{"id":3735,"date":"2017-09-11T15:49:55","date_gmt":"2017-09-11T15:49:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/?p=3735"},"modified":"2023-05-24T17:56:30","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T17:56:30","slug":"a-wabash-man-a-family-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/2017\/09\/11\/a-wabash-man-a-family-man\/","title":{"rendered":"A Wabash Man, A Family Man"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Christina Egbert<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Professor Jennifer Abbott spoke about Delon Pettiford \u201917 at the Senior Rhetoric Dinner last spring, she said she will always remember how special he was. Contrary to\u00a0many\u00a0people on campus, though, Abbott\u00a0won’t recall\u00a0Pettiford for\u00a0his accomplishments on the football field, but because, as she said, he’s\u00a0\u201ca family man.\u201d<\/p>\n

A native of Indianapolis, there is nothing more important to Pettiford than family. He and his two younger brothers have always been close, but their relationship changed once his parents divorced.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen my dad no longer lived in the house, my mom felt that there were some things that were awkward to talk to my brothers about growing up, so I would step in and fill that role,\u201d Pettiford says. \u201cShe would always tell me I didn\u2019t have to and I shouldn\u2019t have to. But I still sort of feel like it\u2019s necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even as a high school student, Pettiford would switch\u00a0between being the fun brother who would wrestle with his younger siblings when mom wasn\u2019t home to\u00a0being more of a father figure who would get on his brothers when he needed to.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m like their best friend, but, at the same time, if they\u2019re getting smart with my mom, I\u2019ll yell at them,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019ll go back and forth with that relationship because they\u2019ll tell me that I\u2019m not their dad and I can\u2019t tell them what to do. And sometimes they\u2019ll listen.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would have been easy for Pettiford to leave that all behind once he got to Wabash (which he chose partially because of how close it was to home). He now had time to focus only on himself\u2014his athletic career, his academic career, and his social life.\u00a0But he could not stand to be away from home.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really bad the first couple of years here,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was my first time being away from my brothers for more than a week. When I was a freshman and sophomore, I went home\u00a0at least two to three times a week. And, yeah, it was only an hour drive, but those were hours I probably should\u2019ve been studying. But I\u2019ve never regretted what I\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s driven home to as many of his brothers\u2019 sporting events that he could get to. Not a birthday or a Christmas goes by without Pettiford spoiling his younger brothers. And even throughout his senior year, he would still drive home to see his family at least once a week.<\/p>\n

Going to college, though, might just be the best thing Pettiford could have done for his younger brothers.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Delon with his brothers at his Wabash Commencement in May: “I’ve just shown them the path to take.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t really know anything about college until my sophomore year of high school,\u201d Pettiford says. \u201cI realized I actually might be able to go, but the only reason at that point was to play football in college. In high school, I\u2019ll be honest, I loved to party. I ended up getting good enough grades to get into Wabash, but I could\u2019ve done a lot better, so I try to teach them to be better than what I was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pettiford\u2019s brothers often came to campus to hang out with him and his friends and teammates. The middle brother would watch the football team at practice, and the younger brother followed all of the Wabash wrestlers and is, as Pettiford puts it, obsessed with Riley Lefever.<\/p>\n

Pettiford takes a lot of pride mentoring his younger brothers \u2013 and even their friends. For some of them, he\u2019s the only person who has made it college and has succeeded both athletically and academically.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m the first person in my family to go to college, and then to make it to Wabash was pretty cool,\u201d Pettiford says. \u201cI\u2019m from the eastside of Indianapolis, which isn\u2019t that great of an area. A lot of my friends didn\u2019t have good enough grades to go to college. Some of them spent time in jail. Some of them actually died. So obviously, I did this for myself, but I think I\u2019m also setting the bar for them by showing them that you can go to the next level of your education and you can graduate. And I think they\u2019ll do a lot more than I\u2019ve done. I\u2019ve just shown them the path to take.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Christina Egbert When Professor Jennifer Abbott spoke about Delon Pettiford \u201917 at the Senior Rhetoric Dinner last spring, she said she will always remember how special he was. Contrary to\u00a0many\u00a0people on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":3736,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured-videos","category-works-in-progress"],"w_featured_image_url":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2017\/09\/0b8a3888-1024x683.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3735"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3747,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3735\/revisions\/3747"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.wabash.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}