Mama's boy: Sunseria Smith brings out the softer side of son Ray Lewis

One of the fiercest, most intimidating linebackers in NFL history is a mama’s boy.

When Ray Lewis isn’t scaring the bejesus out of opposing running backs, he takes his mother to the movies. He chats with her on the phone for hours. He swings by her house — one he bought for her with the millions he’s earned playing for the Ravens — when he gets a craving for her homemade turkey spaghetti.

Nothing has ever come between Lewis and his mother, Sunseria Smith, (pictured left, handout photo) not even a rough, poverty-riddled upbringing or a hotly contested game of Taboo. They’re tight. And though Lewis sidesteps the suggestion that he’s a mama’s boy — “I call it mama’s best friend,” he said — he most certainly is one.

“There’s no greater day than Mother’s Day,” Lewis said Tuesday on a conference call with his mother and a reporter who can be classified as a mama’s boy, too.

On Saturday, Lewis and Smith will celebrate Mother’s Day a night early at the Children’s Guild’s Cabaret for Kids fundraiser, where they will receive an award for their charitable work for local disadvantaged children through the Ray Lewis 52 Foundation.

“We found both Ray Lewis and his mother as just perfect examples of the spirit that transforms the lives of troubled children,” said Children’s Guild President Andy Ross. “Ray said he would take care of his mom — now he’s trying to help the world.”

The first mother-son duo to be honored with a Sadie Award, Lewis and Smith said they’re blessed to be fortunate enough to help out families suffering through experiences similar to the ones they endured when Lewis was growing up in project housing, and then a cramped two-bedroom apartment, in Lakeland, Fla.

“It was a struggle to feed our family,” said Smith, who, with the help of her parents, raised Lewis and his four younger siblings in a single-parent household. “That’s why we’re so passionate about what we do. We had to stand in line to get food, too. We didn’t have it all but we made it because we had each other.”

Smith, who was 16 when she gave birth to Lewis, worked three jobs to keep food on the table. “I saw her never quit,” Lewis said. “I saw what ‘never quit’ means.” Being the oldest child in the household, he was often left to watch after his brother and three sisters. Lewis learned to cook, clean, iron and wash clothes. “Ray had to grow up early because we needed Ray to be the man of the house,” Smith said.

“She was very strict with our rules, and if we broke them, we had to suffer the consequences,” Lewis said. The consequences once included a paddling in front of his sixth-grade classmates after Smith got a call from a teacher about her spitball-shooting son. “She wanted to teach us the right way to live, to respect people, use your manners, make sure our schoolwork was on point, and the house was clean. A lot of my discipline comes from her.”

Lewis said it was always his goal to one day reward his mother for her perseverance. When he made it to the NFL as a first-round pick of the Ravens in 1996, he forced his mom to retire, bought her a house in Randallstown and moved her and his siblings up to Maryland.

She has stood next to him, as well: through the birth of his own kids; through the dark days when he was implicated in a fatal stabbing in Atlanta (a murder charge was dropped, but he pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice); and through the glory days of a Super Bowl win.

Lewis made one of Smith’s dreams come true in 2004 when he surprised her by inviting her to his graduation ceremony at the University of Maryland, University College. Between NFL seasons, Lewis had been finishing a bachelor’s degree in management studies, fulfilling a promise he made to her when he left the University of Miami after three years to enter the NFL draft (pictured right, Lewis and Smith embrace after Lewis was drafted in 1996; photo by AP). Smith wasn’t privy to this.

“I knew what would make her smile for years and years and years,” said Lewis, who turns 35 next week. “And that would be if her baby boy, her firstborn, went and got his degree.”

Smith bawled through the ceremony.

“Being Ray Lewis’ mom is an honor,” Smith said. “Every time I see my child step out on the field … that’s what Mother’s Day is all about.”

But Smith was hesitant to let her first-born child, an ambitious jokester even then, take up sports. Working three jobs left her no time to take him to practice, and she had little cash to buy cleats and gear. “When I came to Mom about sports, that’s the last thing she wanted to hear,” Lewis said. “She said, ‘Boy, I don’t got no money for you to play football.’” When Lewis was 10, Smith reluctantly gave in.

In Florida, Lewis joined the Lakeland Lumberjacks youth team, walking to practice if needed, then went on to star at Kathleen High School. For the first few years, though, Smith, working around the clock, never got the chance to watch his games. Lewis would tell her how well he had played. “But she couldn’t understand that,” he said. Strangers stopped Smith to compliment her son, and local newspapers wrote about the slightly undersized tornado tearing up the football field. But reality set in — that Lewis might not be blowing smoke when he told her, “One day you’re never going to have to work again a day in your life” — the first time she saw him in action.

Lewis, then in ninth grade, took a reverse on a kickoff return 73 yards for a touchdown. He gave his mom the ball. “He ran the reverse back, and I was like ‘Man, that kid has talent,’” said Smith, her laughter infectious. “‘He’s for real!’”

You know how the story of Ray Lewis, future Hall of Famer, went from there.

Today, Lewis and his mother are still tight. They cook out by his swimming pool, take trips to the bowling alley, play epic games of Taboo — and playfully talk trash while doing so. Tuesday, Smith’s claim of supremacy in the word-guessing party game caused Lewis to cry out, “Mama, you haven’t won in five years!”

Smith now lives five minutes away, in Owings Mills, and this past Sunday, she dropped off a pan of turkey spaghetti, one of Lewis’ favorites, with a note that read “I love you, Blessed Man of God.”

“I almost hurt myself with that turkey spaghetti,” Lewis joked. “When my mom cooks for me, you’d think she was cooking for eight people.”

Even with Lewis deep in the twilight of his fine career, decades removed from the struggles of his childhood, one of the hardest hitters in football history still has a sizable soft spot for his mother.

“There’s nothing we don’t do together,” Lewis said.

Spoken like a true mama’s boy.

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(baltimoresun.com)