ANN ARBOR – Marlene Turner had a list.

It read as law. It was non-negotiable.

“School and homework. Then practice. Dinner. Bath. Bed,” Turner recalls. “Every day.”

A single mother raising five children on her own in Detroit, Turner’s nearly impossible load of responsibilities required everything to be planned in detail.

After a while, most of the kids didn’t need a list. As head of household, Turner made these priorities unflinchingly clear. But, for every rule, there’s always an exception. Someone was special.

“Devin,” Turner says through bouts of laughter. “Devin had to have a list. He was different.”

Devin is Devin Gardner -- Michigan’s fifth-year senior quarterback. He has been a household name in Detroit since high school. No stranger to adversity, he’s a player who has seen two head coaches, three offensive coordinators and two positions.

But before the world met the Devin Gardner who starred at Inkster High School and quarterbacked Brady Hoke’s Wolverines, there was just Devin Gardner the kid.

A kid who could have fallen off his path. He had so much energy, his Kindergarten teachers thought he may be learning disabled. His siblings understood this, and worked to guide him beyond Detroit’s pitfalls.

A kid who grew into an adult who desperately wants to help others, and a person who struggles with the idea of trying to be everything for everyone all at once.

“People who have known him since he was 5 or 6 understand,” says Turner, her laugh turning solemn. “People who just know him in passing really don’t understand.

“They don’t understand who he is.”

Painful lessons

David Gardner watched his brother nearly pull off the impossible, and then found himself wondering why.

David – who, at 35, is the oldest of Marlene Turner’s bunch – saw Devin throw for more than 450 yards and four touchdowns and nearly lead his team to one of the biggest upsets the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry has ever seen. He was amazed.

Devin Gardner had to miss the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl.

Both by his brother’s toughness, and his inability to silence his critics.

“His foot was not just broken (with) ligament damage, it was in really bad shape,” David said, remembering the foot injury Devin suffered that day, one that cost him a start in the team’s bowl game a month later. “But he played through that whole game. For some people, though, it just wasn’t ever enough.

“He plays a whole half of football against Ohio State – in one of the biggest rivalries in all of sports – with that foot, and you just can’t please everyone.”

The injury was the final blow in a series of bouts – mentally and physically – during Devin Gardner’s 2013 season, his first full year as a starter.

He struggled with turnovers early in the year. Then came the hits. He was sacked seven times against Michigan State in November, and left the game with “more (injuries) than most people know about,” David Gardner says. “Some pretty bad injuries.”

Neither Devin, nor his family, nor anyone at Michigan opts to speak to the specifics of those injuries. But throughout the month of November, it was clear to just about everyone that Devin wasn’t Devin.

And not just from a physical health standpoint either.

“I saw some doubt,” Turner, his mother, says. “I saw that his teammates weren’t looking to him as the leader he’s capable of being. And that made him a little shaky.”

Brady Hoke describes it as “whistling through a graveyard.” Gardner was doing his best to play with confidence and lead his team, but he was also doing his best to learn how to be a full-time starter for the first time. He was trying to do everything. Always. And it was backfiring.

Not just on the field either. Gardner threw 10 interceptions through the first six games of 2013, and after entering the year as a preseason awards candidate, his play was under the microscope in the media. And despite nearly becoming the second quarterback in school history to throw for 3,000 yards in a year, portions of Michigan’s fan base – notably via social media – were taking an ugly turn.

In five years at Michigan, Devin Gardner's played two positions, for two head coaches and three offensive coordinators. He's had some incredible high points, and some rough low points.

“Just to have to listen to the things (some people said) when they were going through their ups and down, people can be very cruel, and he learned from that,” Turner said. “You’re not perfect. You can’t do everything. You’re going to make mistakes like everyone else. But if you’re not growing from them, you’re not accomplishing anything.”

It was the latest bit of adversity in a career that’s been filled with adversity.

Gardner came to Michigan to play for Rich Rodriguez, but he’s spent most of his career learning under Brady Hoke and Al Borges. And now, in his final year, he’s being asked to learn his third offense under Doug Nussmeier.

He watched as a bystander on Michigan’s 2011 Sugar Bowl team. He considered transferring because of it. He opted to stay, to remain close to his family and friends, only to be pushed to wide receiver for a brief stint the next season. And then, in 2013, when everything seemed like it was going to fall into place – nothing did.

Those close to Gardner saw a player who wasn’t himself. They saw a player who was – as he’s done in the past – trying to do too much by himself. He was killing himself over every mistake, and teammates saw it.

So Gardner did what he’s done his whole life. He leaned on his mother and siblings for support. He also spoke with an old friend, who reminded him that he didn’t need to be anyone but himself.

“Devin’s one of the toughest guys I know,” former Michigan quarterback Denard Robinson said. “Devin’s had three coordinators. He’s had injuries. That’s a lot.

“But that’s life, and that’s what I tried to tell him. How a man reacts when adversity hits (makes you who) you are. He’s handled it well and I always say, my hat goes off to him for that.”

Devin Gardner, simply, needed to get back to being Devin again.

‘My kids had to do better’

When Calvin Norman first met Devin Gardner, his first reaction was to check his birth certificate. His second was to scratch his head.

Norman, who was coach for the Detroit Police Athletic League’s West Side Steelers youth football program, saw a boy who was built more like a high schooler than a 9-year-old. He was stronger, faster and more athletic than everyone in the park.

But he was also a bit odd.

“He’d show up with his football pants pulled all the way up, like to his chest, where you couldn’t see them,” recalls Norman, now the head football coach at Detroit Cody High School. “And he’d walk around with this jersey hanging down, and you’d look at him, and he looked like he was wearing a dress or something. And you’d be like ‘what is this guy doing?’

Devin Gardner's always walked to the beat of his own drum, family members say, which is part of what makes him unique.

“But that was just Devin. And I learned pretty quick, that you had to let Devin be Devin.”

A unique person, with a unique mind and a unique level of potential, there’s really never been anything ordinary about Devin Gardner.

The same can be said for his family.

Married at the age of 19, Marlene Turner went against her parents’ wishes. They wanted her to go to college after high school.. She chose a different path, a path she found to be full of unnecessary obstacles.

It led her to a point where she was raising five children by herself in a city that swallows up and spits out wayward kids. She adored her children and demanded more for them. She also valued what her parents had taught her. She chose to go against those lessons.

Her children would not do the same.

“My kids had to do better,” Turner says. “They had to do better than everybody else.

“What are your expectations for yourself? Forget what everyone else thinks, what do you think? If you fail, who gets blamed? You do. It’s up to you.”

David was the first to learn these lessons. He was also tasked with passing them on to his younger siblings, including his brothers, Gavin and, of course, young Devin.

Admittedly, David -- now a high school English teacher in metro Detroit – learned these lessons the hard way. He grew up without a father in his life. He saw street life. He saw peers go down the wrong path. He also made it his mission to make sure his brothers avoided it all.

Especially Devin.

When Devin’s energy became too much to handle, and adolescent rebellion arrived, David took him in and placed him in the middle school he was teaching at in Detroit.

During those days, David made sure Devin woke up at a certain time. He made sure he came home at a certain time. He made sure his homework was done and the streets were ignored. It was Marlene’s list all over again.

“He was in my building every day, and if a teacher would tell me he was goofing off, I’d pull him into my classroom,” David recalls. “And we’d have a heart to heart.

“Let’s just put it that way.”

After beginning his high school career at U of D Jesuit, Gardner transferred to Inkster High School to play for Greg Carter. And at that point, things began to click.

The inner-discipline took over. And Carter helped strengthen it.

“It wasn’t about just being a great quarterback, it was about being a great person,” says Carter, who now coaches at Oak Park High School in Detroit. “He knows that. And the best is yet to come for Devin. In football, and in life.”

A list of his own

Devin Gardner is a product of his environment.

That list and schedule his mother setup for him years ago offered structure and balance. It gave him the tools to venture into adulthood. If he were to stick his own list to a refrigerator nowadays, he could cross off most items.

Service.

Gardner routinely gives back to Detroit-area youth in his free time. He visits today’s version of the West Side Steelers whenever he can. And recently, he won a John S. Vitale Memorial Award from Wolverine Human Services for excellence in social work.

Commitment.

It took Gardner three years to receive an undergraduate degree at Michigan. He is now in his second year as a student in Michigan’s Master of Social Work program.

Michigan's Devin Gardner enters his fifth and final season with the Wolverines, his second as a full-time starter.

Perspective.

Life gets more serious, but Gardner still holds onto that goofy inner-child. He still watches cartoons, something he gets from his mother – who rarely misses an episode of “Phineas and Ferb.”

“It seems like (I’ve been here) a long time, but this is only a small chunk of my life,” Gardner says. “When you come to college, it’s not just to play football. You come to college to become a better man.

“I know I’m a better man because of it.”

There’s only one item left on Gardner’s to-do list before leaving Michigan. Something he’s touched, but hasn’t grabbed.

Winning.

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