Fred Lee knew The Feeling.
He tightened his muscles, closed his eyes and said a prayer. His car was spinning, and the UB wide receiver was curling up in the passenger's seat to take what he thought would be his final hit.
Football players know the heaviness of helplessness. They know the spine-tingling seconds spent anticipating a collision so forceful and fleeting everything is black before you can begin to comprehend what just happened. A linebacker is charging at you like a bull and you're the red flag, and you know you are seconds from his 250-pound frame hammering you, smashing your internal equilibrium and sucking the wind from your lungs.
This time, though, Lee's opponent was not a linebacker. It was a pick-up truck.
It was the day after Lee's 22nd birthday - Sept. 14, 2012. Lee's roommate, defensive back Dwellie Striggles, was driving Lee's brand new 2012 Toyota Corolla because Lee had a broken hand. And as the duo headed down Millersport Highway near UB's North Campus, a 16-year-old driver was paying more attention to her phone than the road and T-boned the football players.
As the Corolla spun from the collision, a pick-up truck sped toward it.
Lee visualized his death. He prayed. He thought about his future. It felt like everything was moving in slow motion as The Feeling fired questions at his mind.
Why had he felt such a strong calling to come to Buffalo if he was going to die here? Why had he pushed so hard to make the football team in high school if his college career would end as a huge disappointment? What had he really accomplished in life? Had he made Mother Dear proud?
As he had so many times on the field, Lee prepared for the blackness.
The truck swerved at the last second and clipped Lee's already-smashed car. He opened his eyes, astonished to be alive.
He tottered out of the car - intact, but altered far beyond the literal impact of a separated shoulder. Those few near-death seconds had remade him. His insurance paid the $13,000 to fix the car, but the shift in his soul couldn't be undone.
"God used it as a wake-up call," Lee said. "It was a glimpse of how fast my life could be gone. It showed me that God has a plan for me. He is not through with me yet. If he was, that truck would have hit us and it all would have been over."
***
To spend a day with Lee is to comprehend exhaustion. Keeping up with him is like trying to block Ray Lewis on fourth-and-1.
Lee, a soon-to-be senior, spends six hours every day playing, watching and studying football, and he's also majoring in early childhood education and taking 14 credits this semester. He doesn't stop there, though. Having once been overlooked and deemed an irrelevant non-athlete, Lee is hungry to overachieve. He spends 40 hours a week working as the training manager at the Taco Bell on Maple and Sweet Home Roads.
But he has taken on the role he considers most important since the accident. Lee is chasing his new passion: a career as a motivator. A devout Christian, he wants to capture the sensation he had in the Corolla - that sense of being awakened by God - and pass it on to others. He sees it as a mission. Bigger than football, money or fame.
People might think his idea is unrealistic or dismiss him as a bit over the top. They might think again after spending a few minutes with Fred Lee.
***
Lee stands out on campus. His muscle-ridden exterior, all 6-foot-2, 210 pounds of it, encases the personality of a bubbly politician (he jokingly says he knows 75 percent of UB's student body). He's gregarious and gentle - except in the weight room, where he sports a black bandana, barks orders for 10 more push-ups and heaves barbells over his head like an Olympic lifter. When he smiles, he shows almost every tooth in his mouth. He has kept his hair faded tight since he let it get a little long in December and his teammates started calling him "Django." His mustache and goatee mask a baby face.
But his hands are easily his most defining characteristic. They're the biggest hands you'll ever shake. They span the width of his iPad, on which he is writing a book. In one hand, he can palm a full-sized basketball while clutching five Cheesy Gordita Crunches in the other.
In many ways, Lee is the same at Taco Bell as he is on the football field. He focuses on making a burrito concoction with the same intensity he focuses on beating a defensive back. Each process involves methodical precision.
He plants his foot in the turf and separates himself from his defender; he fills a taco shell with beef. He attacks the missile-like pass; he shoots Baja sauce from a silver condiment gun. He snags the football with those hands; he blankets the taco in a flatbread shell. He tucks the ball high and tight and sprints for the end zone; he walks to the counter and proclaims, "Order 76!"
Touchdown. Cheesy Gordita Crunch. It's all the same to Fred Lee.
"I'm a firm believer that everything you do matters," Lee said. "The rush of a board full of orders is [comparable to] running out of the tunnel for the home opener. The completion of clearing that board is success in the same way winning the game is success."
At 2 a.m., Lee is handing Baja Blasts out of a drive-thru window. Four hours later, he's blasting a bench press. His day often begins mere hours after his night has concluded at the Mexican fast-food giant.
"Most people don't understand how I do it," Lee said. "It's a long day, but mentally, I can do it."
Before he had saved up enough to buy his ill-fated, now-repaired Corolla in March 2012, Lee rode his bike between campus, the football field and Taco Bell. Bundled in hoodies and parkas, he took on the Buffalo winter with the same ferocity he brings to the weight room.
After he calls out an order, he shouts, "Have a nice day!" and hustles back to the assembly line as if his quarterback has just sent him in motion. More tacos to make, more smiles to share, more character to produce.
For Lee, it's all about building character and believing in himself. He learned in high school thatany goal is realistic with enough hard work.
***
Lee is preparing to enter his final season with the Bulls as the No. 2 receiver behind standout Alex Neutz. In three injury-riddled seasons with minimal playing time, Lee has caught 45 passes for 482 yards and three touchdowns. During the preseason Blue-White scrimmage on Saturday, Lee walked to midfield as one of the captains.
But take it back to Chester, S.C., in 2007, and you won't find the confident, hulking man Lee is today. You'll find a 15-year-old with really big hands and something to prove.
"He always was a go-getter," said his mom, Jacquelyn, who Lee affectionately calls Mother Dear.
Mother Dear always knew those big hands came out that way for a reason. And she always told Lee so, even when he was a scrawny 140-pound sophomore in high school with the dream of playing football at one of the best schools in the state.
Lee had never played football before and he was only known around school as That Kid Who Wears Sperrys. Most of the girls' basketball players could out-lift him. Even the coaches cracked jokes because he fought so hard to lift meager weights.
Fred Lee, however, had a feeling he could become a dominant wide receiver.
"The good athletes, they despised me being an athlete," Lee said. "They thought I wouldn't make it and told me I wasn't good enough. I was too little. I was weak. At times, I wanted to quit. I wanted to say it wasn't worth it. I decided to not listen to that voice and just work hard."
So the smallest kid in the weight room made a preposterous announcement: By the time he graduated, he told the athletes, he would be a legend, one of the best to ever play at Chester Senior High School.
Nobody but his parents believed him. He ran funny. Slow, too. How, then, would he transform into a football legend?
He was unwavering. "While you're watching me get better," he told the athletes, "you're not working. Eventually, one day, I'm going to pass you."
Seven years and 70 pounds of muscle later, his former critics are watching Lee from behind a television screen.
He made the JV team that year, but his struggle to make it as a football player was only beginning.
***
Lee made varsity as a junior, but he sprained his PCL and tore his MCL, two crucial knee ligaments, in preseason play and had to sit out the whole season.
Everything he had worked for - all the late nights in the weight room, all the times he turned away when other players laughed at him - seemed meaningless. No one thought he could come back.
Except Lee.
He did intense pool workouts throughout the year to rehab his leg.
"I would cry because of the workouts my trainer had me do," Lee said.
He knew he was ready by the start of his senior year, and a new coach, Andr'e White, moved him from tight end to wide receiver. Lee wasn't as fast as the other receivers, but White saw those hands and knew they belonged on the edge.
There is an adage in sports: "You can't teach speed." Lee is living proof that speed cannotbe taught - but it can be earned.
White told Lee he had to get faster, so he quit baseball and joined track. He never skipped a workout. After team training, he lifted weights on his own. He caught 200 balls every day after practice.
Lee was not attracting attention from recruiters, but White saw Division I potential.
"I stayed on his butt like crazy," White said. "You could see the spark in his eye."
Lee was getting faster. His body was changing.
"When he started getting muscles and stuff, I felt so happy for him," said Jacquelyn, whose motherly instincts made her worry when Lee started playing the full-contact sport. "He was proud of it. It meant something to him. That was his dream, to play football. It really was."
White's offense passed 90 percent of the time, and Lee amassed eye-grabbing stats. He exploded his senior year, totaling 87 catches, over 1,000 yards and 18 touchdowns to lead the state of South Carolina.
He had fulfilled his proclamation.
Not everyone was happy, though. The same athletes who had mocked Lee had now grown envious.
"They were looking like: 'Oh, this isn't fair,'" Lee said. "'How do you get to do this? I've been playing all my life.' I never boasted in their faces, but that's how life works: When you sit around thinking you're just going to make it, that's when you don't make it."
***
Still, after Lee had gone from benchwarmer to superstar, from That Kid Who Wears Sperrys to the prom king voted Most Popular in his high school, no Division I recruiters knew his name. He had sat out as a junior, the year recruiters care about most.
Then UB stumbled upon him.
Former Bulls running backs coach Lee Chambers was scouting South Pointe High School, which boasted a notable quarterback: Stephon Gilmore, now a starting corner for the Buffalo Bills.
The stacked South Pointe attack, which included celebrated University of South Carolina D-lineman Jadeveon Clowney, defeated Lee's team, but Lee had an outstanding game. After the buzzer, South Pointe's coach told him: "You work hard. You have good character. You're going to be successful in life."
Lee didn't think anything of the interaction. A few days later, Chambers walked into Lee's school. South Pointe's coach, who noticed Lee had character as big as his hands, told Chambers to recruit him.
Former UB head coach Turner Gill flew Lee and his parents into Buffalo. The football program paid for their hotel room, fed them well and showed them around town for a week - a stay that included a tour of the Bills' facilities in Orchard Park, a big hit with the family.
Lee committed to UB, a school known for its frigid climate that was more than 700 miles from his home.
"Initially, I was like: 'This is crazy. Why am I coming to Buffalo?' Four years later, I see why," Lee said. "Right now, you may not understand why it's happening. Two years from now, 10 years from now, you might be able to see why. But you've got to have that faith that right now means something. It could mean something 10 years from now or 10 minutes from now."
Coach White, meanwhile, was overjoyed that his receiver - the earnest young man with the big hands who stayed late in the weight room and persevered through callous taunts - had finally received attention from a Division I institution.
"It only takes one school to believe in you, and UB was that school," White said.
To this day, Lee visits White's teams and gives motivational speeches about the power of hard work.
Lee's parents had wanted him to stay down South, where his family and friends could come watch him play. A number of lower-level South Carolina schools had recruited him. When Lee goes home for breaks, they still try to lure him from UB.
But Fred Lee had a feeling about UB. He believed everything in his childhood had prepared him to wear 'Buffalo' across his chest.
***
Lee's parents divorced when he was 5, and his mother worked the overnight shift at the Duracell factory in addition to a job at Wal-Mart, so he became the de facto housekeeper. While his siblings would lie around the house, Lee would tidy up so Mother Dear could relax when she got home.
"He'd get up and wash dishes," said his dad, Fred Sr., who could pass as Lee's twin but with a thick Southern drawl. "He can cook good as a woman can. He took a lot of load off of [Jacquelyn] by keeping the house clean and doing things an ordinary teenager wouldn't do."
Lee's sister and four brothers, all older than him, didn't do laundry or vacuum, but he did.
"My brothers made some of the wrong steps and haven't really been role models," he said. "I feed off of that. I feel like I'm working for my family, just to be successful. They need that."
His parents always told him he was headed for great things.
"People said: 'If you're in a single-parent household, you ain't gonna be successful,'" Jacquelyn said. "But I always told him: 'No, you're gonna be successful.'"
Jacquelyn said Lee was a busybody as a child, always wanting to go do something and socialize. She saw her son's curious nature even when he was a baby. At eight months old, when he heard a beep on the oven, he'd always want to know what was inside.
His curiosity turned into work ethic. Lee constantly wanted to be around people, so he followed his dad to work. He started assisting Fred Sr.'s automotive business when he was 9. First, Lee just washed cars. Then he started changing tires. Now when he goes home, Lee does brake pads, oil changes and front-end work.
Lee said he has never been able to say "No" to someone asking for help, and as a result, he believes the world is resoundingly telling him "Yes."
***
The more Lee thought about the car accident and how he could make an impact with his life, the more he realized he needed to act on his perpetual urge to help people.
He's currently working on his first book, a handbook titled ...No Matter What..., which he hopes will inspire others to overcome their inner struggles. He wants people to pick up the manual and find solace - whether they're suffering from loss, relationship problems or just coffee stains on new khakis. He wants them to find peace, and he's also starting a motivational-speaking business called Living Life Enhanced.
Lee describes his writing/speaking style as inspirational with a spiritual foundation, and his insistent, amiable voice has the potential to sway crowds. Lee said he has received a lot of positive feedback on a sample YouTube video he made titled "Not What You Do But How You Do It," which runs 24:21.
"I never memorize anything," Lee said. "I don't believe in reading off the paper, because when you read off the paper, you don't really say what you feel in that moment."
The first chapter of his book is titled: "It may not be, but it can be done." Below is an excerpt.
Quitting is a selfish act; making the decision to quit means you are only thinking about yourself. We forget our decisions in life affect a lot more than ourselves. When you quit, you give up on yourself and everyone else who believes in you. We have to remember when we are on this journey of life we aren't alone. We aren't living for ourselves. There is always someone believing in you - whether you know it or not.
I can remember working at Taco Bell, taking orders on a regular night. It was really busy and I was at the point of giving up and walking out. But I thought in my head: Everyone waiting in line is depending on me and it's my obligation as the server to make sure they have the best experience of their life. No matter how I felt, I had to make sure they were taken care of. I could have quit - I didn't need the job at that point - but I knew quitting was the easy way out. Me leaving would have left the crew I was working with short, and the people in line would have had to wait longer for their food. So when you feel like throwing in the towel, think of whom you will let down.
As a Division I football player trying to be a great student-athlete and a great manager at Taco Bell, I ask myself daily why I do it. I always look around at my teammates and think about my family, and the answer always comes to mind. I love it. I don't always like it, but I always love it. It gets really hard sometimes, but I love it. And I know my role on the team matters. My role at Taco Bell matters. My effort in the classroom matters. No matter the facet of life, my role matters. In football, I don't always get the ball. Sometimes, I have to make a block that no one sees - but that could be the difference between winning and losing.
No matter how small or hard or behind-the-scenes your situation may seem, know it matters to your family, friends, roommates, coworkers, or teammates.
***
Lee said every area of his life ties into his dream - even Taco Bell.
"Who I am at Taco Bell will carry over to who I will become when I'm the CEO of Living Life Enhanced," he said. "I write in the book you have to view every step in life as success because everything you do matters and is a part of who you will be."
When it comes to Taco Bell, people ask him why: Why care so much about a fast-food chain? Why work so much when he has a full scholarship?
Kids ask for Lee's autograph in his South Carolina hometown, and yet he's happy to serve up Doritos Locos Tacos. It doesn't bother him to trade his blue-and-white uniform for a purple-and-black polo. He sees Taco Bell the same way he sees everything else - as a training ground.
He believes calling out an order can help him learn to call an audible. Memorizing a recipe can help him memorize his playbook. Whether he is pressing a quesadilla or beating press coverage, Lee is fully in the moment.
"I wake up every day and I look in the mirror like: 'I'm here,'" Lee beamed. "Where I am now, I consider this big success. A lot of people, this isn't it for them. Each step of my life, I consider it important."
Lee got the job in 2010, during head coach Jeff Quinn's first summer with the team. Quinn made his athletes stay in Buffalo for workouts, and Lee had money for rent and food, but NCAA regulations kept him from having scholarship funds to do much else. While many of his teammates sat around, Lee got a job.
"The NCAA does not have any limits on how many hours a student-athlete can work and our rules only state they must receive the going rate for pay," said Stacey Osburn, an NCAA spokesperson. "In other words, they can't get paid more money because they are a student-athlete or receive money for work they didn't perform."
Joy Corbett, Lee's general manager at Taco Bell, is thankful he sought work.
"He's an amazing worker," she said. "He's always working. Never stands around."
Lee has even developed a fan club. Some of his patrons recently brought him a thank-you card. Others came in during Spring Break, while Lee was in Myrtle Beach, and said they would come back to order when Lee returned.
"That's success," he said. "I have made an impact on so many people's lives just through serving tacos.
"If you're a custodian, if you're sweeping the floor, it means something. It means something to the world. If you take pride in what you do at the bottom of life, you'll always take
pride in what you do at the top of life."
***
Lee is translating his experience into a leadership role with UB's football team.
During his first three years at UB (he redshirted his freshman year), Lee showed he had potential, but it wasn't until he got punched in the face that the casual fans learned his name.
The brawl wasn't Lee's fault. Tension on the practice field had spilled into the locker room when he stepped in and told his teammates, "Just separate, back up." Then star linebacker Khalil Mack threw a punch that inadvertently hit Lee in the face. UB suspended Mack for the first game of the season, a 45-23 loss at Georgia Sept. 1.
"Khalil just made a mistake," said Lee, who describes Mack as one of his closest friends and said Mack cuts his hair for free. "He acted out of anger and rage. After the incident, I told him: 'I don't hate you for it. Do I wish it wouldn't have happened? Yeah, but everybody makes mistakes and I'm not going to ruin our friendship over a mistake.' I know that's not the type of person he is."
Lee had expected his junior year of 2012, in which he had finally earned a starting spot, to be his breakout season. Shortly after the fight, he broke his hand in the Bulls' 56-34 win over Morgan State Sept. 8.
Six days later, Lee and his best friend Striggles decided to shop for dinner - you won't believe your taste buds if you try Lee's Southern-style meatloafand mashed potatoes - and climbed into Lee's Corolla with Striggles at the wheel. They tuned the stereo to Donell Jones, Lee's favorite R&B singer. He knows every word to every song.
Then it came: The Feeling.
The 16-year-old's car slammed into the driver's side door. The mangled metal pressed inside the Corolla but miraculously stopped at Striggles' leg. "It was literally touching my leg," Striggles said, mouth agape, still in shock.
"Is God trying to tell me I shouldn't be playing here?" Lee asked Striggles later in their apartment. He couldn't believe a fight, a broken hand, a separated shoulder and a car accident had marred what he expected to be The Year of Fred Lee. "Do I need to go back home?"
Just like in high school, Lee wanted to quit. He wanted to say it wasn't worth it. But just like in high school, he channeled his frustration into determination.
He knew something had happened in that car. In those excruciatingly long seconds anticipating the blackness, he felt oddly alive. The Feeling had spoken to him, and it was time to reply.
***
He resolved he would salvage The Year of Fred Lee. It would be a year of healing and moving forward - both for himself and for others.
And Fred Lee had a feeling he could make it happen...no matter what.
Trainers told him he would miss the whole season. Teammates told him he should give his injuries time to heal. He told them he'd see them on the field.
"People would look at him and laugh because they told him he wouldn't come back in time, and he kept saying: 'I'm coming back. I'm going to play. I'm going to make an impact,'" Striggles said. "He would make little progressions day by day. One day, he came out of the tunnel just screaming. Everyone's looking like, 'Where's your yellow jersey?' And he was like, 'I'm back!'"
Lee returned for the last five games of the season and made 15 catches for 248 yards and a touchdown while he began to assert himself as a leader.
At UB, he haspacked on33 poundsin the weight room and slashed his 40-yard dash time from 5.0 to 4.5 to earn the self-given moniker "Fast Freddie."
"Fred's what I call a 100-mile-an-hour guy," said Alex Wood, UB's wide receivers' coach. "He doesn't know how to do it any other way."
Head coach Quinn knew Lee was special the first day they met. Quinn said he expects to one day enter UB's Center For the Arts to hear Lee speak.
The accident remade Lee, both as an athlete and as a man.
***
Now, when his teammates go out and party, Lee - ever the socialite - will share laughs and dance, but he always makes sure he has the keys and everyone gets home safe. They call him a natural drunk because he's always high on life.His teammates tell him he has an old spirit. He says he takes pride in protecting his friends.
We are all Fred Lee. We grew up with some goal, some aspiration, that society deemed unfeasible. Some wanted to become an astronaut, others an actress. Lee wanted to become a football player, and when people told him he couldn't do it, he didn't listen.
He has never been interested in what society considers realistic. He defines his reality.
Lee might never be a New York Times bestselling author, might never establish himself as a well-known motivational speaker and reach the millions he dreams of inspiring. He might not have a great senior year and make an all-conference team, might have to settle for shooting sour cream onto Cheesy Gordita Crunches.
People might doubt him. They might even laugh.
Then again, they always have. Let them. He doesn't mind. He has something they can't fathom.
It is heightened. It is focused. It is alive.
Fred Lee has a feeling.
Email: aaron.mansfield@ubspectrum.com
