Herschel Walker Interview

What were your dreams as a young man?

Herschel Walker: Coming from a small town it was really tough to dream big. When I grew up in a small town in Georgia, my biggest dream was one day to be able to go to Atlanta, Georgia. To be able to go to Atlanta, which was about two hours and 45 minutes from my home. So, to dream about going to Atlanta was it. You'd think about that - you'd think about that. I never dreamed about football. I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don't dream about being a professional football player or an actor. So you go to Atlanta, and you're in the big city now. That was the dream.
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The majority of the people that I was growing up with were going off into the military. A lot of my classmates thought of going into the military. That was something more worthwhile, that had a purpose. I was always by himself. I didn't drink, I'm not a big partyer, so I love being by myself. Deep down inside of me, I realized that the military has got a purpose. I wanted to go into the military at that time.

What was it like growing up in a small town in rural Georgia?

Herschel Walker: I think growing up in a small town gave me a lot of values. It has helped me to mature as an individual as well as a person. I think as an individual, because it helped me to have confidence within myself. I think today we have to help our youth to gain this confidence within themselves. People use so many excuses -- peer pressure is thier biggest excuse. There's no such thing as peer pressure. If you believe within yourself, there is no peer pressure.
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You know what's right and what's wrong. I think every individual know what's right. You can take your most violent criminal, and you have a talk with him, and he will say, "I wanted to get caught because I knew what I was doing wasn't right, but I couldn't stop." So I say there is no peer pressure, if you believe within yourself. Growing up, I started developing confidence in what I felt.

My parents helped me to believe in myself. I wasn't the best looking guy, I wasn't the best athlete in the world, but they made me feel good about myself. "Herschel, you are somebody. Whether you are black, white, it doesn't matter. You are a person and God loves you." So that made me feel good. I was able to feel good about myself, growing up in a small town. And then again, there was real hard work ethics. That's what we need today. Young people, adults, we need good work ethics. Because nothing is going to come to you easy. We've got too much of a competitive world for anything to come easy to you. People competing in everything. It doesn't matter what it is. Football, that's just athletics. But in the business world -- doing everything -- people are competing. So you got to get those very good work ethics, and I think that helped me develop good work ethics, being in a small town.
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What kind of a kid were you? What were you like when you were growing up?

I was a little different. I still say I'm a little different, because success to me is not having the most money, or having the biggest car or the biggest house. Success is just being happy. And I try so many different things. I do a lot of different things because I think God has helped me to love myself. I know who God is, and I love God. So, I think growing up as a kid, I used to write all the time. I was always by myself. It's not that I wanted to be by myself, but we lived in a small town. We lived out in the country. There was no one around, so I was not going to use excuses and wander away from home, going over someone else's. I'd sit at home. I wrote. Whatever I could get my hands on, I read, and you know I just was a different little kid, I think.
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What did you read that had an influence on you?

Herschel Walker: I used to read the Bible a lot. Read little short Bible stories. And today, whenever I give speeches, I bring up a few of those Bible stories, because those are inspirations to me. Some people get up and they tell you their life story, like a boxer always comes out and he says, "Well, I was never a tough guy, and this guy stole my bike," like Muhammed Ali, "so I went in to boxing and next thing I know, I'm the heavyweight champion." You know, anyone could do that. I don't mean anyone could do it, but anyone could do one of those stories. But no one can die and come back alive again. It hasn't been done yet. There is only one person that has done something like that. So that inspired me. I said, 'hey, this guy's my hero. If he can do that, I'm going to believe in this guy here.' And to see him, who can help the blind to see, people that are sick he can cure. He became the guy that I looked up to. Whenever my parents or anyone started talking about religion, or about God, I eased over there and listened a little bit, because I said, 'that's knowledge.' I'm not a big guy that's going to try to throw religion on anyone because that person has to be accountable for himself. I think that's what we have to do in society today is to be accountable for yourself. I think we have the tendency of always wanting to live someone else's life. We want to tell that person what to do, how to act, but yet, we don't know how to act. I think first, if we learn to act, maybe we can help that other person. That's the way I try to be brought up.
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I remember you talking about a race that didn't work out so well. That's a great story.

Not having that athletic ability, and being talked about, kids not wanting to play with you and kids making fun of you. When I was in the seventh grade, I think, they have this race at the end of the school year, like a mile run. And I felt that if I can win that mile run, I'd have all these friends. People were going to come and talk to me because I won the mile.
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So about three weeks before the race, my father was a farmer, so he plowed this field and I got out and went into training with my younger brother. We went out and we went into training so I could get ready to win this mile. For three weeks, I trained.

The day came for the race and I got up there with this guy, Willie Jenkins. I remember his name and this other guy, Wells, who everybody predicted they were going to win that race. They were the most athletic kids in my class. And, I got up there right with them to run this race, and we started running. I was feeling good. I was feeling great. I was in shape. No one know I'd been training except my younger brother. So, we were running around the track and about the second lap, something said, "Herschel, you're not going to win." I'm running and I'm thinking, okay, wait a minute. Third lap something said, "Herschel, you're not going to win." And, I'm up front. There's only like...I'm in the second place. I'm right up front. I'm feeling good. I'm not even tired, and going until the last lap. Something said, "Herschel, you're not going to win. You're not going to win this race. You better get out of it. You better get out of it." And, I'm like in second whereas I probably could have won it if I had kept running. And, I said, "Okay. What am I going to do? I'm going to pretend like I pulled a muscle." So, on the last curve, I walked off the field and grabbed my hamstring and sat and pretend like I hurt my leg. And Willie Jenkins ended up winning this race and all day it bothered me.
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I remember going home and getting off the school bus. My younger brother ran up to me and said, "How did it go? How did it go?" and I said, "Well, I hurt my leg," and I lied about it. He said, "Oh you know, you'll get them next time." That made me feel so bad, because I lied, and I think the thing is I didn't try. I said then, no matter whatever happened in my life from then on, I don't care what happened. I'm going to give it everything I've got. It's funny, because I see so many people today that don't want to try, and I say I don't care what I ever do, I never give up at anything anymore. I don't care what it is, you'll never see me give up.
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What kind of a student were you when you were a kid?

Herschel Walker: I had a speech impediment when I was growing up. I could barely put a sentence together. I could barely talk. But my parents wouldn't let that be an excuse. They said, "Well, you have to work on it." I had a lot of teachers that really didn't pay that much attention to me. Having a speech impediment, they just figured then, it's going too tough for Herschel so we will put him over there in the corner, and we will work with him when we have time, after we work with the other kids. Even though that may have disappointed me in their views, it didn't disappoint me in the way my parents said, "Herschel, you just study this, you study that." And my speech got better. My grades came up. And when I graduated high school, I was valedictorian of my class.
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I graduated high school as the Beta Club president, which is a club that you have to have "A"s to be a part of. I was president of the Beta Club.

I went into college with a very high grade point average. I knew, from what my parents had told me, that as long as you apply yourself, you are going to succeed.

Too many people today are afraid to step up at bat. They are afraid that life is going to throw them all kinds of curve balls, and this and that. And you know what is so strange, is there is no one in professional baseball that is batting 100. I doubt there is anyone batting 600. There is no one probably batting even 500. But as long as you're not afraid in life, and step up and take on a challenge, you never know what's going to happen. And every challenge that I have been faced, I am going to step up and swing because one time I may hit a home run. And that home run is going to carry me a little bit farther. That's what is so great to me about the Academy here. I've won so many awards in my life. I won a lot of things, but when I got the word about coming up here to the Academy as a student, I was getting so many scholarship offers and I really didn't know what to think of it, until I got here and saw the other students here. And it made me proud to be a part of that.
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I was sort of embarrassed, coming from a small town and this and that, and I'm seeing all these kids from all over the country, seeing what they've done, and they had a few whiz kids here that were already in college. It made me proud just to be a part of it. I don't care if I was riding on the coattails, as I felt then. It just made me proud to be a part of it. It inspired me, and I said, "Herschel, you can get better. Why don't you get a little bit better, because the Academy means something. The Academy of Achievement, that's always it, it means something." It just made me real proud when I came up as a student. It's like man, all these other kids here, and I think as an individual sometimes you think, I'm the only one that's from a town that's so small, if everyone breathed at the same time, you'd run out of oxygen. Man, there is nothing there. So it's so strange when I came up to this place that has so many students that knew everything. Your'e thinking, shoot, I thought I knew everything. I thought my mother and father knew everything. Here is this little kid here that knows about trying to put together this sphere that can tell you how fast the speed of light. That was stunning to me.
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Where do these values come from? Is this from your family, from your parents?

My parents. Growing up, they worked hard. Everyone in my family were up early in the morning. I used to see my mother and my father go off to work, and come back and, no matter what, they had time for the kids. They disciplined us to do what was right. You knew what to do, and you knew what not to do. And whenever a child in the house went off to work, my parents made him be sure of himself that he if he went, he was going to work. He was not going there to clown around. He was not going there just to pass time away. He was going to work. And he was not going to just try to make a dollar by sitting down. He was going to give everything he's got. And I think because of that, that's why I'm always going to give everything I've got. Because God is going to be proud of you then. There is no such word in my family as "lazy," because there is no such thing. I think, "Lazy" and "I quit" is a bad word in the vocabulary. You never know what's going to happen. You never know.
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Who have been the most important people in you life?

Herschel Walker: God, my parents, my wife. I don't have a lot of friends, because I'm always moving around. I don't drink, so I don't hang out in bars. But they've been very big in my life. Because they have helped to encourage me. Sometimes things get tough, and all of a sudden you see people easing away from you. They say to themselves, "I've got problems, and I don't need to hear his problems, and I'm going to ease away."

No matter what, I can call my parents any time of the night. I'm in Europe some time, and there is such a big time difference. I remember then calling my mother; it was about three o'clock in the morning, and I just wanted to talk. She was so happy for me to call. She's waking up. She's happy for me to call. It sort of brings tears to your eyes, because sometimes a boy grows up in his family, not able to say I love you. Over the last year or so is the first time I ever told my parents that. It's so weird because I say, you grew up and you don't even say it. The word is such a short four-letter, short, little word. You just can't even say, "I love you." I started saying it, and it comes so easy now, if I don't say it when I'm hanging up the phone, I have to call right back and say, "I forgot to say I love you all." It's so funny where now it comes so easy. I say, we are sometimes so macho, we forget who we are. And that's something I'm not going to do. I love to work. I love to learn new things. I love to see a lot of new things. I'm not a person that's going to try to impress anyone because I think as long as I'm myself, you either like me or you don't. I can't help that and there is nothing else I can do.
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I want to take you back for a minute to being a kid in that small town in Georgia. Back in school. Did you have favorite subjects? You said you liked to read and you liked to write. What did you like to read, and what did you write about?

Herschel Walker: My favorite subject probably was math. I love math. Figures just intrigue me. I was really good at math. English probably was my worst subject. But I used to write a lot of poetry. I used to write poetry all the time. It's a little different now, because I can't just sit down and write; it's something that just came to me. A lot of people say, "Herschel, maybe you are writing because you are depressed," and I say, "No. I write happy things." I write from life to death, write about space. Just something that I am thinking at the time. It's not anything that I can think of right now. If I had to come up with something that just came to me, I think growing up in a small town, I want knowledge. I still think today, knowledge is one of the keys. Because when you are able to understand, life is a lot more beautiful. When you are able to hear another language and understand it, it is literally more beautiful than just hearing it. When you are able to see a painting up on the wall, and understand what you are looking at, it is literally more beautiful. So I used to just read anything. I can remember getting a Sears catalog and thinking, "I don't know why in the world I'm reading about how to make women's dresses. I don't think I'm ever going to become that." I was just intrigued by it.

Did you have a favorite poet or a favorite poem?

Herschel Walker: No, I really didn't. And it's so strange, I never really had a favorite poem, and I never really had a favorite poet, per se. It's not a poem, it's something I read about the footprints in the sand. That has stuck in my mind so much, and I think about it with friends.

God is walking along with you in the sand, and all of a sudden there is one set of footprints, and when you look back, and times are hard, and you ask God, "When things were going well, I looked back and there were two sets of footprints in the sand, and now that things were a little bit tougher, you left me. Why?" God says, "It's not that I left you, it's just that I'm carrying you." That stuck in my mind, because it is so strange how we sometimes just forget. I think, growing up, today is what keeps making me drive forward, is just thinking about the people in my home town that encouraged me, and the people that stood behind me that helped me, and I say, "I'm not going to forget those people because they knew me before anything, and they were right there with me." No matter what, they were right there, and they were cheering me on. They didn't care whether Herschel won that one hundred yard dash. But as long as Herschel went out and competed hard, they were proud of me.
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I've read about this chubby kid, this runt of the family, who wasn't much interested in sports when he was growing up. How did that chubby kid become Herschel Walker, All-American?

Herschel Walker: I think dedication, hard work. I wanted to be an athlete because, at that time, being an athlete was considered cool. I was not cool. I was not the prince of the school, or Mr. Big Man On Campus. I just wanted to be acknowledged. I wanted people to come up to me sometimes and say, "Hey Herschel, how you doing?" Rather than laughing at me because I couldn't talk and all this. And so I just started training myself. You know, we didn't have weights, we didn't have a lot of money, but you know, if I could get any little book on the human body, I'd read about it, and I just started training myself. And I liked the way I felt, you know, I felt good about myself, and I love that. That motivated me. Not just in sports, but it motivated me in the classroom. You know, just... it just made me feel good.

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