Ever since Terrell and Joshua Adams were born one minute apart on February 16, 2001, in Birmingham, Alabama, the twins have bonded as brothers on an unusually deep level.

The Adams men are each six feet tall and still basically inseparable. Although they are not identical, their Navy coaches and teammates say it still would be tough to tell them apart, had Terrell Adams, the older brother, not bulked up as a linebacker in recent years. He out-weighs his fraternal twin by nearly 30 pounds.

The twins developed the same mannerisms. They challenged and supported each other and did countless activities together.

They found a meaningful brotherhood, long before they came to learn about and be part of — and eventually, badly need — the larger brotherhood that is the Navy football family.

"They still really don't have any major [personality] differences between them," says Jerome Adams, Sr., their father. "They don't wear the same clothes, but they've got the same style. They've got the same friends. They eat the same things, still order the same strawberry milkshake.

"Terrell is more of a football head than Joshua. He will watch any football game. Joshua is more of a highlights guy. They also like different types of gospel music," adds Jerome Adams, alluding to the devout Christian faith that characterizes the Adams family.

The biographical markers illustrating a recent portion of the Adams brothers' journey show a path marked by togetherness.

They are 2019 graduates of Ramsay High School, where each of them was barely recruited to play college football. Each jumped at the chance to play FBS football by taking the first offer — from Navy — that came their way as high school seniors.

Terrell and Joshua earned four letters apiece in football and track and field at Ramsey. They served as co-captains of the football team as seniors and became members of the National Honor Society.

The twins have made their way in the Navy football program mainly as unheralded role players. Both are anything but an afterthought among the Midshipmen.

The twins have earned enormous respect from teammates and coaches, both as special teams performers and as leaders brimming with positive energy. Terrell Adams, for example, is the undisputed leader of the inside linebackers room, even though Adams might barely see the field on defense in 2022.

"This is my 18th year [coaching] at this level. I've never had that before," saids P.J. Volker, Navy's inside linebackers coach. "It's the role of a leader to know his stuff and always be in a great mood. That's Terrell — positive, infectious, analytical, like his brother. Terrell has a huge influence on our young players, even though he's not out there making the plays. He's an inspiration."

Each of the twins is preparing to graduate in May with a degree in mathematics with economics. The brothers hope to be commissioned as Second Lieutenants in the United States Marine Corps.

"If we're not doing the same things around school or on the same sports team, it feels kind of weird. We're always pushing each other, always have had a level of competition between us," says Joshua Adams, who is bracing for an end of sorts to their lifelong arrangement of being around each other every single day.

"Once the Marine Corps separates us, we will be relying more on the people around us, just like we've been relying on people we also support and love around here," he adds.

"Terrell and I knew one day, we'd have a chance to help lead this team. We've stuck together with our Navy brothers so this place would seem easier, even though there are always really tough challenges in front of you here."

To this point in the young lives of the twins, no challenge can top the unthinkable hardship that has visited the Adams family for the past year. No days could cause more sorrow in the hearts of the family than what happened to it in the last two days of September 2021.

When Terrell Adams begins to talk about that day — Wednesday, September 29 — the day he and Joshua, while walking off the practice field, got the shocking call they had dreaded from their father, Terrell's voice halts. His tears form. He relives the horror again as he regains his composure.

That was the moment the twins began to grasp the reality they are still grappling with. The reality that their mother, Michelle, at the age of 46, had succumbed in Birmingham's Grandview Medical Center to complications from the Covid virus.

Michelle had tested positive the day after she, Jerome and their daughter Amber had watched the Midshipmen play at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.

Instead of flying home, Jerome Adams rented a car and drove nearly 15 hours to get his family back home to central Alabama. Three days later on September 16, Michelle was hospitalized. She never came home.

"My last words in person to her, at the car rental place (on Sept. 12) were 'I love you,'" Terrell Adams says. "I knew a lot of people who had Covid and had gotten over it. Josh had it and got over it. I figured Mom was going to make it."

"We had noticed Mom was doing an unusual amount of coughing [during the Annapolis visit]," says Joshua, who like Terrell, remembers seeing ominous signs of their mother's health during FaceTimes with her, in the days following her hospitalization.

"Then Dad called us [on September 28] and told us the doctors were saying Mom might not make it," Joshua adds. "That is a hard thing to hear. When you're young, you think your parents are superheroes, that they're going to live forever."

While Jerome was delivering the awful news about his wife, he also issued another warning. His mother — the twin's grandmother, 70-year-old Sallie Mae Stitt, who had also been hospitalized for more than two weeks with Covid — had taken a turn for the worse.

By the time the twins had flown home to Birmingham on the morning of September 30, they had lost both loved ones, over a span of about 12 hours. Terrell and Joshua Adams would remain home through October 7, the day the lives of Michelle Adams and Sallie Mae Still were celebrated in the same funeral service.

Jerome says he can still hear his sons' agonized screams on his FaceTime with them after that practice. And the father still feels a sense of comfort, knowing how the Navy brotherhood reacted to the tragedy on September 29 and sprang to the aid of his sons.

"The brotherhood there is even stronger than I thought, the way they are there for each other, lifting each other up," Jerome Adans says.

The only person who was with the twins outside the Navy locker room, when their father's sad call began as they prayed together for Michelle's recovery, was Lt. Commander Holly Short, then the chaplain for the Navy football team.

"I had just learned minutes earlier that their Mom was sick. I was sitting and praying with [the twins] on a bench when they found out. One of [the twins] was in the dirt {distraught]," recalls Short, who helped the brothers get released from the Yard and later drove them to BWI airport. "Someone walked out of the locker room and I asked him to get [head] Coach {Ken Niumatalolo]."

Niumatalolo, who had driven off the Yard minutes earlier, quickly turned around after being informed of the tragic news. By the time he arrived, the twins were enveloped in the open arms, condolences and prayers of assistant coaches and lots of teammates, who lingered for a lengthy stretch.

"Their brothers really rallied behind them. You get reminded what a special place this is sometimes," Niumatalolo says. "It really showed up on a terrible day."

"I remember the anguish on their faces. My heart was torn apart over them," says senior outside linebacker Nicholas Straw.

Other seniors such as Derek Atwaters and Massai Maynor made the needs of their grieving teammates a high priority.

Atwaters says he spends extra time around the Adams twins, relaxing with video games,eating with them, sometimes doing homework in silence with them.

"I've never had to deal with anything as terrible as that. I might not even be talking while I'm with Terrell in his room, but I'm there," Atwaters says. "When you're alone at night, those [heartbreaking] thoughts can take over you. If they want to talk about it, or if they need someone to help take their minds off of it, I just want to be there."

The twins admitted that, while giving their grieving father support during their weeklong stay a year ago — which included viewing an uplifting, 34-30 win over UCF and getting a postgame FaceTime with their victorious teammates — they wondered if it might be best to try extending their bereavement leave.

Jerome Adams rejected that idea. He said he intended to return to his job soon after the funeral. He has been a Waste Management truck driver for 22 years, typically beginning his shift at 3 a.m. He would resume fixing up the house, as his wife had wished. He would immerse himself in family and prayer.


He strongly advised that the twins return to their academy environment, get back to football, stay on track to graduate, rejoin the brotherhood waiting for them. That's clearly what their mother would have wanted.


The twins were back with the team two days later. 


"I'm just glad they didn't give up," Jerome Adams says. "Losing your Mom one day, your grandmother the next, that would make a lot of people go and hide. I'm glad they didn't."


A year later, what amazes their coaches and teammates the most about the twins is how deeply committed they are to their team, and how upbeat they remain doing their jobs as leaders.


"The way they approach their jobs and handle their business, you'd think they were starters," says Navy defensive coordinator Brian Newberry. "What an awful time for them to go through, and they're still the same model of hard work, consistency and how to respond to adversity."

"[The twins] have always understood that, no matter what your role is, you have to be ready for whatever comes your way," says senior striker John Marshall. "They are respected so much for what they've done and how they come to work every day, even with the circumstances they've been dealt."

Terrell Adams says he and his brother have no time to fret about their places on the depth chart. They are too busy trying to get better, help others get better, do anything to get Navy to a bowl game for the first time since 2019.

When it comes to praying for his family and grieving over his tragic loss, Adams says that is simply part of his daily being.

"Leaning on God has given us peace when our hearts are hurting," he says, adding that he thinks about his father's grief daily. "I can't go through a day without thinking about [his mother and grandmother]. I know Dad can't."

Terrell Adams also thinks about his mother's hugs, her sense of humor, her laugh, her faith, her love. He thinks about a dream he had shortly before the one-year anniversary of her passing.

"I was re-living her final days, only I was at home. It felt surreal, being able to see her at the end," he says. "She was talking to me. I love hearing her voice in my dreams."