Mourners gather at a memorial service for former U-M football player and Ann Arbor police officer Vada Murray.

Angela J. Cesere | AnnArbor.com

"True story,” Warde Manuel began.

At the start of his freshman year at Michigan in 1986, he arrived in his dorm room before his new roommate, unpacked his belongings and left for football practice.

The roommate in question arrived while Manuel was gone.

Vada Murray came late that day because he was a Prop 48 - that is, in NCAA code, a borderline student who couldn’t practice or play college sports until certain academic requirements were met.

He wasn’t pleased.

“He didn’t say hello,” Manuel said Thursday, in front of an audience of hundreds of people at Cliff Keen Arena. “He said, ‘I see you have already picked out your bed.”

Murray used a few choice words. Manuel uttered a few back. It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

Another true story: Murray was eligible in no time at all. Over the course of his career as a defensive back, he forced enough turnovers and created enough big plays on special teams that he earned an invitation to the NFL combine, an annual showcase for pro prospects.

He turned it down. Manuel wasn’t surprised. Throughout their college years, he had seen Murray waste countless hours in front of the television, watching ‘CHiPs’ and every other cop show he could find. There was never a doubt of where Murray was headed.

While filing into the arena Thursday under a quote that read, “When we are born, each of us has a destiny,” hundreds of police offers confirmed Murray’s course.

They were among the mourners who paid tribute to Murray, 43, who died of advanced-stage lung cancer April 6. They came from departments around the state and conducted a solemn procession in front of a casket draped with an American flag and decorated with children’s drawings.

Ann Arbor Police Chief Barnett Jones remembered meeting Murray at the Oakland Police Academy. “I met a Michigan football star who wanted to be a cop, and there, he met the good street cop who wanted to be the Michigan football player,” Jones said.

Murray was indeed a Michigan football star. He was indeed a fine officer - a “cop’s cop,” Jones said - serving in a community he never left for 20-some years.

But he was more, much more. That might explain why two fire trucks stretched an oversized American flag over the intersection of Huron and Fifth for the funeral procession to pass under en route to Forest Hill Cemetery.

Vada Murray with his wife, Sarah.

Or why former football players and police officers gathered from near and far Thursday - some hadn’t seen Murray in decades, some saw him in his final days. It didn’t matter.

They came to remember a man of few words, who reserved them for giving short bursts of insults to the best of friends. They remembered an uncle who cared about the grades of his nieces and nephews.

They honored a son and a husband and a father - perhaps most importantly the last one.

You didn’t have to know Vada Murray to know how fiercely he loved his three children. Pictures provided the evidence Thursday. Of vacations spent playing on sandy beaches and silly smiles into the camera.

True story. On a late October night in 2008, Murray returned home from a week-long hospital stay, his family reeling from his diagnosis and his body ravaged by major surgery. He listened to a voicemail from a friend, former Michigan wrestler John Fisher. Murray’s wife, Sarah, listened as he returned the call and left a message.

“Fish.”

“Vada.”

“Got your message.”

“Don’t think that because I have cancer, I can’t still kick your ass.”

“Later.”

The truth is stranger than fiction; it’s also better than fiction. You can’t script a life better than Vada Murray’s. He represents the best of what college athletics is about, a Prop 48 kid given a chance he might never otherwise have received.

A chance to play football, a chance to be a cop, a chance to do great things, no matter how long or short his time on earth.

Pete Bigelow covers Michigan football for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at (734) 623-2551, via email at petebigelow@annarbor.com and followed on Twitter @PeterCBigelow.