Just Cuz | Florida's Corey Brewer makes his family proud

ATLANTA — That voice.

It's what guides a Brewer to a Brewer this day. I can hear my cousin, Corey, talking in his unmistakable twang. An impenetrable pack of press shields us, but it doesn't matter. That voice is ingrained.

It sounds like Tennessee on speed. Corey talks fast for a country boy, his ham hock-flavored accent and rapid-fire delivery muffling his words a tad.

We used to crack jokes about how funny little Corey talked. Then he grew to 6 feet 9. We used to think he was too skinny for a windstorm. Then he became a gifted basketball player.

Now Corey Brewer is a national champion longing for a repeat. He's at the Final Four, again, as the starting small forward for the Florida Gators. He's a future NBA player, a future millionaire and the prince of Portland, Tenn., a town of about 10,000.

Really, though, he's a Brewer. If you called him nothing else, he wouldn't be disappointed. People talk about his quickness, leaping ability and defensive intensity. My family simply thinks he's the ideal Brewer celebrity.

He's all of us in one bundle of talent: caring, charming, charismatic and kind. That's all we've been taught to be, good people. That's what we want folks to recognize first.

I can see my grandparents in Corey. I can definitely see his parents, Pee Wee and Glenda, in him. I can see my mother, brother, aunts, uncles and other cousins, too. So much blood. It makes covering this event the most wonderfully weird experience of my career.

Here's the genealogy: Pee Wee and my grandfather, Lim, are first cousins. Their fathers, Isaac (my great grandpa) and Oliver (Corey's grandpa), were brothers. So that makes Corey my second cousin once removed. It took me until last year's Final Four to figure out the official cousin relationship.

"Family is family," my grandmother used to say. "It's that simple."

Corey has closer relatives, but I'm one of the few who has experienced some of his special moments in person.

Because of my relationship with journalism, not him.

It makes me feel proud but guilty. I'm a trained, dispassionate sports observer. A member of the media. I spend far more time analyzing sports instead of feeling them. If Corey needs an emotional lift from me this weekend, he'd better steal my laptop before the game.

His mom and brother will be among the family contingent here, but his father can't make it. Pee Wee is a diabetic with a left leg amputated below the knee and heart problems. The four-hour drive from Portland to Atlanta would wear on him too much.

But I'm here. My job demands it. My drive to be good at my job demands it.

Funny, that's usually the thing that keeps me away from family.

Career aspirations took me from Louisville, driving distance from my mother's Tennessee roots, to Seattle, which seems like a space-shuttle ride away.

"Oh, you're big time now!" Corey exclaimed when I saw him Friday.

"Nah, that's you, kid," I told him. "You're the one trying to win another championship."

We smacked hands and smiled.

That smile.

It's what makes a Brewer. We all have problems keeping our lips over our teeth. We grin until our cheeks hurt.

Corey cheesed throughout an entire 30-minute session with reporters. By the end, you figured it was part of his uniform. He smiled through countless questions about how UCLA, the Gators' title-game victim last season, is different this season. He smiled through questions about Joakim Noah's hyper antics. He smiled through questions about how hard it is to try to repeat.

And he smiled through questions about his father's health.

Of Florida's junior class — the "Oh-Fours," the players call themselves, referencing the year they arrived at school — Corey is the only member without a father who played professional sports.

"He's famous to me," Corey says of his dad.

Ellis "Pee Wee" Brewer is in a wheelchair, the victim of his work ethic. He was a farmer, an owner of a slaughterhouse, a garbage man — whatever he had to do to earn a living. He's had a heart attack, multiple heart surgeries and an amputated finger to go with his leg. And yet the man is so upbeat you can almost see him grinning through the telephone.

Pee Wee has a favorite Corey story. Corey's uncle died when he was a child, and the nephew had to pitch in an all-star Little League baseball game a few days later.

Before the game began, Corey knelt on the pitcher's mound and said a prayer. Then he threw better than he ever had.

"He hummed it, boy," Pee Wee said. "He did it for family."

This is a kid who shunned NBA millions last year to return to college at his parents' request. This is a kid who has perfected balancing the will to succeed and the need to love. Although he's eight years younger, Corey has taught me much in that area.

A March Madness with Corey in it makes my phone ring without cease. It's the most consistent stretch of communication I have with family. It makes me wonder why it's so difficult to pick up the phone those 11 other months.

When I go back to Portland and see family outside of my grandparents or aunts or first cousins, I'm the little boy who grew up that they've heard so much about. Unconditional love is a wonderful thing. But what about chemistry?

Too often, I just share the love and ignore the chemistry. It's common. That's how the extensions of families operate, right?

Thankfully, Corey came along. Thankfully, he chose sports, which made our paths intersect.

"I'm proud of you," I told my cousin Friday. "The whole family is."

Corey smiled, wider than ever.

"I'm proud of my family, too," said my cousin, the quintessential Brewer.

Jerry Brewer: 206-464-2277 or jbrewer@seattletimes.com