Portland roots: 49ers Kendrick Bourne and his family-focused offseason

As the outcome of Super Bowl LIV continued to nag at Kendrick Bourne in the days after the big game, the 49ers wide receiver sprung into action.

“I was feeling the loss, feeling the hurt,” Bourne said in a phone interview Wednesday of the 49ers’ 31-20 defeat to Kansas City. “So I wanted to get back into it quick.”

Bourne returned to his hometown of Portland. He began working with a local trainer, Aaron Woods, who unleashed an intensive regimen complete with route running, elastic band work, flexibility training and squats — both on a standard weight rack and fully submerged in water.

“I’ve never worked this hard in my life,” Bourne said. “I have more muscle, more defined. I got more core now — and I feel like that’s everything. Acrobatic catches, everything for football starts with the core and that’s where I’m feeling strongest now.”

Of course, NFL players often tout their offseason training programs, but Bourne’s grind was purposefully rooted in parks and gyms near where he grew up — and it seemed exceptional beyond that. Video footage on social media even inspired 49ers linebacker Kwon Alexander to fly to Portland in March.

“Kwon gave him a call,” Andrew Bourne, one of Kendrick’s two older brothers, said in a phone interview earlier this month. “He said, ‘I see you working. I see you doin’ your thing. I’m gonna come down there. I wanna work, too.’

“So Kwon’s like a brother to us now. He was only supposed to stay here seven days. He ended up staying more than month.”

Luisa Turner, Bourne’s mother, suddenly found two of the 49ers’ most vivacious personalities in her Portland living room. In between clusters of intensive training sessions, Alexander took part in Bourne family functions, including Easter and Mother’s Day.

“I was excited when I heard Kwon was coming,” Turner said via FaceTime earlier this month. “Oh, my gosh, he is a really sweet guy. Really nice, very down to earth. I can tell he’s just living his life, enjoying the fruits of his labor. For him to come out here to Portland and to show Kendrick, ‘I’m here to support you’ — it was great.”

This has been a particularly family-oriented offseason for Bourne. The $3.26 million tender Bourne signed with the 49ers in April — a significant pay raise — allowed him to bring both brothers, Andrew and Evans, with him to Santa Clara last month.

The Bourne brothers now live together in the Bay Area, managing the burgeoning Bourne Blessed Foundation. The organization completed its biggest event to date this past Saturday, donating 100,000 pounds of food for COVID-19 relief in San Jose.

The Bourne brothers, from left to right: Andrew, Evans and Kendrick. (Photo courtesy Luisa Turner)

Outside of his foundation’s work, Bourne’s YouTube channel pumps out new content on a weekly basis. “What Will Kendrick Bourne Eat Today?,” a video that’s up to 86,000 views, strives to boost Portland eateries that are struggling through the tough times of the pandemic.

“We’ve been together since the COVID started for four months straight every day,” Andrew Bourne said. “It’s given an opportunity for other people to pitch in and do things. Go up to Portland and give more exposure to Portland businesses. Give them more exposure to the food carts. We’re known for food carts and we just want to show people Portland.”

When Alexander came to town, he became part of the Bournes’ efforts, supporting those iconic food carts — although the family’s house wasn’t quite big enough to fit the linebacker for overnight stays.

“They’re grown men, so they needed their space,” Turner said, laughing.

Bourne had been sleeping in his childhood room until his teammate arrived. At that point, the two 49ers rented a Portland-area Airbnb.

Alexander and Bourne continued training together even after relocating to Santa Clara. The duo’s zest for life remained on display, especially when Alexander astounded Bourne by showing off a special feature of his new car.

“He got a new car, the Rolls-Royce — they got an umbrella in their side door,” Bourne said of Alexander, laughing. “That was the first thing he showed me, and I was like, ‘Bro, you’re a bit different, man.'”

The energy here is indeed unique, but it has been one staple of a highly unusual offseason.

“They have that connection to keep them excited about what’s to come,” Turner said of Alexander and Bourne. “They’re excited about what’s to come because they believe that they’re going to the Super Bowl again. That’s the quest.”

With his new contract, the 24-year-old Bourne is certainly on the right track, but his recent success — coupled with this offseason’s time spent back home in Portland — has served as a reminder of the turnaround story necessary for Bourne to reach this point.

“I was a bad kid in high school,” Bourne said bluntly. “My first year of high school, I was into the wrong things. I was smoking, drinking, skipping school, stealing. I was doing things I wasn’t supposed to be doing.”

Though Bourne played on Benson High’s varsity team as a freshman, he soon found himself out of football — hanging out at Portland’s Holladay Park and the Lloyd Center mall more often than he attended class.

Bourne’s grades suffered, as did his relationship with the coaching staff.

“Sophomore year, I wanted to transfer, so I literally sat out the whole year being dumb,” Bourne said. “I should have just played.”

As a junior, Bourne was suspended for most of the season. That’s when push came to shove.

Bourne decided to transfer and play for former Benson assistant Don Johnson, who’d taken the head coaching job at the Milwaukie Academy of the Arts, a charter school outside Portland. The transfer required Bourne to take the city bus to the suburbs before riding the final mile and a half to school on his skateboard.

“He sat me down and said, ‘Bro, you got one more year to really make it count, so what you gonna do?'” Bourne said of Johnson. “And it really just stuck in my head. Like, bro, you about to be done. You either just gonna be a regular guy working a regular job or doing something you don’t wanna do and you’re just gonna be sad and miserable.

“And it really just stuck with me, you know? I called him my blessing in disguise, my angel that just came down from somewhere to talk to me, and I actually took the blessing.”

But even after Bourne’s transfer, it wasn’t all smooth sailing.

“The first day of school, I’m sitting in the lunchroom,” remembered Johnson, who’s now the director of high school relations for Oregon’s football program. “The lunch lady comes in and tells me: ‘That kid right there just put all the snacks in his Louis bag and went upstairs to class.'”

The “kid” that the Milwaukie lunch lady referred to was Bourne, who had pilfered an entire backpack’s worth of goodies.

Johnson, livid, stormed after Bourne.

“I take his bag and I dump it out, and all the snacks are in there,” Johnson said. “I go crazy: ‘Get your ass out of here, get your ass on the damn bus, take your ass back home, I’m done with you!”

Bourne left, but he didn’t go home.

“Three o’clock that day, school’s out — he’s just standing there outside waiting to talk to me,” Johnson said. “And that was the changing moment. After that day, I don’t think Kendrick ever got in trouble again. He was a campus leader. Went to every class, got a 3.8 GPA. He really was respectful. He stopped every event, every fight, anything, and just turned into a true leader.”

Said Bourne of the incident with Johnson: “It was a ‘what’s wrong with you?’-type deal. ‘What are you doing? You’ve got a future. We talked about it already.’ That’s when he became my true mentor.

“After that situation, I was like, ‘OK, bro, that’s it. I’m really going to change.’ I don’t know what got into me, just all the times I disappointed my parents, all the failure, I was done with it, man, all the negative stuff. I wasn’t gettin’ nothing from it. Just feeling all that disappointment, I was tired of it. So I bought in. I went out there and I went crazy.”

Bourne amassed 1,292 receiving yards on only 54 catches during his 2012 senior year, a staggering average of 23.9 yards per grab. He scored 21 touchdowns, leading a sensational turnaround for Milwaukie football.

“In a town where they hadn’t won a football game in five years — they were like 0-30 — his senior year, he comes in and goes 8-2,” Johnson said of Bourne. “He was an all-state player that led us to an 8-2 season. There are still pictures of Kendrick Bourne in the Milwaukie-area Applebee’s on the wall.”

At around the same time that her son transferred to Milwaukie, Turner took a job as a package handler at FedEx. Turner still works there, working a graveyard shift that’s become more demanding during the pandemic.

With closures and stay-at-home orders fueling a boom of online purchases and shipments, 4 a.m. call times of the past are now a bygone luxury. Five nights a week, Turner now reports to work around 1:30 in the morning, after only an hour or two of sleep.

“It’s been busy,” Turner said. “We were supposed to get drivers out by 8:30 (a.m.), but we haven’t been finishing until 9:30. It feels like Christmas with the hours we are working now.”

Bourne recently told his mother that she “wouldn’t have to go to work anymore in a couple months,” but Turner insists that she has no plans to quit — even if her son’s new contract will be able to boost the family financially.

“I like going into work,” Turner said. “I have friends there.”

Bourne credits the work ethic of his parents for the persistent drive that he’s shown to make it to the NFL and subsequently climb the league’s ladder. Eric Turner, Bourne’s father, owns a landscaping business that Luisa helps manage when she’s not on the clock at FedEx.

“My dad had us working at a young age, earning everything,” Bourne said. “We earned a paycheck. You don’t get paid if you don’t work. Life don’t work like that. We were taught that young.

“My parents had a lot of tough love for me and my brothers coming up. There wasn’t nothing given to us. We had to earn everything that we wanted. Get bad grades and come home and get cell phones and shoes taken away. If you wanted to reap the benefits, you had to do good. … That’s what I want kids to know now. You can’t disobey your parents and expect to get the things you want.”

Of course, Bourne’s rise to professional success wasn’t linear. Even though he excelled on the field and in the classroom as a high school senior, it was too late to draw serious interest from Division I programs.

Bourne played his college ball for FCS power Eastern Washington. And though he excelled for the Eagles — Bourne and Rams receiver Cooper Kupp combined for 639 catches and 9,594 receiving yards over their college careers, becoming the most prolific receiving duo in FCS history — Bourne still flew under the radar.

But he got just enough exposure. Teams like the Jaguars and the 49ers, with new coach Kyle Shanahan, noticed Bourne’s explosive short-area quickness and established contact with him prior to the 2017 NFL Draft.

“With the help of Cooper Kupp bringing in the recruiters and the scouts, they couldn’t help but look at the other side,” Andrew Bourne said of his brother’s time at Eastern. “Who’s this other guy catching all these touchdowns?”

Bourne watched the draft on Johnson’s couch, growing visibly nervous during the seventh and final round.

“He said, ‘Coach, I hope I don’t go right now, please don’t have anyone pick me,'” Johnson recalled Bourne’s words.

“Why, Kendrick?” Johnson asked.

“Because I want to go to the Niners,” Bourne said. “I want to play for Shanahan. I’m telling you: That’s where I want to be.”

Shortly after the draft ended, Bourne’s phone rang. The 49ers were on the other end of the line. They wanted to sign Bourne as an undrafted free agent. The wait hadn’t been easy, but it had certainly been worth it.

“I’ve come to accept that this is just part of the way the journey was supposed to go in his life,” Turner said of her son. “He’s just gotta earn it because this is the road he is taking.”

Shanahan underlined the family-oriented nature of this all before the Super Bowl, saying that Bourne reminded him of his 10-year old son, Carter.

“I just meant that as in he’s very innocent in a lot of things,” Shanahan said of Bourne at the time. “He’s just very upbeat. The way you guys see him make a great catch in a game, in a divisional playoff game with a diving catch over the middle in a huge pressure situation. The way he gets up and does his dances and stuff, it’s like, ‘How is the pressure not getting to him?’

“It’s because that’s exactly how he looks on Wednesday. I bet you that’s exactly how he woke up out of bed today when he probably ate Froot Loops and watched cartoons. The guy is just the same all the time. The pressure doesn’t get to him and he’s fun to be around.”

Turner noticed Shanahan’s comment regarding Bourne and his 10-year-old son online, so she immediately asked her own son about it.

“He loves his son, doesn’t he?” a laughing Bourne said about Shanahan, according to Turner. “That means he loves me!”

During the second week of his rookie season in 2017, Bourne slept in and missed a 7 a.m. team meeting. Shanahan was incensed, calling Bourne — who’d be inactive for several weeks after the incident — into his office to deliver a lecture meant to put the rookie on track.

“His high school situation and story is the same story as the league,” Johnson said of Bourne. “He had that one time where he was late and got reprimanded, and guess what happened after that? Never again. When that happened, it reminded of that situation of him and I with the Louis bag and the snacks.

“With Kendrick, you tear his ass up one time, and he doesn’t want to let you down again. It’s not even one of those things where it’s a reprimand. He just feels bad to let you down. Doesn’t want to again. And Kendrick Bourne loves Kyle Shanahan.”

Bourne has two kids of his own now. He scored his first career touchdown with his son Valentin, now 3 years old, in attendance at an NFL game for the first time in 2018. Bourne’s daughter, Mila Marie, is celebrating her first birthday on Friday.

Bourne says that increasing responsibility has brought more maturity.

“There’s more on my plate now,” Bourne said. “Taking care of my family, wanting to be a winner, the whole nine yards. I’m excited to receive that contract. Now, I’m ready to go earn it.”

Said Andrew Bourne of his brother: “He’s grown up, more mature, more focused to take on a head role now, fourth year in the league. He’s bought in and is ready to go.”

The whole family, in turn, has bought into Bourne’s growing efforts to give back to the community.

Bourne couldn’t attend Saturday’s food giveaway in San Jose — he’d been training with 49ers teammates in Nashville when a player reportedly tested positive for coronavirus, so Bourne remained home as a precaution while he waited for his test results to come back — but his son, mom, nieces and nephews all came out to volunteer.

It was a festive event full of music and dancing. Bourne watched his family load dozens of cars with big boxes of free food through social media.

“We were just showing them the kind of people we are, how we grew up giving back not expecting nothing in return,” Bourne said of his family, saying he’s looking forward to hosting a turkey giveaway at Thanksgiving. “They were all out here just enjoying it. We’ve always been the type to give back, and that’s where blessings come back to us in ways we don’t even see.”

Fittingly, the Bourne Blessed Foundation was inspired by family.

Ronald and Michael Bourne, Turner’s brothers and Kendrick’s uncles, are both on the higher end of the autism spectrum. (Because autism prevents their uncles from fathering children, Kendrick, Andrew and Evans all took the Bourne last name instead of their dad’s — Turner — to ensure that it’s passed down to future generations.)

The foundation’s primary goal, even though it’s striving to build a diverse portfolio of community service efforts, is rooted in fundraising for autism awareness.

“My uncles, they’re almost 40 years old now and they’ve always had a smile on their face,” Bourne said. “They’re just free-spirited. They don’t bring stress to anybody. They’re unique. I love seeing them and I want to bring them out to more games this year. They’re always wearing my jersey everywhere they go.

“I’ll never take it for granted, how they appreciate me and how I appreciated them when I was a kid. Any time we wanted to go to the park or ride bikes, they would take us. They’ve always been happy. Never bad energy. I’ve always cherished that. They’re precious to me. I’ve always wanted to do something for their situation.”

Luisa Turner, her son Kendrick Bourne, and her brothers Ronald and Michael Bourne after the 49ers’ Week 17 win in Seattle. (Courtesy: Luisa Turner)

Earlier this month, Bourne shared a video that included his goals for the 2020 season etched onto a mirror in his house. A list read:

Be a starter
Always be a leader
Wake up early
Win a Super Bowl
1k WR
Be Legendary

Bourne, who caught 36 passes for 446 yards and six touchdowns as the No. 3 wideout throughout last season’s regular season and playoffs, expects an uptick in usage in 2020. The 49ers have lost veteran receiver Emmanuel Sanders to free agency, while starter Deebo Samuel is sidelined with a broken foot (Samuel said he expects to be back in time for Week 1).

“I always try to have my body ready for those two-minute situations,” Bourne said. “Emmanuel, he was able to go, like, eight plays in a row and he didn’t seem tired. I looked at stuff like that and want to have myself ready because I feel like I’m gonna have a bigger role.”

And though virus concerns caused the 49ers to wrap up player-led throwing sessions early, Bourne said the unofficial workouts — which took place over several sessions at both San Jose State and in Nashville — were productive.

“It was awesome, man,” Bourne said, pointing out that in the previous offseason, quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo — rehabbing from a torn ACL at the time — didn’t throw at all to the team’s receivers. “You can tell Jimmy is more comfortable in the offense making his reads now. We don’t go out there and just run routes now. We’re calling out coverages, we’re calling out man or press. We’re trying to get realistic looks without the defense being out there.”

Bourne said that the work has been beneficial for timing and chemistry. A year after it took the 49ers’ passing attack several weeks to fire on full cylinders, he expects the offense to flow better from the get-go in 2020.

Regardless of specific on-field dynamics, the 49ers are counting on Bourne to remain a key cog of the team behind the scenes.

Bourne’s energetic dancing — Turner, a native of American Samoa, explains that this is a big part of island culture — is already a staple. In the lead-up to the Super Bowl, Sanders explained Bourne is “good for the ecosystem of this team” — and even Hall of Famer Jerry Rice latched on to the wide receiver’s bubbly disposition during the 49ers’ playoff run.

Perhaps Johnson can speak to Bourne’s impact in this regard better than anyone, having seen the wideout bind Milwaukie Academy’s team together for that remarkable turnaround back in 2012.

“The one thing that people don’t understand about Kendrick: He’s a locker-room guy,” Johnson said. “He’s a guy who brings the guy who plays country music in his car when he hunts together with the guy who plays rap in his car and wears a bunch of chains.

“Especially in this time right now, with all this social justice stuff going on, and this time in America, Kendrick Bourne is who you want in your locker room. He’ll walk in with the linemen one day laughing, he’ll walk in with the DBs one day laughing. He keeps the locker room together. That part alone is not expressed enough.”

Bourne has taken an active role in the ongoing movement for racial justice, marching and speaking at a peaceful protest in Milpitas two weeks ago. This is all part of Bourne’s development both on and off the field; addressing a large crowd at the protest, he stressed the importance of using his growing platform to encourage change.

That platform, of course, will only grow larger if Bourne progresses and approaches his goals in 2020. He has a chance to earn a long-term NFL contract — a major milestone for any player — this season.

“The greatest thing about Kendrick: He’s gonna be a fourth-year veteran and he’s 24 years old,” Johnson said. “He has a lot more to go.”

And he’s already come a long way from undrafted status in 2017. Life is evolving very, very quickly.

When Bourne, fresh off playing in the Super Bowl, returned to stay in his childhood room in Portland, a reality of this whirlwind hit his mother.

“When he comes home, I see him as my baby boy, even though he’s grown,” Turner said of Bourne. “I spoil him. We treat him as if he’s the son that stays upstairs and comes down when it’s time to eat and then goes up back up to play his game.

“But I realize that the next time he comes home, he’ll probably be coming to his own home. He won’t be coming here and going upstairs to his room.”

Times change, but the tight bond of the Bourne family almost certainly won’t.

A family meal. (Courtesy Luisa Turner)

(Top photo: Alika Jenner / Getty Images)

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