Photos by Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times

Former Virginia Tech football player Tommy Edwards considers Doreen's Gourmet in Southwest Roanoke County to be his musical home base.

Tommy Edwards hopes Heart of Virginia's music and art events will raise both money and awareness of mental illnesses.

Former Virginia Tech football player Tommy Edwards performs during an open mic at Doreen's Gourmet Thursday evening.

Tommy Edwards was never your typical jock.

It might have seemed when he was a high school kid in the late 1980s and early 1990s -- bursting through the Radford Bobcat offensive line and taking off at a pace of 40 yards every 4.5 seconds -- that football was what he was born to do.

It was his family birthright to be a star football player in his hometown. His father, Kenny, had been there. So had his Uncle Tommy, for whom he was named.

But like his namesake, he had another talent. This Tommy Edwards, "Touchdown Tommy," was a burgeoning guitar player.

He did not know then that his music -- driven by his own demons and his uncle's old guitar -- would be essential to his permanent return to Southwest Virginia.

It would fuel performances for his Heart of Virginia Foundation -- a nonprofit he created to help people understand mental illness in the aftermath of the April 16, 2007, shootings at Virginia Tech that left 33 people dead.

"Thirty-three," he said. "That was my number."

Music and football

It started with a seemingly useless guitar that he rescued when he was about 13.

"A neighbor kid had broken it over his knee," Edwards said. "I put it back together with some screws and a license plate."

And he played it. A lot. He played it so much that his grandmother decided to give him a guitar. The guitar, a Yamaha acoustic, had belonged to uncle Tommy Edwards, who during his own high school days had been the front man for a band called T.C. and the Castaways. T.C. stood for "Tomcat," his uncle's nickname.

Edwards had only heard tell of his uncle, who died of cancer while a student-athlete at Ferrum College.

But football was still No. 1 for the Bobcats' No. 33. The younger Edwards signed a scholarship to play with Virginia Tech, where his father had played.

Edwards had his own demons to deal with, though. He said bipolar disorder and drinking to self-medicate derailed him at Tech. Later, it sneaked up on him at Boise State University, where he had transferred. He dropped out 25 hours shy of a degree.

In Boise, though -- with notebooks of depression-inspired poetry and his uncle's old guitar -- he began to understand what was happening with the acoustic's fretboard.

He began to discover that he could bring the notes in his head to life with his fingers. The poetry became lyrics, the chords a foundation.

Drawn home

Just another Monday running late again

I get an early call from an old friend

Hey turn on the TV have you seen the news

It's happening again, the world is crazy, how are you

-- from "Believe," by Tommy Edwards

Edwards, 34, remained an athlete, though his idea of competition after college was attempting to set skateboard speed records. He said one crash in San Diego County, Calif., nearly killed him.

But music remained a passion, and Edwards continued writing and performing his songs as he bounced back and forth among home, Myrtle Beach, S.C., and the West Coast.

Then he heard the news that Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho had killed 32 people before taking his own life. He said it became increasingly heartbreaking as news surfaced of Cho's psychological illness and intermittent attempts to treat him.

He felt he needed to come back home and get involved. He started his foundation shortly after returning to Southwest Virginia with the idea of raising $2 million by April 2009 for mental health services. One of his goals is to get people thinking, talking about and dealing with psychological illnesses in a healthier way.

"When someone we love has cancer, we all go to see them at the hospital," he said. "Are we as willing to go see a loved one who is in psychological treatment?"

He knew the Heart of Virginia's engine would have to include music. Since his return last year, Edwards has put on numerous fundraisers, and tried to be as public as possible about it. Getting publicity has been easy for a guy whose moves on the football field sparked countless column inches of ink and plenty of TV face time in Southwest Virginia.

But getting the foundation going has been difficult, he said, and at times he's thought about quitting. Then he would receive a call or e-mail from someone he had touched through his work, and would feel new energy to continue.

The foundation "is my life right now," he said.

An artistic family

Football fans have long known about that part of the Edwards family connection. But they didn't know so much about the artistic side of the family.

Tommy "Tomcat" Edwards and his band played Motown songs and other hits of the day. And "Touchdown" Tommy's mother, Linda, was into arts and crafts and started her own framing shop at the family's house.

"Touchdown" Tommy is an artist, too. He has designed his own skateboards. He paints and draws. He sculpts. But mostly, he plays guitar and sings.

On July 31, he was at Martin's Downtown Bar and Grill in Roanoke, fronting his own Tommy Edwards band. The group is an often-revolving door of musicians.

"Working with musicians is like herding cats," he said.

On that night, Brad Taylor was on bass, Carlos Aranguren was on drums and Darren "Ben" Hurt was playing rhythm guitar.

Taylor and Aranguren, a talented battery, were new to some of the songs but didn't let them get out of control as they locked into nice grooves. Edwards' playing, whether on guitar or mandolin, was tight -- particularly when he was playing rhythm chords.

And his singing, strong and heartfelt, matched his lyrics. His seeming openness to exposing his emotions onstage shows that he has come a long way from his younger days, when the team and social leader seemed always to be "up."

Of those days, he said: "It's one of those things, you just don't let people into your emotional space. It's a cultural thing, I think more so in the South. Scots-Irish therapy -- a bottle of Jameson's."

Edwards said he no longer drinks. He said that he takes care of himself through diet and exercise, and he closely monitors his ups and downs, but he takes no medication for bipolar disorder. Edwards said that he doesn't think that his situation is so extreme that it requires medication.

"I wouldn't recommend that for everybody," he said. "But it works for me."

Making new friends

On Aug. 7, he was at the place he considers his musical home base, Doreen's Gourmet, in Southwest Roanoke County near the house he shares with his girlfriend, Nancy Hunter and her 7-year-old son, Chase.

He hosts open-microphone nights there, and at least one of his paintings was hanging on the wall that night, across from the corner where he was chucking away at an acoustic guitar and singing his songs in between his open-mike guests' performances.

As he sat outside after playing a couple of songs, a man walked up and introduced himself to Edwards. The man was Roger O'Dell, whose son, Derek, was wounded during the Tech shootings. Since then, Roger O'Dell has taken an active role in trying to change the way people and public institutions deal with mental illness.

He hadn't heard of Edwards until a couple of weeks back, when he and friend Tom Spurlock met at Doreen's to talk about organizing for the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill's Virginia advocacy committee.

O'Dell said a painting on the wall caught his eye. It was one of Edwards', and near it was literature and newspaper articles about Edwards and the Heart of Virginia Foundation. He was struck by Edwards' understanding of mental illness, and by his compassion toward the victims.

"I said to Tom, 'Gosh, we need to get hold of Tommy Edwards. We're on the same track as far as mental health goes,' " O'Dell said.

After reading and learning more about Edwards, he came back to Doreen's on Aug. 7 and the two spoke for a long while. O'Dell said they agree on long-term needs -- reducing the stigma of mental illness, building awareness to change attitudes toward the mentally ill, and persuading state legislators to enact changes in the law to improve funding for health care.

In the short term, they can plan some music and art events to raise both money and awareness, O'Dell said. He also hopes to introduce Edwards to his son, a huge Tech sports fan.

It was the first time Edwards had met a victim's family member. He said that he had wanted to, but was shy about reaching out, worried that it would be taken the wrong way. He said he is excited about the possibility of working with O'Dell, as well as a couple of relatively new groups on the Virginia Tech campus.

Through both his football career of old, and his music-making today, he's getting that chance.

"I'm lucky enough to tap into a creative flow, periodically, that has allowed me to tap into certain talents and skills," Edwards said. "I'm totally blessed, man."