After Katrina, a Ford Escort Was Home

D.J. Fluker, whose full name is Daniel Lee Jesus Fluker, grew up in New Orleans with his mother, two sisters and a brother. In August 2005, before Hurricane Katrina struck, the family left the city and took refuge in Biloxi, Mississippi. When the storm brought flooding, their modest home in the Lower Ninth Ward was destroyed. They had no insurance and lost their belongings. Fluker was 14.

For a time all five of them lived in their Ford Escort. The family moved between the Mississippi Delta, Alabama and New Orleans looking for stability, and they sought help at shelters and from local groups, sometimes sleeping in the car. Fluker has said they struggled and struggled and struggled some more. There were times with little to eat, and times the children wore clothes they had no place to wash.

At McGill-Toolen High School in Mobile, Alabama, a fundraiser for a needy family turned out to be for the Flukers; he had donated a dollar himself. At 15 his coach offered him a spare bedroom, and he later said he had never slept in a bed by himself before. He mowed lawns, built piers and cleaned sheds to help out, which cut into his study time.

He finished high school in Foley, Alabama, and earned a football scholarship to the University of Alabama. With tutoring he graduated in three and a half years with a health science degree, was a first-team All-American and played on three national championship teams. The San Diego Chargers chose him 11th overall in the 2013 draft, and his first big purchase was a home in Mobile for his mother. He also paid college tuition for his younger brother, Leon. His advice to kids facing hardship is simple: stay in school.