Ayanbadejo living up to boyhood dreams
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Long before they received their Super Bowl tickets, Ayanbadejo and Sanford paid their own way through years of sacrifice, hard work, poverty, the heartache of her broken marriages, his brushes with death, the shame of Sanford supporting her family on welfare despite having a master's degree and his rejection by two NFL teams before sticking with the Bears.
''I want to go down in history as a legend in my hometown of Chicago, and it doesn't get any better than this,'' Ayanbadejo said. ''There is a lot of irony and coincidences to me playing in the Super Bowl in Miami. I was born in Chicago and lived in Nigeria as a kid before coming back to Chicago and leaving again when I was 10.
''I was cut from the Bears once, and now I'm back with the Bears, trying to help them win a Super Bowl. I'm also back in Miami, another home city, because this is where I started my NFL career. I played for the Dolphins, who didn't want me, and I still have a home here. My brother [Obafemi] already won a Super Bowl with the Baltimore Ravens in 2000. Now I have a chance to win mine.''
Ayanbadejo is a firm believer that true greatness is measured not by how high one ascends, but by how far one comes from where he started.
''I grew up on welfare,'' he said. ''I had to wait in long lines to get free milk and cheese. The first of the month was a holiday for my mother, my brother, my sister and me because that was when my mother got our food stamps.
''I lived in the West Side projects, baby. I saw friends get murdered around me. One kid was my buddy who lived next door. His mom was on drugs, and she killed him in his sleep. She stabbed him to death.
''Another little girl was my sister's best friend. Her dad chopped her up into little pieces with an ax. This was all before I was 10. It was like, 'Man, another person dead? Another gunshot? Another crime? Another victim?'''
But his mother's struggles were more constant. Sanford, who is white, married her college sweetheart, a black student from Nigeria. She moved to Nigeria with him and their sons, then came back to Chicago when the poverty there proved unbearable. The marriage eventually failed. Her second marriage also failed.
And once unruly students in the Chicago Public Schools frustrated her into quitting her job, she found herself on welfare and living in public housing when she couldn't get a suitable job fast enough to support her family.
''My mother worked when she could at odd jobs, like a substitute teacher or secretary at the day-care program that kept me, and was on welfare when she couldn't,'' Ayanbadejo said. ''She had an abusive husband for a certain period of after she broke up with my biological father. She did what she could, man. All my clothes were secondhand, including hand-me-downs from my older brother.
''I'm very proud of where I came from, but I was determined to never let the bitter circumstances of my boyhood hold me down, and I was never going to revert back to where I came from. I always wanted to aspire to be more. I always dreamed that I was going to be a star one way or another. We always had high goals and did everything for the future so that one day I'd be able to give back to my mother and reward her for all her hardships. My [siblings] and I have gotten a college education and turned out well.''
Ayanbadejo said he thinks his family's challenges, determination, discipline and eventual breakthrough should serve as a blueprint for other struggling families.
''We'd like for our story to be an inspiration to others,'' he said. ''No matter how hard things are when you start out, you can still overcome if you dare to have ambition and are willing to make the sacrifices and do the hard work to make your dreams come true.''