Curtis Gainwell Sr. admits he never bragged on his three sons when they performed well on the football field while growing up.
He believed respect had to be earned.
And he made sure they gave respect back.
“I always told them, ‘y’all got to do better than me,’” Curtis said. “I played football in high school and college, and I told them the only way you are going to show me that you are better than me is if one of y’all make it to the NFL and make your own name.”
And as the nation and Yazoo County celebrate his middle son Kenny Gainwell and the Philadelphia Eagles on their victory in last Sunday’s Super Bowl LIX…Curtis admits Kenny “made him eat his words.”
“My name died when he first got to Memphis,” Curtis said. “He became Kenny Gainwell.”
A Yazoo County High School graduate, Kenny has certainly made his own name. From Yazoo County to Memphis University to the Philadelphia Eagles, he has made a name for himself through the sport he has always loved.
The celebrations continue with the Philadelphia Eagles’ dominating 40-22 win over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. After recently suffering a concussion and a knee injury, it was unclear if running back Kenny Gainwell would even be cleared to play in the most important game of his lifetime. And with his parents, Curtis and Monica Gainwell, among the thousands at the New Orleans Superdome, they took a sigh of relief when they saw their son run onto the field, later to be crowned a champion.
“When Kenny was little, he would be at the house talking about his favorite football player, Darren Sproles,” Curtis said. “He would say that he was going to get his jersey because he wanted to be like him. I stopped that conversation right then. I told him, ‘your Daddy ain’t never wanted to be anybody but himself. You be who you are. Don’t be like nobody else. You make people want to wear your number and your name on their backs. You make folks want to wear your stuff. And people are wearing it today.”
Kenny is the second child of Curtis and Monica Gainwell, the oldest son being Curtis Jr. and the youngest Kory. The family made their home in Benton, in a tight-knit rural community where the three Gainwell boys could often be found in the front yard with tires, weights, ladders, footballs and a spirit of determination.
“Kenny was very quiet, more independent than Curtis and Kory,” Curtis said. “I noticed a quietness when he was about three years old. He was very shy. And we don’t have many baby pictures of him because he just wouldn’t sit still. He was always going.”
But Curtis admits it was a difficult road for Kenny at times. He often struggled at school with his grades. And later in life, he encountered several obstacles, including a challenging era when Kenny opted not to play college football as the effect of covid ripped through the Gainwell family with illnesses and even deaths, three within one month.
But the Gainwell family held strong in their faith and their love for one another. And through the help and belief of several people within their lives, Kenny pushed through those obstacles, determined to “make his name.”
“I can remember when Kenny was in first grade, his teacher told us that he wasn’t doing well in school,” Curtis said. “I went up there and observed the classroom. When I came back to the house, I found out what Kenny’s problem was. When I heard the teacher talking to the students, I noticed she raised her voice. She had a high pitch in her voice. Kenny was so shy. He just kind of shut down.”
Curtis said the teacher was very accommodating with Kenny, and after adjusting her approach to him, he turned around.
“She called me back and told me that we were right,” Curtis said. “She said she started lowering her voice with Kenny and noticed that he was doing so much better. That was the way with Kenny all the way until about ninth grade.”
In ninth grade, Kenny came out of his shell. The shyness was starting to wear off.
“But at home, he would still keep to himself,” Curtis said. “He would play with Curtis and Kory. They were all loud, but Kenny would be the soft hearted, kind one out of the rest of the boys.”
In high school, Curtis said they never had any issues with Kenny.
“He never got into trouble at school,” he said. “We were never called to the school because he was fighting or running with the wrong group of guys. You never would get that out of Kenny.”
And Kenny always had football on his mind. He first started playing on a pee wee team with the county. Before he became a Panther, he was a Cowboy. And it was during a championship game against the Jackson Steelers that Kenny’s talent was exposed.
“Kenny came from one end of the field, and he intercepted the ball,” Curtis said. “He didn’t even have any business on that side of the field. But he just saw the ball in the air, going down the field on the other side. He caught the ball, ran the ball down the field, but he got tackled.”
It was at that moment when Curtis realized the speed Kenny was capable of. And as he grew older, Kenny was determined to build upon that first glimpse of talent he showed in that pee wee football game.
“He really showed me that he was determined,” Curtis said. “He never worked at a job a day in his life. If somebody told you Kenny worked at a job, they done told you a story. He was always out there practicing. Even when he came home from practicing, he was back practicing again in the neighborhood. That is all he has ever done.”
Kenny tried his hand at basketball and baseball. But it was always football that kept his attention.
“We tried to let him play basketball,” Curtis said. “But he was a little bit too fast on the court. And he was too physical. I told the coach to take him off the team before he hurt somebody else’s child because he was always going. Going at all times was his main thing. But football has always been his thing. He played a little baseball. I think he could have been a better baseball player than he could have been in football. But he wasn’t feeling it. I think he did the right thing.”
Although he would later make headlines as a quarterback at Yazoo County High School, Kenny hit a roadblock with his grades. Determined to make it a four-year university, he knew he had to perform better in the classroom and improve his ACT score.
“A recruiter in this area told me that his grades were not where they needed to be,” Curtis said. “The recruiter told me that he would have to go to a junior college. And I told him that I didn’t raise a junior college player.”
But thanks to the school’s JROTC officer and a handful of teachers, Kenny improved his grades and scored a 21 on his ACT.
“They stayed late and helped him,” Curtis said. “They knew Kenny wasn’t a problem in the classroom. He wasn’t failing, but he just didn’t have the right grade levels that he needed. They got him what he needed.”
From Yazoo County High School, Kenny made his way to Memphis University. He had never been to Memphis before in his life. But it was during his time there that his life took a turn.
“In January of 2020, covid hit,” Curtis said. “We lost three family members in one month - two on the same day.”
“That was hard on him,” added Monica.
That wasn’t the only test Kenny had to endure in his young life. In 2013, Kenny’s older brother Curtis suffered a ruptured blood vessel in his brain causing a hemorrhagic stroke, requiring four surgeries to save his life at 18 years old. Though he needed to learn to walk and talk again, Curtis has made great progress with his recovery, deeply motivating Kenny. Kenny considers Curtis his “greatest inspiration.”
The pandemic and the grief from his family’s losses resulted in Kenny’s decision to opt out of his final collegiate season at Memphis in 2020. That era is difficult for the Gainwell family to talk about, adding that Kenny was met with resistance and bitterness from some of the university’s coaching staff with Curtis adding that they were told “they could make it easy or hard on Kenny.”
“We stayed humble and kept our peace,” Curtis said. “But, as a parent, it was hard to watch somebody do that to your child.”
But the Gainwell family looks at where Kenny is today despite the obstacles that were placed in his path. After being selected in the fifth round of the NFL Draft, Kenny was an Eagle. He led the Eagles in both rushing yards (181) and scrimmage yards (236) during the 2022 playoffs, which resulted in a Super Bowl LVII appearance. In 2021, he tied for the most rushing TDs (5) in franchise rookie history, joining Don Johnson (1953) and Steve Van Buren (1944).
Now he is a Super Bowl champion, but he is still Kenny, and he never forgot where he came from. He hosts an annual free football camp for local youth. He even spoke to the students at Linwood Elementary School last week via teleconference.
“He is Yazoo Kenny when he gets here,” Curtis said. “Even when we go up there, he is the same Kenny.”
“Kenny is Kenny,” Monica added. “He hasn’t changed one bit.”
Kenny is still a Yazoo boy with big dreams. He enjoys fishing or eating his favorite meal, a Meatlovers pizza. His favorite movie is Spider-Man and enjoys watching Sanford and Son, Good Times and Scooby-Doo on television.
And even though the entire nation watches him when he picks up a football, there is still a part of that Yazoo kid who couldn’t sit still, a shy boy who has a huge heart, a young man who still likes to wrestle with his brothers in the same house he grew up in.
And Yazoo is represented every time a young kid in rural Yazoo County turns on the television and sees the Gainwell name across that Eagle jersey. What could they be thinking?
“Wow, that could be me,” Curtis predicts. “One day that could be me.”
