UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, November 17, 1994
9
much of his day working at the field house before heading to the 'Hawks football practice
already ahead of them," he says.
His colleagues say he holds the world's tee-retrieval record.
between his dashes onto the field,
Leaper stands on the sideline, never letting go of the tee, always chomping on a wad of gun, and occasionally downing
They take turns reading the sports sections and talk about that day's game over doughnuts and coffee. Leaper munches c contentedly on his Charlie Brown doughnut.
Top center and below:
Leaper's duties at Allen Field House include keeping the bathrooms spotless and vacuuming the locker rooms.
Leaper's day begins at 5 a.m. when he opens the field house.
Left: Leaper plays with his cats, Maynard and Scooter, at his house in Lawrence.
Kansas kicks off. Leaper watches intently at the 30-yard-line. When the commotion at the south end of the field slows and the whistles blow, he runs onto the field, picks up the dark-orange tee and sprints to the sideline, leaning backward and shuffling his feet to slow himself.
A swarm of football players glides onto the field and over to the sideline, where Leaper greets individual players with good-luck hand slaps.
The managers give Leaper a ride to the equipment room at the field house and then over to the stadium. Leaper's assigned task is to polish the blue helmets.
Before long, the fans begin filling the stands, Leaper calmly walks along the KU team's sidelines. He's clad in his sports goggles, blue polo shirt, baggy black shorts, knee-high white socks, white and black football shoes and, of course, red, white and blue wristbands on each arm.
At one point, Leaper was not sick for seven and a half years. When Sean Williams showed up to jog at the field house early one morning, and 20 or so people were waiting to be let in, he knew something was wrong.
cups of water. A few drops linger on his walrus mustache. No. 67, Derek Brown, an offensive tackle, walks up to Leaper and holds out his hand. Leaper reaches into his pocket and pulls out a stick of gum.
"I said, 'Well, you know, maybe he didn't show up.' And this woman, who didn't know me at all, turned around and said, 'He's NEVER later!'"
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No. 7, No. 74, No. 73, the jerseys stroll by
They all depend on Leaper for their gum.
Shortly after Leaper started working at the field house, his supervisors realized just how dependable he was. Every morning, there would be Leaper, waiting for the field house to open. So when several other custodians repeatedly failed to unlock the field house, the supervisors finally gave Leeper the keys to the house Phog Allen built.
"He's probably the most reliable person in the building, as far as coming to work and doing his job," says Jim Porter, the labor supervisor for the field house.
Sean traced Leaper's route to work.
"I finally knocked on the door, and he
got up, and he was completely groggy and just in his underwear. He said that he was sick. And I said, 'Well, Todd, I'm sorry, but when you're sick, you're supposed to call somebody or call your supervisor.' And he looked at me vacantly because, like, he.
had never been sick. He had absolutely no idea what to do."
“There are so many people that spend their time thinking of reasons why they can't do something, and Todd has spent so much of his time concentrating on what he can do,” Sean says. “Todd and his enthusiasm are just the embodiment of mental attitude. Here's a guy who doesn't have a bad word to say about anything, always optimistic.”
"I really am close to everybody here at the University of Kansas," he says. "I just like everything about KU. I just try to please the people here."
It was an exception to the rule — a rule that Leaper has made for himself. "Let's get in there and do it."
In Leaper's living room hangs a Special Olympics poster reading, "Courage, Sharing, Skill and Joy." He sees himself as a pretty good athlete — he was an outfielder on the gold-medal-winning softball team in the 1987 International Special Olympics, an inductee in 1981 into the Kansas Special Olympics Hall of Fame, the coach on his own city-league basketball team—the Williams' Warriors—and speed signer of baseball cards with his own picture and statistics on them.
In anything that Leaper does, he tries to help people, Sean says.
But overall, he describes himself as just an easy guy to get along with.
"Todd is just Mr. KU," says Michael Center, the men's coach.
Leaper's house is a virtual museum of KU sports. The Special Olympics poster hangs over a blue couch with red pillows. A KU stained-glass lamp hangs in his kitchen, a Jayhawk phone perches on the kitchen counter, and a picture of Leaper, Sean and Roy Williams sits in a paper frame on the microwave.
A messy shelf in his living room is crammed with books filled with autographs. Page 54 of "The Superstars of the
NBA" has Wilt Chamberlain's autograph, which Wilt gave to Leaper's father. Page 191 of "Touchdown!" has the autograph of Lance Alworth. In his back room, a long table that has been in the Williams family for generations holds five footballs with autographs from the 1969 Orange Bowtie team and the defensive backs of the 1974 season.
"Could he retire and survive? The answer is probably, yes — on the inheritance that he has and the fact that he lives a very simple lifestyle. Does anybody need to work? There's a lot of philosophy and psychology involved that says 'yes.' You don't have the same feeling and value of self worth as when you are a productive member of society."
The table holds 12 trophies from his city-league, church, and Special Olympics softball and basketball teams. All four walls are covered with hats from KU and other universities. Above the couch hangs a painted picture of his grandfather, Dick Williams, the man who started the Williams Educational Scholarship Fund, better known as the Williams Fund.
Sean says the mystique and myth that his grandfather was a hugely successful businessman has done Leander a disservice.
Dick Williams, a KU alum and a founder of the Douglas County Bark, had suggested back in 1949 that the KU athletics program would do better if the school established a scholarship fund to recruit better athletes. His position was one of soliciting funds, not of financing the Athletic Department, Sean says. Dick's sons, Odd and Skipper, continued the job of raising money. Skipper is Sean and Leaper's father.
"He doesn't care about what money can do, what it can buy, what it can't buy," Sean says. "He's not interested in having a fancy car because he's secure with himself."
Jan Williams, Leaper's mother, sees it the same wav.
"I think Leaper would be lost if he didn't have a job," she says.
The field house job, his family, his cats and the help he gives the football team are Leaper's life. He often talks of his cats,
Maynard and Scooter, fat from Purina Cat Chow.
"There's so much energy and life involved in somebody that does what they love to do, and they do it with their heart. It comes back," Sean says. "And that's why Tpöd is notable. That's why he's remarkable. That's why people say 'Look at that guy.'"
and groom.
O O O
He beams about being the best man in Sean's wedding, which was Oct. 15. The bachelor party two days earlier fell on Leaper's birthday. At the wedding rehearsal, Leaper had to toast the bride
Leaper's brother, Lance, a computer graphics artist from Los Altos, Calif., said his brother's speech was a mixture of humor and sincere warmth. That's the way Leaper is when he speaks. Sometimes he doesn't finish his sentences as he wanders off to the next task or thought.
At the end of the day, Leaper walks from the KU campus toward the blue house where he eats, sleeps and plays with his cats.
"My schedule is really hectic," he says.
"Because I'm a busy person, my cats don't see me very much."
"Todd has an emphatic sense of humor and a sense of warmth, and it really comes out in social gatherings," Lance says, watching Leaper work the crowd of family members assembling in the church for photos before the wedding.
Leaper talks proudly of Lance, Sean and Bret, his oldest brother and a doctor in Chapel Hill, N.C., as well as his nieces and nephews, and his mother and step-father, Bob Simpson. They are proud of Todd, too, and of his unfailing devotion to family, to KU and to life.
As soon as Leaper is through the front door, Maynard and Scooter begin pushing against his legs, purring, competing for his attention. They know in the morning, when they hear the jingling of the keys, that it will be a long day until Leeper is back. They know that by 5 a.m., with his keys on the dirty, white sheostring, Leaper will once again rise and begin the walk to the place that is his real home.