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On the gridiron, he played wideout and defensive back while also returning kickoffs.

He lettered four times in each sport and became a Texas All-State honorable mention in football. He played not only football but also basketball and baseball while running track. Playing sports at Milby High School gave him his first sight of the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. “I was going to church on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, and all day Sunday, but when church was over, I was back in the streets.”

“I had everything I wanted, but I was still playing both sides of the fence,” he said. Although it wasn’t exactly going from the outhouse to the penthouse, it was an improvement of sorts, as both grandparents at least held steady jobs.īut Driver, by his own admission, still wasn’t fully headed in the right direction. Things were so bad that Driver and his older brother, Marvin III, took to selling drugs and even stealing cars simply in order to survive.Īt age 14, with things at something of a breaking point, Driver’s mom sent him to live with his grandparents. Driver’s mother sometimes dated other men following her divorce, and one of them pulled a gun on the young boy. He just laughed and told me to go to sleep.” “I didn’t know what it was going to be or how I was going to do it, but that’s what I told him. I’m gonna take my family outta this,’ ” he told PEOPLE magazine. The trying circumstances seemed to stir something deep in him, as he became determined to rise above them. One time, after a collection agency took his family’s possessions, Driver and crew were forced to live out of a U-Haul truck. At times, he and his family lived out of a motel room that his mother was able to secure using food stamps. Driver and his four siblings were raised by their mother, and it is fair to say that they were all living on the edge, so to speak.įor stretches of his childhood, Driver was homeless. When he was very young, his parents got divorced, and it cast a dark shadow on his ensuing years. 2, 1975 in Houston, Texas to Marvin Driver Jr. In fact, simply overcoming his early circumstances was an accomplishment in itself.ĭonald Jerome Driver was born on Feb.

However, while growing up, he wasn’t exactly a candidate for the Most Likely to Succeed award.