Pubdate: Fri, 18 Nov 2005
Source: Kamloops This Week (CN BC)
Copyright: 2005 Kamloops This Week
Contact:  http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1271
Author: Dale Bass
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?135 (Drug Education)

PLESS TACKLES DRUG ABUSE

When Willie Pless talks about his mother, Mary, his voice
changes.

He's still the confident football legend who ran his way into the
record books of the Canadian Football League - but the little boy who
turned to his mom for guidance also starts to peek through.

Pless said everything he became, all his successes and his many
charitable works today, all stem from talking to his mother about
what, at one point in his life, was starting to take it over: An
overwhelming reliance on drugs and alcohol.

It was an easy road to go down, Pless said, because his four older
brothers and his father all drank.

"But my mom didn't drink and she didn't smoke and she didn't do
drugs," Pless told KTW.

"And she said to me that if I was going to go down that path, I was
going nowhere. She told me to get off that thing and I could be a
success at what ever I wanted to be - a lawyer, a doctor, a football
player.

"She helped me turn my life around."

Pless tells his stories to other gatherings because he believes in
positive role-modelling for those who might be tempted to travel the
same road he took for a while.

"There are lots of kids who get on the wrong path, and if I can help
in a small way to get them off it and get them headed in the right
direction, then that's good."

Being a football legend helps, he said, because often people who have
only seen him on the field are unaware of the turmoil he went though
to become the man who was inducted into the CFL Hall of Fame this year.

The linebacker won the CFL most outstanding defensive player award
five times, another league record, as well as being named West
Division outstanding defensive player, East Division outstanding
rookie, CFL all-star and member of the Grey Cup winning Edmonton
Eskimo team in 1993.

In addition to playing with the Eskimos, Pless, an Alabama native, was
a member of the New Orleans Saints, Toronto Argonauts, Saskatchewan
Roughriders and B.C. Lions.

He was the featured speaker Wednesday night at Together Today for our
Children Tomorrow, a drug awareness conference sponsored by a variety
of agencies in Kamloops.
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