Minium: DeLisha-Milton Jones 'Died' When she Nearly Drowned at Age 11, and Says That Changed Her Life

By Harry Minium

DeLisha Milton-Jones had been under water for so long that she could no longer hold her breath. Her mouth opened involuntarily, and chlorinated water quickly began to fill her stomach and lungs.

She could not swim, but that had not stopped the shy but precocious 11-year-old from goofing around with her friends around a pool at a church outing. She slipped, hit her head on the side of the pool and fell into 12-feet of water.

She momentarily blacked out and awoke gasping for air. In all the commotion, at first, no one noticed she was in the water.

"I remember fighting violently, trying to get back above water," she said. "I was right under the lifeguard. I could see her looking into the pool, but she couldn't see me. I was fighting, yelling for help."

Her feet hit the bottom of the pool and she tried with all her might to push herself up. "But I only grazed the surface," and sank back down. She was frightened and panicking.

Suddenly, she said, the pain and angst went away and "everything got peaceful and bright.

"It was so bright it was like you were looking at the sun. It was bright but soft and peaceful feeling. I felt like someone was carrying me and I just remember going to sleep."

She believes that, for a brief few minutes, she was dead. And given what she recalls, that may be true.

The lifeguard finally saw her, jumped in, pulled her out, laid her beside the pool and began doing CPR. Milton-Jones did not respond for several minutes and people around her began to cry, including her sister, Charmaine.

But the lifeguard refused to quit.

"The lifeguard would not give up on her," said Beverly Milton, her mother. "She did not give up on my little girl. She just kept working."

DeLisha says she woke up and heard people saying, "Breathe, DeLisha, breathe."

"I turned over and puked," she said.

In a Hollywood movie, she would have immediately sat up and began talking to friends. But this was real life and it was not clear she was going to be OK. She had been without oxygen for quite a while. Doctors later said that she had had a seizure and some vital organs were struggling.

She was passing in and out of consciousness.

Across town, her mother was at work when she got a phone call from DeLisha's sister. When Beverly Milton answered, someone grabbed the phone from her daughter and said, "DeLisha is dead. You need to get to the hospital."

She dropped the phone and went into a state of shock. She wandered in and out of the office several times as puzzled employees watched. She finally said she needed a ride and when a co-worker began driving, she didn't say where to go.

"Finally, I came to my senses and said, 'my baby is dead.' I told him I needed to go to the emergency room," she said.

When she arrived, dozens of friends were standing around, and they all dropped their heads when they saw her and said nothing.

"I knew when I saw them that my baby was dead," she said.

But she wasn't. When Beverly got inside, a nurse told her DeLisha was alive but in serious condition.

Beverly was at her side for hours as DeLisha was unconscious in intensive care, wearing an oxygen mask and a needle coursing medicine into her veins. Beverly drifted off to sleep and dreamed that
she ran up some stairs into Heaven, where she met Jesus and he cradled her in his arms.

"Everything is going to be OK," she said he told her.

When she woke up, DeLisha was awake and smiling at her.

DeLisha has told this story many times in the 34 years since that July day, including one evening in April, when she was being interviewed for the head women's basketball coaching position at Old Dominion.

The pandemic had just begun, so she told the story and how it changed her life by Zoom call. And when she was done, there wasn't a dry eye around the table of people interviewing her.

In his more than three decades in college sports, Athletic Director Camden Wood Selig said "I've never been involved in an interview process where the person being interviewed brought tears to everyone around the table."

"Her story was compelling and resonated with everyone on the committee," Dr. Selig added. "We knew this was the type of woman, the type of role model, the type of leader we want leading our student-athletes at ODU."

Milton-Jones got the job, of course, and her Monarchs begin their season next week with a road game at George Washington.

Beyond her brush with death, Milton-Jones has a compelling life story. She grew up in poverty in a single-parent home in rural Georgia, without access to the summer camps or AAU teams that turn average players into stars. Yet, she became a high school basketball star, and then the nation's college Player of the Year.



She spent 17 seasons playing professionally, was a two-time Olympic Gold Medalist and quickly revived Pepperdine's program as head coach before heading to Syracuse last season as an assistant coach.

At age 45, she is a rising star.

Yes, her Mom raised her right. But she says it was that miracle that occurred when she was 11 that changed the direction of her life and set her on a path toward excellence and deep religious faith.

Life was not easy for Beverly and her two daughters. They lived in Riceboro, Ga., a town of fewer than 1,000 people located 32 miles south of Savannah.

She has always worked, but when her kids were small, she didn't always make enough money to make ends meet. She had family around but did not ask for help.

"Trying to raise two children by yourself, especially back then, was hard," she said. "I would go to work crying and leave from work crying, not knowing how I would feed my girls.

"I had my mother and siblings around, but I felt like God gave me two girls and that I was supposed to take care of them.

"God always had that ram in the bush. I didn't always have to eat, but God always made a way for my daughters."

DeLisha was three when her parents split and wasn't old enough to understand but now says: "My Mom made a courageous decision to grab my sister and me with our clothes on our backs. She never turned back from that moment on."

DeLisha was always tall for her age and a bit of a tom boy. "I was always getting in the dirt, playing with my friends who were boys," she said.

She says being introduced to basketball "was a breath of fresh air."

Her uncle and Charmaine, who was also a pretty fair basketball player, taught her how to play with a basket hung on a light pole in front of their house.

She was not an instant success. In middle school, "it was tough for me. I was an athletic, long, wiry girl from the country and the coach never played me," she said. "The girl who played ahead of me was a dignitary in the community."

Although hurtful, it proved to be a good thing. Her sister invited her to come practice with the high school team and she did, every day.

"They would whoop my tail and take me to school in terms of learning the game," she said. "My learning curve shortened."

She started as a freshman in high school and was one of the nation's most coveted players by the time she entered her senior year. Not only did she have great basketball skills, her work ethic on and off the court was off the charts.

Early on, she was nicknamed "Sunshine," and when you see her, there's no question as to why – she has a seductively, wonderful smile.



But eventually, she earned the nickname "D-Nasty" because, as former ODU All-American Nancy Lieberman said, she was so relentless and physical that no one wanted to defend her.

Charmaine was playing at Stetson when her sister was being recruited and Beverly said trying to see both girls play at different schools would be impossible. So, the family agreed that Charmaine would transfer from Stetson and would go wherever DeLisha went.

"I told coaches it had to be a package deal, that Charmaine also needed a scholarship," Beverly said.

The University of Florida offered them both scholarships and they both flourished in Gainesville. DeLisha was a four-year starter there who won the 1997 Wade Trophy as a senior. Florida went to the NCAA tournament all four seasons, and DeLisha led the Gators to the Elite Eight of the 1997 NCAA tournament her senior year.

She scored 1,858 career points, made 53 percent of her shots and averaged nine rebounds per game as a senior.

In her final game, Florida lost to ODU, then a national powerhouse, 55-53, in a regional final.

It was, she remembers, a bitter defeat. Little did she know that 23 years later, she would be hired to help restore ODU to its place among the women's basketball elite.

DeLisha met her husband, Roland Jones, when she was a freshman at Florida. He was a hotshot junior college player from Texas whom Gators' coach Lon Kruger was recruiting.
She was on the court doing drills with her teammates when she saw him and could not take her eyes off of him. When he looked at her, she looked away and he was also smitten.

He boldly walked across the court, introduced himself. "My name is Roland Jones and I want to know if I can take you out on a date," he said.

"I was so self-conscious," she said. "I had acne and a bad hairstyle. So, I lied and told him I've got a boyfriend."

Jones said he was embarrassed that she turned him down. But he proved to be patient and persistent. Amazingly so.

Five years later, he was playing with the Dallas Mavericks summer league team. He knew that DeLisha was playing for the Los Angeles Sparks of the WNBA and saw a woman with a Sparks shirt on.

He asked her for Delisha's phone number, a request she understandably declined. But she gave him her card and said, "you can write to her at this address."

He did – a four-page, handwritten letter, both front and back, on large notebook paper, and included a photo. It wasn't until the end of the season that DeLisha opened her fan mail and read the letter.

"When I looked at it, I said, 'Yes, he's cute, but I don't remember him,' " she said.

She shared the letter with teammate Lisa Leslie but said she wasn't going to call him.

"Then I'll call him," said Leslie, who took DeLisha's phone and dialed his number.

Jones said she drilled him. "She asked me about 30 questions, about my family, my religion, what do I do," he said.



Finally, DeLisha took the phone and began to talk.

"We hit it off right away," she said. "We talked every day for three months." After she returned from the 2000 Olympics in Australia, he invited her to come visit him in Dallas.

At the time, there was no social media, no face time, no way to connect other than through telephone calls and the mail.

"Mom told me I should go for two days and if it doesn't work out, come on home," she said.

Two days turned into five and they quickly realized they really cared for each other. Soon thereafter, he moved to Los Angeles to spend more time with her.

"I'm glad he was so persistent because if it was up to me, we wouldn't be married," she said.

"Neither of us are perfect people but we're perfect together. He's intelligent, charming and well put together. He's a tremendous ball player.

"He was the one who taught me how to be a pro. He taught me how to train, how to eat, how to set yourself apart. He helped me tap into resources I didn't know I had.

"I have him to thank for my longevity in the game."

For their first two years, they dated long distance because they both played in different cities. During the summer, they would play in Europe, although never in the same place.

Eventually, Jones decided to sacrifice his career to help DeLisha. He found jobs wherever she played or coached – he is ODU's director of basketball operations. And while he worked, his main job
has been to support his wife, no matter what she's doing.

"He's made big sacrifices for me," DeLisha said. "For someone to put their life on hold to advance yours. I owe him so much. I really do."

DeLisha did not come to ODU at an ideal time. Because of the pandemic, the University shut down in-person classes during the spring and summer. She didn't meet many of her players until the summer.

She held Zoom meetings with them as a team and individually while she hired a staff.

She's made up for lost time since and her practices are different from what you will see with many coaches. She is upbeat and encouraging. Although she demands discipline, when she's coach, she lives up to her first nickname, "Sunshine."

"I love the way she's coaching her players," Selig said. "You can tell those young ladies believe in her."

DeLisha said she wants to continue the task of previous coach Nikki McCray-Penson, who vowed to build ODU back into a national power, but left for Mississippi State after three seasons (Mississippi State is ranked as high as No. 6 in some preseason polls).

"We can do that here,"DeLisha said. "I want to compete with ACC teams, like Virginia and Virginia Tech. I want to beat them."

Although she's been at three different colleges in four years, she said she could stay at ODU a long time.



"There's so much potential here," said her husband. "The facilities are great and Old Dominion still has a national name. She thinks she can do great things here."

If she does great things, she will credit it all to that July day when she nearly perished.

"I knew from that day on that I was going to be different," she said. "When you lose something as precious as life, and you come back from it you have no choice but to look at things differently.

"I love life. I appreciate things that some other people may not appreciate. I'm almost clairvoyant in the things I can see.

 "It was a religious experience for me. When I think about my time in the water, the struggle I was going through, it resembled life and death, that battle between life and death.

"I feel like God saw fit for me to have another chance at life because I fought so hard. I think he said, 'this little girl is relentless. I'm going to grant her another chance and she's going to be tasked with doing tremendous work.' "

Part of that work, she says, is telling her story.

"I feel like it's my responsibility to enlighten people, to have compassion, to emphasize to people to take every precious breath that we can breathe and not take it for granted.
"I know it was divine intervention that saved me. When I came out of that water and breathed once again, I felt like my life was starting over."

Beverly, now 66, has reveled in the lives both of her daughters have carved out. Charmaine Gatlin is the Chief Operating Officer for the Jackson Memorial Hospital Foundation in Miami and has given her Mom two grandchildren and two step grandchildren.

She often travels to Miami and will be traveling to Norfolk for as many home games as she can make.

"The people at my work, they've been so good to me," she said. "When DeLisha was at Florida and had a home game, they would tell me to leave the office early so I could get to her games.
"I can't wait to come to Norfolk."

Now that DeLisha and Charmaine are financially independent, her mother has no monetary wants or needs they won't meet.

"But she still wants to work," Delisha said.

Beverly recalls the tough times, when she was running away from her husband, and scrounging to pay the bills, and said it was all meant to be.

"It was all part of God's plan," she said. "The Lord blessed me with my two girls and they spoil me.

As for the day she nearly lost Delisha, she said that was also meant to be.

"The Lord spared her life," she said. "He wasn't ready for her.

"He knew she had so much more to do on earth."

Contact Minium: hminium@odu.edu