Tarlam!
06-17-2007, 06:49 AM
By Pete Dougherty
pdougher@greenbaypressgazette.com
Nadine Rouse was about six months pregnant that fall evening in 1983 when her boyfriend, Roosevelt "Tim" Newby, went into his family's Norfolk, Va., apartment, grabbed a handgun and ended a fight with his brother by shooting him dead.
Though Tim Newby served less than a year in jail for involuntary manslaughter for the killing, the course of his and his family's lives changed profoundly beginning that unforgettable night.
Newby, unable to cope with having killed the brother he helped raise, eventually abandoned his family for a life of drug addiction that led to his current plight: The 53-year-old is incarcerated at Buckingham Correctional Center in Virginia, serving a 54½-year prison sentence, with no chance of parole, for shooting dead a man in a crack house in 1999.
His dissipation left Nadine Rouse, 10 years his junior, to raise their four children by herself in impoverished neighborhoods in Norfolk and nearby Virginia Beach. And it led those children to grow up estranged from their father after he disappointed them one too many times.
"Before that happened, (Tim) was going to college and I could see he was a good guy," said Nadine Rouse in a telephone interview from Virginia Beach last week. "At one point, he was a good father. I can't say too much bad about him during that time. But (after) that occurred, he was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, just a different person, a person I didn't know and that I had to get away from. I couldn't deal with it anymore. He was so changed, got into drugs."
The child Nadine Rouse was carrying that evening was a son, Aaron, who was born in January 1984, while Newby was in jail. Aaron grew up to play safety for Virginia Tech and become a third-round draft pick of the Green Bay Packers this offseason.
Tim Newby followed his son's college career from prison, watching games on television and reading any news on him he could find at the prison library. He also watched this year's NFL draft on a community TV, but the show moved from ESPN, which the prison has, to ESPN2, which it doesn't, before Aaron was selected. Later that night of April 28, Newby found out from other prisoners the Packers took his son in the third round.
"When he got drafted, I was nervous, sweating, everything," Newby said last week in a telephone interview from prison. "I was so happy he got drafted. That's what he wanted and what he worked so hard for. I'm so proud of him."
A year ago at this time, Newby might have wondered if he'd see or hear from Aaron again. Aaron Rouse had sworn off contact with his father in 1998, but their relationship has begun to thaw recently.
Newby precipitated the rupture with his children by taking up a life of drugs and street hustling that led to four prison stays after his initial jail sentence for shooting his brother. The relationships disintegrated in 1998, when he was released about two years into a three-year sentence for possession of heroin and cocaine. When Tim got out — he and Nadine never lived together — Newby visited his children and promised Aaron he'd never leave him again.
However, just a couple of days later, Nadine drove Newby to Norfolk to see his parole officer and waited for him at her parents' house. She happened to be looking out the front door when she saw Newby purchase crack cocaine from a man in a car in front of the building, and from that moment on, she forbade him from visiting the children at her house. She said he could still see them, but not at her apartment.
When she told 14-year-old Aaron about the incident, he decided he wanted nothing more to do with his father.
"It was just, 'I don't want to see him,' " Nadine said of Aaron. "I never heard him say anything (critical), but in himself I guess he was like, 'You know what? From this point on, I've got to be the man. I'm not going to let him lie to me any more. He's not going to hurt me anymore. I'm going to do what I've got to do.' He never said, 'I hate him.' I never heard him say anything like that. Right to this day."
Finally, in the summer of 2006, before his senior season at Virginia Tech, Aaron visited his father in prison. Nadine had urged him to talk with his father, and he wanted to see the man after those eight years. Aaron also planned to speak his mind, to tell Tim of the damage he inflicted by abandoning his family. But when he finally saw his father, they hugged and Aaron kept his speech to himself.
This past spring, a couple of weeks before the April 16 shooting massacre at Virginia Tech, Aaron again visited his father. They're not friends yet, and the relationship no doubt is conflicting for Aaron, though it appears to be improving.
At one moment, Aaron says, "If he wasn't in prison, he'd be with me here now." He also suggested he'll try to visit his father at least once a year and has promised a television for his cell so Tim can watch the Packers' nationally televised games in relative quiet.
"I love him and hope he's doing fine," Aaron said.
On the other hand, Aaron says career and other familial priorities rank well ahead of his father, and he stays in contact with Tim only by reading the letters Aaron's sisters forward to him, and any short messages he might relay back through them.
"I forgive you, but a lot of things that you weren't there for I learned on my own," Aaron said of his father last week, with no hint of anger or bitterness. "I have my own son now. It's kind of like, even though you didn't show me how to be a man, you showed me how not to be. You showed me what not to do."
Aaron had his child his freshman year at Virginia Tech with his girlfriend, Jacina Thornton, who lives in Virginia Beach. She and their son, Isaiah, were to visit Green Bay last week and will move here with Aaron for the football season.
Rouse's priority is his football career because it probably will lift his family out of its life in Virginia Beach. He has older twin sisters, 24-year-old Andrea and Adrain, plus a younger brother, 21-year-old Avery. One of his sisters and her three children live with Nadine.
Just last week, Aaron signed a four-year contract with the Packers worth $2.21 million that included a $649,000 signing bonus plus a salary of $285,000 this season. Nadine Rouse says she wants her son to worry about his career and setting up his life in Green Bay, but if Aaron pans out in the NFL, he should be able to help her and the rest of the family significantly.
Nadine has worked for more than 20 years as a housecleaner at a hospital, though she's on disability pay because of a lung ailment that's aggravated by breathing in cleaning chemicals. She lives in a better neighborhood than when Aaron was growing up, but Aaron says she'll never have to work again and eventually will move to an even better neighborhood.
"I can do a lot right now," he said. "Not on a grand scale, but we never had anything (growing up), so I can make sure (Nadine) is taken care of and doesn't have to work and she has a nice car. She's going to live back home in Virginia Beach. She has a nice condo. You have to remember we never had anything, so what we've got now is a blessing.
"It isn't a burden. It's just a change of priorities and made me realize how blessed I am to be able to help them out. I just let them know that my sisters — the kids will be taken care of regardless — as far as their situation, if you want me to help you, you have to help your situation first. My sister is going back to school, my other sister has a job and she's in school. So things are working out."
Third-round draft picks rarely are cut as rookies, so it's a given Aaron will be on the Packers' roster this year and probably for two seasons minimum. But in selecting him with a valuable third-round pick, the Packers signaled fairly high expectations, including perhaps contending for a starting spot as a rookie safety opposite Nick Collins. Rouse, Marviel Underwood and perhaps Atari Bigby will challenge returning starter Marquand Manual for that job.
At 6-foot-4 and 223 pounds, Rouse is tall and big for his position — the size of some small linebackers in the NFL — but the Packers are convinced he has enough body control and quickness to be a decent cover man as a safety. He also had the reputation at Virginia Tech as being an exceptionally hard hitter.
The Packers drafted him not to match up man-to-man with receivers but more to cover the ever taller and faster tight ends coming into the league, as well as to play a major factor in their running defense. Whether he gets on the field much as a rookie depends on how fast he learns the defense and how well he tackles in open space.
"We've seen enough in a short period of time to know athletically he's fine (at safety)," said Kurt Schottenheimer, the Packers' defensive backs coach. "He's going to give you that advantage against the tight end. You saw the way he moves around out there, he's very smooth, very athletic, and shows a little more quickness than I thought he might."
The fight that changed the Newby and Rouse families' lives that fall evening in 1983 began over a minor matter. Mike Newby apparently had been drinking and urinated in the family's front yard, in front of everyone still outside in the crowded neighborhood.
Tim told Mike's mother what he'd done. After the mother stepped out and confronted Mike, he went after Tim, who was 30. The younger brother whom Tim helped raise was about 24 and the bigger and stronger of the two — "a bully," Tim recalled. Mike pummeled him.
Tim didn't say a word but went inside. He came out with the handgun the family kept as protection from intruders, saw Mike across the street and shot at him.
"I just snapped," he said. "I went and got the gun. I was trying to shoot over his head, but I hit him and it just rocked me."
Nadine, who besides being pregnant with Aaron, was caring for their toddler twin girls, was at her parents' home around the corner. A friend called to say that another man in the neighborhood named Tim had just shot Mike. She ran to the Newby's house, saw Mike on the ground, and then found out it was her Tim did the shooting.
No one would tell her what happened, so she went back home and Tim called and told her the story.
"It was horrific," she said. "It was just terrible. So I'm sitting there with two twin babies, pregnant again, and you've done this to your brother?' He was so distraught once reality set in, 'I did this.'"
Tim was charged with involuntary manslaughter and released from jail about seven months into his 12-month sentence. But he was a different man when he got out. He slipped into drug addiction and hustling for money, and eventually was convicted of first-degree murder for shooting a man on the porch of crack house the day after Christmas 1998.
"It wasn't something I thought about, it just happened," he said of shooting his brother. "Today, I'm still feeling the effects of it. If it hadn't happened, I'd be at home, you know what I'm saying? I still have to deal with what I did. It tore my family, and it tore me up too."
pdougher@greenbaypressgazette.com
Nadine Rouse was about six months pregnant that fall evening in 1983 when her boyfriend, Roosevelt "Tim" Newby, went into his family's Norfolk, Va., apartment, grabbed a handgun and ended a fight with his brother by shooting him dead.
Though Tim Newby served less than a year in jail for involuntary manslaughter for the killing, the course of his and his family's lives changed profoundly beginning that unforgettable night.
Newby, unable to cope with having killed the brother he helped raise, eventually abandoned his family for a life of drug addiction that led to his current plight: The 53-year-old is incarcerated at Buckingham Correctional Center in Virginia, serving a 54½-year prison sentence, with no chance of parole, for shooting dead a man in a crack house in 1999.
His dissipation left Nadine Rouse, 10 years his junior, to raise their four children by herself in impoverished neighborhoods in Norfolk and nearby Virginia Beach. And it led those children to grow up estranged from their father after he disappointed them one too many times.
"Before that happened, (Tim) was going to college and I could see he was a good guy," said Nadine Rouse in a telephone interview from Virginia Beach last week. "At one point, he was a good father. I can't say too much bad about him during that time. But (after) that occurred, he was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, just a different person, a person I didn't know and that I had to get away from. I couldn't deal with it anymore. He was so changed, got into drugs."
The child Nadine Rouse was carrying that evening was a son, Aaron, who was born in January 1984, while Newby was in jail. Aaron grew up to play safety for Virginia Tech and become a third-round draft pick of the Green Bay Packers this offseason.
Tim Newby followed his son's college career from prison, watching games on television and reading any news on him he could find at the prison library. He also watched this year's NFL draft on a community TV, but the show moved from ESPN, which the prison has, to ESPN2, which it doesn't, before Aaron was selected. Later that night of April 28, Newby found out from other prisoners the Packers took his son in the third round.
"When he got drafted, I was nervous, sweating, everything," Newby said last week in a telephone interview from prison. "I was so happy he got drafted. That's what he wanted and what he worked so hard for. I'm so proud of him."
A year ago at this time, Newby might have wondered if he'd see or hear from Aaron again. Aaron Rouse had sworn off contact with his father in 1998, but their relationship has begun to thaw recently.
Newby precipitated the rupture with his children by taking up a life of drugs and street hustling that led to four prison stays after his initial jail sentence for shooting his brother. The relationships disintegrated in 1998, when he was released about two years into a three-year sentence for possession of heroin and cocaine. When Tim got out — he and Nadine never lived together — Newby visited his children and promised Aaron he'd never leave him again.
However, just a couple of days later, Nadine drove Newby to Norfolk to see his parole officer and waited for him at her parents' house. She happened to be looking out the front door when she saw Newby purchase crack cocaine from a man in a car in front of the building, and from that moment on, she forbade him from visiting the children at her house. She said he could still see them, but not at her apartment.
When she told 14-year-old Aaron about the incident, he decided he wanted nothing more to do with his father.
"It was just, 'I don't want to see him,' " Nadine said of Aaron. "I never heard him say anything (critical), but in himself I guess he was like, 'You know what? From this point on, I've got to be the man. I'm not going to let him lie to me any more. He's not going to hurt me anymore. I'm going to do what I've got to do.' He never said, 'I hate him.' I never heard him say anything like that. Right to this day."
Finally, in the summer of 2006, before his senior season at Virginia Tech, Aaron visited his father in prison. Nadine had urged him to talk with his father, and he wanted to see the man after those eight years. Aaron also planned to speak his mind, to tell Tim of the damage he inflicted by abandoning his family. But when he finally saw his father, they hugged and Aaron kept his speech to himself.
This past spring, a couple of weeks before the April 16 shooting massacre at Virginia Tech, Aaron again visited his father. They're not friends yet, and the relationship no doubt is conflicting for Aaron, though it appears to be improving.
At one moment, Aaron says, "If he wasn't in prison, he'd be with me here now." He also suggested he'll try to visit his father at least once a year and has promised a television for his cell so Tim can watch the Packers' nationally televised games in relative quiet.
"I love him and hope he's doing fine," Aaron said.
On the other hand, Aaron says career and other familial priorities rank well ahead of his father, and he stays in contact with Tim only by reading the letters Aaron's sisters forward to him, and any short messages he might relay back through them.
"I forgive you, but a lot of things that you weren't there for I learned on my own," Aaron said of his father last week, with no hint of anger or bitterness. "I have my own son now. It's kind of like, even though you didn't show me how to be a man, you showed me how not to be. You showed me what not to do."
Aaron had his child his freshman year at Virginia Tech with his girlfriend, Jacina Thornton, who lives in Virginia Beach. She and their son, Isaiah, were to visit Green Bay last week and will move here with Aaron for the football season.
Rouse's priority is his football career because it probably will lift his family out of its life in Virginia Beach. He has older twin sisters, 24-year-old Andrea and Adrain, plus a younger brother, 21-year-old Avery. One of his sisters and her three children live with Nadine.
Just last week, Aaron signed a four-year contract with the Packers worth $2.21 million that included a $649,000 signing bonus plus a salary of $285,000 this season. Nadine Rouse says she wants her son to worry about his career and setting up his life in Green Bay, but if Aaron pans out in the NFL, he should be able to help her and the rest of the family significantly.
Nadine has worked for more than 20 years as a housecleaner at a hospital, though she's on disability pay because of a lung ailment that's aggravated by breathing in cleaning chemicals. She lives in a better neighborhood than when Aaron was growing up, but Aaron says she'll never have to work again and eventually will move to an even better neighborhood.
"I can do a lot right now," he said. "Not on a grand scale, but we never had anything (growing up), so I can make sure (Nadine) is taken care of and doesn't have to work and she has a nice car. She's going to live back home in Virginia Beach. She has a nice condo. You have to remember we never had anything, so what we've got now is a blessing.
"It isn't a burden. It's just a change of priorities and made me realize how blessed I am to be able to help them out. I just let them know that my sisters — the kids will be taken care of regardless — as far as their situation, if you want me to help you, you have to help your situation first. My sister is going back to school, my other sister has a job and she's in school. So things are working out."
Third-round draft picks rarely are cut as rookies, so it's a given Aaron will be on the Packers' roster this year and probably for two seasons minimum. But in selecting him with a valuable third-round pick, the Packers signaled fairly high expectations, including perhaps contending for a starting spot as a rookie safety opposite Nick Collins. Rouse, Marviel Underwood and perhaps Atari Bigby will challenge returning starter Marquand Manual for that job.
At 6-foot-4 and 223 pounds, Rouse is tall and big for his position — the size of some small linebackers in the NFL — but the Packers are convinced he has enough body control and quickness to be a decent cover man as a safety. He also had the reputation at Virginia Tech as being an exceptionally hard hitter.
The Packers drafted him not to match up man-to-man with receivers but more to cover the ever taller and faster tight ends coming into the league, as well as to play a major factor in their running defense. Whether he gets on the field much as a rookie depends on how fast he learns the defense and how well he tackles in open space.
"We've seen enough in a short period of time to know athletically he's fine (at safety)," said Kurt Schottenheimer, the Packers' defensive backs coach. "He's going to give you that advantage against the tight end. You saw the way he moves around out there, he's very smooth, very athletic, and shows a little more quickness than I thought he might."
The fight that changed the Newby and Rouse families' lives that fall evening in 1983 began over a minor matter. Mike Newby apparently had been drinking and urinated in the family's front yard, in front of everyone still outside in the crowded neighborhood.
Tim told Mike's mother what he'd done. After the mother stepped out and confronted Mike, he went after Tim, who was 30. The younger brother whom Tim helped raise was about 24 and the bigger and stronger of the two — "a bully," Tim recalled. Mike pummeled him.
Tim didn't say a word but went inside. He came out with the handgun the family kept as protection from intruders, saw Mike across the street and shot at him.
"I just snapped," he said. "I went and got the gun. I was trying to shoot over his head, but I hit him and it just rocked me."
Nadine, who besides being pregnant with Aaron, was caring for their toddler twin girls, was at her parents' home around the corner. A friend called to say that another man in the neighborhood named Tim had just shot Mike. She ran to the Newby's house, saw Mike on the ground, and then found out it was her Tim did the shooting.
No one would tell her what happened, so she went back home and Tim called and told her the story.
"It was horrific," she said. "It was just terrible. So I'm sitting there with two twin babies, pregnant again, and you've done this to your brother?' He was so distraught once reality set in, 'I did this.'"
Tim was charged with involuntary manslaughter and released from jail about seven months into his 12-month sentence. But he was a different man when he got out. He slipped into drug addiction and hustling for money, and eventually was convicted of first-degree murder for shooting a man on the porch of crack house the day after Christmas 1998.
"It wasn't something I thought about, it just happened," he said of shooting his brother. "Today, I'm still feeling the effects of it. If it hadn't happened, I'd be at home, you know what I'm saying? I still have to deal with what I did. It tore my family, and it tore me up too."