Payton's mother still using food to help others

You get to be a nine-time NBA All-Star, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, and an NBA champion, and you surely worked your tail off.

Bet you didn't cook it all up on your own, though.

Ask Gary Payton.

Gary Payton's mother, Alice.

Even before spending Mother's Day in Oakland with Annie Payton, the 17-year NBA veteran gave testimony to her influence and her attention to detail -- right down to making different meals for him than his four siblings.

That lasagna?

"I didn't like the meat," said Payton, now retired, living in Las Vegas and working part-time as an NBA studio analyst for NBA TV. "She would make my plate separate. My mother was the most important person in our family."

"The Glove," had a prickly palate so Mom tailor-made meals, food for the soul of the future pro.

Annie Payton was far from alone, apparently.

She is just one of 34 mothers of present and retired pro players who each contributed a recipe to a cookbook, Food for the Soul. The mothers of Denver's Chauncey Billups and Carmelo Anthony, the Lakers' Derek Fisher and many more each have one recipe in the $12 book available at womenstandingtall.org.

Payton's wife, Monique, assembled the recipes to raise funds for her ongoing fight against AIDS, the disease that took the life of her cousin in 2001.

It was only natural, a sort of continuation of Payton family kinetic energy, that Annie contribute. Her husband, Al, is a chef, and one of her three sons, Alfred, also cooks, at Neptune's Palace on Pier 39 in San Francisco.

"Gary was always a picky eater. Even right now he doesn't eat a lot of food other than bacon and eggs and waffles," she said, exaggerating a little . . . we think. It would always have to not be spicy, not too much tomato sauce. Gary has always been a wonderful son.

"Since he's been in the NBA, he's always taken care of me and his Dad."

Annie Payton's recipe in the book, butternut squash stuffed with mango with chicken and rice, is the compilation of something she saw on a televised cooking show and some additions of her own.

And her daughter-in-law -- not picky ol' Gary -- chose the recipe.

Monique has learned a thing or two about collaborative efforts, and raising money.

She flew to New York City on Sept. 10, 2001 to visit her cousin, Shawn Guidry, who was dying in New Jersey of AIDS.

They'd grown up together in Oakland as close as brother and sister, and that visit would be the beginning of an emotional tsunami that impacted her life.

"I woke up to the second plane hitting a [World Trade Center] tower, all alone, didn't know anyone, taxis everywhere, smoke, chaos," she said. "That World Trade Center affected every single human being on this planet.

"With my cousin passing [a few days later at age 34], that was extra heartfelt. I didn't know my cousin was gay. I had no problem with that. I was angry with Shawn that he didn't feel comfortable enough to tell us."

Angry and motivated.

Gary was already active in philanthropic work while playing in Seattle, and before Guidry's death his wife had formed Lifelong AIDS Alliance to raise money.

By April 2002, Monique, friend Catherine Gerlach and others staged a Seattle fundraiser titled Red, White & Blues (in keeping with the music played). She said they raised $170,000 to $200,000 in two years.

Ideas kept percolating, and soon Monique and friend Virginia Patu-Owens founded Women Standing Tall, an organization designed to raise funds for the Alliance.

They began publishing calendars featuring the wives of several current and former pro athletes and entertainers, including those of Shaquille O'Neal, Magic Johnson, Mitch Richmond, Shaun Alexander, Barry Bonds, Shane Battier and Justin Timberlake's mother.

Virginia Patu-Owens (left) and Monique Payton founded Women Standing Tall.

Then, the calendar project, based in part on women who have overcome adversity, outgrew itself.

When Monique traveled with Gary's mother a couple years ago to meet with the Mothers of Pro Basketball Players Inc., a support group formed in 1996, her plan was to put mothers on a calendar.

"Over 30 women wanted to come and take pictures," she said. "So many mothers. We thought we can't get them all in one calendar; we could only do 12. We were able to get every last one of the mothers into this cookbook."

Gary Payton, who flew to Oakland this weekend to surprise his mother, is proud. Without his mother, who routinely traveled from Oakland to Seattle to greet the youngest of her five children with home-cooked meals when he would return from long NBA road trips, who knows where he'd be today?

Would he have won Olympic gold in '96 or '00? Would he have played long enough to win an NBA title with the Heat in '06? Would he have the constitution to play all the way until '07 after being drafted second overall by the former Sonics back in '90, playing also for the Bucks, Lakers and Celtics?

"When we were growing up, Mom was there, Pops was out grinding, trying to support us," said Payton. "She was the focal point in raising us. She was the disciplinarian, from the whuppings to making us go to school, and talking to teachers.

"Three years ago, she had [breast] cancer. She has diabetes, and it's hard for her to get around. But she doesn't complain. My mother's a big part of my life. My mom used to make me chicken, cabbage, candied yams, things like that. It will be a great Mother's Day . . . especially with my mother kicking cancer."

Payton, though, said he'll be taking his mother to dinner.