Oct. 26, 2015 Hephzibah Thomas contemplates with amazement how far her son has come in such a short time. The mother of Navy senior left guard E.K. Binns also is not far removed from the heavy worry about his future that once dogged her. How would her only son hold up while living a life so unsettled and cluttered with financial hardship? How would E.K. thrive under the wing of a single mom forced repeatedly to move long distances to relocate around America - even across oceans -- while she did the religious work of a missionary?
And how would E.K. turn out, after absorbing the deeper scars? First, there was his parents' separation and eventual divorce, going back to his early elementary school days in his native Jamaica.
Then, just after E.K. had turned 11, while he was living with his mother in Tulsa, Oklahoma, his father succumbed to a battle with lung cancer. Alvin Valentine Binns had suffered from mesothelioma, a lung disease that ravaged him after he breathed asbestos particles at a Jamaican factory where he had been employed.
How adversely would those cruel blows shape the boy's fate?
As it turns out, Ikechukwu Binns - his first name, later shortened to "E.K.," translates to "God's power" - is doing just fine, as he closes in on his 22nd birthday.
Make that better than fine. For starters, Binns, who comes from a family with no military background, is seven months away from graduating from a place he knew nothing about six years ago, and seven months shy of being commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Navy.
"E.K. is my angel and my hero," says Thomas, 55. "I think of how many times we would change addresses when he was younger, and everything we were going through. He would just say to me, 'Don't worry Mom, it's going to be all right.
"Every time I would travel on missions, it felt like we were starting over. Sometimes, E.K. would only be in one place for six months," adds Thomas, who has remarried and has settled in Shreveport, La. She teaches adult education classes there for Community Renewal International.
"E.K. was always changing schools, but he never let his grades drop. He stayed trouble-free. He was never disobedient or disrespectful. When I watch him sometimes on the football field, I wonder 'Who is this giant?' I look at him and I see all of my blessings."
"It was rough going through that, although a lot of people go through a lot worse," says Binns in his baritone voice, recalling the turbulent time over a decade ago surrounding his ailing father. Back then, he and his mother had recently moved to Tulsa from Houston, their first residence in the United States.
"I went to see my Dad when he was getting [cancer] treatment in New York. Then I went to be with him for a while back in Jamaica and came back to Oklahoma," he adds. "I thought he was doing better. Then I found out that he had died. I flew back to Jamaica for the funeral. All I could do was to try to make my Mom proud."
That mission already has been accomplished. And Binns, 6 feet 3, 295 pounds, surely has been a blessing for the Midshipmen.
From the time he landed in Annapolis as a freshman, direct from Island Coast High School in Cape Coral, Florida, the economics major has set a tremendous example in the classroom. Entering the fall semester, Binns carried a cumulative, 3.41 grade point average.
He also has been a fixture at left guard and one of the foundational pieces behind Navy's spread option, which features one of the nation's premier rushing attacks year after year.
Since the beginning of his sophomore season in 2013, Binns has started 27 games. He is on track to be part of a fourth straight winning season at Navy (5-1, 3-0 in American Athletic Conference play). The Mids, in their first season ever as a conference member, are pursuing a berth in the AAC title game and can clinch a fourth consecutive bowl-game appearance with a win over South Florida on Saturday.
Binns, with his imposing combination of strength, quickness, smarts, impeccable technique and a mean streak to boot, has played an integral role in the Mids' success.
"You've got be ready to go against him," says Navy senior nose tackle Bernie Sarra. "E.K. can base block you with so much explosion and power that, if you're not ready, he'll roll you right out of there."
His fellow offensive linemen gave Binns the nickname of "Technique-K." Senior starters such as center Blaze Ryder and left tackle Joey Gaston marvel at Binns' complete command of the offense and the physical tools on display when he gets to work. "Having E.K. is like having a coach on our line," says Ryder, who also credits Binns with tutoring him in calculus successfully as a junior. "He'll make line calls and point out blocking schemes and sort it out for us in the heat of the game.
"He's just a big, strong, precision kind of a player. I don't think I've ever seen E.K. get mad, but he is a really tenacious competitor. He just dominated his guy in the Colgate game [a 48-10, season-opening rout]. After watching the film, I told E.K. it looked like somebody killed his dog and he just took it out on that guy, who had no chance."
"[Binns] knows the playbook better than anyone on the team, besides probably [quarterback] Keenan [Reynolds]," Gaston adds. "I think that allows him to play as fast as he does.
"You'll watch a whole game on film, and even if he's not spectacular, you'll notice E.K. doesn't make a mistake on a single play. He has this presence when he walks into a room. He's too humble to say he plays with a chip on his shoulder, but he does."
"We take a lot of pride in being the guys who win the battle of the trenches. We don't ask for high praise. We just play our 70 or 80 snaps with the mindset that we have to get it done," says Binns, who was also quite skilled in high school at defensive line play.
"I thought it was fun to make tackles, but it was more fun to pancake somebody and be part of a bigger unit that doesn't get a lot of accolades," Binns adds. "I love watching myself on film driving a defensive lineman 10 yards downfield. I love seeing the end zone getting closer and closer during a long drive."
Binns also loves the fact that Navy came into his life at such a fortuitous time. That happened years after E.K. and his mother, a native of Nigeria originally sent as a registered nurse by her government to assist in sickle cell anemia research in Jamaica, had begun their improbable journey.
After she met and married Alvin Binns, Thomas says she didn't envision leaving Jamaica after E.K. was born. "I had a clothing business there. We'd built a house," Thomas says.
By the time the marriage was dissolving, Thomas, a deeply religious woman, says she had felt a calling to the ministry. That took E.K. and her to Houston, then Tulsa. Thomas was committed to being a missionary, to working with the disadvantaged, the disabled, the homeless. Among many assignments, she has helped earthquake victims.
And that commitment, which yielded modest income and forced the pair to move often, put her son to the kind of test that frightened Thomas at times. It helped that E.K. naturally dealt with responsibility with a striking level of maturity as a youngster. As Binns recalls, "I always remember being heavy on academics."
From Oklahoma, Thomas' work took them to Hampstead, Maryland - where E.K. played football at North Carroll High School during his 18-month stay - to Cape Coral, Florida, then to the Hawaiian island of Maui, where Binns became a star, two-way lineman at Baldwin High School in Wailuku.
During his first stay in Florida, Binns had struck up an immediate friendship with fellow students and football players Parker and Robert Cauble, and Binns had made an indelible impression on their parents, Rick and Linda.
Binns' bond with the Cauble family would play a huge role in his future.
As his mother recalls, E.K. began to express a desire to go back to Florida as a high school junior. That made logical sense, since Binns figured to be seen by more college football recruiters. And it made emotional sense, since he felt a real closeness with the Caubles. Would they be willing to take him in as temporary, surrogate parents?
"E.K. called and wanted to know if he could come home," recalls Rick Cauble, who choked up as he spoke the words at the pregame tailgate at Navy-Marine Corps Stadium, prior to Navy's 31-14 victory over Tulane on Saturday. "We told him to get on the plane right now."
Cauble says the teenaged Binns blended in beautifully with the family, and the kids became inseparable. E.K. and the Cauble brothers even formed the left side of the offensive line at Cape Coral, where Binns became the team captain as a senior.
"E.K. is a unique person. He's made me a better person. He had all of the reasons to turn out the other way, but he turned to be such a great kid," Rick Cauble says. "We wanted our kids to hang around with E.K. We hoped his intelligence would rub off on them."
Binns drew serious recruiting interest from the Ivy League, and took an official visit to Dartmouth. He also checked out Florida Atlantic. But once Navy entered the picture - and Cauble urged him to go to Annapolis for a visit - Binns took the trip, got a feel for the school's strong emphasis on education and the deal was done early in his senior year.
Cauble said Binns' decision to enter a service academy also exerted a major influence on his sons. Parker and Robert each enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, and are serving today.
At Navy, there is no question about Binns' leadership skills.
"For a plebe to really catch your attention, it takes somebody like E.K.," says Ashley Ingram, Navy's offensive line coach. "He understands our offense inside-out. He'll catch nuances of the defense during a game that I don't even see. If the players have questions in the meeting room, they turn to him." "E.K. has seen an awful lot of things in his life," Navy head coach Ken Niumatalolo adds. "He's a cultured young man and a wise young man who has really been around. And he's been so consistent here." Binns shrugs off the accolades.
"If you're an offensive lineman, you sign up to do the dirty work, the work that a lot of people don't want to do," Binns says. "Every play, you're hitting somebody and getting hit. I've been blessed to come out of most of the piles unscathed."
