Byline: Victoria Sun Post staff reporter
LEXINGTON, Ky. -- The party school had no chance.
Ruby Fitch didn't want her youngest son, Gerald, attending Florida State, a university known for being one of the best party schools in the country.
She had worked hard to keep him from getting sucked into a gang in their hometown of Macon, Ga., and she didn't want him to forget why he was at college: to forge a better life.
Clemson seemed like a nice, quiet university, but the University of Kentucky had the thing she thought Gerald needed most: a strong, black head coach in Tubby Smith who could provide her son with some guidance.
Gerald's father, George II, and Ruby divorced when he was a baby.
'I didn't really get into the sports part, I was more interested with the kind of person coach Smith was,' Ruby said. 'He had raised three successful young men (UK manager Saul, G.G. and Brian).
'I thought, he has to be a good person and I thought that would have been good for Gerald. As I started talking to him, I understood what Tubby's approach to Gerald was and he can relate to any problem of a young black male. I knew Gerald would need somebody like that.'
Ruby's reasoning seems to have worked out well.
Fitch and the No. 1 seeded Wildcats (26-4) will play No. 16 seed Florida A&M (15-16) in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday night in Nationwide Arena in Columbus.
Neither Florida State nor Clemson made it into the field of 65 teams this year.
Fitch has been to the Big Dance all four seasons. The senior guard leads UK in scoring with 15.8 points per game and has averaged eight points, 2.6 rebounds and 2.1 assists in 10 NCAA Tournament games.
He's 24th on UK's all-time scoring list with 1,348 points and needs 11 to tie UK Radio Network color analyst Mike Pratt for 23rd, and is seventh in career three-point percentage (39.5) and fourth in made three-pointers (191).
The closest he's come to winning a national championship was last year when the Wildcats reached the Elite Eight, a fact that still surprises him.
'I thought before I got here, I know I'm going to at least win one, the main thing is trying to win two,' Fitch said. 'This is the last time I get so I'm definitely going to give my full effort and try my best to do that.
'I wouldn't be able to accept (not winning one). Especially with all the great history behind Kentucky basketball, it'd be a great disappointment if I don't.'
But even if UK doesn't win its eighth NCAA championship in school history, disappointing isn't how Ruby would describe Gerald. She knows the grief he's lived with every day since his older brother, George II, was found shot to death seven years ago and the temptations he resisted as the youngest of four children growing up in a single-family home in the projects of Macon.
* * *
Last April, the U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that 12 percent of the more than two million people in jail were black males aged 20-34 compared to 1.6 percent of white males in the same age group.
So the fact that 21-year-old Gerald stayed in school and is intent on finishing up his degree in sports management means much more to Ruby than the fact her son is a finalist for the John R. Wooden award, was named to the Associated Press' all-SEC second team or that he was the MVP of this year's SEC Tournament.
'I'm so thankful that he didn't get sucked in by the streets, because it's easy to do,' Ruby said. 'That's the part that makes me so proud that he continued to strive and do the right things. He's definitely grown up, trying to take over as head of the household. He's doing the same thing his brother did when he was alive.'
When Gerald was about 6 Ruby moved her brood from the more suburban setting of Columbus, Ga., 90 miles to Macon in search of a better career after learning Macon had a high job turnover rate.
Columbus was a place Gerald could ride his bike around the neighborhood without fear of running into drug dealers or gang members.
There he learned how to play basketball from his older sister, Valencia, who fashioned a basketball hoop out of a bicycle rim. Gerald, 'Len,' as she is called, and George would spend hours playing outside with George's best friend, Brett Scales, on the makeshift basket before Scales father bought a real hoop for the kids.
But things were vastly different in Macon, where Ruby had to put Gerald 'under lock and key.'
On one street, Ruby saw mansions, and on the next, there were slums.
'When I first moved to Macon, I never experienced anything like this,' Ruby said. 'Guys used to be standing on the corner, women too, hustling where the liquor store was and I would show him all the homelessness.
'And it scared me to death. I was even scared to talk to some of those people. I would show him all that and say, 'See if you don't stay in school, you're going to be a bum on the street.' Or I'd say, 'Look, you see that, don't ever smoke because it'll stunt your growth, you'll be a little short boy.' Anything to teach him to make the right decisions.'
Without his father, Gerald often turned to his older brother for direction.
Ruby disciplined Gerald by forbidding him to play basketball when necessary and George helped keep Gerald in line.
'My brother used to beat me up if I wasn't acting right or getting in trouble in school,' Gerald said. 'We kind of stuck together, without a dad. He gave me advice.'
The two remained close even after George enlisted in the Army after high school, as George would often spoil Gerald with nice things Ruby couldn't always afford.
'We didn't have too much money so he would send me shoes or clothes,' Gerald said. 'He was my brother but my father. I just always wanted to be like him.
'I felt the way he treated my mom and our family, it's rubbed off on me.'
* * *
George was off-duty in Miami when he was found shot to death at the age of 24, the summer before Gerald's junior year at Macon's Westside High School.
After George died, Ruby shut down and Gerald spent time living with Len and his maternal grandma, Vera Pugh.
Seeing how hard his mother took the news forced Gerald to grow up.
To cope with his own loss, Gerald found strength in numerous people, including Pugh, Len, his high school guidance counselor and Dr. Chuck Hawkins, the father of a Westside High School girls' basketball player.
As a tribute to his slain brother, Gerald has two tattoos and keeps some of his brother's Army mementos and pictures in his room in Wildcat Lodge.
'My first couple of years it was terrible,' said Gerald. 'I think I got to the rock bottom, the lowest point in my life that I could ever get to.
'At one point, I guess I was just tired of feeling like that and trying to find some kind of savior for myself. I just devoted myself to basketball and my family. That definitely saved me from other things.'
Today, trying to provide a better life for his family through basketball is what drives him.
He has become a role model for Len's son, Kenneth Fitch, and older sister April's son, Aaron Carter.
Kenneth, a junior-varsity basketball player at Westside High School, said the coaches tell him how hard Gerald used to work in practice. Gerald often tells him to stay in school and to respect his mom and grandma.
'Without Gerald, I probably wouldn't be playing basketball,' Kenneth said. 'I wouldn't have no interest in it and school. I probably wouldn't care. Now that I see how he went to school, it makes me work harder.'
That is just what Gerald is hoping.
He was involved in a few highly publicized incidents his sophomore season resulting in disciplinary action from Smith, but has since realized he needed to be a better role model for his nephews.
'It shows I'm getting old,' Fitch said, laughing. 'I like it though, it keeps me on my toes to do the right thing, especially around them.
'He's going through the same thing, dealing with problems on the street, hanging out. Macon is still kind of crazy; I think it's keeping him in line, making him want to do something with himself.
'He's growing up like me, without no dad. I try to keep it how my brother did me, I think I turned out all right.'
With or without a championship.
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BRUCE CRIPPEN/Post file photo
Besides playing basketball, Gerald Fitch enjoys being a role model for his nephews.
ELSA/Getty Images
UK senior Gerald Fitch leads the Wildcats in scoring with 15.8 points per game.
