Khari Willis nearly died in Ann Arbor. Now he's a Michigan State star

Chris Solari | Detroit Free Press

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Khari Willis called his father, John, and swore him to secrecy.

He was a few days away from starting his first career game for Michigan State. As a true freshman. In the Big House.

His dad got nervous. But nowhere near as anxious as he was about 19 years earlier on a trip to Ann Arbor with his son.

A few miles from Michigan Stadium, at CS Mott Children’s Hospital, is where University of Michigan doctors helped save Khari Willis’ life.

“Naturally, that’s part of his life, so that was a crucial thing for us,” John Willis said Wednesday from his home in Jackson. “Even though we want to beat them very bad this Saturday, we are definitely always eternally grateful that it worked out for us and that he’s been able to continue on.”

This will be Khari Willis’ final game against the Wolverines, a noon kickoff at Spartan Stadium (Fox). Now a senior safety and one of three captains, Willis’ college career took off in MSU’s now-legendary 2015 victory, as he was on the punt block unit that scored the winning touchdown in the 27-23 miracle finish as time expired.

An immediate impact that Willis dreamed of making on the field.

“But as a kid, you just kind of hope to come in as a freshman and try to play,” he said this summer at Big Ten media day in Chicago. “I felt once I was able to play, I’d get some plays under my feet, get some trust going, keep my grades where they needed to be, then good things would happen. As they always have.

“I think if you just stay true to yourself, everything will take care of itself. And I think it’s been that way so far.”

In football and beyond.

Rooted in faith

A photo of that final play remains on his father’s cell phone background screen. His son, pointing to heaven.

It is a display of the faith, sports and spirituality that flows throughout Willis and his family.

His mother is a teacher at Church of God in Jackson and prays with Willis before every big game and moment in his life. John, a former basketball coach at Jackson College, is the neighborhood outreach coordinator for the city of Jackson and serves as director of The King Community Center in town. Willis went to Jackson Lumen Christi, a Catholic school, where he starred in both basketball and football and returns home to mentor kids in his hometown.

“I think Khari definitely will be engaged with people and helping people in some kind of ways,” John said of his son. “With my job, with what his mom does at church and with helping people – his mom is such a giving person as well, so he’s been around it a lot. They’ve always had to share their time, helping other people get to do things. And Khari, his vision has always (wanted) to reach out and help out other people.

“Even now when he comes back, he checks on some of the young athletes. The funny thing is, they always want to tell him what they’re doing athletically. And he’s like, ‘We can’t talk about athletics. I need to know what your grades are.’ "

Khari Willis was born May 7, 1996, in Jackson, the seventh of John and Mary Willis’ 10 children and the fifth of seven boys in their family.

Around Thanksgiving that year, baby Willis developed a fever. He was unconscious but breathing.

“For us, there was nothing we could do. There were no responses,” John recalled. “The body literally just went limp.”

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Willis was rushed to Foote Hospital in Jackson. Doctors there could not determine what was wrong, so they ordered a helicopter flight to Ann Arbor and U-M’s hospital. It took some time, but doctors there determined it was an adenovirus, John said. The virus is most common in young children and can affect the respiratory and nervous systems, among other things. It can be fatal.

“They just couldn’t figure it out for a while what it was,” John said. “Some type of infection or something got in there – a virus, some type of adenovirus, that got to the lining around the brain that shut everything down, the body shut down to protect itself. He was out for three days, and they had to do a spinal tap and all types of stuff.”

Three days later, Willis regained consciousness, “just like he’d never been sick,” his dad said.

Winning his fights

Willis did not have any lingering issues or ramifications from his health scare. And his older siblings never treated him any differently, something he believes helped instill toughness that he carries with him to MSU’s demanding safety position.

Especially in competing with his four older brothers.

“The biggest challenge was you gotta win your fights,” the 6-foot, 215-pound Willis said. “I mean, if you were younger, 9 times out of 10, you were losing. If you were older, 9 times out of 10, you were winning. I feel like it helped me because I always played with older kids. I think I had maybe one year, maybe in eighth grade, where I played with kids my age, and I went to high school and went back to playing with older kids again.

“I feel like it’s been helping me all my life.”

He watched as his older brother, Terrell, went from Jackson to play linebacker and defensive end at Toledo from 2007-10. The Rockets won 13-10 at Michigan in 2008, Terrell’s sophomore year.

Back in Jackson, Willis started to morph from a quiet, introverted kid into a fierce competitor as a point guard in basketball and a running back in football. By his sophomore season at Lumen Christi, he had multiple Division I basketball offers.

“We have kind of a general, standing family rule where we like our kids to play as many sports as they can and to stay active – unless they get a Division I scholarship offer,” John said. “And then we allow them to focus on the sport you have a scholarship offer in.”

When the basketball offers arrived, Willis decided to drop football. It was the second time he wanted to get away from the sport, he said, and his parents were OK with his decision.

“And then the day before football practice started his junior year,” John recalled, “he said, ‘Dad, we need to go to the store and get some cleats.’ And I said, ‘Cleats? I thought you said you weren’t playing football this year?’ But he decided to play.”

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The football offers started to trickle in, from bigger and more prestigious schools, as he became a 3-star recruit in both sports. Eventually, MSU was his final decision – he initially entertained the idea of playing basketball as well, but his father said Willis felt changing positions from running back in high school to safety in college would require all of his offseason attention.

“The defensive back thing was totally new to him,” John said. “But he felt with film work — and at the time, it was coach (Harlon) Barnett there — he liked to spend as much time learning at the position he was in. So he felt that would be more effective for him.

It paid off.

Willis debuted in MSU’s fourth game in 2015, against Central Michigan. Three weeks later, on Oct. 17, 2015, he found himself inside Michigan Stadium starting at safety next to Grayson Miller, another true freshman. The duo combined for nine tackles in the game in place of veterans Demetrious Cox and Montae Nicholson.

Then came the final play, with 10 seconds left.

Miller helped force Michigan punter Blake O’Neill to fumble. The ball bounced to Jalen Watts-Jackson. Willis helped pave the way for his teammate to get to the goal line and dive into the end zone for the miraculous touchdown as time expired.

“It was going back and forth and we pulled it out with the punt at the end,” Willis matter-of-factly recalled this week. “That was a long time ago.”

Though Willis can downplay the moment while still embroiled in the rivalry, that day still gets his father glowing. His two sons, he joked, are a combined 3-0 in the Big House after Willis and MSU won there last year, 14-10.

On another final play last year, a U-M heave to try and win it as time expired, Willis was there to help defend the desperation pass and celebrate MSU’s eighth win in 10 games against the Wolverines.

But the surreal nature of that 2015 game still sticks in John’s mind.

“Funny thing is, it kind of reminded me of that Penn State game,” he said, recalling last week’s 21-17 upset of the Nittany Lions. “The audience noise, that game was pretty loud. And at the end of the game, when Jalen Watts-Jackson picked up that ball and ran it back, just to see that whole stadium go quiet like that was amazing.”

A growing voice

It was a different sense of pride in July for John and Mary Willis.

There were no secrets to keep on the car ride to Chicago, not like the one John kept from his brother as they drove to Ann Arbor before that U-M game in 2015. This was a chance for Willis' character and personality, not his athletic prowess, to take center stage.

MSU coach Mark Dantonio recommended Willis as the keynote speaker for the annual Big Ten Kickoff Luncheon. The pre-law major took the stage and delivered an 8-plus-minute speech in front of about 1,300 college football players, coaches, fans and business people about the responsibility athletes have within their communities to give back and guide others.

“Khari is just a tremendous individual,” Dantonio said that day. “Extremely disciplined, very much faith-driven as a person, stands behind who he is as an individual. … I think it gives him a platform to talk about himself, his family a little bit, his growth and some of the other things that have come up.”

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Moments before the luncheon, a floor below, Willis and his mother prayed together. Just like they had in every other major moment in his life. And he told the crowd about how important her faith was in growing his own, then imparted his father’s advice to his fellow football players.

“Let's make a difference, let's continue to let our light shine,” Willis told the crowd. “There is an old saying that my father used to use, he still uses it to this day. That saying is 'If you blow my candle out, that won't make your candle shine any brighter.' Let's go back and let's light these candles in these communities.”

Mary and John watched from the crowd, amazed to see the one-time introvert commanding a room like a master speaker. They beamed with pride and became swept up in the standing ovation for their son, applauding and cheering.

And they realized they had become so mesmerized they forgot to record the speech.

“Just knowing him to be as shy as he was as a kid and then to see him start to gain the confidence to do the things he’s been asked to do now,” John said, “it’s phenomenal as a dad to watch and see those things happen.”

Willis continues to produce on the field. He was named to the Pro Football Focus College midseason All-Big Ten team on Wednesday, after posting 36 tackles, intercepting two passes, forcing a fumble and breaking up a career-high five passes through six games.

Michigan week arrives at the midway point of Willis' final season. And like most seniors do, there is a chance for some reflection of the sometimes improbable, sometimes fateful journey Willis has experienced at MSU.

He is mentally preparing for life without football, planning to go to law school after he graduates and adding a master’s and any other degree he can along the way. Willis said he would like to be a defense attorney, to help good people who put themselves in bad situations.

But he also hopes there is a future in pro football first.

“It’s been a very fast four years. Three-and-a-half, really,” he said. “It’s kind of scary, knowing that after this, you’re out in the real world and you gotta fend for yourself, which is fine. It’s been surreal being here. It’s been a great experience.

“I love East Lansing, this is always home for me. I’m really close to home as well, so that’s been great. But winning games, being with this team, going through that rough (3-9 season in 2016) – believe it or not, I wouldn’t trade it.”

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari. Download our Spartans Xtra app for free on Apple and Android devices!