A man needs speed and strength and, yes, a little savvy. He needs grit and purpose and a little fury, too.

But to play at Memorial Stadium, more than anything a man needs time. Hours on the practice field and hours more in the weight room and still more hours dreaming, just dreaming of football.

Nebraska has featured through decades of dominance names like Reynolds, Rodgers and Rimington. Fryar, Frazier and Frost. Glover, Gill and Green. They roll off native tongues like nursery rhymes.

But never has a Husker superstar carried a name like this one:

Ndamukong Ngwa Lennon Suh.

And never has the face of the program come so far.

Suh is 22 years old. But to bring that man to this place, it took much longer.

West Africa

Michael Suh remembers seeing the old man and feeling fear. It was the early 1960s.

Cameroon, a former German colony during World War II, had just achieved independence. And Michael, a young boy, was scared of his grandfather. It made sense. The man was 7-foot-3, a former soldier in Hitler's army.

His name was Ndamukong.

Michael was born in a village near the Nigerian border, about as far from an American football stadium as a boy can be.

His father fell ill when Michael was in grade school and couldn't provide anymore. Michael walked — “we run, we don't walk” — five or six miles to school each day, then went to work at his family's grocery store.

But he wanted to learn more. At 16, he knew he had to leave.

“I wanted to be better than my father.”

He spent two years in Germany studying machinery. During down time, he played semi-pro soccer.

He aspired to come to the United States and, in 1981, he got accepted to a trade school in Portland, Ore. He juggled work, school and homesickness.

But America is worth the effort, he says. America provides opportunities to those who seek them.

“In other countries, sometimes you work hard and you don't achieve.”

In '87, he started his own business, fixing refrigerators and washers and dryers. He learned more and now he designs and installs heating and cooling systems.

In the beginning, it was hard as a black man to find contracts. It was harder as an African immigrant. But there is always someone who looks beyond race, he says.

His dream all along was to take his skills, return to Cameroon and be a technician.

“My children inspired me to stay.”

West Indies

She grew up in the 1960s jumping rope in the schoolyard of Spanishtown, Jamaica, about as far from an American football stadium as a girl can be.

Her mother and father lived in England from the time she was born. That was where people moved when they wanted to be better than their fathers.

Bernadette lived with grandpa and grandma. She remembers sitting on their laps, listening to stories from the Bible. She went to the beach on Sundays after church.

Her ancestors had come on slave ships to Jamaican plantations. But her grandpa had acquired land outside the city, where he raised acres and acres of sugar cane.

When she was 15, her parents moved from England to Boston to be closer to home. She moved to America to join them.

One summer, she enrolled in a college prep program. The administrator was a professor at a small Oregon college interested in recruiting students of color.

She moved alone across the country, a girl from Jamaica to an Oregon town of 20,000 near the California border.

Blacks didn't move to Ashland very often, but she wanted to be a nurse like her mother, and Southern Oregon University gave her a chance. She graduated with a teaching degree instead.

A few years later, tired of limiting her recreational options to hunting and fishing, she moved to Portland. There, she began teaching elementary school. She hasn't stopped.

She met Michael in Portland in 1982 when “we were young and foolish.” They married and named their daughter Ngum.

Then they had a boy.

Junior varsity

The biggest kid in the crowd is the first one heard. That's usually how it works, says Ngum Suh. Not with her brother.

“He was always the first one forgotten, because he was so quiet.”

Much of his friends' culture was foreign to Ndamukong Suh. Simple things. Like doughnuts — what were those? The unknowns made him observant, but shy.

At home, Suh's parents showered him with little remnants of Jamaica and Cameroon. Like jerk chicken, his favorite dish. Values they instilled lasted longer.

Like respecting elders.

Even if someone's one day older, you heed what they have to say, Ndamukong says. Even now, when he returns home, he and his father set a curfew when he goes out with friends. Leave one place for another? Ndamukong calls home to inform Mom and Dad.

Like traveling.

“It's amazing how much there is to learn and see about the world,” says Bernadette, who has visited four continents and intends to see the other three. “You can't get it from reading. I know some of it is financial. But you live in the richest country in the world. Get a loan.”

Like the importance of education.

If you went to school in Cameroon, it meant your family had money. Not every kid had the privilege. So don't waste education. Michael would always say, “You're very lucky to grow up here.”

When the kids forgot, Dad quickly pulled them back.

“He would laugh at us,” Ngum says. “He would say, ‘You want these $200 shoes? Do you know that when I was growing up I got my older brother's hand-me-downs and those shoes didn't even cost $2.'”

Ndamukong was kicking soccer balls as soon as he could walk. He controlled the paint on the basketball floor — he got just enough of his great-grandfather's height. But size made him an easy target for whistle-happy officials.

So as a sophomore in high school, without Mom's and Dad's permission, he tried out for junior varsity football. He only told them because he made the team.

Two years later, with Oregon and Oregon State banging on his door and Mom and Dad hoping he'd forget all their advice and stay close to home, he chose Nebraska.

“Our parents just had basic standards,” says Ngum, who earned a soccer scholarship to Mississippi State. “It was never, ‘You have to be the best in the world at this, or even the best in your class. But you need to do your best.'”

Ngum continues.

“(Ndamukong) and I have had conversations about it. We're like, ‘How can you let somebody like that down? They did all this. My dad traveled how many thousands of miles to come to America for a better education and a better life.

“My mom did the same thing. She traveled across the country alone to get her education.

“What excuse did we have to be afraid?”

His own dream

Last fall, Ndamukong's sister went to Cameroon to play with the national soccer team.

She visited her dad's hometown, where Michael owns land adjacent to his old home. He's building a big house, so he has a place to stay when he retires.

Ngum wasn't crazy about the Internet access or the electricity blackouts, but that aside, she liked Cameroon. Liked walking through the markets on the street. Liked the designs of the art and the architecture.

She met her great uncle, also named Ndamukong.

“Often, when you're named after someone, you take their personality as well,” she says. “As soon as I stepped into his house, I could feel my brother's presence. It was really, really weird because I hadn't seen my brother in so long.”

Back in Nebraska, Ndamukong was turning into a player worthy of attention. When he returned for his senior season — the degree in construction management was a priority — he put himself next in a long line of Husker greats.

Growing up, Suh never drew comparisons to others, his sister says. He was different in size, in ability, in heritage. His uniqueness freed him to chart his own path.

“He is in his own realm. ... He wants to set the standard high.”

A generation removed from a Cameroon village and hand-me-down shoes, a few generations gone from Jamaican slaves raising cane on a plantation, Suh stood tall Tuesday afternoon high above the field on which he'll demonstrate his fury tonight.

Pressed to reflect on his family's journey, the big man thought for a moment. He recalled a lesson he learned long ago:

The world is small.

Contact the writer: 679-9899, dirk.chatelain@owh.com

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