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8:19 AM Tue, Feb 03, 2009 | Permalink | Yahoo! Buzz
Kevin Sherrington http://www.***BANNED-URL***/blogs/images/email-icon.jpg E-mail http://www.***BANNED-URL***/blogs/images/email-icon.jpg News tips
The flap over whether Lucille Hester is actually Bob Hayes' sister, a point challenged by other family members since the Bullet was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame last weekend, may be up for debate. But apparently her claim is as good as any others.
In 1994, I went to Bob Hayes' North Dallas condo to write a follow-up story on what had been a feel-good story that summer, and in the course of that research made some interesting discoveries about Hayes' childhood.
Hayes, then 51 in the fall of '94, had gone back to Florida A&M to complete his degree in elementary education. The story attracted national attention. But by that fall, Hayes was in a funk, bitter that he couldn't get a job. Or, more to the point, a business to run. In the course of the interview, he was alternately grateful to all the people who'd helped him, and angry that he couldn't find a career in the town where'd been a famous Cowboy.
While researching his story, I read Hayes' 1990 autobiography, Run, Bullet, Run: The Rise, Fall and Recovery of Bob Hayes. In it, he tells his co-author, Robert Pack, about his upbringing in a Jacksonville, Fla., ghetto known as "Hell's Hole," where one of the family's neighbors was a man named George Sanders.
In the book, Hayes reveals that his mother's husband was away at war when he was conceived. Any time someone would ask if Bob Hayes was his son, George Sanders would reply, "That's what his mother says."
Sanders was identified in a DMN story this morning as the owner of a shoe-shine shop. But he was also a numbers runner, according to Hayes. And he would place his son in match races around the neighborhood. He bragged that Bob could beat anyone, even after a night drinking whiskey.
At the time, Bob was 12.
Lucille Hester, who read a letter purportedly written by Hayes at the news conference announcing his HOF selection, told our Brad Townsend that George Sanders is her father. If true, then her claims to being Bob's sister, or half-sister, are correct. Even Bob's immediate family members concede that, while Joseph Hayes raised Bob, he was not Bob's biological father.
Now as for Hester's claims that the letter she produced was written by Bob Hayes, only she knows for sure.
Certainly Hester is a more gifted public speaker than at least one of Bob's other family members. When the Texas Sports Hall of Fame inducted Bob Hayes in 2004, Ernest Hayes spoke on behalf of his departed brother, or half-brother.
On a night when others regaled the crowd with story after story or spoke elegantly of the influences on their careers, each speech running long after its allotted time, Ernest Hayes thanked his mother, the TSHOF, the crowd, the state of Texas and the Cowboys, then sat down.
I almost gave him a standing ovation.
Kevin Sherrington http://www.***BANNED-URL***/blogs/images/email-icon.jpg E-mail http://www.***BANNED-URL***/blogs/images/email-icon.jpg News tips
The flap over whether Lucille Hester is actually Bob Hayes' sister, a point challenged by other family members since the Bullet was voted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame last weekend, may be up for debate. But apparently her claim is as good as any others.
In 1994, I went to Bob Hayes' North Dallas condo to write a follow-up story on what had been a feel-good story that summer, and in the course of that research made some interesting discoveries about Hayes' childhood.
Hayes, then 51 in the fall of '94, had gone back to Florida A&M to complete his degree in elementary education. The story attracted national attention. But by that fall, Hayes was in a funk, bitter that he couldn't get a job. Or, more to the point, a business to run. In the course of the interview, he was alternately grateful to all the people who'd helped him, and angry that he couldn't find a career in the town where'd been a famous Cowboy.
While researching his story, I read Hayes' 1990 autobiography, Run, Bullet, Run: The Rise, Fall and Recovery of Bob Hayes. In it, he tells his co-author, Robert Pack, about his upbringing in a Jacksonville, Fla., ghetto known as "Hell's Hole," where one of the family's neighbors was a man named George Sanders.
In the book, Hayes reveals that his mother's husband was away at war when he was conceived. Any time someone would ask if Bob Hayes was his son, George Sanders would reply, "That's what his mother says."
Sanders was identified in a DMN story this morning as the owner of a shoe-shine shop. But he was also a numbers runner, according to Hayes. And he would place his son in match races around the neighborhood. He bragged that Bob could beat anyone, even after a night drinking whiskey.
At the time, Bob was 12.
Lucille Hester, who read a letter purportedly written by Hayes at the news conference announcing his HOF selection, told our Brad Townsend that George Sanders is her father. If true, then her claims to being Bob's sister, or half-sister, are correct. Even Bob's immediate family members concede that, while Joseph Hayes raised Bob, he was not Bob's biological father.
Now as for Hester's claims that the letter she produced was written by Bob Hayes, only she knows for sure.
Certainly Hester is a more gifted public speaker than at least one of Bob's other family members. When the Texas Sports Hall of Fame inducted Bob Hayes in 2004, Ernest Hayes spoke on behalf of his departed brother, or half-brother.
On a night when others regaled the crowd with story after story or spoke elegantly of the influences on their careers, each speech running long after its allotted time, Ernest Hayes thanked his mother, the TSHOF, the crowd, the state of Texas and the Cowboys, then sat down.
I almost gave him a standing ovation.
