USC’s Rey Maualuga overcomes hunger
LOS ANGELES – To go hungry is to not forget.
Some try to bury that feeling, so they dare not speak of it.
Rey Maualuga doesn’t want to forget. The Southern Cal linebacker doesn’t want to muffle it. So he talks about it.
“Some people grow up and wake up the next day and not know what’s going to happen,” he said. “I had that feeling here and there. I’m pretty sure my mom and dad had that feeling. I’m pretty sure that the tears that came down their eyes weren’t tears of happiness. They were tears of ‘What am I going to do with these kids?’ ”
Maualuga, the all-American at the center of the defense that will face Penn State tomorrow in the Rose Bowl, bounced around as a child. He was born in Oklahoma, but soon after, his American Samoan family moved to Waipahu, Hawaii.
That was where his mother, Tina, and father, Talatonu, struggled. That was where Rey and his two younger brothers would eat the same meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner, save as much as they could, wrap it up, and eat the leftovers the next day. And that was where the Maualugas were kicked out of their tiny apartment and forced to live in the attic of a church.
philly.com
12/31/08
