By Karen Feldscher
Photography by Dana Smith

There's an old videotape, recorded nearly ten years ago, that shows the FleetCenter buzzing with thousands of Boston-area kids, gathered for a one-day program against hatred called Team Harmony. Next up: Darryl Williams.

He appears onstage in a handsome dusky-purple suit and gazes out with large, expressive eyes at the sea of young faces. "How's everybody doin'?" he calls in a warm, strong voice. The audience yells in response.

"Oh, come on now. I was younger earlier, and I know you can get louder than that! How's everybody doin'?" Williams shouts. This time, the cheers ring out more emphatically.

And then the man in the wheelchair—who got there after being shot by three white youths sixteen years earlier—explains why the crime that crippled his body didn't cripple his spirit, why it didn't turn him against white people. And why no one in the audience need succumb to prejudice, either.

"If I were to react in the hostile, ignorant manner in which my assailants [acted], I might not be here today to speak to you," Williams says in a measured cadence, to a now hushed crowd. "My family would be hurt. My friends would be hurt. And I really didn't want to have that burden on me, nor did I want anyone to have to go through that."

It's a message of peace Williams, UC'01, had carried to the world many times before. One he continues to carry, though his life remains filled with a mixture of obstacles and struggle that would have closed the hearts of many men.

The injury

On September 28, 1979, Williams, then fifteen, was shot on the Charlestown High School football field during a break in play between his Jamaica Plain High School varsity squad and the home team.

The bullet that lodged in his neck came from a nearby roof, where three local teens later said they'd been firing at pigeons. Others—including Williams, his family, and friends—believe the shooting was racially motivated.

Since that day, Williams has been a quadriplegic. His injury is, in medical terms, "incomplete," meaning there is a high probability of a complete recovery. But doctors can't predict his future.

"To quote my original doctor," Williams says, "'Darryl could regain some mobility, complete mobility, or stay the same. We just don't know.'"

He has enough movement in his left arm to operate a power wheelchair. At home, an environmental-control system allows him to turn lights on and off, lock and unlock doors, and operate other electronics through a series of sips on a straw.

When he goes out, he usually has an assistant along, for extra help with getting around and "because I am recognized a lot," he explains. "I'm approached by people wanting an autograph, a picture—or even a kiss. Having someone basically police the attention is extremely helpful."

As you get to know Williams and his situation, the first thing that jumps to mind is, How can he not be angry?

And yet, he isn't. He's not only learned how to deal with his injury, he hasn't been confined by it. He spent several years as a part-time outreach specialist at Northeastern's Center for the Study of Sport in Society, with which he is still affiliated. He's worked for a dozen years at the Massachusetts State Lottery Commission, where he's currently a part-time special projects coordinator. In 2001, he earned a bachelor's degree in human resources management from Northeastern.

Williams also went on to become a motivational speaker and personal counselor, a powerful voice in the fight against hatred and violence. "I used to obsess over things early on, after sustaining the injury," he admits. "But I don't any more. In my early to mid-twenties, I began to get my feet on steadier ground."

"I always describe Darryl as an unknown American version of Nelson Mandela," says Richard Lapchick, the founding director of Sport in Society, who hired the young man in the early 1990s. After Williams was shot, Lapchick says, "he had every reason to hate white people, but he was able to isolate his feelings to the three people who did that to him."

In fact, Williams doesn't even spend much time thinking about his assailants. He's forgiven them.

"Over the years," he explains, "I came to realize that forgiveness does not mean condoning what was done."

The incident

Not that he wasn't angry at first. He surely was. But mostly, Williams was a scared teenager, just trying to come to terms with a monumental change, and deal with it.

He chuckles a bit when reminded of the early news accounts that lauded him for not being bitter. "I would have to amend that," he says. "I wasn't bitter not because I was so altruistic, but because I was a kid. I didn't know what the hell just happened to me."

Exactly what happened may never be fully known. Three Charlestown teenagers, Stephen McGonagle, Joseph Nardone, and Patrick Doe—residents of the Bunker Hill housing project, all with previous run-ins with the law—were hanging out on the roof of a three-story apartment building, about a hundred yards from where Williams stood near one of the end zones on Charlestown High's football field. A sophomore wide receiver, Williams had just caught his first pass for Jamaica Plain's varsity team.

A few seconds later, he was lying on the ground with a bullet in his neck.

He nearly died. He spent a year of his life in the hospital. For about seven months, when he had to wear a neck brace for stabilization, he couldn't swallow or speak. It took him many difficult years to adjust to living in a wheelchair.

His mother, Shirley Simmons, ferociously protective, shielded him from news accounts of the incident. It wasn't until many years later that Williams learned details of what had happened to him. When he did, it was a shock.

Like when he read about the procedures that kept him alive the week after the shooting. "A doctor said they had to inject me with steroids to keep my heart pumping," he says. "And I sat there thinking, Who in the world was this? Knowing it was me. But I couldn't believe it. I actually had steroids in my body to keep my heart pumping? Wow."

Williams was still in the hospital when the two men convicted in his case—McGonagle, who admitted firing the bullet, and Nardone—each received only ten years for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, the result of a negotiated plea bargain. The third youth, Doe, was tried as a juvenile and found not guilty. As part of the plea bargain, the district attorney's office agreed to drop some armed robbery and motor-vehicle larceny charges that already stood against the two older defendants.

In a stinging legal irony, Nardone got a longer sentence—twenty years—for holding up a Medford store nine months before the shooting, than for putting Williams in a wheelchair.

Throughout the court proceedings, all three youths insisted they hadn't meant to hurt anyone.

A question of race

According to a September 1990 Boston Globe Magazine article by Dan Shaughnessy, the Boston Police department maintains the Williams shooting was not a racially motivated crime.

Immediately following the incident, Boston mayor Kevin White labeled it a racist act. After arrests were made two days later, however, White said there was "no evidence, at this point, of racial intent against one boy." Speculation circulated that the mayor, anxious about Pope John Paul II's upcoming visit to Boston, was intent on quelling the city's racial tensions, still inflamed by the court-ordered busing that began in 1974.

Yet the African-American community was shaken by the gunfire in Charlestown. A few days after the shooting, protestors chanting "Justice for Darryl" marched to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the South End, where the pope was conducting a service. In the days following, hundreds of students walked out of several Boston high schools to demonstrate, saying they feared for their safety.

Reaction probably would have run hotter were it not for Williams's mother, who publicly called for a nonviolent response, as did other leaders in the black community.

In the 1990 Globe magazine article, Williams speculated about the motives of the teens who shot him. He believes they weren't aiming at birds.

"Besides getting ready to make my life a living hell, what were they doing?" he said then. "I think they were trying to kill somebody black, not wound somebody black, not make somebody black paralyzed; their intent was to kill somebody black."

Told today that the Boston Observer reported in March 1982 that McGonagle said he often thought of Williams—and even considered charging for interviews and sending his victim the money (something he never did)—Williams expresses amazement. Then shakes his head.

"A statement like that adds insult to injury," he says. "It sounds to me like he's trying to jump on the bandwagon of feeling bad for me. But it's total BS. Come on."

He adds, "It was such an outrage at the time in the black community. There were some people who pretty much wanted to bury their heads in the sand and not call a spade a spade—no pun intended. But it was racial."

The shooting's aftermath held more pain. Immediately after the incident, city officials promised to help the Williams family with housing and medical expenses. But the aid didn't materialize.

A civil lawsuit the family filed against the city failed as well. The $3 million suit named a handful of city, police, and school officials, including Mayor White and police commissioner Joseph Jordan. It claimed that, with the city's tense racial climate, officials knew or should have known violent attacks on black athletes were likely to occur in Charlestown; that they failed to take adequate security measures; and that, therefore, Williams was shot and deprived of his constitutional rights.

But U.S. District Court chief judge Andrew Caffrey dismissed that argument in January 1985, ruling that, "in most circumstances, there is no constitutional right to basic services such as adequate police protection."

Caffrey went on: "Where a victim voluntarily places himself in peril, and injury is caused by a third party, there is no due-process right to protection or aid." The judge noted that Williams was not under compulsion to participate in football or to travel to Charlestown for the game.

Williams scoffs at the reasoning. How, he asks, can one expect a fifteen-year-old to not only understand that he may face danger playing a high school sport in another part of the city, but also have the gumption—or desire, for that matter—to refuse to play for his team?

Dan Shaughnessy criticized the judge's decision even more harshly in a November 1991 Boston Globe column. "Great logic there," he wrote. "I guess this was Darryl's fault for thinking he could play high school football without being shot by a sniper. Silly guy."

Williams's mother's reaction was blunt. "Justice," Shirley Simmons told the Globe in 1985, "is not being done in this city."

New life

Stephen McGonagle obtained his release from prison, but in 1988 was shot to death by a cousin in Charlestown. Joseph Nardone, while out of jail on parole, got involved in a local drug ring, and wound up sentenced in 1995 to life in prison for murder. Patrick Doe got married, and stayed a Charlestown resident.

As for Williams, he lives on his own in Milton. Hired personal assistants come by every day to provide care and transportation. Friends and family members help out whenever they can, too.

It took Williams a while to fashion what might be called a "normal" life after the shooting. He earned his high school degree from the Massachusetts Hospital School in Canton in 1983, as well as from Jamaica Plain High, which presented him with a diploma at the same time.

After that, he signed up for classes at the University of Massachusetts­Boston and Roxbury Community College. Both efforts were short-lived.

"When I attended those schools, the timing wasn't right," says Williams. "It was some five years after the injury. It was still relatively fresh. I just wasn't mentally prepared for the rigors of college."

He tried again in spring 1992, at Northeastern, with the help of a full scholarship. This time, it worked. Nine years later, he had his degree. Northeastern was a good experience for him, he says: "Great campus, nice students, challenging professors."

As he was working toward his degree, Williams became affiliated with Sport in Society, which promotes the use of sport and sports figures to effect positive social change. Lapchick, then the center's director, had seen video footage of Williams denouncing racism, and asked him to participate in a speaking program at the Robert Gould Shaw Middle School, in West Roxbury.

By summer 1994, Williams had joined the Sport in Society staff, working part-time for the Project Teamwork program, in which former athletes help middle and high school students combat discrimination and practice conflict-resolution skills. He had also begun working part-time at the Lottery, where he currently writes databases and spreadsheets.

"There would be no Center for the Study of Sport in Society if not for Darryl Williams," Lapchick says today, noting that Williams's story helped convince him, back in the early 1980s, of the importance of using sport for social good. "He's one of the biggest ambassadors in the country bringing people together across racial groups, and talking to young people about dealing with physical trauma. He's one of the most inspirational people I know."

Friends and colleagues concur wholeheartedly. Steve Morgan, a Boston Police detective who's known Williams since they were both fourteen, calls his friend a truly compelling speaker. "He just talks from what he knows, what he sees, and what he's been through," says Morgan. "His strongest message when he's talking to young kids is just to persevere in life."

Adds Jeffrey O'Brien, the Sport in Society senior associate director for programs, "When you see somebody who's been on the receiving end of racist violence, then he turns around and dedicates the rest of his life to racial healing, reconciliation, and violence prevention, that's really powerful."

Daily tests

In addition to his ability to motivate, those who know Williams best say they're amazed by his sheer resilience.

Williams's mother, who rarely talks to the press these days, in October 1995 told Boston Herald columnist Joe Fitzgerald that her son is a "truly remarkable" guy.

"Way back when it happened, back when I first saw signs of this inner strength in him, I said, 'God, you must have him in your hands,'" Simmons said. "It was like there was something in him that was way beyond me, way beyond what I could understand."

For Williams, that strength translates into a stamina level he himself labels "through the roof."

When asked if it was physically tough for him in the 1990s, for instance, when he was working three and sometimes four days a week at Sport in Society, two days at the Lottery, and spending a couple of nights each week in University College classes, his answer is a categorical "no." Because, he explains, being busy "solidified my self-worth."

Williams's energy occasionally gets him into trouble. "I have more stamina than everyone who has worked for me," he says, smiling. Then he chooses his words judiciously: "That has made me have to reexamine the speed in which I prefer to have things done."

Sometimes, he admits, when he's watching someone sweep a floor or put air in a tire, he wishes he could simply jump up and do it himself, more rapidly.

Steve Morgan laughs in recognition of Williams's impatience. "It's not like people don't try to make things happen faster for him," he says. "But he knows that if it were possible for him to do it on his own, it would be done in a quicker fashion." Morgan adds, "He's gotten a bit better with the frustration."

For all his strength, Williams is certainly not without his low moments. Although he's come a long way, he says, he still deals with the consequences of the shooting.

"Each and every day presents a new challenge," he says. "The key is learning how to conquer that challenge. It's been my experience that the challenge could either make you or break you. It can break you and make you wallow in self-pity, self-loathing. Or it can make you, in the sense of shaping your character, your determination, your will."

Williams says he goes through different mental and emotional states all the time. "It's constant," he says. "Every day."

Lessons learned

When Boston University hockey player Travis Roy suffered a debilitating spinal injury in 1995, Joe Fitzgerald called Williams to see if he had any advice for the younger man.

He did. Williams acknowledged he'd gone through months of despair after the shooting. But "little by little," he said, "I began to see a bigger picture: 'God has left me here for a reason.' And I began to question Him as well as myself: 'OK, what is it I'm supposed to do now?'"

Williams realized—and what he said he hoped Roy would realize, too—was that "we all have to find out what qualities there are inside us that make each of us unique. And when you find them, it's a totally euphoric feeling."

How does Williams define what makes him unique? "The ability to uplift, to inspire, to empower, by way of leading by example," he says.

Because of the intense focus on Williams's strength and image as a role model, other pieces get lost in the shuffle. Little things. Like his friend John Kelly's memory of the fifteen-year-old who was learning how to play guitar and loving it. Or Williams's notion of himself as a philosophical kid, even before his injury nudged him toward a greater consideration of profound issues. Or his reliance on books about positive thinking by writers like Deepak Chopra, Norman Vincent Peale, and Emmet Fox.

Or not-so-little things, like the comfort he finds in religion. "I talk to God a lot," he says.

And there's another matter. "One point that has been really annoying to me—personally, as a man—is being considered not sexually active," Williams says. "People assume I'm not. It can be awkward. But I've discovered that, once a person gets to know me better, and one thing leads to another"—he laughs—"a lot of times, they have been pleasantly surprised."

Williams may always struggle—sometimes more, sometimes less—with the aftereffects of his injury. But one memory illustrates, in a subtle way, how far he's come.

Back in 1995, the Globe wanted to take a photograph of Williams on the football field where he'd been shot. He hadn't been there since the shooting.

Asked today if it had been tough to return to the scene of the crime, Williams shakes his head.

"It was no big deal," he says. "It wasn't a heart-pounding moment. I did get reflective. I sat there and thought, 'This is the last place I felt my shirt on my body.'"

But mostly, he says, he was just thinking about how cold he was in the late September evening air. "I kept saying to the photographer," he chuckles, "'Do you have enough pictures yet?'"

Karen Feldscher is a senior writer.