Getting dad’s vote of confidence

Published 12:02 pm Tuesday, August 28, 2007

KIRKLAND — When a disturbance broke out at the home of Amina Atkins and Nilaja Davis in Sarasota, Fla., on Sunday afternoon, one of the city’s highest-ranking public officials stood in the middle of it and didn’t do a thing. He was too busy critiquing a football play to get involved.

The man was city commissioner and former mayor Fredd Atkins, whose two daughters were hosting a party to watch the replay of the Seattle Seahawks-Minnesota Vikings game from the previous night. When Seahawks defensive end Baraka Atkins — another of Fredd’s six children — brought down the Minnesota quarterback for a fourth-quarter sack, the house went berserk.

Everyone, that is, except, Dad.

“The first thing I said (to the television screen) was: ‘You hit (Vikings quarterback Brooks Bollinger) too high; you’ve got to hit him lower,’” Fredd Atkins recalled Monday morning. “Everybody else was screaming and hollering, but I look at it from a little different perspective.”

One would expect the son of a politician to be under that kind of constant scrutiny. But in Baraka’s case, being related to Fredd Atkins was the best experience he could imagine.

“It was great having a father figure like that who you can look up to and who will be a great supporter of you,” Baraka Atkins said on Monday afternoon.

Well before he became a politician, Fredd Atkins was a self-professed “sports encyclopedia.” He often got called in to settle arguments because, as Fredd himself explained, “I knew everything from lacrosse to badminton.”

Most of all, he knew football. Fredd Atkins grew up playing the sport before a leg injury derailed his athletic career when he was a sophomore in high school.

“After that, I became a sports junkie,” Fredd Atkins said. “But then I started growing up, and I had to put something else in my brain.”

Armed with knowledge that had nothing to do with 3-4 defenses or 24-second shot clocks, Fredd Atkins became a politician. He held several offices between 1985 and 1995 before taking some time off to be with his family. While he went back into politics in 2003 and eventually won the mayoral race in 2006, Fredd Atkins found out during the period in between that there are other ways to stay in the public eye.

“That’s when (Baraka) stopped being my son, and I started being his dad,” said Fredd Atkins, whose term as mayor ended in April. “¿ In my last election, I threw Baraka’s name around. I wanted to make sure (voters) knew I was his dad.”

Baraka Atkins laughed off the notion that he was more well-known than his father. He admitted that he grew up in a big shadow but couldn’t have imagined it any other way.

“It was definitely great,” Baraka said. “My dad was a well-respected man in our community. In the entire state of Florida, he did a lot of things for not only African-Americans but for anybody he could help.”

Fredd Atkins acknowledged that there are drawbacks to being the son of a politician.

“It was tough for all my kids,” Fredd Atkins said. “I always told them: ‘You’re going to get all the blessings and the curses from me being in the public light.’”

In a way, that’s what shaped Baraka’s personality — both on and off the football field. He’s a polite, pleasant young man who sometimes gets criticized for not showing enough emotion on game days.

“He’s so busy being perfect that he doesn’t want to mess up,” Fredd Atkins said. “He’s too busy being in control. We wish he would just let loose one day and go a little crazy out there.”

Leading up to the draft, many scouting reports on Baraka Atkins said that he did not play with emotion while at the University of Miami.

“I have a strong passion for the game, but my attitude is that I can go out there and get the job done without all that heckling back and forth,” said the fourth-round draft pick, whose level personality comes from his mother, Shelia. “I just go out there and play football.

“But I do believe that having an alter ego will help in a game, and I have tried to work on that.”

Baraka Atkins doesn’t even brag to his own family. He called home immediately after Saturday’s game but made no mention of the sack. Only after watching a replay the following day — sisters Amina and Nilaja ordered the NFL Ticket shortly after finding out their brother had been drafted by the Seahawks — did the Atkins family see Baraka break through for his first sack in an NFL uniform.

His father called him early Monday morning to offer congratulations — and a few words of wisdom.

“‘He was like: ‘You almost let him get away,’” Baraka recalled with a chuckle. “He told me I have to put more body on him.

“That’s just how he is. One of his famous quotes is, if you ask him how he is, he’ll say: ‘Better and better.’ That means that he’s striving to get better. That’s something he preaches: to never get complacent.”

Fredd Atkins is proud of how his son has grown, both as a football player and as a man.

“He’s an amazing personality,” the former mayor said. “It’s like his name (Baraka Bashad, which is a saying in the Sufi language) says: ‘May the blessings be.’

“He’s been amazingly blessed. We knew it was going to happen.”