JOLIET – Raul Weeks was a father figure to many youths at the Boys & Girls Club of Joliet.

One of them was Mike Smith, 19, who said Weeks used to play basketball with his father, before he died in 2008. Weeks encouraged him to come to the Boys & Girls Club, where he played basketball with Smith and mentored him.

Weeks died Wednesday after his bicycle was struck by a pickup truck. He was 57.

“It’s hard for me because I knew him for a long time. He was always there to help me when I was down,” Smith said.

Friends and family remember Weeks, a lifelong Joliet resident, as someone who always had a smile on his face but was also a fierce basketball player despite his small size when he was young. He worked not only for the Boys & Girls Club but for Joliet Central High School as a security guard.

Kimberly Weeks, his sister, said her brother always was athletically inclined, and often played baseball and basketball. He always smiled, she said, and always tried to say something nice about everybody.

“He was my brother. I loved him. He will be sorely missed. We were very close, we were very close,” she said.

Weeks, along with many of his friends graduated, from Joliet Central in 1976.

R. Dale Evans grew up with Weeks, went to the same school and was in the same graduating class. He said they connected through sports and he remembered Weeks as someone who was small in his youth and always picked last in basketball.

But over time he became the guy everyone wanted on their team, said Evans, who is a Joliet Township High School District 204 board member. Weeks would grow up to be someone who would make an impact on the lives of youths around him, too.

“He demonstrated what a small man can do in the court and in life with persistence and practice,” Evans said.

Basketball was a rite of passage for youths in Joliet growing up, said Ernest McCullum, another lifelong friend of Weeks. People had to earn their right on the basketball court, he said, and Weeks earned his – and then some.

“He was just a guy you couldn’t get mad at even when he blew you away on the basketball court,” McCullum said.

Kahlil Diab, executive director of the Boys & Girls Club, said Weeks was one of the most generous people he ever met and his priority “first and foremost was the kids.”

Weeks is survived by sons, Michael and Aron, and daughter, Jessica; his mother, Alice M. Weeks; six sisters; two brothers; four grandchildren; companion Pamela Dixon; and numerous nieces, nephews and cousins.

Funeral services for Weeks will be at 11 a.m. Friday at St. Paul Missionary Baptist Church, 1404 Briggs St. in Joliet. Visitation will be from 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday at Range Funeral Home, 202 S. Eastern Ave. in, Joliet and Friday 10 to 11 a.m. at the church. The Rev. Larry V. Tyler will officiate.