Michigan State football shows up for Armorion Smith after mom's death. More help is needed

Football, at the moment, should not matter for Armorion Smith. Even though earlier this week, he was flying around the practice field and working to cement a pivotal role in Michigan State’s secondary.

On Thursday night, the inevitable yet incomparable happened. Smith’s mother, Gala Gilliam, died after a nearly two-year battle with breast cancer. She was just 41 years old and a single mom raising six children. Armorion’s father was not in the picture, he told the Free Press while blossoming into a high school star at River Rouge.

Gala Gilliam left a major mark on her son, and her fight with cancer has touched many others in the River Rouge and MSU communities. That impact was evident July 28, with the outpouring of love and support from Smith’s former and current teammates who showed up at IHOP in Livonia for a fundraiser after Gilliam was given less than six months to live.

The need now is even greater for the Smith-Gilliam family.

Gilliam’s friend, Ronnesha Freeman, established a GoFundMe campaign about two months ago that is quickly reaching its target goal of $50,000, sitting at nearly $35,000 with 438 donations by Saturday afternoon. That campaign remains ongoing.

And later this month, the day after the Spartans’ season-opener against Florida Atlantic, former MSU player and current radio analyst Jason Strayhorn said another fundraiser will be held for Smith and his siblings. It will be held at McDonald’s restaurant on Lansing’s west side (4015 W. Saginaw Highway) from 2-5 p.m. on Aug. 31.

But right now, through the haze of processing life ahead, Smith more than anything needs compassion and emotional support. And his football family immediately provided it.

Galvanizing bonds

New MSU coach Jonathan Smith tweeted his condolences and a link to the GoFundMe campaign. One by one, Armorion Smith’s teammates did the same, perhaps a glimpse that the renewed bond players and their families have talked about is tangible and real. Among them were thoughts and prayers from another River Rouge product, Spartans freshman wide receiver Nick Marsh, and his mother, Yolanda Wilson.

On Friday night, Wilson took to her “MamaTron” account on X and shared details of her recent visit with Gilliam. It involved getting “cute” and dolled up together, taking selfies, listening to some jams and laughing. A last goodbye and pledge.

“I am going to miss you Gala my beautiful friend,” Wilson wrote, with an angel emoji next to it. “Your babies are good I promised you.”

Armorion Smith was a three-star prep prospect who initially chose Cincinnati over MSU and spent his first two years there, playing all 12 games for the Bearcats as a redshirt freshman in 2022. However, after his mother was diagnosed with cancer that October, Armorion Smith entered the portal the following April and returned home to become a Spartan.

BACK TO THE HS DAYS:River Rouge's Armorion Smith had every reason to not play football. He's now their best player

Amid all the chaos last season at MSU, Armorion Smith appeared to be emerging as a playmaker at safety in the first four games before injury cost him the rest of his season. Another complication, but far less dire than his mother’s plight.

According to the GoFundMe, Gala Gilliam had two “Major surgeries and many setbacks, including blood clots, infections, and a decline in her daily function” and liver as the cancer ravaged her body. Earlier this year, her doctors found the cancer had metastasized in her bones and liver.

Life beyond sports

Cancer sucks. Everyone knows that. Watching a loved one fight and endure the aggressive treatments is not easy, particularly after learning the outcome is grave.

My mother-in-law currently is in the final phases of her nearly two-year battle with advanced-stage liver bile duct cancer. It can be paralyzing seeing my wife, her sister and their father as they process all of this, in trying to explain it all to my daughters and nieces, in watching the rest of the family and her friends handle the short time that is left. All coming after my own mother – like Gilliam, a single mom who raised me through a lot of adversity – endured her own major health scares throughout 2023 and required me to go back and forth to Pennsylvania in the midst of the turmoil last football season.

Sports are meant to be an escape from real life, but real life puts them into proper perspective. Always.

A few weeks ago, instead of joining Jonathan Smith and the rest of the Big Ten media and coaches in Indianapolis for media days, I drove with my family to the Upper Peninsula. It is an annual vacation in my wife’s family that her mother’s parents began decades earlier, one I married into and have embraced. It took a lot of work from her village, but my mother-in-law managed to make the long trip and spend four days up north. She got to see her daughters and their children and other relatives enjoying a place they made so many memories over the years. There were many smiles, many tears.

And my wife, after we got home, wrote nine words that summed it up: “Time is not a given, it is a gift.”

The days and weeks and months and years ahead will not be easy for Armorion Smith and his family and his mother’s tribe of relatives and friends. They were blessed with time, but not even close to enough.

Support is the gift the Smith-Gilliam team needs most right now.

Contact Chris Solari:csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.

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For openers: Owls

Matchup: Michigan State (4-8 in 2023) vs. Florida Atlantic (4-8 in 2023).

Kickoff: 7 p.m. Aug. 30; Spartan Stadium, East Lansing.

TV/radio: Big Ten Network; WJR-AM (760).