For Hopkins, survival has been the name of the game
"I think we're free," said Sabrina Greenlee, Hopkins' mother. "I'm claiming that we're free. We are free of that. Took a lot of years."
CENTRAL, S.C. - A blue 1995 Impala sits in the middle of a plot of land that DeAndre Hopkins' family has owned for three-quarters of a century. Most of its damage has been repaired by the great-uncle he calls dad.
Mom is resilient
Hopkins' toughness came from his mother.
His father died when he was 5 months old.
When Hopkins was 5 years old, Greenlee told him how it happened as she prepared him to meet his father's family for the first time.
"I remember I cried," Hopkins said. "I don't know why. Just cried. Like I knew him."
His mother never tolerated tears. Once when he cried, she gave him 15 minutes to get it all out.
"After 15 minutes, you got two choices," she recalls telling him. "You can either walk around here moping the rest of your life, talking about, 'Oh, my daddy's gone, I can't believe that I don't have a father, what am I going to do?' Or you can look at me, you can realize the love that you have and the love that we have in this house, and you can embrace it and move on."
Said Hopkins: "Nothing's too big to overcome. … That's just how we are."
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