Former NFL great Roosevelt Taylor honored in New Orleans

6th August 2012   ·   0 Comments

By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor

Former NFL great Roosevelt Taylor, a two-time Super Bowl champion and former Joseph S. Clark Senior High School standout, was recently honored in his hometown by an eastern New Orleans-based group.

On Tuesday, July 17, 2012, the Nazareth Inn Residents Council held a dedication ceremony at its Hayne Blvd. facility during which its dining room hall was renamed in honor of Roosevelt Taylor. Taylor was also presented with proclamations from State Rep. Austin Badon and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. July 17 was declared Roosevelt Taylor Day.

That was a long way from Joseph S. Clark High School where Taylor was a star athlete who excelled in three sports. “Basketball was my best sport,” the NFL living legend said during a visit Tuesday to The Louisiana Weekly Tuesday. “When I was in the 11th grade I could dunk the basketball with two hands even though I was only 5’11”.”

Although he would later be cut two times by Grambling men’s basketball coach Fred Hobdy, that leaping ability would later earn him a roster spot in professional football. “That’s one of the big reasons I made the pros,” he told The Weekly. “When they saw me jump up and grab the crossbar on the goalpost, it was over with.”

Taylor grew up in the Lower Ninth Ward, where he and his friends played in the streets and waited for a chance to sneak onto the Holy Cross High School. “Holy Cross’ grass was cut and greet, and we played ball until we saw the priests coming,” Taylor said. “Then we knew we were on our way out.”

Before enrolling at Clark, Rosey Taylor attended McCarthy Elementary School in the Lower Ninth Ward, which was located on the site of the current Martin Luther King Jr. Charter School.

After graduating from Clark, Taylor walked on at Grambling State University, paying his own tuition his first semester. He began to blossom into a bonafide gridiron star his sophomore season, scoring on runs of 87 and 75 yards in back-to-back games against Tennessee State and Texas Southern.

Legendary GSU coach Eddie Robinson would later say that that was the year his young charge became “Rosey Taylor.”

Asked about “Coach Rob,” Taylor said, “He was definitely solid. What he said, he did, and more. He used to push us and push us, and he had a coaching staff that was really good.”

Taylor met Claudia, his soulmate and a native of Marian, La., at Grambling when the two were freshmen and “walked down the road to the preacher’s house and got married when we were seniors.”

In 1960 Taylor and his G-Men teammates earned Grambling’s first Southwestern Athletic Conference championship.

In 1961 he was signed as a free agent by the Chicago Bears and remained there for eight and a half seasons, never missing a single game. Taylor and Mike “Iron Mike” Ditka were two of the four rooks to make the Bears squad in 1961.

The two men became great friends and Chicago Bears head coach Mike Ditka would later hire Brian, Rosey Taylor’s only son, after getting a phone call from Rosey. “Mike said, ‘Really? You’re talking about little Brian?’” Taylor recalled. “’Man, he got your blood. I’ll sign him tomorrow.”

Taylor would later tell Gramb­lingLegends.net, “I think they got a pretty good deal with me. I was out there every second when I was with the Bears.”

Taylor led the NFL in interceptions in 1963 with 9, pulling down a career total of 32 passes. His three interceptions for touchdowns tied for the most by any safety in Bears history, and was tied for the second-most ever. He is also the first of just two Chicago free safeties to be named first-team All-Pro, later having been joined by Mike Brown in 2001.

Taylor’s exploits on the gridiron, including being twice named a Pro Bowl selection, were good enough to land him a spot in the second annual Grambling Legends Sports Hall of Fame class, which was inducted on July 17, 2010 at the Monroe Civic Center.

In addition to being widely considered the best defensive back to ever don a Bears jersey, Rosey Taylor was listed among The 50 Best Bears by The Chicago-Sun Times and is a member of the Greater New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame.

Taylor says his success on the gridiron was in part the result of his commitment to preparing to compete before he took the field. “I used to go out at 11:30 or 12 o’clock, I’d sneak out of the dormitory to go and work out,” he said. “I’m a nut about training. I believe in training.

“Anybody who has ever trained with me will tell you ‘That son of a gun never gets tired — he just runs and runs and keeps on bouncing.’”

With regard to the insinuation that Coach Rob isn’t really the nation’s winningest college football coach because his GSU teams and all HBCU teams were by definition inferior to white college football’s legendary programs, Taylor refuses to bite his tongue or mince his words. “Our greatest ballplayers at the Black schools back in the day would have beat the living hell out of the best — Michigan State, Ohio State and all these schools — if we could have played against them,” Taylor said. “We would have just beat the hell out of all of them if we could have played against them. That’s the reason why they started going down to these Black schools and recruiting.”

Taylor, who turned 75 on July 4, says it meant “a helluva lot” to him when he learned that Nazareth Inn’s Resident Council wanted to name the assisted living center’s dining room hall after the NFL great. “That meant so much to me,” he added.

As much as he appreciates the love and support of fans, fellow New Orleanians and other professional athletes, Taylor says it is somewhat disappointing that he has not received the kind of recognition from the City of New Orleans and the NFL he so richly deserves. “New Orleans has never done anything for me,” Taylor told The Louisiana Weekly. “All of the ballplayers that I run across from time to time say, ‘May, you should’ve been inducted 20 years ago’ because I had a hell of a career. Three teams, all of them won championships and during the years that they won championships I led the team in tackles, interceptions, etc.”

Taylor says he learned early on to be grateful for the things he has and mindful of the way he treats others. “There’s always somebody worse off than you,” he reflected. “We should always bear that in mind.

“I treat everybody well,” he added. “I speak to everybody and don’t need to be the center of attraction.”

Asked about the love of his life, Taylor says, “That country girl has been with me for 51 years.” The couple recently celebrated its 50th anniversary with a surprise party at Gallier Hall thrown by their three children. “Nobody let it out of the bag,” Taylor recalled. “We went up there supposedly to take a family picture and had at least 100 people from at least seven different states.”

What’s Rosey Taylor’s secret for a long and happy marriage?

“Me being able to be away from her for a while,” he said, bursting into laughter. “For 14 years, on the day the season ended, an hour and a half after they shoot the gun and end the game, I was on my way back home to New Orleans.”

Without hesitation, Taylor said his three children are his greatest accomplishment in life. His son Brian, a St. Aug grad and former NFL player, is vice president of the largest bank in Buffalo, NY. One of his daughters is a Southern University-Baton Rouge grad who earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and owns an L.A.-based computer-programming company. His younger daughter is a Howard University honors graduate and a Philadelphia-based news reporter.

“My three kids — all of them got an education, all of them are happy,” he told The Louisiana Weekly. “They got that character thing about them that they are so good to be around. They work, they help with everything, they do so many different things and I’m grateful for that.”

This article was originally published in the August 6, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper