SPARTANBURG, S.C. — Early in Carolina Panthers training camp, offensive line coach John Matsko asked Byron Bell to share his story with the team's linemen.
It seemed unusual, having an undrafted rookie address a group that included two Pro Bowlers and a number of veterans.
But when Bell started talking, the room got quiet.
He told teammates how he lost his father to a heart condition when he was 5, leaving his mother, Sandra Bell, to raise four boys while working full-time in law enforcement.
He described the day in 2007 that began with a bowl game victory for the University of New Mexico and should have been capped with a party. Instead, it ended with Bell in a room-trashing rage after receiving a phone call about a fire that destroyed his family's home in Greenville, Texas.
He explained how he played his final college season in honor of his brother, Isaiah, who was 8 when he died in that fire.
And finally, Bell told Matsko and the linemen that his mother and brother are the forces driving him to beat the odds as an undrafted free agent and make the Panthers' 53-man roster. As the oldest of his mother's four sons, the 6-foot-5, 339-pound offensive tackle is his family's protector.
"That's why I play, because of (Isaiah)," Bell said he told his teammates in the meeting. "I said I'm not even in it for the money. I just want to get enough money so I can get my mother a home. That's it."
Bell ended training camp firmly entrenched on the Panthers' second-team line, and took reps last week at the starting right tackle spot after injuries to players in front of him. Bell missed Friday's exhibition at Miami with his own injury — a knee issue that is not considered serious.
Bell, 22, comes by his large frame naturally. Relatives on both sides of the family are plus-sized.
"We're all pretty big out there in Greenville, Texas," Bell said.
Byron Bell Sr. was a 6-3, 220-pound defensive end at Texas A&M-Commerce, a Division II school near Bell's hometown. Bell has watched game video of his father, but has few memories of a man who was 29 when he died of an undiagnosed heart condition.
After her husband's death, Sandra Bell kept her job as jailer at the Hunt County jail and took her two boys, Byron and Seth, to the doctor to make sure their hearts were OK.
She was walking through the jail one day when a woman in the female wing stopped her and asked about her family. Sandra Bell said she could not discuss her personal life with prisoners.
Bell learned the woman, doing a hitch for theft and drug convictions, was pregnant with twins. A few months later, the woman was transported to a hospital to deliver the twin boys. A couple of days after that, the prisoner's family members showed up at Sandra Bell's door with the infants.
"She told them she wanted me to have the babies," Sandra Bell said. "They literally left the babies."
Bell adopted the twins, Isaiah and Elijah, and raised all four of her boys in the church. Byron sang in the choir at New Jerusalem Missionary Baptist Church and played center for the Greenville High football team.
Bell's scholarship offers came from only Southern Methodist and New Mexico. In the summer of 2007, Bell headed off to Albuquerque.
When he returned to Greenville a few months later, he had no home to go to, and a younger brother to bury.
Bell was on the travel squad for his entire freshman season, although he played only a few plays in one early game.
When other freshmen were given the opportunity to go home and skip the New Mexico Bowl, Bell had to stay and practice for the game, held in Albuquerque. The Lobos stayed in a hotel the night before the Dec. 22 game against Nevada.
Back in Greenville, Sandra Bell went to Wal-Mart after work to buy Christmas presents for the 8-year-old twins. After stopping at Taco Bell for dinner, Sandra Bell arrived home around 9:30.
She left the bags of toys and clothes in the truck and took the boys inside the family's one-story home to get ready for bed. Isaiah slept in the twins' room, while Elijah fell asleep watching TV in Seth's room.
Seth had been called in to work the night shift at McDonald's. The only other person home was Raleigh Linson, Sandra Bell's 83-year-old father, who also lived there.
Sandra Bell had not been asleep long when her father woke her up around 11.
"We all just fell asleep in three different rooms. And the next thing I knew my daddy came into my room and was telling me the house was on fire," she said. "I could hear him telling me but I couldn't process it. When I finally opened my eyes, the house was just full of smoke."
Linson told his daughter Isaiah was already out of the house. So she got Elijah out of Seth's room, grabbed her purse and went outside. When she didn't see Isaiah, she asked her dad where he was.
"He kept looking at Elijah and saying there he is," Bell said. "I kept trying to let him no, that's not Isaiah. It's Elijah. … I was thinking, 'Oh, God, my baby's going to burn up.' "
Bell put Elijah in the truck, and followed her father back into the house to find Isaiah. They didn't get far.
"It was just too much smoke. I couldn't see and I knew he couldn't," said Bell, who ran outside and called 911.
Firefighters and emergency crews couldn't save Isaiah, who died from smoke inhalation. Investigators determined an electrical problem caused the fire, Sandra Bell said.
She decided to wait until after the bowl game the following day to tell Byron about the fire. After the Lobos' 23-0 victory over Nevada — their first bowl victory in 46 years — Bell took the team bus back to the hotel.
He tried to call his mom to tell her about the game, but couldn't reach her. Finally, he reached a hometown friend, who broke the news.
Bell blamed himself for not being there to save his brother, and took out his anger on his hotel room.
He flew home the next day and went by the house, which was still standing but ruined by the smoke and water. The family's plastic Christmas tree was charred.
Bell's co-workers at the sheriff's department and their families re-wrapped the presents that were salvageable. Sandra Bell and the boys spent a sober holiday at her sister's house.
"We didn't celebrate," Byron Bell said. "We didn't do nothing. We slept on Christmas day."
New Jerusalem was packed to the balcony for Isaiah's funeral two days later. Bell saw his brother a final time at the funeral home before the small casket was closed.
While the university created a fund for Bell's family, Bell could not stop thinking about how things might have been different had he been home the night of the fire. Confused and depressed, Bell considered transferring to SMU or North Texas, where he could be closer to his mom and brothers.
"He was just mad at the coaches, mad at the whole system. Football was not important at that time," Sandra Bell said. "He felt like he should have been at home, and felt if he would have been there, he could have saved the house, could have saved Isaiah."
Sandra Bell assured her son there was nothing he could have done.
But his anger lingered. Bell remained at New Mexico, but withdrew from friends and teammates. At the first team meeting in January, he sat in the corner and didn't speak to anybody.
He quit going to classes. He showed up for practices in the spring, but would leave without showering and go back to his apartment to grieve.
In one of their last conversations, Isaiah had told Bell he was signing up for football the next fall and wanted Byron to teach him to play running back.
"I don't know how to play running back. But I'm pretty sure I know enough about the game," Byron said. "But he never got to do it."
Eventually, Bell figured he owed it to his brother to get serious about football again. He started all 12 games at tackle in 2008, and received honorable mention on CollegeFootballNews.com's Freshman All-American team.
He attended counseling sessions, but still struggled to keep his emotions under control. He and a teammate were arrested in 2009 following a bar fight in Albuquerque, although the charges against Bell were later dropped.
New Mexico coach Mike Locksley said Bell was still trying to figure things out when Locksley took over the Lobos before Bell's junior year.
"He and I had plenty of one-on-one meetings where he just wanted to know why," Locksley said. "And there are no answers for things like what happened to Isaiah."
New Mexico opened the 2010 season at Oregon. In the visitors' locker room before the game, Bell noticed the equipment manager had stitched the initial "I" next to "Bell" on the back of his jersey.
The tribute to Isaiah stayed on Bell's back his senior season, when he graded out at better than 90 percent and finished with 100 knockdown blocks. An honorable mention All-Mountain West selection, Bell was not invited to the NFL combine.
There were rumblings about his attitude and character. But Locksley told Panthers college scout Khary Darlington, who played at Maryland when Locksley was an assistant there, that Bell been through trying circumstances, but he was not worried about him because he had a strong role model in his mother.
The Panthers were the only team to give Bell a personal workout. Assistant offensive line coach Ray Brown, an NFL lineman for 20 years, said he could feel Bell's power when he held a blocking dummy for him during the 45-minute workout.
"He worked hard and I knew he wanted it," Brown said. "The big thing is his lack of experience. He hasn't played a lot of football. But the kid has an NFL body. You've got to really coach him up to NFL standards."
New Mexico filed an unsuccessful appeal with the NCAA to get Bell another year of eligibility for the year he burned playing six snaps as a freshman under the former staff. Locksley believes Bell would have been a mid-round draft pick in 2012 with another year in college.
Instead, Bell faces the steep road of an undrafted player. Only one undrafted rookie made the Panthers' 53-man roster out of training camp last year — defensive tackle Andre Neblett.
Bell's technique needs work. But the motivation is there.
"He's been through tragedies. That ought to make him play for it. It ought to make him work for it," Brown said. "I always tell him you've got to use that as gas. You've got to make that work for you.
"Sometimes you get a little rattled. It's tough out here. You might start thinking about home or wanting to be at home. But you just bounce back. You're doing it for your mom. You're doing it for your brother."
The Bells honor Isaiah in different ways. Sandra Bell, who at 48 recently bought a new house a few miles from her former home, throws Isaiah a birthday party on April 26 every year. She invites friends and family, who write messages to Isaiah on helium-filled balloons and release them to the heavens.
He would have been 12 this year.
Byron Bell visits Isaiah's gravesite whenever he goes home. If he sticks with the Panthers — in addition to buying his mother a bigger home — he first wants to buy a tombstone to replace the simple, metal marker at Isaiah's grave.
The big lineman is still his brother's protector.
"I just keep pushing through life," Bell said. "Things happen. That's why we're here. We're human. Everybody's had mistakes.
"One thing I learned growing up is stay in church, stay in the Book and just keep living life."
(c) 2011, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).
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Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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