Carter has heard the criticism, but that doesn’t mean he believes it’s valid.
From the time Carter graduated from Middletown High School in 1984, until his professional career ended after 16 seasons with the Philadelphia Eagles, Minnesota Vikings and Miami Dolphins, Carter said he didn’t have time to return to Middletown.
In fact, he said, his mother, Joyce Carter-Ly, encouraged her children to leave Middletown and explore the opportunities beyond the city borders.
When asked about his rocky relationship with Middletown, Carter, during a phone interview, paused, then said: “I can only say it this way. Mom told us, ‘There is a world outside Middletown. Go find it for ourselves. This is not the world here.’ Mom always spoke about doing things outside of Middletown. My mom thought about bigger things.”
Right after high school, Carter, on a football scholarship, enrolled in summer classes at OSU. And he’s never been back to Middletown for an extended period of time. His mother soon moved to Columbus to watch him play, and besides his four close friends — Sean Bell, Jimmy Calhoun, Al Milton, and Dwight Smith — there was no reason to return.
Plus, he said, when he visited Middletown, “there was a lot of bad stuff” happening in the city.
“Not a lot of people in Middletown wanted me to make it,” he said. “They always tried to start fights and say, ‘You think you are better than…’ I had to watch my front and my back.”
He said there were others who wanted to borrow money from him. That made him laugh.
“I was just as broke as I was in the projects,” said Carter, who lived in a four-bedroom apartment with his mother and three brothers and two sisters. “I told them, ‘Don’t ask me for money. I’m a college student.’”
After three seasons at OSU, Carter was ruled ineligible before his senior season after he signed with an agent, an NCAA violation. He was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in fourth round of the 1987 supplemental draft. So he moved to Philadelphia. He played three seasons for the Eagles, then was released by head coach Buddy Ryan because of Carter’s off-the-field drug and alcohol issues.
The Minnesota Vikings signed Carter off waivers for $100, and that served as a wake-up call, he said. He and his wife, Melanie, moved to Florida so he could train year around.
“I wanted to be the best athlete I could be,” he said. “I was trying to survive. I was trying to better myself.”
Carter said he has done charity work in Minnesota and Florida and he’s active in his church.
When the Middletown High School boys basketball team played in a tournament in Florida last Christmas break, Carter hosted them for dinner at a restaurant.
And he’s been talking to Nike representatives about possibly providing new uniforms for the MHS football team this season. During his visit to Middletown in May, when he was honored at the high school for being a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee, he met Troy Everhart, the Middies head coach.
“I’m going to do something that will blow the kids away,” Carter told him. “I mean blow them away. It will make them proud of the purple.”
While Carter hasn’t been visible in the community, he frequently communicates with his closest high school friends.
“We have hung in there together,” he said of his classmates.
He told them: “Thanks for not being judgemental even during those tough times.”
And whenever Carter is interviewed, he’s proud, he said, to say he’s from Middletown. Once a Middie, always a Middie, he said.
“No one makes it to the Hall of Fame without a great deal of help and assistance along the way, especially in those formative years in middle school and high school when a kid’s career can just go astray real easy,” he said. “When I go into the hall, I’m taking a lot of people, the whole city, with me. Middletown will be in the hall forever.”
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