During middle school, a worker in the St. Charles school system named Ben Parquet, whose wife worked at Reed’s school, reached out to help the 13-year old excel and to motivate him to play football at Destrahan during the eighth grade. He was about to fail and not move on to high school. Parquet fought with school board to get Reed a waiver to play in the 9th grade during that summer of 1993. Mr. Parquet was one of the first adults that truly made him accountable.
But, once again, Edward Reed – everyone in his hometown calls him “Edward” not Ed – responded on the field, but not necessarily in class. When he got to high school, he was a handyman on the football team – he returned kicks, played quarterback in an option offense, performed all duties of a kicker, and was Player of The Year as a defensive back. He was the school’s only four-sport athlete. He played guard on the basketball team and was a triple and long jumper plus ran on the sprint team. He threw the javelin on the track and field team. During his senior year, he asked to be on the baseball team and wound up starting at third base and even pitched in short relief. He once turned an unassisted double play to win a league championship and hit three home runs in one game. The legendary story at Destrahan is the one where Reed played third base and threw the javelin between innings on adjacent fields while both events were in progress.
He was the best athlete anyone at Destrahan High had ever seen.
He was always open to sports coaching, but needed to stay focused in school and didn’t like going to class. At one point he had missed more than 20 days of class and knew he was in danger of failing in school, which would lead to sports being eliminated from his life. And sports was going to be his ticket out. He was in the Destrahan High School front office enough to have made the acquaintance of the school’s office administrator, Jeanne Hall, who initially tutored Reed and his struggling football teammates. She eventually offered him a chance to get to school every day by driving him and making him accountable when he didn’t want to get up in the morning. Reed spent most evenings at Hall’s house, so much so that he got to know her four children, as he began eating meals and working on homework there.
Eventually, Reed asked Hall and her husband Walter, who worked at a local oil refinery, if he could move in with a woman he affectionately calls “Ms. Hall.” She made sure he got to school every morning and treated Reed like a son. Reed didn’t have a problem at home with his parents, but everyone agreed he needed more structure if he was going to become a college student and follow his dream of playing in the NFL.
While he never excelled in the classroom, he survived, and he learned how to learn. And he learned how to study. And he learned how to apply himself mentally to something that he’d already been given a physical gift to perform.
Reed had his sights high for college: he wanted to go to the University of Miami and wear the green and orange. The Hurricanes had a direct path to recruiting Reed via receivers coach Curtis Johnson Jr., who was from St. Rose and who knew Ed’s father. During his junior year, Reed was told by Johnson and head coach Butch Davis’ staff that he’d need to get his grades up and improve his ACT score if he wanted to become a Hurricane. Other schools called during his senior year, but Reed was emotionally invested in going to Miami and did everything over his last 18 months at Destrahan to make sure he stayed the course.
