A legend in his home country, former Liberian soccer great dies penniless on streets of Newark.The legal notice ran in this newspapers back pages, tucked between a name-change announcement and a court summons.George Sacko has died at Saint Michaels Medical Centre, it read.Within 17 short, clinical lines, it catalogued a few other facts: Sackos birthplace and birth dateLiberia; May 19, 1936and his last known address.It asked that anyone with information on next of kin call the hospital.Sacko, 75, had died at St. Michaels, in Newarks Central Ward, on September 17, homeless, penniless and almost anonymously.But a half-century ago and an ocean away, George McDonald Sacko, aka Wizard, had a country at his feet.Sacko had captained the Liberian national soccer team into the 1960s, when the nascent squad supplied the unifying thread to a country fraying at the serrated edge of tribal and political strife.He had groomed his game barefoot, kicking tennis balls with older boys in the dusty streets of Liberias capital, Monrovia. He attended a prestigious high school and befriended government ministers. He had a future president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate as a girlfriend, and played for the countrys best club teams.He was flashy, said June Nwanna, who became his wife and the mother of his two sons. He was very popular. All the women wanted him.A unifying forceSacko had grown up in Monrovias Crown Hill neighborhood, the son of an Americo-Liberian mother born in Georgia and an indigenous father from the Grebo tribe, in the countrys southeast.By his 20s, Sacko was carving a piece of his own countrys history.Playing on a dirt field in a stadium built for political rallies, the team attracted overflowing crowds.He was the glue, said Sackos younger brother, Garretson, a star forward on the Lone Star, as the team was christened around that time.Lone StarLiberia never qualified for the World Cup or the continental championship during the brothers playing days. But as the team coalesced around George, its playmaker, and Garretson, its finisher, the Lone Star started to shine.My brother was priceless. He was born to play. I learned to play, Garretson said in the living room of a home in Newarks Weequahic neighbourhood, where he lives. He was a masterpiece.George captained the team to its first-ever win, a 2-0 victory over the Cote dIvoire in 1960. Garretson, nicknamed Bulldozer, scored that games first goal, on a pass from his brother.George was an exceptional player, said Charles Wordsworth, a former Liberian basketball player who lives in Virginia. George was bending it before Beckham was born.George, though, suffered a serious knee injury in 1962, and would never be the same player.But he was never bitter, Garretson and others said. Instead the Wizard deflected the leftover fame.Coming homeGarretson came to the States in 1968, lured by a contract offer from the New York Generals, a forerunner to the North American Soccer Leagues Cosmos. The offer flamed out, though, when the team folded the year he arrived. Garretson went to work in New Yorks garment district and broke goal-scoring records playing semipro soccer on weekends.A third Sacko brother and the youngest, Alwyn, was already in the United States, pursuing an education on a basketball scholarship.George crossed the Atlantic in 1971 to join his brothers in Brooklyn. June Nwanna, who, along with the couples two sons and her daughter, was also already here, having come to New York a few months before.Nwanna, in her early 20s and 11 years younger than her husband, was intent on a new world, she said. I didnt think he planned to come, but I knew I had left, Nwanna said.George, Nwanna and their children eventually moved to Newark, into an apartment on West Kinney Street.In a roundabout way, the Sackos had come home: Their mother, Eva Gibson, was born in Atlanta but came to Liberia in her childhood. Her grandfather, Garretson Wilmot Gibson, who would become Liberias 14th president, was a Maryland native.George got a job working in the foundry of a custom metals firm in Harrison. He made good money, and he, June, their sons and her daughter settled into a spacious apartment on Washington Street.When the metals company shuttered in the late 1980s, George started his slide, often drinking to excess, Garretson said. He began using heroin.Star aloneIn May, Sacko turned 75. The Liberian community, including an official delegation from Washington, D.C., feted him at Little Mai, a restaurant and meeting place in Newarks University Heights district. He wore a gold-print shirt, a contrast to his close-cropped silver hair and goatee. People who were there say the once-affable Sacko smiled mournfully. His gaze was distantThe flier for the occasion noted that Sacko lived in Newark, and that he was in excellent health.He was not.Im sick, Garretson recalls George telling him. Pray for me.Among the gifts Sacko received on his birthday was a commemorative pin sent by Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, his childhood girlfriend.Afterward, Wisseh took George to Penn Station. Sacko had told him he had a train to catch.Sacko, though, was dredging the citys streets for his next drink, his next fix.Nwanna last heard from him the second week in September.He called me. He said he was not feeling well and that he needed some money, Nwanna said.A few days later, George made $50 moving furniture. Garretson saw him afterward. He cried, Garretson said.According to the death certificate, Sacko died of natural causes. His lungs were acutely diseased, it said. It also indicated that his upper gastrointestinal tract had started to bleed about a month before his death.But Garretson said he is convinced that the $50 George earned moving furniture paid for his last-ever purchase: the heroin that killed him.Something happened in my brothers life. He just didnt care anymore, Garretson said. He was not crazy, but he gave up on life.Courtesy: The Star Ledger.
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