A Giant success story: Bulluck from foster care to NFL

For the first 12 years of his life, nobody asked Keith Bulluck to clean his bedroom. Or do his homework. Or be home by a certain time.

"Clean a bedroom? I didn't have one,'' the Giants linebacker said with a deep laugh last week. "No one at home to ask where I was going or what I was doing.''

In Bulluck's early childhood, home was a fluid concept. He bounced around the apartments and houses of various relatives in Rockland County, sleeping on sofas and even floors.

Bulluck never knew his father. He said his mother had a drinking problem and was in an abusive relationship with his stepfather.

Things finally came to a head when his stepfather died when Bulluck was 12, leaving his mother with a pile of debt. Evicted from their apartment, Bulluck's mother decided she needed a fresh start. She called Linda Welch, the mother of Bulluck's friend Danny, and asked if Keith could stay there until she got back on her feet.

"It was supposed to be two months,'' Bulluck said, "and it ended up being six years.''

Welch eventually became Bulluck's foster parent, making him one of the 12 million Americans who have spent some time in the foster care system. It is a population that Bulluck has embraced since the Titans drafted him out of Syracuse in the first round in 2000. His Believe and Achieve Foundation has provided college scholarships and run a number of support programs for children in foster care in Tennessee and New York.

This past week, as he prepared with the Giants, his new team, to host the Titans, his old one, Bulluck was honored at a black-tie dinner by the New Yorkers For Children for his work with youth in foster care. Previous honorees have included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Def Jam records founder Russell Simmons.

Anthony Taveras, an 18-year-old City Tech student from Brooklyn who has spent his entire life in the foster care system, was at the event and said it was a thrill to meet someone like Bulluck.

"There's a lot of people out there who think because we're in foster care that we're nobody and we're not going to get anywhere in life,'' Taveras said. "Keith is someone who understands what we've gone through and has gotten somewhere in life. He's an inspiration.''

Bulluck believes that the foster care system changed his life for the better. Linda Welch, his foster mother, was a divorced mother of two from England who worked long hours as a mortgage broker to support her family. Bulluck describes Welch as big-hearted and paints a picture of her three-story house as the place where all the kids in the neighborhood liked to hang out.

"Foster care gave me a chance to be a 12-year-old kid,'' Bulluck said. "I could just go to school, play sports and come home and play video games. What happened, it was a blessing in disguise.''

Welch said she never thought twice about Bulluck moving in with her family because he was so close to her younger son that they already spent a lot of time together. She said Bulluck was a "bit of a free spirit'' when he first moved in, and that at first it was an adjustment for him to live in a more structured situation. Bulluck agrees.

"Living there, I had to follow rules,'' Bulluck said. "It was normal stuff, the kind of things that definitely help mold children into young men. But I wasn't used to supervision because I had been left alone all the time.''

That wasn't the only difficult part. Though they didn't talk about it much then, Welch said she has come to realize that it wasn't easy for Bulluck, who is black, to be living with a family who wasn't.

"I'm white, so it's not like he could pass us off as being his family,'' Welch said. "He'd have to explain all the time who this woman was dropping him off at practice. I think that part got tedious for him.''

Dan Welch said growing up with Bulluck was like "having a sleepover with your best friend every night.'' Bulluck was outgoing, good in sports and had no problems making friends in a town that was primarily white with a large Jewish population. For a while, he was named Captain bar mitzvah for the way he danced at all his friend's parties.

"Keith is resilient,'' Welch said. "He is also a driven person. If he wasn't playing football, he would be doing something else. I think he went through a lot in life, but I think he was also determined to make his life a success.''

Bulluck's resilience and determination might have led him to the Giants this season after a decade in Tennessee.

Until last December, Bulluck's athletic career had been pretty seamless. A star free safety and running back at Clarkstown North High School, he went on to Syracuse and excelled. He was drafted by the Titans with the 30th overall pick and started 127 straight games before tearing an anterior cruciate ligament in December.

Bulluck said on a conference call with Tennessee reporters this past week that the Titans were not interested in re-signing him, though the team has said the decision to sign with the Giants was his.

"When I was growing up, I dreamed of playing here, so it all works out in the end,'' Bulluck said.

Bulluck said one of the messages that he wants to get out to foster kids is that if they work hard and set goals, it can work out for them, too. He is a big believer in education; he has a degree in psychology from Syracuse and has completed classes offered by the NFL at Stanford and Harvard.

He also is a big believer in parenting and has two young daughters whom he dotes on.

Said Linda Welch: "He's a great father. I think that's what makes me happiest about Keith. I'm just so proud he was able to commit to a relationship. I thought since he had so much negativity in his childhood that he might not be able to do that.

"He's really a special person.''