Eric Berry's new fame gives Duncan Park new life

Eric Berry comes home Friday to the artificial turf of the Georgia Dome, the acclaimed fifth pick in the 2010 NFL draft. The rookie safety for the Kansas City Chiefs will debut in an exhibition game against the Falcons.

But Berry’s real home field lies 22 miles southwest of the Dome, down Interstate 85 to Jonesboro Road and out Rivertown Road.

Clarence Duncan Park is where Berry, from ages 5 to 13, put down roots in football a few miles from the HUD home his parents fixed up and quickly filled with their sons’ trophies.

Back then, Berry needed the park. Recently he returned because the now-ragged 50-acre park really needs him.

“If you got hurt at Duncan Park, if you weren’t dying, you just did it [kept playing],” Berry, 21, said. “I did that for seven years. That’s how I built [myself] to be tough. ... I think we were brainwashed because we thought we could do anything.”

Today there’s no playground equipment. The pool is drained. In late spring, the football field's weeds were so high that the tops of blocking sleds looked like mailboxes.

Enter Berry, who felt such pride in his roots that he intended to wear his Fairburn Flames T-shirt on stage in New York at the NFL Draft. Later he realized that to make a difference, he had to get in the dirt again.

“This place is like a part of me,” he said.

Berry played football for the Fairburn Flames program at Duncan Park. Across metro Atlanta, programs such as Duncan’s tag talent early and seed rivalries.

“Playing Ben Hill was like Tennessee playing Alabama,” Berry said. “The stands were filled up.”

Boys played for the Fairburn Flames for $75 a season, against park teams from across Southside Atlanta that included future NFL players such as Lions wide receiver Calvin Johnson.

Rokevious Watkins remembered when his team from College Park Recreation Center met Berry.

“He scored on the first play of the game and two more times before we could even talk about it,” said Watkins, 21, now a junior guard at South Carolina.

If not at Duncan, Berry "would have had a place to play anywhere,” said Marion Brown, his coach at age 11. “The problem with most kids is that they grow before they’ve grown up. He was the type who was always listening.”

Duncan Park was where Berry heard the coaching voice he most wanted to listen to.

“That’s where I got to see my dad before he went to work,” said Berry. “His heart is deepest into the park.”

James Berry coached the Flames before his overnight shift as a machine operator at the Owens Corning plant. A former running back at Tennessee, he saw Eric’s big hands and moved him up to play against older boys -- as quarterback -- at Duncan.

The only game Berry missed was the morning his mother’s water broke. Then 7, he begged to go to Duncan, but his parents took him to Piedmont Hospital. His twin brothers Evan and Elliott have since followed his football path through Duncan Park and the Flames program.

Berry played the season he turned 12 as a way to recover from the August death of Huel Young, his grandfather and caregiver who took him to practice.

In the early 1990s, Duncan Park “was thriving,” James Berry recalled. “All the buildings were in use. The pool was functional. There was an afterschool program and tutoring. Seniors had an exercise class. It was flourishing.”

Eric Berry moved upward from Creekside High School to Tennessee, where he won the 2009 Jim Thorpe Award as the best defensive back in America.

Meanwhile, Duncan Park went down.

When Fairburn reached 3,500 residents, state law forbade Fulton County to continue maintenance. As the city coped with this and other growth issues, the park languished. The football Flames suffered, too.

No longer could Carol Berry, Eric’s mother, peacefully cut coupons at Duncan Park while Eric’s younger brothers worked out.

“The city sent the police out to keep them from practicing because they said we didn’t have permission,” she said. “The kids were crying and complaining.”

If James Berry didn’t mow the field, his team would play in waist-high weeds -- which at least, he said, was an improvement from his own roots. “Where I grew up [in Natchez, Miss.] we played in the backyards of other peoples’ homes.”

“We were growing, and we hadn’t figured out who we were yet,” said city council member Scott Vaughan, also a Creekside teacher who coached Berry to several state track titles.

To reinvigorate and renovate Duncan Park, Berry pooled his status and resources. He, his family and corporate sponsors unveiled the results with a big party in late July on “Eric Berry Day.”

Adidas donated 300 uniforms for the Flames. Because Berry has helped test prototypes of safer synthetic turf, AstroTurf is installing a new football field at Duncan Park.

Fairburn put up $150,000 toward the field. Local officials showed up at the party to raise support for a November referendum that would fund a park overhaul.

“It’s a blessing ... to have an athlete of this regard with the finances to help the renovation,” said mayor Mario Avery.

For Berry, returning evoked nostalgia for a childhood free of negotiated salaries, long before Sports Illustrated called him “The Sure Thing.” His college freshman souvenir is the Atlanta skyline tattooed across his abdomen, with the acronym DSGB for “Down South Georgia Boy.” He seeks an authenticity in action, not just words.