Nathan “Nate” White never really slept that night in the park.
It’s nearly impossible to sleep when you are the man of the family at age 17, and you, your mother and four younger siblings — including newborn D.J. — are all homeless.
“I stayed up for a few hours, watching over them,” White said of perhaps the low point of his life, which occurred in the summer before his junior year at Orlando Edgewater High. “I would doze off, but then I would wake up and do it again.”
White, a 6-3, 220-pound defensive end, earned a football scholarship to play for FIU, signing with the Panthers on Dec.