‘She Didn’t Raise No Quitters’ Mother’s Death, Brother Spur On U-Hi’s Turner

Mike Turner ran the lead leg for University High School’s state champion 4x100 relay team, was a starter on the Titan football team and is graduating this weekend all after briefly dropping out of school last fall, devastated by his mother’s death.

Turner left U-Hi and the Titan football team just before the season opener, reeling from Ruby Turner’s death from breast cancer.

“We all grieve differently,” U-Hi track coach Keven Frandsen explained. “I knew he was going to have a period of mourning - he took two or three weeks.”

“I was just trying to collect my thoughts,” Turner said. “Wasn’t much left. She was all I really have.”

Although he stepped away from school and his teammates, the Titans didn’t leave him. Frandsen was there, offering a meal, a place to stay, anything Mike needed. Head football coach Mike Ganey was also supportive.

“The coaches were on my side. They were tugging, trying to get me on track,” Turner said. “One of my best friends, Jason Berger, and his parents gave me encouragement.”

Mike thought more and more about his mother, and returned to school “after realizing what she’d taught me,” he said. “She didn’t raise no quitters.”

Mike moved in with his brother, Finis Turner, a 27-seven-year old Kaiser Aluminum pot room carbon setter, who supports 19-year-old Mike and their 13-year old brother, Don. Finis and his wife Tammy became Don’s legal guardian after Ruby’s death.

“One night we sat down and had a good, long talk, about how it was going to be and how she would have wanted it,” Finis said.

Finis inspired Mike, as did older brothers Keith and Brock, both of whom play football at Southern Utah and major in criminal justice. His older brothers taught him to be strong, Mike said. “They set a big example for me. It was their mother, too, and they stuck with it.”

Now, only a few months after briefly dropping out of high school, Mike is considering college. “I wish to play football, and if football’s not there, I’d love to run track.”

He has a football scholarship offer from Glendale Community College in Phoenix, the school that both Keith and Brock attended out of high school. However, Mike said he would prefer to attend college locally. “I like Spokane,” he said. “This is where I gained most of my real friends.”

He enrolled at U-Hi as a sophomore when he moved to the Spokane Valley with his family after living in Phoenix and Houston, where his mother was a beautician and also a licensed minister.

Having already beaten a brain tumor in 1988, she weakened from the new cancer and died over Memorial Day weekend of last year.

After the struggles of last fall, Mike proved that he has artistic as well as athletic talent by painting a beautiful picture of his mother, which he hung by his bed.

“When these kids are successful, it’s because of their mom,” said Mike’s sister-in-law, Tammy. “She was a woman of tremendous faith.”