Her death left a void he found difficult replacing. He says his craving for attention to replace a lost mother's love first made him a troublemaker and clown in school. Then he turned to sports. If you joined one of the gangs, you might escape harm but you also might be in trouble the rest of your life. If you stayed decent, you stood a good chance of being clobbered every day.
Basketball is big stuff in New York.
If you're good in it, everybody respects you. Nobody would want to ruin your shooting eye or your shooting arm. Beamon was even better in track, and his prep coach convinced him to stick with it. He wasn't thrilled by life there, and after his grandmother died he transferred to Texas-El Paso, a growing track power. He worked on his speed and perfecting a technique in which the jumper does not so much jump as walk in the air.