Publication: Charleston Daily Mail
Published: November 27, 2008
Page: 1A
By Jacob Messer
Staff Writer
HUNTINGTON -- Chubb Small has a secret.
It is a subject so sensitive to him that only a few friends and loved ones know all of the details.
Coaches and teammates who have known the Marshall University football player for four years know only bits and pieces, some more than others depending on how much he trusts them and how much they mean to him.
It is a success story, one that is unfinished but already includes chapter after chapter in which Small, both the hero and the protagonist, overcomes obstacles that would have tripped up lesser men and women all too willing to be the guest of honor at their pity party.
Although it is a tough topic to discuss, one that forces him to recall painful periods in his life, Small decided to break his silence and share his story in an exclusive three-hour interview with the Charleston Daily Mail.
He decided to do so to provide inspiration, not to receive adulation.
He knows there are boys and girls whose present mirrors his past. He believes he owes it to those unknown children whose principals, teachers, coaches and preachers might clip or print out the story and give them a copy. He wants them to read it and realize there is hope, a concept that seems as unreal to them as an imaginary friend or the tooth fairy seems to adults.
Thanksgiving is the perfect day to share Small's story because he is grateful for all of the caring people who offered opportunities that enabled him to succeed despite the long odds he faced.
"A guy that made a way out of no way," Thundering Herd head coach Mark Snyder said of Small, a 5-foot-9, 198-pound running back who will play the final game of his college career Saturday. "A very, very rough background that he came from. He has given us everything. Just a great kid."
Small's journey began in Florida, where he was born.
A seventh-grader at Stambaugh Middle School in Auburndale, he could not have been happier. Football season had ended and basketball season had started.
Although his single mother had bounced him from home to home and school to school more than a dozen times during his childhood, often leaving him alone to fend for himself for days and weeks at a time, Small betrayed his better judgment and believed she had changed.
They had a house, complete with running water and working power, necessities to most people but luxuries to them. It was just the two of them, which is the way he liked it.
"It was perfect," Small said.
But not for long.
He awoke at 7:30 one morning before school to find an unusual object on his pillow -- a handwritten letter penned on notebook paper.
As he read the words, each one breaking his heart and wracking his brain, Small could not help but wonder if a nightmare had escaped the dream world and entered the real world to torment him.
"It said how much she loved me, but she can't stay in Polk County and she knew I wasn't going to go with her," Small said as straightforward as a husband reciting a grocery list back to his wife. "She just told me she was leaving and going back to Daytona to stay with a friend."
Sitting alone in an empty house, the abandoned child read the letter "probably a hundred times" in three hours, wondering if it was a cruel joke.
"I didn't believe it," Small said.
Anger soon replaced doubt.
"I was just done," he said, "because let's be real: What kind of parent does that? She could have at least woke me up so she could have at least had a talk with me and maybe I could have understood where she was coming from. She didn't have a good enough reason to tell me face-to-face."
The letter had to go.
"I was so mad I couldn't keep it," Small said. "I cut it up and threw it away."
Holding the letter an arm's length from his face and reading it, Small grabbed a chef's knife -- the large kind with a wide blade and sharp point -- and started poking holes in the paper.
"I read it for the last time and it was just that little oomph," he said, scrunching his face and gritting his teeth in an angry expression. "I stuck it in there and from then on I just started cutting it. Then, I threw it away. It was like me saying, 'I don't need you. I can do it myself. I'm a man now.'"
He was 13.
"I was forced to grow up after that," said Small, who has four older brothers who did not live at home during his childhood. "I stayed there for a while by myself. After practice, I would go to a friend's house and eat dinner there.
"One day, my middle brother came by the house just to see if we were home and I was there. He asked me where mom was and I told him. Of course, he got mad. He was like, 'Come stay with me.' But he had his own issues. He had a lot of kids -- at least eight at the time.
"I didn't want to be a burden on him. How much better could that be? I stayed with him for just a little bit so I wouldn't be there by myself because eventually the rent would be due and the lights would be cut off."
Sadly, it was not the first time and would not be the last time Aris Small abandoned her youngest son.
Take the summer between his fifth- and sixth-grade years, for example. Small and his mother had moved to Kissimmee to live with her oldest son. But Small's mother and brother rarely were there.
"I can honestly say that was when I was forced to grow up," he said. "She would stay the night somewhere and then come back for a couple of days. That one night would turn into two or three. Once, it turned into a week. One time, she left and I didn't know when she was coming back."
Only 11 at the time, Small was not exactly Emeril in the kitchen. Even if he were, he did not have the food or the money needed to make meals for himself.
With no other options, he would break into his brother's bedroom and steal from his brother's change jar to scrounge up a couple of dollars to take to the corner store. There, he would buy one of the few items he could prepare -- Hot Pockets.
"I did that for a while," Small said.
One of his food runs started a chain of events that led him first to Hargrave Military Academy and then to Marshall.
A lady inside the store noticed Small. She asked him his name, his age and if he played football. Her husband, she told him, coached a youth team and he would be perfect for it, although he was bigger than the average 11-year-old.
"I was fat until the fourth grade," Small said with a grin.
His given name is Lenford Small. His nickname is a shortened version of "Chubby," which is what a doctor called him when he weighed 11 pounds, 9 ounces at birth.
The lady told Small he needed his parents' permission and a $30 admission fee to play for the Kissimmee Panthers.
"I filled out the papers right there in the store," he said. "But she wanted to talk to my parents about me playing.
"At the time, I was like, 'What am I going to tell her?' I couldn't let her know I was at home by myself because she could have called the Department of Health and Human Services. I didn't want my mom to be put in jail and I didn't want to be taken away. I just told her they weren't home.
"I took the papers home so my mom could fill them out. Luckily, my mom showed up and filled it out, but she didn't have the money to pay the fee. (The coach and his wife) basically paid it for me. They felt sorry for me."
Small was happier than he ever had been.
"Mom started staying home a little more," he said. "I thought everything was getting back on track."
His joy lasted only a couple of months, however, because his mother decided to move again.
"I don't know why I expected anything else," Small said, "but I did."
Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls have been jerked up less than Small, who estimates he attended 13 elementary schools.
"I never really got the chance to actually have an established childhood," said Small, who lived in at least four different cities -- Auburndale, DeLand, Kissimmee and Lakeland -- before he turned 18. "I never got a chance to meet or have a real friend because I never knew when we were going to leave."
That continued in his teenage years, when he attended two middle schools and three high schools.
Fed up with the constant moving, Small refused to accompany his mom to Daytona during the summer between his sixth- and seventh-grade years. But instability begat instability. He bounced back and forth between an aunt's house and a brother's home.
His mother returned a few months later, only to write her infamous letter shortly after that.
If Small ever came close to cracking, it was then.
"I didn't let it get the best of me," said Small, who lived in crime-infested and poverty-stricken neighborhoods where he witnessed people getting robbed, carjacked and worse. "You only lose when you give up. I never gave up.
"I had plenty of chances to go sell drugs. I had plenty of chances to steal. It was all right there. I have come close to doing it. But I never did. I knew it wasn't for me."
Small remained loyal to his mother despite the hardships she caused. He never questioned her. He never yelled at her. He loved her and supported her and admired her as if she were a stay-at-home mom who always had a hot meal, a warm bath and a cozy bed waiting on him at the end of the day.
"I wanted to please her," he said. "As long as mom was happy, everything was cool.
"The way she raised me, she always taught me to stay in a child's place. Even the things I did want to know, I never asked her. It was always assumption. Either she wasn't ready to slow down and take care of her responsibility or ... I don't know any other reason."
Small wowed a pair of then-Auburndale High School football coaches -- head coach Kenny Harrison and assistant coach Mike Coe -- the first time they watched him play for the Auburndale Hounds the following year.
"The high school coaches would come watch what's coming next," Small said. "I was that kid. I was the hottest player on the market then."
Coe talked to Small about playing for Auburndale.
"I wanted to, but I didn't know how it would work out because I didn't know where I was going to be next," Small said. "I told him my situation and he said, 'You know what? You can come stay with me.' I wasn't supposed to be staying with the coach, of course, but at the time that was the only place I could live.
"After my eighth-grade year, the summer before I started high school, he took me in and he basically taught me that there is someone out there who is willing to help. He gave me hope."
Then, Small's mother tried to take it away from him. She made him transfer to DeLand High School and live with her.
"She didn't want to take care of me, but she didn't want anyone else to take care of me, either," he said. "She just decided to not let me have any say-so on what I wanted to do or where I wanted to be."
It took a few months, but Coe and Small persuaded her to let him return to Auburndale. Small lived with Coe for the next 15 months, Florida High School Athletic Association rules be damned.
Coe gave Small the long-term stability and security he needed and wanted all of his life. But that came to an end when Coe received an opportunity to become a teacher and associate head coach at Madison County High School.
"I was going to have to move there with him or move in with someone else," he said.
Small wanted to follow Coe but not to Madison, which is about 225 miles north of Auburndale.
"All of my friends were in Auburndale," he said.
Small moved in with his sister-in-law's mother in Lakeland and remained at Auburndale High School, which was 20 minutes away from her home. Travel became an issue and forced him to transfer in the middle of his junior year.
Small ended up at Lakeland High School, where the football team is a state and national powerhouse. But he was not allowed to participate in spring drills for the Dreadnaughts because of a transfer rule.
For Small, who found solace in the sport despite its violence, life without football was no life at all.
With help from community members and church leaders, then-Auburndale High School Principal Ernest Joe made it possible for Small to return for his senior season and reunite with his mother.
"I wanted her back," Small said. "I wanted it to be just my mom and me again. We talked her into coming back. Her reason (for not returning) was she wasn't able. She couldn't afford this or she couldn't afford that. She wouldn't have time to get back on her feet. She didn't have a job.
"They all came up with money. They all came up with food. They all helped find her a job and get us an apartment. This was my mom's chance to actually make her life better. Everything was given to her on a platter. All she had to do was maintain."
Even that was too much to expect.
Small returned from football practice one evening to find an empty and dark apartment. The power had been cut off because his mother had not paid the electric bill.
"And my mom was nowhere to be found," he said.
Small, whose football coaches allowed him to wash and iron his clothes at school, moved in with one of his best friends. Brian Casey's father agreed to let Small stay there so he could finish his senior year.
It was not the first time Casey's family had helped Small, a Class 4A all-state selection who rushed for about 1,600 yards in his final season and 3,000 yards in his high school career.
"He had it rough," said Casey, a Florida State University graduate who now is a first-year student at the Florida Coastal School of Law.
"His power would get cut off. His water would get cut off. His mom wouldn't be able to support him. He would come over to my house to eat dinner or take a shower."
Small never let it get the best of him.
"Inside, you knew his life was falling apart; outside, he was fine," said Casey, who first played football with Small in the eighth grade. "Anybody who can get through all of that with a smile on their face, you know they're going to succeed in life."
With no one to support him, Small had to support himself. A teammate's father was a city commissioner in Auburndale. He told Small to visit the Parks and Recreation Department and talk to Cindy Hummel, who gave him a job manning the concession stand at the city's softball complex.
"When he came into my office, he was so sincere," she said. "He said, 'I promise I'll work.' I asked him why he needed a job. He said, 'I have to buy all of my personals and pay bills because my mother can't take care of me.' For a young man to say such a thing, I knew it must be bad."
Their meeting was another link in the chain of events that paved his current path.
"From then on," he said, "she always made sure I was OK."
Small did not know Cindy Hummel is married to George Hummel, a former high school football coach who taught his ninth-grade computer class.
The Hummels eventually became his godparents, which Small partially attributes to his late maternal grandmother, Ruth Cooper.
"I remember my grandma yelling at my cousins for saying things like, 'I hate this person or that person' or 'I'm not going to do this for him or that for her,' " Small said. "She would tell them, 'Be careful what you do or say to people because you never know when you're going to need them.'
"For some reason, that stuck with me. Therefore, I always treated everyone the same. I was always nice to everybody even if I wasn't too fond of them. What if I had been that kid who was the class clown and who was always disrupting class?
"I'm pretty sure Cindy comes home and talks to George about her day. What if she came home one day and said, 'I met this kid today, and I'm contemplating whether we should help him or not. His name is Chubb.' And then he said, 'He's a punk. It won't be worth it to help this kid.' What if he thought that about me?"
Instead, the white couple informally adopted the black teenager and welcomed him into its family, which already included two grown children who have kids of their own.
"I don't know how it all happened, but it just did," said Small, who became a full-fledged member of the Hummels' family when he started living with them during the winter break after his first semester at Marshall. "They were just there, like the angels that were made just for me."
Small might not have graduated if the Hummels had not asked one of their friends, a former college professor, to tutor him for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which all Sunshine State seniors must pass before they can receive their high school diplomas.
Although major colleges recruited him to play for their football teams, Small could not accept an athletic scholarship because he was unable to pass the ACT college entrance exam. He needed a 17 but repeatedly scored a 16.
Small decided to attend Hargrave to prepare himself academically and athletically, but there was an obstacle he had to overcome: a $24,000 price tag.
There was no reason to worry. Not with the Hummels taking care of him. They formed a fundraising committee with school officials and community members. The group collected about $18,000 that summer, but he needed $6,000 more.
Joe, himself a former football player and coach, made sure Small got it. Joe cashed in a favor from Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, whom he had coached at Kathleen High School.
Lewis, whose younger brother, former University of Maryland running back Keon Lattimore, also attended Hargrave, wrote a check for the remainder of the balance.
"I had all of this negativity in my life to the point where something positive eventually had to happen," Small said. "I thought God had made this my second chance."
Small made the most of it.
He not only passed the ACT and SAT college entrance exams in his only semester at Hargrave but also earned a 4.0 grade point average.
He also played so well for the Tigers that a recruiting Web site, Rivals.com, ranked him the country's No. 14 prep school player and No. 2 prep school running back.
Small chose Marshall over the University of Toledo and Utah State University after he and the Hummels visited all three schools.
When he told them his decision, they told him their secret: George played football for four years at Marshall and Cindy lived in Huntington for two years. Cindy, a former Kent State student, married George after his sophomore year.
"The Lord works in mysterious ways," Small said. "It was just a big coincidence in my life that got me here."
Small said college is like paradise to him because he never has to worry about having food, power, water or shelter. All his needs are covered, either by Marshall or the Hummels.
"It's like heaven," said Small, who slept on a couch on his grandmother's carport and kept his clothes in a cardboard box beside it for a couple of weeks during the summer after his high school graduation because there was no room for him inside her home. "I finally got out of hell."
However, reminders of his past remain. He lives alone in a Huntington apartment and prefers to keep his rooms dark.
"Throughout all of my life, that's just the way it has been," said Small, 23. "I have adapted to it so much to the point that that's just the way I am now. That's what I know."
Small did not become a headline-making star for the Thundering Herd, but he believes there is a reason for that.
"Before, all I thought I had was football," said Small, who enters his final game with 254 carries for 1,153 yards and nine touchdowns in 46 games in four years.
"Because I haven't had all of these 100-yard games or 1,000-yard seasons, it made me think about other things that I need to have in my life other than football. I think by not having (that kind of success) it actually steered me to broaden my horizons. The emphasis on education became stronger."
Small will receive his bachelor's degree in sports management and marketing next month. He plans to pursue a master's degree if he doesn't make it to the National Football League.
"I'll be the first one in my family to graduate from college," said Small, who normally ends each semester with a 2.8 to 3.0 grade point average. "I feel like I have already succeeded.
"I kept getting pushed down when I was younger. I'm pushing up now. I just want to keep pushing up, just to even it all out and make up for lost time."
The only thing that matters more to Small than his academics and athletics is his family, as evidenced by his MySpace page. His profile includes an arrangement of three photos -- one of him with his godfather, one of him with his godmother and one of him with his biological mother. Above it is this title: "No love like family love."
Aris Small lives in Florida, where she battles health conditions, including diabetes. She is disabled and has had a leg amputated. She receives a phone call from her baby boy every day.
"It's unconditional love," he said. "I can be mad at her because she doesn't make the best decisions, but I can't hold a grudge against her."
Ask Small who his parents are, however, and he does not hesitate: George and Cindy Hummel, 61 and 60.
"Your parents say they love you and help you get where you are, but it's not always like that," said Small, who does not know his father. "That's how it's supposed to be.
"You can say you love me, but love is spelled H-E-L-P. That's the way I see it. If you love somebody, you want to help them. It's a four-letter word, but it isn't spelled L-O-V-E.
"George and Cindy are my mom and dad. They have made my life so much easier. They helped me to not think so much. I used to always think about how am I going to eat, how am I going to do this, how am I going to do that, where am I going to stay next.
"I was living day-to-day until I met them. Now, when I go home for break, that's where I live. Their home is my home now. They do everything parents should do for their children."
Added George Hummel: "He has given as much joy and love to us as we have given to him."
The Hummels were scheduled to travel from Florida to West Virginia today to have Thanksgiving with Small, who had not celebrated Christmas -- sitting around a decorated tree and opening wrapped presents before eating a traditional dinner with family members -- until he joined their family.
"This will be the first time we have spent Thanksgiving away from our biological children," Cindy Hummel said. "They don't have a problem with it. They told us we needed to be there for him. They call him their 'brother from another mother.' They love him and accept him as much as we do."
The Hummels also will join Small for Senior Day festivities Saturday before Marshall faces Tulsa at Joan C. Edwards Stadium in Huntington. When he is introduced and honored, they will accompany him.
He would not have it any other way.
"That's my mom and pops right there," he said.
Published: November 27, 2008
Page: 1A
By Jacob Messer
Staff Writer
HUNTINGTON -- Chubb Small has a secret.
It is a subject so sensitive to him that only a few friends and loved ones know all of the details.
Coaches and teammates who have known the Marshall University football player for four years know only bits and pieces, some more than others depending on how much he trusts them and how much they mean to him.
It is a success story, one that is unfinished but already includes chapter after chapter in which Small, both the hero and the protagonist, overcomes obstacles that would have tripped up lesser men and women all too willing to be the guest of honor at their pity party.
Although it is a tough topic to discuss, one that forces him to recall painful periods in his life, Small decided to break his silence and share his story in an exclusive three-hour interview with the Charleston Daily Mail.
He decided to do so to provide inspiration, not to receive adulation.
He knows there are boys and girls whose present mirrors his past. He believes he owes it to those unknown children whose principals, teachers, coaches and preachers might clip or print out the story and give them a copy. He wants them to read it and realize there is hope, a concept that seems as unreal to them as an imaginary friend or the tooth fairy seems to adults.
Thanksgiving is the perfect day to share Small's story because he is grateful for all of the caring people who offered opportunities that enabled him to succeed despite the long odds he faced.
"A guy that made a way out of no way," Thundering Herd head coach Mark Snyder said of Small, a 5-foot-9, 198-pound running back who will play the final game of his college career Saturday. "A very, very rough background that he came from. He has given us everything. Just a great kid."
Small's journey began in Florida, where he was born.
A seventh-grader at Stambaugh Middle School in Auburndale, he could not have been happier. Football season had ended and basketball season had started.
Although his single mother had bounced him from home to home and school to school more than a dozen times during his childhood, often leaving him alone to fend for himself for days and weeks at a time, Small betrayed his better judgment and believed she had changed.
They had a house, complete with running water and working power, necessities to most people but luxuries to them. It was just the two of them, which is the way he liked it.
"It was perfect," Small said.
But not for long.
He awoke at 7:30 one morning before school to find an unusual object on his pillow -- a handwritten letter penned on notebook paper.
As he read the words, each one breaking his heart and wracking his brain, Small could not help but wonder if a nightmare had escaped the dream world and entered the real world to torment him.
"It said how much she loved me, but she can't stay in Polk County and she knew I wasn't going to go with her," Small said as straightforward as a husband reciting a grocery list back to his wife. "She just told me she was leaving and going back to Daytona to stay with a friend."
Sitting alone in an empty house, the abandoned child read the letter "probably a hundred times" in three hours, wondering if it was a cruel joke.
"I didn't believe it," Small said.
Anger soon replaced doubt.
"I was just done," he said, "because let's be real: What kind of parent does that? She could have at least woke me up so she could have at least had a talk with me and maybe I could have understood where she was coming from. She didn't have a good enough reason to tell me face-to-face."
The letter had to go.
"I was so mad I couldn't keep it," Small said. "I cut it up and threw it away."
Holding the letter an arm's length from his face and reading it, Small grabbed a chef's knife -- the large kind with a wide blade and sharp point -- and started poking holes in the paper.
"I read it for the last time and it was just that little oomph," he said, scrunching his face and gritting his teeth in an angry expression. "I stuck it in there and from then on I just started cutting it. Then, I threw it away. It was like me saying, 'I don't need you. I can do it myself. I'm a man now.'"
He was 13.
"I was forced to grow up after that," said Small, who has four older brothers who did not live at home during his childhood. "I stayed there for a while by myself. After practice, I would go to a friend's house and eat dinner there.
"One day, my middle brother came by the house just to see if we were home and I was there. He asked me where mom was and I told him. Of course, he got mad. He was like, 'Come stay with me.' But he had his own issues. He had a lot of kids -- at least eight at the time.
"I didn't want to be a burden on him. How much better could that be? I stayed with him for just a little bit so I wouldn't be there by myself because eventually the rent would be due and the lights would be cut off."
Sadly, it was not the first time and would not be the last time Aris Small abandoned her youngest son.
Take the summer between his fifth- and sixth-grade years, for example. Small and his mother had moved to Kissimmee to live with her oldest son. But Small's mother and brother rarely were there.
"I can honestly say that was when I was forced to grow up," he said. "She would stay the night somewhere and then come back for a couple of days. That one night would turn into two or three. Once, it turned into a week. One time, she left and I didn't know when she was coming back."
Only 11 at the time, Small was not exactly Emeril in the kitchen. Even if he were, he did not have the food or the money needed to make meals for himself.
With no other options, he would break into his brother's bedroom and steal from his brother's change jar to scrounge up a couple of dollars to take to the corner store. There, he would buy one of the few items he could prepare -- Hot Pockets.
"I did that for a while," Small said.
One of his food runs started a chain of events that led him first to Hargrave Military Academy and then to Marshall.
A lady inside the store noticed Small. She asked him his name, his age and if he played football. Her husband, she told him, coached a youth team and he would be perfect for it, although he was bigger than the average 11-year-old.
"I was fat until the fourth grade," Small said with a grin.
His given name is Lenford Small. His nickname is a shortened version of "Chubby," which is what a doctor called him when he weighed 11 pounds, 9 ounces at birth.
The lady told Small he needed his parents' permission and a $30 admission fee to play for the Kissimmee Panthers.
"I filled out the papers right there in the store," he said. "But she wanted to talk to my parents about me playing.
"At the time, I was like, 'What am I going to tell her?' I couldn't let her know I was at home by myself because she could have called the Department of Health and Human Services. I didn't want my mom to be put in jail and I didn't want to be taken away. I just told her they weren't home.
"I took the papers home so my mom could fill them out. Luckily, my mom showed up and filled it out, but she didn't have the money to pay the fee. (The coach and his wife) basically paid it for me. They felt sorry for me."
Small was happier than he ever had been.
"Mom started staying home a little more," he said. "I thought everything was getting back on track."
His joy lasted only a couple of months, however, because his mother decided to move again.
"I don't know why I expected anything else," Small said, "but I did."
Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls have been jerked up less than Small, who estimates he attended 13 elementary schools.
"I never really got the chance to actually have an established childhood," said Small, who lived in at least four different cities -- Auburndale, DeLand, Kissimmee and Lakeland -- before he turned 18. "I never got a chance to meet or have a real friend because I never knew when we were going to leave."
That continued in his teenage years, when he attended two middle schools and three high schools.
Fed up with the constant moving, Small refused to accompany his mom to Daytona during the summer between his sixth- and seventh-grade years. But instability begat instability. He bounced back and forth between an aunt's house and a brother's home.
His mother returned a few months later, only to write her infamous letter shortly after that.
If Small ever came close to cracking, it was then.
"I didn't let it get the best of me," said Small, who lived in crime-infested and poverty-stricken neighborhoods where he witnessed people getting robbed, carjacked and worse. "You only lose when you give up. I never gave up.
"I had plenty of chances to go sell drugs. I had plenty of chances to steal. It was all right there. I have come close to doing it. But I never did. I knew it wasn't for me."
Small remained loyal to his mother despite the hardships she caused. He never questioned her. He never yelled at her. He loved her and supported her and admired her as if she were a stay-at-home mom who always had a hot meal, a warm bath and a cozy bed waiting on him at the end of the day.
"I wanted to please her," he said. "As long as mom was happy, everything was cool.
"The way she raised me, she always taught me to stay in a child's place. Even the things I did want to know, I never asked her. It was always assumption. Either she wasn't ready to slow down and take care of her responsibility or ... I don't know any other reason."
Small wowed a pair of then-Auburndale High School football coaches -- head coach Kenny Harrison and assistant coach Mike Coe -- the first time they watched him play for the Auburndale Hounds the following year.
"The high school coaches would come watch what's coming next," Small said. "I was that kid. I was the hottest player on the market then."
Coe talked to Small about playing for Auburndale.
"I wanted to, but I didn't know how it would work out because I didn't know where I was going to be next," Small said. "I told him my situation and he said, 'You know what? You can come stay with me.' I wasn't supposed to be staying with the coach, of course, but at the time that was the only place I could live.
"After my eighth-grade year, the summer before I started high school, he took me in and he basically taught me that there is someone out there who is willing to help. He gave me hope."
Then, Small's mother tried to take it away from him. She made him transfer to DeLand High School and live with her.
"She didn't want to take care of me, but she didn't want anyone else to take care of me, either," he said. "She just decided to not let me have any say-so on what I wanted to do or where I wanted to be."
It took a few months, but Coe and Small persuaded her to let him return to Auburndale. Small lived with Coe for the next 15 months, Florida High School Athletic Association rules be damned.
Coe gave Small the long-term stability and security he needed and wanted all of his life. But that came to an end when Coe received an opportunity to become a teacher and associate head coach at Madison County High School.
"I was going to have to move there with him or move in with someone else," he said.
Small wanted to follow Coe but not to Madison, which is about 225 miles north of Auburndale.
"All of my friends were in Auburndale," he said.
Small moved in with his sister-in-law's mother in Lakeland and remained at Auburndale High School, which was 20 minutes away from her home. Travel became an issue and forced him to transfer in the middle of his junior year.
Small ended up at Lakeland High School, where the football team is a state and national powerhouse. But he was not allowed to participate in spring drills for the Dreadnaughts because of a transfer rule.
For Small, who found solace in the sport despite its violence, life without football was no life at all.
With help from community members and church leaders, then-Auburndale High School Principal Ernest Joe made it possible for Small to return for his senior season and reunite with his mother.
"I wanted her back," Small said. "I wanted it to be just my mom and me again. We talked her into coming back. Her reason (for not returning) was she wasn't able. She couldn't afford this or she couldn't afford that. She wouldn't have time to get back on her feet. She didn't have a job.
"They all came up with money. They all came up with food. They all helped find her a job and get us an apartment. This was my mom's chance to actually make her life better. Everything was given to her on a platter. All she had to do was maintain."
Even that was too much to expect.
Small returned from football practice one evening to find an empty and dark apartment. The power had been cut off because his mother had not paid the electric bill.
"And my mom was nowhere to be found," he said.
Small, whose football coaches allowed him to wash and iron his clothes at school, moved in with one of his best friends. Brian Casey's father agreed to let Small stay there so he could finish his senior year.
It was not the first time Casey's family had helped Small, a Class 4A all-state selection who rushed for about 1,600 yards in his final season and 3,000 yards in his high school career.
"He had it rough," said Casey, a Florida State University graduate who now is a first-year student at the Florida Coastal School of Law.
"His power would get cut off. His water would get cut off. His mom wouldn't be able to support him. He would come over to my house to eat dinner or take a shower."
Small never let it get the best of him.
"Inside, you knew his life was falling apart; outside, he was fine," said Casey, who first played football with Small in the eighth grade. "Anybody who can get through all of that with a smile on their face, you know they're going to succeed in life."
With no one to support him, Small had to support himself. A teammate's father was a city commissioner in Auburndale. He told Small to visit the Parks and Recreation Department and talk to Cindy Hummel, who gave him a job manning the concession stand at the city's softball complex.
"When he came into my office, he was so sincere," she said. "He said, 'I promise I'll work.' I asked him why he needed a job. He said, 'I have to buy all of my personals and pay bills because my mother can't take care of me.' For a young man to say such a thing, I knew it must be bad."
Their meeting was another link in the chain of events that paved his current path.
"From then on," he said, "she always made sure I was OK."
Small did not know Cindy Hummel is married to George Hummel, a former high school football coach who taught his ninth-grade computer class.
The Hummels eventually became his godparents, which Small partially attributes to his late maternal grandmother, Ruth Cooper.
"I remember my grandma yelling at my cousins for saying things like, 'I hate this person or that person' or 'I'm not going to do this for him or that for her,' " Small said. "She would tell them, 'Be careful what you do or say to people because you never know when you're going to need them.'
"For some reason, that stuck with me. Therefore, I always treated everyone the same. I was always nice to everybody even if I wasn't too fond of them. What if I had been that kid who was the class clown and who was always disrupting class?
"I'm pretty sure Cindy comes home and talks to George about her day. What if she came home one day and said, 'I met this kid today, and I'm contemplating whether we should help him or not. His name is Chubb.' And then he said, 'He's a punk. It won't be worth it to help this kid.' What if he thought that about me?"
Instead, the white couple informally adopted the black teenager and welcomed him into its family, which already included two grown children who have kids of their own.
"I don't know how it all happened, but it just did," said Small, who became a full-fledged member of the Hummels' family when he started living with them during the winter break after his first semester at Marshall. "They were just there, like the angels that were made just for me."
Small might not have graduated if the Hummels had not asked one of their friends, a former college professor, to tutor him for the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test, which all Sunshine State seniors must pass before they can receive their high school diplomas.
Although major colleges recruited him to play for their football teams, Small could not accept an athletic scholarship because he was unable to pass the ACT college entrance exam. He needed a 17 but repeatedly scored a 16.
Small decided to attend Hargrave to prepare himself academically and athletically, but there was an obstacle he had to overcome: a $24,000 price tag.
There was no reason to worry. Not with the Hummels taking care of him. They formed a fundraising committee with school officials and community members. The group collected about $18,000 that summer, but he needed $6,000 more.
Joe, himself a former football player and coach, made sure Small got it. Joe cashed in a favor from Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis, whom he had coached at Kathleen High School.
Lewis, whose younger brother, former University of Maryland running back Keon Lattimore, also attended Hargrave, wrote a check for the remainder of the balance.
"I had all of this negativity in my life to the point where something positive eventually had to happen," Small said. "I thought God had made this my second chance."
Small made the most of it.
He not only passed the ACT and SAT college entrance exams in his only semester at Hargrave but also earned a 4.0 grade point average.
He also played so well for the Tigers that a recruiting Web site, Rivals.com, ranked him the country's No. 14 prep school player and No. 2 prep school running back.
Small chose Marshall over the University of Toledo and Utah State University after he and the Hummels visited all three schools.
When he told them his decision, they told him their secret: George played football for four years at Marshall and Cindy lived in Huntington for two years. Cindy, a former Kent State student, married George after his sophomore year.
"The Lord works in mysterious ways," Small said. "It was just a big coincidence in my life that got me here."
Small said college is like paradise to him because he never has to worry about having food, power, water or shelter. All his needs are covered, either by Marshall or the Hummels.
"It's like heaven," said Small, who slept on a couch on his grandmother's carport and kept his clothes in a cardboard box beside it for a couple of weeks during the summer after his high school graduation because there was no room for him inside her home. "I finally got out of hell."
However, reminders of his past remain. He lives alone in a Huntington apartment and prefers to keep his rooms dark.
"Throughout all of my life, that's just the way it has been," said Small, 23. "I have adapted to it so much to the point that that's just the way I am now. That's what I know."
Small did not become a headline-making star for the Thundering Herd, but he believes there is a reason for that.
"Before, all I thought I had was football," said Small, who enters his final game with 254 carries for 1,153 yards and nine touchdowns in 46 games in four years.
"Because I haven't had all of these 100-yard games or 1,000-yard seasons, it made me think about other things that I need to have in my life other than football. I think by not having (that kind of success) it actually steered me to broaden my horizons. The emphasis on education became stronger."
Small will receive his bachelor's degree in sports management and marketing next month. He plans to pursue a master's degree if he doesn't make it to the National Football League.
"I'll be the first one in my family to graduate from college," said Small, who normally ends each semester with a 2.8 to 3.0 grade point average. "I feel like I have already succeeded.
"I kept getting pushed down when I was younger. I'm pushing up now. I just want to keep pushing up, just to even it all out and make up for lost time."
The only thing that matters more to Small than his academics and athletics is his family, as evidenced by his MySpace page. His profile includes an arrangement of three photos -- one of him with his godfather, one of him with his godmother and one of him with his biological mother. Above it is this title: "No love like family love."
Aris Small lives in Florida, where she battles health conditions, including diabetes. She is disabled and has had a leg amputated. She receives a phone call from her baby boy every day.
"It's unconditional love," he said. "I can be mad at her because she doesn't make the best decisions, but I can't hold a grudge against her."
Ask Small who his parents are, however, and he does not hesitate: George and Cindy Hummel, 61 and 60.
"Your parents say they love you and help you get where you are, but it's not always like that," said Small, who does not know his father. "That's how it's supposed to be.
"You can say you love me, but love is spelled H-E-L-P. That's the way I see it. If you love somebody, you want to help them. It's a four-letter word, but it isn't spelled L-O-V-E.
"George and Cindy are my mom and dad. They have made my life so much easier. They helped me to not think so much. I used to always think about how am I going to eat, how am I going to do this, how am I going to do that, where am I going to stay next.
"I was living day-to-day until I met them. Now, when I go home for break, that's where I live. Their home is my home now. They do everything parents should do for their children."
Added George Hummel: "He has given as much joy and love to us as we have given to him."
The Hummels were scheduled to travel from Florida to West Virginia today to have Thanksgiving with Small, who had not celebrated Christmas -- sitting around a decorated tree and opening wrapped presents before eating a traditional dinner with family members -- until he joined their family.
"This will be the first time we have spent Thanksgiving away from our biological children," Cindy Hummel said. "They don't have a problem with it. They told us we needed to be there for him. They call him their 'brother from another mother.' They love him and accept him as much as we do."
The Hummels also will join Small for Senior Day festivities Saturday before Marshall faces Tulsa at Joan C. Edwards Stadium in Huntington. When he is introduced and honored, they will accompany him.
He would not have it any other way.
"That's my mom and pops right there," he said.