“I blame me,” Michael Vick told 60 Minutes in 2009 after his release from federal prison. “Football don’t even matter.” He had served 18 months for financing a brutal dogfighting operation. “I cried so many nights,” he said.  When pressed by James Brown about why he didn’t stop it, Vick admitted he just couldn’t tell people around him that they all had to stop. The fall felt seismic, but the foundation had always been fragile. 

Michael Vick grew up in the Ridley Circle housing projects of Newport News, Virginia—a neighborhood where streetlights flickered over drug corners and gunshots weren’t out of place. His parents, Brenda Vick and Michael Boddie, were unmarried teenagers when they had him. His mother worked two jobs at a time to make ends meet, while his father worked long hours in the shipyards as a sandblaster and spray-painter.

Despite the hardship, while talking in a recent interview with Wilmington Library, Vick opened up about how he meant to navigate childhood. “I was always just aware of my surroundings, and like had a goal, and I wanted to accomplish something,” he said. “I go in the house, I look at my mom, and sometimes, I know she’s struggling. I’m like, you know what? One day I want to make some money.” He knew what was out there—quick money from drugs, easy trouble—but stayed away. “Oh no, I can’t sell drugs. I can’t take the package over there. It might be an extra 20 or $30, but damn, I might go to detention.” Every day required restraint. “Yeah. So, it was like sacrifices like every turn. But I loved it because it was a challenge, and it paid off for me one day.” Still, there were things inside the house that would make him go fishing just to be able to escape them, if only for a little while. He opened up about them further in the interview: 

 “My parents… sometimes they showed affection, sometimes they didn’t. A little crazy at times. Sometimes my father would be stuck in his ways and it was conflict,” he explained. “ I question like what’s really love in a relationship. I’m a young man. I’m real observant. I’m paying attention cause I know I’m a young man. I am like, I know how I would hold my girlfriend’s hand if I could take her to the candy store…I probably would hold her hand and walk in. I don’t see that in the household sometimes.” Emphasizing his attentive, observant nature, he confessed, “I just knew that… they had a relationship that was rocky. I was like, one day I’ll change that.” Yes, it got heavy in there for a moment, but then came a lighthearted twist.

 When asked about from whom does he gets his athletic abilities, he said, “My dad. … Well, my mom can run when she’s afraid. She’s afraid of dogs…But my dad was like a track star, football star…” Colleges came calling — he had offers from Syracuse and Georgia Tech, among others, but his decision came down to more than athletics. When asked about his choice, Vick said,

“It was convenient for my mom to get there,” highlighting how her presence in the crowd gave him comfort. “Having my mom in a crowd was like a safety valve for me. I know I could make a mistake in front of her, and I can explain it to her.”

That bond with his mother ran deep. From high school to college, she never missed a single game. “She was like my biggest supporter. Never missed a game in Little League, never missed a game in high school, never missed a game in college. Um, and so I wanted to keep that going.” And just so you know, Vick’s home from VT was a 4-hour drive, which is not exactly convenient, but she made it every week.

The family’s closeness extended beyond the stands and into their surname. When asked about keeping his mom’s name, Vick confirmed, “Absolutely.” It was a collective decision he and his siblings made. And while his childhood relationship with his father was rocky, he now speaks about it with maturity and peace: “Me and my dad got a great relationship to this day. I’m all about forgiveness… I love them now more than I did when I was younger.”