Twelve-year-old William Rumbley hadn’t heard of Herschel Walker.

“Not until my dad told me about him last week,” he said.

And there were those amid the few hundred gathered at the Fort Gibson Youth Football season-ending banquet at Kilharen’s Lodge in west Muskogee on Saturday night who knew him as a competitor on the most recent edition of Donald Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice.” But Rumbley had the lowdown.

“He played for the Dallas Cowboys,” he said.

Quite frankly, you could link Walker to any number of things — from reality TV star to Heisman Trophy winner to standout running back for four different NFL teams to one-time member of the U.S. Bobsled team in the Olympics and even one who has trained to go to work for the FBI.

And here he was Saturday, playing a little bit of evangelist during a break in training for his next big adventure, a career in Mixed Martial Arts. He flew from his training quarters in California to Dallas and made the 4 1/2 hour drive to Muskogee as guests of Frank and Alicia Cabal of Fort Gibson, who he met three years ago while participating in the Kyle Petty Charity Ride, a cross-country motorcycle event that benefits terminally ill children.

And from the admiring glow of some of the dads in the audience, Walker was well known enough and by the end of the night, everyone had a solid idea of the identity of a man who grew from an overweight kid with a speech impediment to a world-class athlete, even now at 47 years of age.

“Kids wouldn’t play with me because I was a little fat and couldn’t talk well,” Walker told the gathering. “My older brothers, they were good athletes, and one day, their high school coach asked me what I liked to do and I said I like to watch TV. He told me ‘Well when you’re laying on the floor watching TV I want you to do these push-ups and sit-ups.’”

His parents, whom he said wanted him to grow up to be a preacher, introduced him to Jesus Christ. One message locked in to his thinking.

“We’re all kings and we’re all queens,” he said. “We forget God has made us special.”

Getting in touch with his self has at times been a struggle. He recently authored a book “Breaking Free” where he speaks of a struggle following his retirement from football with dissociative identity disorder, or DID, formerly known as multiple personality disorder. In the book, he speaks about having a dozen alternate personalities and how the condition nearly drove him to suicide.

He reflected on the self-love that some look at as arrogance among athletes like Terrell Owens and said, put into perspective, that kind of love is necessary.

“Hey I’ll look into the mirror and say ‘I love me some Herschel Walker,’” he said. “We forget God has made us special. Every morning you get up, you need to walk up and look into that mirror and say ‘I love who I am.’ But be willing to pay the price and by that I mean, you’ve got to walk into the classroom and pick up those books and get to study. If the coaches are coaching you’ve got to let them coach you. If you want that crown, you’ve got to go get it. It ain’t coming to you and life isn’t easy.”

In a chat with the Phoenix prior to his address on Saturday, Walker said people today still doubt that he’s conditioned himself away from basic weight training.

“I’ve had people from high school, college and even some professional programs talk to me out of an interest of my longevity in pro ball and all the things I continue to do, then they really don’t believe me,” he said. “I just say to everyone you’ve got to believe in what you’re doing. I know how I got here. I also have no tolerance for all the drugs out there that can make you a better athlete. My thing about that is there should be a zero tolerance with steroid use. If you do it, you get stripped of playing it because you’re taking the place of someone else who isn’t.”

Walker has helped raise money and awareness for mental illness and its various kinds, with a focus on benefiting military hospitals across the country.

Looking back at his many passions over the years, would there be any change to the path he’s taken if he had a chance to start over?

“I don’t believe I’d change that much because I think God has blessed me through football to have an opportunity do a whole lot of things and touch a lot of people,” he said. “I’ve been blessed. I’ve had a lot of tough times but I’ve had a lot of good times as well.”

The fifth-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do signed with Strike Force MMA and should make his MMA debut early next year.