The first indication that something had gone wrong on Monday, Sept. 8, 2014, came shortly after 8 a.m.

Chris Elmore began his sophomore year of high school the same way he had many others, by going to class and starring on the local football team. As Elmore strolled into his first period of the day at Wendell Phillips Academy (Illinois), he noticed a student walk out of a classroom. The room was dark.

Elmore peeked inside, where everybody had their head down. He asked what had happened. A classmate informed him his best friend had died in a fire. His heart sank. Elmore knew a lot about Carliysia Clark’s life, from its beginning — she was born May 8, 1999, two weeks before him — to the details of its final moments. He called her mom “mom.” He and her father, Carl, still FaceTime frequently. Elmore knew Carliysia had always been generous, smart, funny, kind and positive.

Elmore also knew a lot about the day everything changed. His best friend, Carliysia, died on Sept. 8, 2014, at about 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. while trying to save her younger siblings in a fire. Elmore wept uncontrollably when he found out a few hours later.

He wept himself to sleep that week. He wept at school. He wept when he thought about her on his way home from school, because he knew he would never see her again, never laugh with her again. He was bored, helpless, frustrated and hopeless in the wake of her death. Elmore said there was something unique about her deep affection for self and others. He kept thinking about the time he wouldn’t spend with her.

Long before he was a sophomore fullback on the No.12-ranked Orange (8-2, 6-2 Atlantic Coast), Elmore said he was like a lot of kids from Chicago. He had big dreams and wanted a chance at life. His transformation begins amid the details of that troubled day, week and ensuing months. As he grieved from her death, he forced himself to carry her spirit forward. He wanted to grow into an echo of her.

“I sometimes wonder, if she was still here, would I be in the same spot that I am now?” Elmore said. “That always hits me. I don’t know if I’d still be here today if that didn’t happen.”

•••

Elmore and Carliysia texted often. Sometimes they discussed their life goals — Elmore first wanted to be part of a SWAT team, then a social worker. She wanted to graduate near the top of her class, enroll at Princeton and be a pediatrician. Now he wants play in the NFL. She wanted to help others.

Carliysia dated Elmore’s best friend, Daurice Lee, a center on the football team. They hung out between classes, at lunch, after school and on Chicago’s lakefront. Elmore went to some of her basketball games, and she cheered him on at his football games. They shared life anxieties at a local park. They were part of the school track team, too.

“She was his diary,” Lee said. “She was his go-to, man.”

Elmore and his best friend, Carliysia Clark, messaged often and took selfies together. Courtesy of Chris Elmore

Carliysia knew that Elmore grew up with his single father, Clinton, a retired firefighter paramedic who raised three kids. And Elmore saw her little brothers as his own — they would approach him after school because their dad was also the wrestling coach. They’d chat about school or what they were doing that weekend.

“A guy from Chicago, there’s this stigma that nothing good comes from there,” Elmore said. “We’re the good that comes out of that. We’re here to show people that that’s not what Chicago is all about. She was the nicest person in the world, and that just drives me to do better in everything I do.”

Elmore and his family know many of the details from that Monday night on Chicago’s South Side, in the Roseland neighborhood on South Vernon Avenue, where the building Carliysia was living went up in flames. Including Carliysia, four children died. Two adults were seriously injured.

Carliysia Clark was 15, a sophomore at Phillips Academy. According to Elmore’s family and Carliysia’s father, Carl Clark, firefighters said she died huddling inside a closet on the third floor while using her body to shield her younger siblings from the flames. She and her three siblings died while their mother, Shamaya Coleman, broke several bones jumping from the window.

Elmore and Carl said the fire started on the second floor, went down a hallway and up a stairwell to the third floor. The building had been cited several times for code violations such as missing smoke detectors. Clark said he received a “big” settlement after the tragedy.

Elmore (second from right) visits Carliysia’s grave when he’s home from Syracuse on breaks. Courtesty of Clinton Elmore

Elmore didn’t go to classes the day of Carliysia’s death. When he went home that night, he didn’t talk to anybody. He kept the light in his room off.

After his grieving, Elmore helped the school retire her No. 33 jersey and put together a presentation at the school’s graduation in 2016, when Carliysia was scheduled to graduate.

When the situation demands it, Elmore will think about the way she lived and the manner in which she died. She refined his idea of where he was and what he wanted to become. By dedicating his football career to her, he likes the idea that Carliysia gets to live a life through him.

Elmore credits her for his demeanor on the field: never one to berate an official or complain to coach why he isn’t on the field.

“Sometimes I wonder how she did it,” Elmore said. “She saw the positive in everything. She was in Chicago, one of the lights that shined.”

•••

Early this month, Elmore stood in Manley Field House and remembered September 2014. The final texts are somewhere on Elmore’s old Android, on the Kik app he used to message her with. He screenshotted his last messages to her and keeps her spirit alive by holding onto that phone.

“She was his heart,” said her father, Carl. “Always will be.”

Elmore made a pact to himself in high school that he’d one day make the NFL and give back to Carliysia’s family. Courtesy of Clinton Elmore

In their last conversation on Kik, Elmore said to Carliysia that he was still recovering from the weekend game. There was blood on his pads. In their last ever message, Elmore asked about how she was doing and how Daurice, her boyfriend, had been that weekend. She didn’t respond.

Elmore visits her grave when he’s home from Syracuse on break. He wants to win a Bowl Game this season and obtain a ring for Carliysia.

“Everything I do, I do for her,” Elmore said.

She is the reason he prays before every game — for no one to get hurt on the football field, for his single father who raised three kids, for Carliysia’s family and for Carliysia.

She is the reason he points to the sky to a “special someone” after a big play or touchdown.

She is also the reason Elmore tattooed praying hands on his chest, just behind his jersey block numbers, just over his heart.

Published on November 15, 2018 at 1:10 am

Contact Matthew: mguti100@syr.edu | @MatthewGut21