Mother's strength guides NU's Holt
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BY BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star
It seems now like it was her who gave him this — the gift to stand before a circle of people and keep saying things that would have them all nodding, laughing, wanting more.
Always wanting more.
Sometimes Menelik Holt will stand in a lunch line and just start dancing for what seems like no apparent reason.
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Of course there is a reason. Someone might smile, might laugh. Actually, there’s no “might” about it.
“He’ll make you smile,” says Major Culbert, Husker teammate and former roommate. “When it’s that time to go to sleep, it’s that time he’s still playing around. He’s a fun guy. He’s like my brother.”
A jokester, that’s Meno. Plenty will tell you that and he’ll gladly accept the title.
And if someone asks where that humor comes from, he’ll tell you: “Maybe my mother.”
If you’d ever met Mary Holt, you probably would have remembered her.
Guys on the Husker football team knew who she was — just like Meno, full of the positive, refusing to be ruled by the negative.
She had shown her resolve as a young Ethiopian immigrant, starting a new life in the United States with her mom and brother.
After Meno was born, she settled with her son and mother in San Diego, Meno’s father remaining in Denver. Meno says the two lost contact and he didn’t meet his dad until he was in college.
And when the cancer came, she never would let her son see the pain. She’d fight the disease for years — six or seven as Holt remembers it – but only the change in her figure from the steroids gave clues that it was getting worse.
“She kept a positive attitude the whole time, that’s where I get it from,” Holt says. “If she can fight through that, then spring football and camp, all that’s relative. If she can fight through that, I can fight through this. This isn’t the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
Trying to win a starting spot, which is exactly what the junior receiver is looking to do this year, doesn’t seem like such a mountain when Holt thinks of what his mom did for him in her final years.
When he was a junior in at St. Augustine High School in San Diego, they both visited Nebraska. There was a comfort here. She could let go of him here.
“Being from the West Coast, a lot of people don’t really care about you, they’re not really genuine. It’s a real fast pace,” Holt says. “You get here, people were slow. People actually waved back if you said ‘hi’ to them. People here were genuine.”
Of course, moving to Nebraska meant moving from her.
Saying goodbye wasn’t easy, but she told him to go to college, go play football, that her heart was at ease.
“That’s all I needed to know,” Holt says.
But his mom thought he needed more. She wanted her son to meet his dad before she died.
Sick and facing her last days, Mary Holt found him in Colorado. The meeting between son and father happened about a month into Meno’s freshman season at Nebraska, a month before his mom passed away.
His name was Alfred Jones, definitely Dad. Tall like the 6-foot-4 Meno, talked like Meno, acted like Meno.
“I don’t hold any grudges,” Holt says. “I don’t forget anything. At the same time I don’t hold grudges. He didn’t try to come in and be some overruling figure. So I have no problems with it. Who doesn’t want to have a dad? A father-and-son relationship, I never really had that, so now I do.”
He also found he had a half-brother named Austin Jones, just a year younger, a pretty good football player himself.
Jones was looking for a place to play his college ball. His new connection with Holt led him to Nebraska, where he’s now a redshirt freshman running back.
Holt talks to his dad every day now, often traveling to Denver with his half-brother to see him.
A week before his mom passed away on Oct. 30, 2006, Holt had this feeling that he needed to call her every day.
“I don’t know if it was God,” Holt says. “They say mother and sons have that internal connection. She never alluded to the fact she was feeling worse.”
When he returned from the funeral, teammates gave him a game ball after a home victory against Missouri.
“She wanted to see me play, she wanted to see me get to college, she wanted me to find my dad,” he says. “So she got a lot of things done before she passed away.”
Since then, Holt has become a player other guys have leaned on in times of personal struggle.
One day last season, he walked into the locker room and found Maurice Purify crying. A family member had died. Holt looked for the strength to give another strength.
His positive outlook draws people near. He can’t think of a person he dislikes on the team. Apparently, the feelings are mutual. When certain players were asked last year who the funniest guy on the team was, about half said Meno.
“I’ve always been the type of guy that makes other people laugh. I’m a lighthearted person,” he says. “I always try to keep the aura around the locker room as positive as possible, keep guys laughing.”
The jokes end on the football field.
After spending his time in the shadows the past two seasons, Holt seems poised for a breakout year.
“It’s great,” Holt says. “I love having the pressure. Everyone keeps saying it’s my year. But don’t forget we still have Nate (Swift) and Todd (Peterson) and Niles (Paul), a lot of underclassmen that have been waiting.”
Still, with his height and his 220 pounds, Holt can’t help being compared to Purify, something he considers very high flattery.
“For a man who’s supposed to get drafted, keep calling me Mo, please,” Holt says. “Call me Mo. Call me Calvin Johnson. Call me all those guys. Jerry (Rice). But I’m really just trying to establish a game for myself, a name for myself. But of course I’d like to fill that void.”
Players have given a name to any special catches Holt makes: “A Mo catch.”
But Holt knows now that Mo catches can’t just come in practice. Nebraska needs him to make big plays come fall. At this point, Holt has four catches in his career. Purify had 81 the past two seasons.
“Mo got hit and always got up,” Holt says. “My thing is, I’m just as big as him. I’m just as strong. I just got to work on playing just as big. Being big doesn’t also mean you’re also going to play big.”
Husker receivers coach Ted Gilmore says playing time is up for grabs, that the potential is there, now it’s time to see who will rise to the top.
It’s been a gradual process to this moment for Holt, with plenty of behind-the-scenes laughs and moments of hurt, too, but through it all he’s prayed and tried his best to practice patience.
He’s sure he’s in Nebraska for a reason.
“Whether it’s to play or not to play or be a backup guy for just four years,” Holt says. “As far as playing, don’t get me wrong, I’m not nonchalant about it. I really want to play. I committed as a junior in high school here so I always wanted to play here. It isn’t a joke to me by any means.”
Of course, once football practice is over, you can always count on a few laughs.
Discussing the receivers after one recent practice, Holt says, “Now I think we’re all fully bloomed flowers. It’s time to go out there and show everyone our petals.”
He starts laughing midway through his analogy. It’s corny, sure, but the people around him are smiling, and he learned long ago from a special woman that’s what counts.
Reach Brian Christopherson at 473-7439 or bchristopherson@journalstar.com.
