Those are powerful words from a man who knows all about tragedy and picking up the pieces only too well after losing his wife and four of his children because of a drunk driver. But even before then University of Alabama Football Standout Siran Stacy knew the importance of facing and overcoming challenges in life as he shared with attendees of the recent Cherokee County SADD (Students Against Destructive Decisions), which was held in the Gadsden State Community College-Cherokee Arena.

The conference was sponsored by C.E.D. Mental Health Center.

“It is time to do it again,” said Stacy. “I don’t know who you are, but give me your attention over the next 45 minutes. This can change someone’s life!”

“Maybe you have tried something and you failed or you tried something and it didn’t work out,” said Stacy. “Or you attempted something and you didn’t achieve it. What I want to tell you, you can do it again.”

“You may have lost relationships, someone you loved dearly, let me tell you what, you can do it again,” said Stacy. “You can be empowered again, you can get that thrill again!”

“Some of you have dreams inside of you,” said Stacy. “You want to go to great places and along the way something bad happened, somebody let you down or somebody rejected you and you have lost that passion.”

“Well I come here today to Centre, Ala. to light the fire, to do it again!” said Stacy. “Are you ready young people?”

The message, literally, was about life or death, Stacy said. Period!

STACY from 1A

“There are people that are dying every day, young girls and young boys because they refuse to make the right choices,” said Stacy.

“I was speaking yesterday to a crowd,” said Stacy. “There were young people, teenagers talking to someone while I am speaking. They are sitting there playing around. If you don’t want to listen you can get up and get out of here because somebody in here needs this message.”

“You are either going to submit or you are going to rebel,” said Stacy. “There are two kinds of teenagers in America, teenagers that submit to authority and those that rebel. What is rebellion? Rebellion is a hard headed young girl or boy that refuses to listen. They refuse to obey their teachers, they refuse to be in class, refuse to turn in their homework.”

“They think that sex and drugs and all types of perversion is fun,” said Stacy. “That is the right way to do it, but let me tell you, a person that submits, knows there is a line not to cross.”

“There are things you absolutely will not do,” said Stacy. “Over here is drugs, Meth, Oxycontin, crack cocaine, wild sex, calling girls b’s, whores, or sluts. Over here is doing it the right way. You have got to have a line that you will not cross young boys.”

“Where are you right now?” Stacy asked. “I thank CED and this mental health organization for bringing on this opportunity for speaking to come here and invest into your life. When you look up SADD, it has been in operation 27 years. There are Students Against Destructive Decisions, Students Against Drunk Driving, Students Against Texting While Driving.”

“There are students against getting on the Internet and saying nasty words,” said Stacy. “Students forget there is a line and SADD is doing it.”

The mind, Stacy said, is a powerful thing.

“The mind is what got you up this morning,” said Stacy. “There are memories and organization that is actually growing. It is actually growing right now as I speak these words.”

“As a man or woman thinks in their hearts, so are they,” said Stacy.

“How I think about myself, that is how I am going to feel,” said Stacy. “How you think about yourself, young girls, that is how you are going to feel.”

“My mind controls my feelings,” said Stacy. “If I think I am a reject, if I think I can’t make a play out there on the football field, if I think it, I am going to feel that way. As you think is how you are going to feel.”

The trouble today, Stacy said, is young people often refuse to listen to teachers and others in authority.

“We have people today who think they know it all and they make these choices,” said Stacy. “You can be so far into rebellion, you forget about what is right. You create a world in which wrong is actually right.”

Stacy recalls that even at the age of 8, with people calling him “dumb”, “stupid,” the University of Alabama was inside of him.

“What are you going to do for the remainder of your life?” Stacy asked. “You can be a singer, a marine biologist, you can go on and change the world.”

“What is the one thing that has to happen for you to get there?” he asked. “You have got to get your high school diploma, you’ve got to get your education. You’ve got to put your work in. You can’t stay on Facebook eight hours a day, you can’t just be tweeting. You have got to put your work in.”

“Line your things up to where you are going,” said Stacy. “It is not enough to say you are going to be a singer if you don’t spend time on your voice. You have got to put your work in. You can’t be lazy!”

Stacy recalls running into a potential roadblock at the age of 16 when a cousin involved him in a scheme to sell stolen jewelry.

“I did something that forever changed my life,” said Stacy. “Right is right, wrong is wrong and I made a wrong choice.”

“When you put your work in, you do what is right,” said Stacy. “When you put your work in, you submit.”

Stacy said his cousin showed him the jewelry and offered to give him some if he would sell some of it.

“I heard the same voice again,” said Stacy. ‘“Don’t do it!’ Then I heard another voice. ‘You can get the jewelry!’”

It wasn’t long before there was a knock on their door, a policeman handcuffed young Stacy and hauled him in front of a judge where he was sentenced to one year in a juvenile detention facility in Dothan, Ala.

“For seven days a week, 23 hours a day, I never was out of my room,” Stacy noted. “There was no window, TV or nothing. I could count the steps to the door, one, two, three and that was it.”

Stacy said he then began blaming everyone and everything except the real culprit: himself!

“I didn’t take the jewelry!” said Stacy. “Nobody came, nobody answered. It was so tiny and small, I was crying in there.”

“I blamed my daddy,” said Stacy. “I said, ‘if you had made enough money, I wouldn’t have done it.’ It’s the white people. That is all they do is pick on black folks.”’

“It was my fault,” Stacy said. “It was never anybody else. I made a choice! I rebelled!”

“And I learned something in jail that I still do to this day,” said Stacy. “I call it preparation. I knew I was going to get an opportunity to get out. I was prepared.”

“Just like now what are you going to do for the rest of your life?” Stacy asked. “Now are you prepared for it? How now are you preparing for it? If you are not ready for that opportunity it will pass you by. And people who have missed an opportunity may never get it back. You have got to prepare!”