For years, Paul Williams and his wife, Lori, relished and renovated their dream home in Dudley, Georgia, a gleaming estate on a 2-acre lot. A lake twinkled nearby. They had a pool and a hot tub. They believed, truly, they’d be there forever. And Demaryius Thomas joked to Williams about choosing to settle down here, this home 2 miles down the road from the gym where Williams first met the young boy he believed was sent from heaven.
By 2022, they couldn’t bear it anymore. Thomas, who played basketball for Williams at West Laurens High and later became a Denver Broncos legend, died suddenly at age 33 in December 2021. Williams considered him a son and fell into a depressive hold that has yet to truly loosen. He gathered up all his memorabilia of Thomas and put it in the center of the living room. He sold the house. They moved away from extended family. They left their dream.
“We just thought, ‘This is what God needed for the healing process,'” Williams said.
The 56-year-old Williams has since found his mind often wanders through hazes of grief to memories of Thomas. And he’s thought, continually, of a conversation he had with the five-time Pro Bowler in Thomas’s final year in Denver in 2018.
“He said, ‘You know what I want us to do when I retire?’ I want us to go all around the world,” Williams said. “And he said, ‘I want us to tell kids it doesn’t matter the color of your skin, how you was raised. But as long as you got love, you can be successful.'”
That central idea birthed a new dream for Williams, a longtime high school basketball coach in Georgia, that has come to fruition this spring. Along with friend and business partner Roger Whitehouse, Williams is founding a new prep basketball school dubbed “Flight 88 Elite,” in honor of Thomas’ former No. 88 jersey. The program will accept between 15 and 30 graduated high school seniors across the country for a 45-game season against a schedule of Division I, Division II, JUCO and prep schools beginning in the 2026-27 basketball season, while enrolling each athlete at partner South Georgia State College to earn collegiate academic credits.
The goal, according to Williams and Whitehouse, is to build relationships with collegiate and professional scouts and leverage Williams’ existing relationships to build exposure for underrecruited players in South Georgia and elsewhere. It’s founded with Thomas’ story in mind: a former three-star football recruit who flew under the radar as a basketball prospect despite obvious talent.
“(There’ll) never be another Demaryius Thomas, of course,” Williams said. “I know that. But maybe, by chance, that we can reach someone — they can somehow be like Demaryius.” entirely sold.
Flight 88 is ultimately caught in a complex web of financial infighting over Thomas’ legacy that complicated his relationships when he was alive — and has sown deep distrust among his closest friends and family since his death.
“I am for the Flight 88 school,” Katina Smith, Thomas’ mother, told The Post. “But I’m also cautious, at the same token. Because we had an issue with some other people saying, ‘We wanted to keep DT’s memory alive.'”
Estate issues
On Dec. 9, 2021, Thomas was found dead in his shower in his home in Georgia. In the years since, research has revealed Thomas to be one of the most prominent names in a long line of football players who developed physical complications from CTE, a brain disease caused by repeated head trauma. Most close friends and family, speaking with The Post last fall for a story on Thomas’s induction into the Broncos’ Ring of Fame, have accepted that football in some way contributed to his death.
Friends Jamuel Jones and Warren McLendon, who were close to Thomas until the end, offered a slightly different perspective on a tragic story.
“It was just — the pain sometimes,” McLendon said back in October, “of being alone. And feeling like, who really cares about him?”
In the fall, Jones texted The Post screenshots of conversations he’d had with Thomas in 2021, where the wide receiver expressed clear frustration about ongoing financial matters.
“Family is a headache,” Thomas texted, in one screenshot shared by Jones.
“Actually dealing with something right now and it’s hectic and big part of the other side of family,” a subsequent text read.
Thomas sent one more.
“Killing me.”
When Thomas was 11 years old, his mother, Katina Smith, and grandmother, Minnie Pearl Thomas, were arrested for their role in a cocaine ring run by Pearl Thomas from their home in Georgia. Smith wasn’t released from prison until 2016, when Thomas was 29. Father Bobby was in and out of Thomas’ life. Friends and family alike told The Post that Thomas, thereafter, was plagued by trust issues until the time of his death. Williams took a job at a high school three hours away during Thomas’ senior year at West Laurens; still, years later, Thomas would suddenly look at Williams and tell him, “You left me.”
And Thomas grew to answer his phone hardly ever, his father told The Post in October, because of family members who’d ask for money every time they called.
“Family,” Bobby said then, “had ruined it for everybody.”
In death, it worsened. Thomas — — left an estate worth roughly $40 million, Bobby told The Post. But he didn’t have a complete physical will written out, Bobby said, at the time of death. Under Georgia state law, his parents . Smith told The Post this week that the process was a “mess,” and Jones said in October that Thomas’ parents were “fussing” over pieces of the estate.
“It was a lot of stuff going on, man,” Jones said then. “It was horrible.”
In July 2022, Bianca Stewart — Thomas’ girlfriend and close confidant in his final months — sued Thomas’ mother for defamation related to the “Gladiator’s Hub,” a planned health care facility and research center for athletes with neurological diseases that Stewart had continued planning after Thomas’ death. According to the original complaint reviewed by The Post, Stewart alleged that Thomas had developed a 164-page PowerPoint presentation, including his “vision for the organization” and “potential site locations for the facility,” before his death, and that he planned to create charitable trusts to fund the facility.
Stewart, the complaint alleges, had begun soliciting donations to the Gladiator’s Hub from Thomas’ friends and family and approached the executor of his estate to request additional donations. Smith attempted to “shut it down,” the complaint reads, and wrote on social media she hadn’t given permission to create the nonprofit.
The suit demanded $2.5 million in damages be paid to both Stewart and the Gladiator’s Hub. The case was eventually transferred to the U.S. District Court for Northern Georgia.
Years later, Smith is “very skeptical” about anyone trying to raise money in her son’s name, she said. That includes Flight 88 and Williams, with whom she maintains a healthy relationship.
“I’m happy that this is something that he wants to do,” Smith said. “And I know it’s going to take a lot to make this happen. But I just want to make sure he’s doing it for the right reasons, and I don’t want him to misuse anyone that donates to this.”
Bobby Thomas, too, said he likes what Williams is doing. But he added he had “mixed feelings,” and noted Williams hadn’t interacted much with Thomas in the couple of months before he died.
“At this point, I appreciate what he’s doing for the legacy of my son,” Thomas said. “But I just don’t want to invest in the matter, with the way things went.”
Williams’ mission
Williams, for his part, has repeatedly insisted in multiple conversations with The Post across the past week that he and Whitehouse won’t pocket a dime from Flight 88.
“Listen,” Williams said Friday, “I’m not in this for any money at all.”
Smith has known the full story of Williams and Thomas’s relationship, which began as a young Thomas hopped into pickup basketball games with Williams in Dublin, Georgia, and continued as a lifelong friendship. Still, she said Flight 88 charging a tryout fee raises “red flags” for her and that charging such a fee is something her son — if alive — “wouldn’t do.”
Williams and Whitehouse, though, have both said the tryout fees for Flight 88 will go directly toward uniform, travel and education costs, and that the program isn’t planning to charge any additional costs for athletes once accepted. Players will remain on the South Georgia State campus as part of their partnership, Whitehouse said, and take fewer than 12 collegiate credits to avoid losing a season of potential NCAA eligibility.
“The whole thing, if we can do it right — I feel we’re doing what Demaryius wanted, what Paul wants, and what his family wants,” Whitehouse said.
The 56-year-old Williams will retire from high school duties in May. To him, this is a labor of hope and a labor of grief.
After Williams left, Thomas was drawn away from basketball toward football, setting in motion a life that brought a remarkable legacy and a tragic end. Williams knew, in bits and pieces, that Thomas was struggling with seizures in his final months. But the receiver, who retired in June 2021, didn’t want to see many people.
When asked about Bobby’s claims that he and Thomas hadn’t talked much before his death, Williams said family members had told him firsthand that Thomas was actively trying to avoid him because he didn’t want his former coach to hurt.
“It’s been hard,” Williams said, “since he’s been gone. And you see signs, and you think about him all the time. But this way, I can actually go out and — itap going to sound weird what I’m saying — itap going to be my way of being with him again. Because I get to see Flight 88. I get to see pictures of him. I get to tell stories about him.
“Itap like I’m going to work every day,” Williams continued, “with Demaryius.”
Williams repeatedly told The Post that he wouldn’t move forward with Flight 88 unless Thomas’ parents were in favor of the venture. They are. But not without a larger caution, much bigger than Williams.
“Based off what I have witnessed, and based off what I have seen, it seems to be a genuine relationship,” Smith said, on Williams and Thomas’ shared journey. “But also, with the same token, with someone doing a big venture as this, I still have some questions and I still have some apprehensions about everything.
“Because DT has a good name,” she added. “And I want it to stay that way.”
