After three years of exhaustive research and interviews with Jehuu Caulcrick and his family, Bill Burk, above, is nearing the completion of a book project that tells the remarkable life story of the Clymer Central School, Michigan State University and NFL player, whose early years were spent in war-torn Liberia. P-J photo by Scott Kindberg

Bill Burk sits at a table at the Chautauqua Sports Hall of Fame in downtown Jamestown, his left hand holding a pen pointed at a notepad as he looks into a camera. In the right corner of the photographer’s viewfinder is a picture of a football player wearing a jersey with Michigan State emblazoned across his chest. His green helmet is snapped in place as he presumably waits for the next offensive snap.

But there are no Xs and Os that can possibly diagram the figurative game plan that Jehuu Caulcrick has navigated in his life, one that began in war-torn Liberia as a little boy; brought him to Findley Lake where he was introduced to American football, and where he led tiny Clymer Central School to the brink of state championships; and that ultimately routed him to East Lansing, Michigan and the Big Ten Conference.

College football at the highest level.

He finishes his Spartans’ career with 2,395 yards rushing and 39 touchdowns, including a school-record 21 his senior year, placing him among the best running backs in school history. He also ends up playing in the National Football League for four teams, including the Buffalo Bills, just another indication of his God-given talents.

Yet that’s only part of his incredible journey. Burk is committed to telling it in its entirety, so he put that figurative pen to paper and, after three years of exhaustive research and interviews with Caulcrick and his family, he’s well into the “red zone” and about to push that remarkable story over the figurative goal line.

But the retired athletic director at Jamestown Community College could use a little help in getting his book, entitled “The Jehuu Caulcrick Story: The Bullet Doesn’t Pick and Choose,” into the literary “end zone.” He’s hoping to accomplish that through Kickstarter, a corporation that, according to its website, “maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity.” It’s stated mission is to “help bring creative projects to life.”

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Burk, who graduated from Southwestern Central School and Grove City College, and obtained his master’s degree from San Diego State University, is a talented writer. Although this is his first book project, he’s had many stories published locally on a variety of topics, which I have found a must-read each time. This one will top my list, because I’m familiar with Caulcrick’s journey as well, having covered his career, beginning more than two decades ago.

“My manuscript … is also story-telling based on imaginative speculation, and on real-life testimonials of people, especially child soldiers, who survived the (Liberian Civil War),” Burk wrote on his Kickstarter campaign website. “I was drawn to his story, of the carnage he witnessed, of the world he survived, of the needle he threaded to arrive in the United States. The puzzle of his life (hiding in the African bush from soldiers wielding AK-47s as a child refugee, to riding in a private jet as a contracted player in the National Football League) is an impossible story of luck, perseverance and faith.”

So, Burk, whose son, Ben, played quarterback for Caulcrick in 2015 when the latter was the head coach at Southwestern Central School, sought to uncover the Chautauqua Sports Hall of Fame inductee’s memories of Africa, about his experiences as an elite athlete and about his family.

“Books about athletes have always been spectacularly popular,” Burk wrote on his Kickstarter campaign website. “The best ones use the life of the athlete as a device to explain more, to show more, to describe a world a reader can’t have seen, and won’t experience except through the eyes of a persona they can remember, embrace and understand.

“Jehuu’s story hits a niche of a very successful college football player and lesser-level professional athlete with a remarkable past, upbringing and history. The backstory is the story, and it’s a doozy.”

Here are a few small snippets from Burk’s manuscript, as told to him by Caulcrick:

My dad was Kru.

He survived the first wave of Liberian genocide, one of the regular cleansings that sparked so many of the civil wars in my home country. His association with the wrong people made his life in Liberia impossible. He fled, and we erased him from our lives, burned his pictures, threw his effects into the ocean. When you’re ambitious in Liberia’s military you better also have all the guns. My dad didn’t.

My mum is Bassa. Soon after my father left she moved to the United States, looking for a better life for me and my sister. This was just before war broke out in my neighborhood. Her timing was a blessing for her; she might not have survived the war.

I didn’t see her for almost three years.

When I was nine, on the refugee road, my Grandpa was shot in the leg, a sniper bullet meant for the back of my head. Gramma pulled the bullet out, tended the wound.

When I was twenty-six I played one down in the National Football League for the Buffalo Bills. I grabbed a football from a professional quarterback, plunged forward for one yard, a lifetime of running coalesced into that moment.

In between a lot happened.

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A Kickstarter campaign, its website notes, is “designed to fund and hire a quality editor, typesetter and book designer. Once that’s accomplished, Burk said he will use those funds to “spread Jehuu’s word of hope and perseverance at book signings and presentations.”

To contribute to Burk’s book project, go to https://www.kickstarter.com/ and search “Jehuu.”