Teen keeps friend's memory alive on his feet

FORT MYERS, FL - Steve Walker wears his grief on his feet.

The 16-year-old point guard slides a palm below the sole of his white Air Jordans to restore the grip.

Walker is in the thick of a pick-up game at the STARS gym in Fort Myers, just down the road from Dunbar High where he’s a junior. He sleeps in Lehigh Acres, but most days he shoots around Fort Myers “until his arms get tired.”

You can see his doggedness, his ferocity of spirit in his game. He sprints when his opponents drag. He grins when he maximizes their out-of-breath state to swoop in for a lay up. His T-shirt touts “Unbeatable.” So later when his shot for three bounces flatly off the rim, an "Oh, sh--"   escapes. His shoulders droop as he jogs down court.

Dee would have made that, he thinks. Dee never missed. Dee was the best player he knew. Dee was his brother, not by blood, but close enough to call each other’s mothers “Mom.” Dee was the nickname of Stef’an Strawder, one of two teens killed in a hail of bullets at Club Blu and Walker is wearing his shoes.“These babies right here, you ever see the movie, ‘Be like Mike?’ I like to call these, ‘The Be like Dees,’” Walker said after the game on a Thursday night in late August, a month to the day from when his best friend was shot two miles away. “These are a little beat-up now, but when they were brand-new. Stef’an used to wear these everywhere.”

Walker’s tone lifted when he described the size-11 Legend Blue Air Jordans, sought-after white sneakers with splashes of North Carolina blue. North Carolina was an early stop on Michael Jordan's rise to greatness.

I am not a sneakerhead, but my friend who is told me that a friendship with trust enough to swap sneakers is a sacred one. Walker gave Strawder his Nike Air Force Ones. Walker said Strawder had them on when he was shot.

The day after his friend’s death, Walker visited Strawder’s house in Leigh Acres and saw his bag sitting on his sister’s floor. “That’s Stef'an's bag, right?” he recalls asking her.

Inside he saw the Legend Blues.

“I need these right now,” he told her.

The Air Jordans were something tangible to grip when what he really wanted was Dee. They had been accessory to so many memories: school, parties, gas-station runs and ranked among Dee’s favorites for the court.

For more on this story, click here.

Surviving Dunbar: Loss, hope and a pair of Air Jordans

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