AFTER THE CHEERS HAD STOPPED

EX-PACKER'S LIFE ON STREETS

When Travis Williams was 23 and a star halfback for the Green Bay Packers, it seemed the world would never stop cheering. Reporters waited for him in locker rooms and fans reached out to touch his jersey, to shake his hand, to get his autograph.

But that's history. For the past three years, people have passed him with hardly a glance. Williams, 42, and now a resident of Richmond, Calif., has been homeless for most of that time. He spent nights on street corners and days sleeping on park benches. Three weeks ago, Williams said, he got a part-time job as a security officer for a soup kitchen, earning $8 an hour, two hours a day, six days a week. He moved into a room that costs him $200 a month.

He came to Washington yesterday with several other California housing advocates to protest cuts in the federal housing budget. Williams, wearing worn tennis shoes and sporting a beard sprinkled with gray, met reporters on the Capitol steps.

"I came to make people aware of homelessness," Williams said. "It seems to be something people turn their heads away from. I'm doing stuff like this to just let . . . {the homeless} know they're not the only ones."

Williams, who earned $41,000 a year at the peak of his career, explained patiently to one reporter after another how a series of bad investments and the death of his wife pulled him into a financial hole and mental pit of despair. Each time he repeated the story, there was a sense that he, too, was straining to understand his own explanation.

He came to Washington to support Mitch Snyder and eight other members of the Community for Creative Non-Violence who are fasting until Election Day to protest housing budget cuts and demand that Congress pass a housing bill that increases that budget.

Williams said donations by advocates for the homeless paid for his flight. He joined Snyder and about 25 supporters on the steps of the Capitol, then they walked to the office of Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), a member of the Senate's housing and urban affairs subcommittee, to voice their discontent and to ask that the senator take a stronger leadership role in asking that billions be restored to the housing budget.

Cranston was in California, according to Victoria Lion, his assistant press secretary.

The last time Williams was a media sweetheart was when he played halfback with Green Bay, from 1967 to 1970. He had been the team's fourth draft pick, and left his sophomore class at Arizona State University to join the NFL team. At his athletic peak, the 6-foot-1 Williams weighed 212 pounds. He weighs about 150 now.

In his football days he racked up his share of impressive statistics. He was on the UPI All-Rookie Team in 1967. He was the Packers' leading scorer and rusher in 1969, the same year he was voted "most valuable offensive player" by the Wisconsin Pro-Football Writers.

But a player did not earn six figures for such statistics in those years. Williams drove a truck for the Pabst Brewing Co. during the off-season. The most he ever earned playing football was $41,000 annually. Today's average salary for a running back is $300,000 a year.

Williams left pro ball in 1972, after a bad knee kept him benched.

"I tried opening a recreation center. You know, the type with Pac Man machines," said Williams. "I tried to open a restaurant once."

The businesses folded and Williams drove a beer truck for a while. After he and his wife were evicted from their house in 1977, he said, they spent the next few years in public housing, living on public assistance or the salary from his occasional job as a security officer.

On April 9, 1985, his wife of 23 years died of a drug overdose. Williams would not identify the drug. He said he never has abused alcohol or any other drug.

It is the struggle to help the homeless that has given Williams a new sense of self worth. "Things are picking up since I've thrown myself into this homeless issue," he said. "I was beginning to feel pretty bad about myself.

"I see a way up and it's through me," Williams said. "I never said the system failed me. I just think America should put a little more interest in the homeless."

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.