Lions' D.J. Reader gives back decades after grandfather starred in Negro Leagues

On one of his two trips to Cooperstown as an aspiring young baseball player, D.J. Reader found himself flipping through a book at the Baseball Hall of Fame looking for a name that was near and dear to him.

Reader's grandfather, Ervin Ford, was a speedy outfielder who played for the Indianapolis Clowns of the Negro Leagues , and is the man he credits "for the beginning of (my) lineage of sports."

"You're looking through the books, you're just looking, scraping, scraping," Reader, a first-year Detroit Lions defensive tackle, said Monday. "Obviously, you’re a little kid, you're like, not going to find him, you're not going to find him and you find him and you're like, 'Oh shoot, that's super cool.' I'm bragging. I'm showing my mom, my grandma all over the store with it."

Reader heard plenty of stories about his grandfather while growing up a baseball and football star in Greensboro, N.C.

His mother, Felicia, still has memorabilia from her father's time with the Clowns — he also played for the Appleton Papermakers, Eau Claire Bears, El Paso Texans and Mexico City Reds, according to Baseball Reference — and Reader said he trained with one of his grandfather's old bats when he was young.

Reader knew his grandfather was so fast he once beat out a bunt for an infield single and kept running for a home run.

"They never could catch him," Felicia said.

And he was good enough his teammates nicknamed him "Thunderbird."

But seeing his grandfather's name in print — at the Hall of Fame, no less — made Reader swell with pride.

"I had a reflection of like, 'This is a part of your lineage. You should feel special cause you are,'" Reader said. "And I think there was a story that could resonate with a lot of people just, yeah, you’re told these stories over and over and over and over and over and having confirmation was just awesome."

Reader spent much of the Lions ' off day Monday at Paul Roberson Malcolm X Academy in Detroit, donating his time and school supplies to an expected 350 kids as part of his A Son Never Forgets Foundation .

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Children got backpacks and paper, a lunch of pizza and pie, and free dental screenings to make sure they were ready for the school year.

Reader said his desire to give back to the community — his foundation also has opened resource rooms that provide clothing, school supplies and other goods throughout the school year to kids at two schools in Cincinnati, with a third set to open soon — has roots in the grandfather who passed away when he was young and the lessons handed down to his parents.

"It’s just amazing just the admiration a person has to have to be able to be that stand-up person every day, deal with what you got to deal with, still have a family, go out there and entertain people and you're doing it for pure love," Reader said. "I think that's always stuck with me and just kind of showed me the man who he was. And just all the kids that he raised showed me the character he had to have had.

“I've watched my aunt and uncles be just amazing people just throughout my life and the way my mom — I didn't get to meet him in my older age, just being older and just being more mature and able to ask certain questions. So just the way my mom talks about him and what high regard she holds him in just shows me just what kind of person he was."

Growing up, Reader accompanied his mother to charitable events she took part in through work. They served food at soup kitchens, collected clothes for the Salvation Army and built rain barrels to help clean up trash when a hurricane hit close to home.

Felicia, a former college softball player, said D.J. was in eighth grade the first time he told her he planned to start a foundation one day to give back to the community.

"Philanthropy's always kind of been a part of what I wanted to do in life," Reader said. "I was home-schooled till the sixth grade so (my mom) drove me everywhere when she had those type of events. Whether it was soup kitchen or outings or going to help with Goodwill or packing or this, that and the third, there was always just kind of those things that it was good to just be around people. The energy and everybody was just, for me it was always awesome so I said one day if I was fortunate enough to be in a position to do something like that then I'd do it."

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Reader, who played one season of baseball at Clemson before giving up the sport to focus full-time on football, said his goal with Monday's event was to "make an imprint on people’s lives and spark an interest in somebody to one day be able to just make more imprints on other people’s lives," like his parents did for him.

Longer-term, he wants his foundation to open one or more schools to honor his late father, David, a math teacher who died in 2014 after a long battle with kidney disease.

"I look at my dad as a superman even though he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis when I was like 4," Reader said. "(He was) always kind of battling that but I never really seen my dad have bad days. I’ve obviously seen him have bad days physically, but one thing he always did a great job was controlling his attitude. I think that’s kind of paved who I am as the man. I tell people all the time that if you don’t really like see life as glass half-full, me and you probably don’t see life the same. That’s kind of how I go about it."

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Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com . Follow him on X and Instagram at @davebirkett .

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Lions' D.J. Reader gives back decades after grandfather starred in Negro Leagues