Viking spends his down time lifting others up

When a team in the National Football League has a bye week, reporters for the local newspaper often spend a little more time studying the police blotter. Those prone to players-gone-wild behavior often take the opportunity to, let's say, unwind.

Some fly off to Hawaii for good clean fun. Others go home to visit family. A small number of them wind up with new jewelry marking the occasion, locked securely around their ankles.

Remember that the infamous Love Boat incident happened during a bye week.

But one Minnesota Viking did something different last week. He spent a day with egghead intellectuals at a health-care symposium, then gave away $2 million the next day to improve health care in impoverished communities. But you won't hear about it from him.

Vikings free safety Madieu Williams gave the endowment to the University of Maryland to create the Madieu Williams Center for Global Health Initiatives, which will provide ongoing funds for research and services in his native Sierra Leone, as well as in Prince George's County, Md., where he grew up.

It is the largest gift to the school from an African-American alumnus, as well as the largest donated by someone of Williams' age, 28.

While the university held a news conference last week to announce the gift, it wasn't widely publicized beyond Maryland and the Vikings did not even send out a news release. Williams declined to talk about the gift to sportswriters, so they linked to an article in their Vikings blog. A spokeswoman for Williams' agent said he was a private person and didn't want any press. Brad Madson, executive director of community relations for the Vikings, said that "there are a lot of players doing good things in the community, but Madieu just doesn't want the attention."

Bill King, president of the Minnesota Council on Foundations, said it's not a bad thing if celebrities get attention for giving, "because we want people to see role models. That's a legitimate role for them to play."

But "they say the most selfless giving is anonymous giving," King said. "We don't often hear about athletes putting their own money behind it."

Former Vikings Matt Birk and Randall McDaniel are among those who have a reputation locally for putting real passion and effort into their charity work, and Alan Page is among those with his own foundation.

But sources at the University of Maryland say Williams has shown an uncommon generosity with both his time and money. Last year, they say, he quietly built a school in Sierra Leone, one of the poorest places on Earth. Over the past 18 months, he has worked with the university on the current initiative, which will fund student volunteers and professionals to make an initial assessment trip to Sierra Leone early next year to determine which health issues are most important.

"Madieu is really quite a remarkable young man," said Robert Gold, dean of the Maryland School of Public Health. "He's said from the beginning that he didn't want the focus to be on him and his contributions. I think he's really just a very private guy."

"We have alumni athletes who give back in other ways, but never like this," he said.

Gold said Williams' mother, Abigail Burscher, told him to make a difference if he could. Burscher, who died four years ago, was a nurse.

At the news conference, Williams reluctantly spoke about his motivations. "I realized a vision of what my mom would have liked to do," he said. "She would have liked this."