NEW ORLEANS — When Devon Walker enters the James W. Wilson Center for Intercollegiate Athletics on Tulane’s campus, he smiles.

People come to say hi, and he makes the rounds to the offices of his friends. He’s a familiar face around the building. An inspirational one, too.

None of Tulane’s current athletes were members of the Green Wave when Walker was paralyzed during a football game Sept. 8, 2012, but he’s remained a constant presence around the team. The football program has honored him with his No. 18 visible at Yulman Stadium and on the flag that is waved when the team runs out of the tunnel.

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Now Tulane is making sure it honors Walker permanently. At Thursday’s football opener against Wake Forest, Tulane will retire No. 18 across all sports.

“I don’t have words to describe it,” Walker told The Athletic. “I was really content just having the 18 up there. It really means a lot to me. It means the Tulane community is still behind me. They’re still showing me support.

“They appreciate not only what I have done, but what I’d tried to embody in myself to show other people who are going through my situation or might be in a different situation and are looking for a reason to keep going and keep being better and improving.”

You might remember Walker’s injury. You might not know how he responded to it.

He returned to school in a wheelchair a year after the injury and earned his undergraduate degree in 2014. He earned a master’s degree in neuroscience last December.

“In the face of adversity, you hope you’d react and respond in the way he did,” Tulane athletic director Troy Dannen told The Athletic. “I’m not sure I would’ve had the power and courage.”

Walker doesn’t have feeling below his shoulders. He moves his motorized wheelchair with a mouthpiece and breathes using a ventilator. But he still gets out as much as possible, coming to watch Tulane practice and all the games.

Finally finished with school, Walker is eager to figure out what’s next. But first, he’s focused on one thing.

“Right now, I’m just ready for football season.”

Tulane is a top-40 university academically, according to U.S. News & World Report, and Walker might have been there without football.

A strong student growing up in nearby Destrehan, La., Walker wanted to continue playing football after high school, so he walked on to the Tulane team as a safety and began studying pre-med. Half of his schooling was paid through a need-based academic scholarship, but the rest was paid with student loans — which he says he’s still paying off.

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“There would be times when we’d have workouts, have three classes in the morning and then 10 minutes to grab lunch and get back and dressed for practice,” Walker said. “And then we’d go back to class and study hall. It was a grind. It was a tough two years.”

Walker played in nine games as a true freshman in 2009 and all 12 games in 2010. The next year, he earned a full athletic scholarship from then-head coach Bob Toledo.

“It made me feel accomplished. It made me feel appreciated,” Walker said.

By 2012, the Green Wave had a new coach in Curtis Johnson. Walker was close to graduating with a degree in cell and molecular biology and was a senior leader on the team.

In the second game, Tulane trailed Tulsa 35-3 before halftime. The final play of the first half, in a blowout, figured to be routine and inconsequential. Devon Walker’s mother, Inez, who was watching on TV because she had stayed home for a wedding, had gotten up and gone to the kitchen.

Tulsa completed a pass on a crossing route, 30 yards from the end zone. Devon Walker broke through a block to help on a group tackle. As he moved in, the Tulsa player was tackled by the legs and dropped, and Devon Walker’s head collided with another teammate.

“Some things are kind of (fuzzy). I have a little retrograde amnesia from it,” Devon Walker said, trying to remember the play. “It’s kind of like it’s foggy, but it’s not foggy. You can remember specifics about certain things, like who was chasing after the guy running, tackle, he started tripping up right before I got to him, so my head went down and the crown of my head hit one of my teammates. I remember having a feeling like everything went numb, and my arms and legs were in a different position than I could see them. I couldn’t breathe.”

He blacked out.

Inez Walker heard the TV announcers note that an injury looked bad, and she returned to the room.

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“All I could see was a lot of people around legs. But you know what your child looks like,” Inez Walker told The Athletic. “I had a feeling it was him, but I was saying, ‘Please Lord, don’t let it be him.’ Then they flashed his picture on the screen, and I just lost it.”

Liz Devlin-Ziegler, the football team secretary, had been listening to the game on the radio and got a call from Johnson’s wife, Angel. They needed to get Inez Walker’s phone number to keep her updated.

“When you’re a mom and you see another mom, there’s a level of frantic and dread when you see another parent going through that,” Devlin-Ziegler said.

Then-athletic director Rick Dickson arranged for the Walker family to travel to Tulsa to get to Devon Walker in the hospital. On the way, Inez Walker didn’t want to read anything about her son. Booker Walker, Devon’s father, was a retired EMT and could tell where things were headed. At one of the stops on the trip, Inez Walker pulled up an article that noted Devon had a cervical spine injury and a broken neck. He was paralyzed.

“We lost a lot that day,” Johnson told The Athletic. “That day took a lot out of us.”

Devon Walker was later told he flirted with his nurses. He doesn’t remember it, but he laughs about it now. After 10 days in Tulsa that included a medically induced coma, he was moved to the Shepherd Center in Atlanta for three months of rehabilitation.

“I was thinking, tomorrow I’ll get up and walk again. The next day, I’ll get up and walk again. It’ll be fine,” Devon Walker said. “I’m going to bounce back from it like any injury. The days went by, months went by.”

Before the injury, Devon Walker was fiercely independent. To return home and have to rely on other people for everything was frustrating. He battled depression for a while. At the time, there was little feeling and nothing he could control.

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A combination of insurance and fundraising helped pay for adjustments to Inez Walker’s house. At home, nurses get Walker up, dress him and are with him 12 hours a day for six days a week. He has physical therapy two days a week for two hours, and he is transported in a large Mercedes-Benz van. Family is always around to help. When Devon Walker sleeps, he can’t remain on one side for more than six hours, so his mother has to turn him over.

As the reality of the situation set in, Devon Walker had to figure out what to do with the rest of his life. He decided to return to Tulane and finish his degree. He had to finish what he started.

“We talked about it, and he basically said he wanted to go back because if he didn’t, he felt everything would have been in vain,” Inez Walker said. “He wanted to complete his degree. I was totally behind that.”

He needed physical help from nurses and teammate and close friend Jacob Davis, from taking notes to working in the lab, but he knew what he was doing, and he knew what needed to be done. Voice-activated computers helped him dictate. He did schoolwork alongside rehab.

In May 2014, he completed his goal, receiving his degree in cell and molecular biology and crossing the stage to receive his diploma. Inez Walker cried. That same day, he signed a one-day contract with the New Orleans Saints. Former Saints player Steve Gleason, who is in a wheelchair because of ALS, became one of Devon Walker’s close friends.

“To me, it was a feeling something along the lines of euphoria,” Devon Walker said of graduation. “When you work hard for something, put in a lot of hours, and all of a sudden you get to your goal — OK, I’m here, I did it, it was worth it. I showed I could do it. What’s next?”

He continued multiple treatments to help his physical condition, and he returned to school in 2015 for a master’s degree in neuroscience. He wanted to better understand his injury and what kinds of medical treatment he should be looking for. Tulane paid for his schooling.

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Dannen became Tulane’s athletic director in late 2015, and Devon Walker was one of the first people he met with upon getting the job.

“A lot of people have this ideal situation laid in front of them and don’t take advantage of it,” Dannen said. “As much as it says about Devon, hopefully it sends a message to everybody else. ‘Look how important this is to him. Why is it not that important to me?’ I’ve used the word courage a couple of times. When he couldn’t play football anymore, he didn’t walk away from what he set out to accomplish. In fact, he’s done it and done it in spades again. That, to me, is a special breed of person that is willing and able to do that.”

In 2016, Devon Walker helped create the Devon Walker Foundation, which raises money to provide equipment and medical treatment for other people dealing with spinal-cord injuries and paralysis. Walker said the high-profile attention around his injury helped get him assistance, and other people may not have that. He also knows what has helped him and what he could have used earlier and wants to assist others in any way he can.

Through charity events like basketball games, Walker estimates around $50,000 has been raised, and it all goes to help others.

“I saw a need in the community and I just try to help as much as I can to get that equipment or various things to better their lives,” he said.

Walker said he’s probably done with school, and he has ideas in mind for what’s next. The NFL Player Care Foundation works with the Tulane School of Medicine for its Healthy Body and Mind Screening program, and he is interested in helping. He also wants to grow his foundation.

Some days, he sleeps in. Some days, he just goes out to hang out with people. Though he spends a lot of time watching YouTube or other videos, he wants to get outside. He’s social and is often around his friends from high school and college. He’d like to travel more, but he understands it’s a difficult process.

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Sometimes Inez Walker has to push back, worried he’s doing too much, but she understands his independence.

“He doesn’t shy away from anything,” she said. “He wants to live life as best he can.”

Whatever he does next, he wants to help people in his position.

Devlin-Ziegler remembers the Tootsie Rolls.

She forged a friendship with Devon Walker early in his career. She was the football secretary at the time, and players would regularly come by her desk. She kept a big bowl of candy out, and Walker always grabbed Tootsie Rolls. He often went out of his way to talk with her, and she made sure the candy was always there.

After the injury, Devlin-Ziegler became a vital liaison between the athletic department and the Walker family. To this day, every time Devon Walker comes to campus, he tries to see “Miss Liz,” who is now the athletic department’s director of administrative services.

Walker has remained ingrained in the Tulane community. He still attends all Tulane football games and some Saints games. He’s close with current Green Wave head coach Willie Fritz. Johnson was fired after the 2015 season, but he returned to New Orleans as a Saints assistant in 2017, and he and Devon Walker remain in contact.

Tulane’s locker room includes a locker shrine to Walker. The No. 18 is everywhere, even painted on the front of the new football equipment truck. The number hasn’t been worn in football since his injury, and now it will be remembered at Tulane forever.

While talking about their relationship, Devlin-Ziegler was holding a stack of passes for the opening football game. They were all for Devon Walker and his family. He’d asked for a dozen, and she gave him a few extra. “Lagniappe,” she says, a Louisiana French word for “a little more.”

“He’s such a dear kid,” Devlin-Ziegler said. “In the best of circumstances, it’s tough to get where he is academically. Then you add on what he’s going through, and it’s just a real testament to intestinal fortitude, perseverance, how well he was raised. His parents did a great job with him.

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“He’s always stuck to a good and true path. He never complains. Always in a great mood, jokes, exactly the same as when he was picking up Tootsie Rolls when he would go to practice. It’s a thing to admire. You don’t want to be tested that way, but he’s met the challenge and done an amazing job.”

(Top photo by Parker Waters)