In Black America; Resilient By Nature, with Reggie Wiiliams

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. You know, my row to Disney was laid with a little bit of failure. You know, I was a New York New Jersey nice journal manager when the World League of American football decided to end and for a few hours I was without a job and then Jim Steeck, who was head of the Super Bowl, I had a problem that he wanted to see if I could help him with and that problem was the Rodney King riots. The riots were taking place in Pasadena, so essentially the NFL had a public relations problem with having all the owners and sponsors and fans fly in and party for Super Bowl weekend and leave and inconvenience the local residents, especially local residents that

were hurting. So, that's when I came up with the NFL Youth Education Town, which was a multi-faceted education and recreational facility for the most at-risk kids in that at-risk neighborhood. Reggie Williams, former NFL linebacker, college hall of famous, former Cincinnati City Council member, an author of Resilient by Nature Reflecting from a Life of Winning on and Off the Football Field published by Post Hill Press. If you thought 14 years in the National Football League would be a highlight of Williams life thus far, you would be mistaken. Among the most memorable moments is when he envisioned a multi-sports complex for an iconic corporate brand, and when he saved the National Football League for an embarrassment for being insensitive to inner-city concerns during the Super Bowl by coming up with youth education town, a multi-perfect education and recreation center built in South Central Los Angeles.

In his book, Resilient by Nature, Williams provide insight into his remarkable joining while also sharing his unique perspectives on the variety of topics. I'm Johnny Johansson Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, Resilient by Nature with Reggie Williams, In Black America. I was drafted by the Toronto Argonauts in the first round and was told by Gil Brant, who was the Hall of Fame General Manager of the Dallas Cowboys that I'd be in the first round by then. So on draft day, man, I was expecting an early phone call. And as it turned out, I didn't get a phone call to late late late afternoon. By then, I thought my draft stock had fallen completely to the basement. But fortunately, I was still in the third round. And even the fact that the Toronto Argonauts were off for me, twice as much money, my dream was to play in the NFL.

I wanted to play in the same field as my hero Jim Brown and play under a team like my hero, Vince Lombardi. And so when I was drafted, even though you don't go to Dartmouth College or the Ivy League to go to the NFL, it really represented my role. The roots of Flint, Michigan. In 1993, William signed with the Walt Disney Company as the first African-American vice president with the organization and championed Disney's involvement in sports, particularly amateur sports. He spearheaded the effort that became ESPN's wide world of sports, a state of the art multi-sports complex that opened in 1997, had it not been for his foresight, the National Basketball Association, could not have completed their season last year. Born and raised in Flint, Michigan, William was an outstanding student, athlete at Southwest and High, although his holds were a tenth of the University of Michigan. He ended up at Dartmouth, and that person's decision has been the best he could have made.

We have spent 14 years in the NFL. He spent two terms on the Cincinnati City Council, and was a GM with the world league of American football and the recipient of the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year Awards, recently in Black America spoke with Reggie Williams. Well, I'm really have to be on your show, John, in Black America. Certainly have some stories to tell, and I appreciate you calling out my new book, Resilient By Nature, a collaboration with Jared Bell with a forward written by Seattle Seahawks, Super Bowl Winning Quarterback, Russell Wilson. There are a number of places we can start, but I think the most apropos place to start is that 25 years ago, this year, which you would ever imagine your dream being part of having the NBA complete their season. Well, let me tell you, it's been one of the highlights of my lifetime, that I had the opportunity to conceive and build and run ESPN wide road of sports when it was called

Disney's wide road of sports. The whole concept was to provide a very special place where all kids could come and meet to compete in their sport of choice in an authentic environment that was completely about them. They were the stars of the show, no Mickey, no Mini, no Goofy, no, the little kids are the stars of the show, in order to authenticate their experience, having the world's best athletes compete there as well, gave all young athletes some big shoes to walk into aspire for. So now, while we did have our calendar full of professional sports event, nothing can replicate a NBA championship, and the fact that it took place in a bubble, a collaboration between the great leadership and the NBA and the great leadership of Walt Disney World

to really create an impenetrable showcase of their sport, it also showed America that this virus can be beat, and that's one of the most important things that I think that we could take into it, is that this virus can and should have been beaten. If we had the kind of leadership of the NBA, and Walt Disney provided, we could have done it. How did you have an actually come to Disney? You know, my row to Disney was laid with a little bit of failure. You know, I was a New York New Jersey nice journal manager when the World League of American Football decided to end. And for a few hours, I was without a job, and then Jim Steak, who was head of the Super Bowl, I had a problem that he wanted to see if I could help him with, and that problem was the Rodney King riots. The riots were taking place in Pasadena, so essentially the NFL had a public relations problem with having all the owners and sponsors and fans fly in and party for Super Bowl weekend

and leave and inconvenience the local residents, especially local residents that were hurting. So that's when I came up with the NFL Youth Education Town, which was a multifaceted education and recreational facility for the most at-risk kids in that at-risk neighborhood. And it was at-risk because it was the cornerstone of the gang war between the bloods and the crypts. And in order to open this place without it being tagged by one gang over the other, I had to go and meet with both gangs and negotiate a truth. And I was fortunate that Jim Brown, who run the entire gang group, America, I can, he was willing to introduce me to them and get that done. So after I started opening the place, I started looking for sponsors, and one of the companies

I looked towards was Walt Disney. I had a Dartmouth classmate named Michael Montgomery, who had ascended to become now the treasure of the company. And I'm with him, having lunch at the Disney headquarters in Anaheim, when Michael Wyzener comes over to my table and says, you know, we just bought the mighty ducks, we're going to be getting into the sports business. We have all this landed Walt Disney world. What would you do if you had an opportunity to start a sports business? Just off the top of my mind, I gave him what I thought he would do, should do. And my visual was where I grew up. It was Flint, Michigan. And Flint was blessed to have a central stadium where all of the four high schools met to compete. It was called Atwood Stadium, and it was a beautiful stadium, and it also hosted a number of other citywide events like when John F. Kennedy came and gave a speech when Martin Luther

King came and gave a speech. They were all at Atwood Stadium. But my whole idea at Walt Disney World was that they needed to build a place where the four corners of the world and all the sports could come to one place to authentically compete and win or lose, you're still at the happiest place on Earth. And in that way, you can teach kids not only the morals of winning, but the fact that losing isn't the worst thing in the world. Being a Flint, most of the world are familiar with Flint because of the water crisis, but tell us what was like going up in Flint in the 60s. Now Flint was one of the most progressive cities in America during the 60s. If you wanted a job, you could get a job. If you graduated from high school, you could get a job in the factories. Now there were some long-term ramifications of getting that job in the factory. In terms of getting a viable income, it was certainly there.

We also had a strong art support. The Mott Foundation provided a lot of cultural and arts opportunities. The Flint Institute of Art was the first place that offered me a scholarship when I was in middle school, academically. Flint had four competing high schools, all of which had over a thousand graduating seniors. So it was a big city, about a quarter million people. I went to the very first integrated high school, and at that time, while there were tensions, we got along, and so I've started in the same classroom with white and black kids since I've been in the first grade. Dartmouth College obviously was not an aspiration when I was growing up in Flint. I wanted to be a Wolverine. I wanted to wear the maze and blue. I just wanted to run out of the tunnel in the big house, you know.

And then Bolsheim Beckler just destroyed all of my dreams, saying to my face that I wasn't good enough. And fortunately, my father, who was working in the factories, was willing to take on two more jobs to ensure that he could pay for the additional cost of me going to Dartmouth College, which does not offer athletic scholarships, and continued to support the tuition needs of my older brother, who was at Western Michigan. Now when you were, go ahead, go ahead, friends. Now I was just going to finish that. When I went to Dartmouth, I always knew that it was an extra burden on my dad, and so that increased what I wanted to prove once I got into that environment, especially since early in my childhood, I overcame Michigan School for the Duff. And so knowing my father had put so much extra effort into ensuring that I had the opportunity to at least play sports and get a good quality education.

That once I got a chance to play, I was going to make an impact. Now when you went to Dartmouth, but at that time, Dartmouth was all male, but I think the year that your first freshman year went to co-ed, tell us about one. When you were in high school, you were running back, but when you got to Dartmouth, you played football, and you was also on the wrestling team. Yeah, you know, I wrestled in high school one year. And my senior year, and I was able to have a good season, I was in the city championship, I beat in the city championship, but beat the guy who beat me in the districts and went to the state championships in high school. Lost a girl for the way, didn't you? Yeah, lost a girlfriend, that's the story people got to read in this book. You know, those are the things we sort of watch over. You know, you can talk about all your successes, but the successes are many times preceded by failures.

And how we learn in our lives to process failing, to process disappointment, to a process embarrassment, and those are the ways that you rise, you know, from the ashes of defeat. And so those have been the multiple lessons that we, you know, try to share from my lifetime and in the book, Resilient by Nature, but all of the, you know, the successes that came out of it were again preceded by a bunch of calamities. Now when you graduated from Dartmouth and you went to one of those All Star games, you got dogged again. Tell us about that. Yeah, something about the Big Ten coaches, I mean, they feel like they're the center of the universe, but there was another defense of coordinator from Ohio State, George Hill, who later became an NFL defensive coordinator. When I first got there, I was an All-American, the only All-American linebacker on the team, and yet he benched me.

And he benched me by telling me that he was changing the defense and instead of them running a 4-3 defense, they're going to run a 5-2 defense, and I will be the third linebacker that won't play. And he assured me I'd get some playing time, but I wouldn't be starting. But then, come practice, the other two defensive ends were both outside of linebackers too. So I knew he made me the fifth string linebacker. And when he gave his pre-gain speeches, he basically used me as an example of how weak the opponent was. I didn't play it all in the first half, and when I did get a chance to play in the third quarter, I was putting a one-on-one situation with the greatest open field runner of that time, Joe Washington, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I missed him the first time I went after him, jumped back up, missed him again, jumped back up, and got him. So I'm thinking I'm going to be rewarded for hustle, but he took me out of the game

and told me that's why he didn't want to play me and totally shot all my confidence. And it really wasn't until the plane ride home from halfway around the world, because we also played following weak in Japan, was in this layover in Cleveland that I met my hero, Muhammad Ali, out of the clear blue that he was to one that restored my confidence. And never know who and what will happen in our lives when our confidence at stake, but success does depend upon us being confident about what we're about to do. Now as interesting as you say that, now we had one icon, Muhammad Ali, taking time out to give you encouragement, and then later on in life, you ran into Tiger Woods and it was a totally different story. Well, you know, it was a totally different story, whereas Tiger seemingly had very little orientation to African Americans himself, that he didn't grow up around them.

He didn't see himself as one. And yet, when I started Disney's Wild Road of Sports, our very first event was a Braves spring training game between the Atlanta Braves and the Cincinnati Reds. The first person to get a hit was Deon Sanders. The first person to still a base was Deon Sanders. The first person to score a run, Deon Sanders. The second event that I held at Wild Road of Sports was the Tiger Woods youth golf tournament. This was three weeks before he won his first Masters. And I'm hosting it for him at the conflict because I wanted to showcase that our fields that you play soccer, football, baseball, were just as fine a of grass as you would find on our award winning golf courses.

And so I have been at Walt Disney World hosting a number of PJ tour events, which I gave him the winners' check. They opened the All Star Cafe under the entrepreneurial eye of Robert Earl, Andre Agassi, and Tiger Woods were both co-owners. I hosted that, you know, on stage with both of them. I was in the suite with, you know, John Sherehoes, the General Manager of Atlanta Braves when Tiger was in there with his wife. I'm just saying after all these times that you run into a person, and you're, and he are probably the only black people around, that when he doesn't, you know, recognize you after a decade of that, you have to wonder, you know, about, you know, those issues. Whereas Muhammad Ali, he admittedly, you know, grafted his experiences unto the mutual experiences of another black man.

And that's how we maintain a relationship for the rest of our lives because of that. I understand. If you're just joining us, I'm Johnny Young Hanson Jr., and you're listening to End Black America from KUT Radio, and we're speaking with Reggie Williams, former NFL linebacker, former NFL executive, former council member for Cincinnati City, and also author of Resilience by Nature, Reflections for my life, winning on and off the field. Drafted about a Cincinnati Bringles in 76 in the third round, what was that like? Well, you know, I was drafted by the Toronto Argonauts in the first round, and was told by Gil Brant, who was the, you know, Hall of Fame, General Manager of the Dallas Cowboys, that I'd be in the first round by them. So on draft day, man, I was expecting an early phone call.

And as it turned out, I didn't get a phone call to late, late, late afternoon. By then, I thought my draft stock had fallen completely to the basement. But fortunately, I was still in the third round, and even the fact that the Toronto Argonauts were off for me twice as much money, my dream was to play in the NFL. I wanted to play in the same field as my hero, Jim Brown, and play under a team like my hero, Vince Lombardi. And so when I was drafted, even though you don't go to Dartmouth College or the Ivy League to go to the NFL, it really represented my roots of Flint, Michigan. You know, I mean, the Black and Brown division, you know, even though I was more of a Cleveland Brown fan than a Detroit Lions fan, that's only because Cleveland won championships. You're right.

Speaking of Detroit Lions, Dick Leboe, one of the iconic players for the Lions, were you a defensive coordinator at Cincinnati? Yes he was, and I, for the first time that I met him, I let him know that I'd been watching him my whole childhood, you know, and I really was a fan of his. So it was easy to play for Dick Leboe. He's a great person. I mean, he's one of the greatest personalities in the NFL. Now your involvement in Cincinnati extended beyond playing football. You became a counsel person. Tell her how that happened. Well, you know, when in 1987, there was a strike and I crossed the pick and line because of my issue, since I was in the later part of my career, I was an interesting free agency. I was interested in lifetime healthcare. And it became very acrimonious in the 87s and yet I, you know, stood my ground and articulated my views.

And I had been well known in the community because of all the community service that I'd done. And then one of the city council members earned boards at one dinner. He sort of asked me the same question, what would you do? And through that, even in I just hypothesized about what I would do if I was on city council. And following week, he called me and said that he was considering stepping down from city council because he had some conflicts of interest because he was a real estate developer. And they're about to develop a big part of town that he was involved in. And he asked if I was interested in running and taking over his seat. If I assured him that I would run for election to that seat with the Charter Party, which was an independent political party in Cincinnati in 1989. And so that we could keep the seat in the Charter Party hands. And I told him I would. And then it was a question of working it out with Mike Brown and Sam White. And Sam wasn't immediately willing to go for it.

But Mike was in the fact that I crossed the picket line. They both knew that I had made a tremendous personal sacrifice for them. So they made a sacrifice for me because that meant that I would have to miss some practice. And the only way that that was doable was because I had so many years under my belt. I was so experienced, I could practically teach the defense or coach the defense myself. And plus, at that stage of my career, I'm in my 13th year, I've had so much wear and tear on my knees that the less wear and tear at practice, the better for me to play. And fortunately that season, 1988, was one of the greatest seasons in Cincinnati Bingo history. We didn't lose a single game at home. We went 12 and 4, won the AFC and went into Miami to take on the 49ers for the second time in our Super Bowl history.

And that game went down to the final seconds and unfortunately didn't go our way. But that loss hurt me so bad that it had so many horrible nightmares. That it was those nightmares that were part of the dream of building a place like wide road of sports where losing wasn't devastating. That you could love your sport and not be in a nightmare about the outcome of your sport. And so I feel such a sense of pride in the accomplishment of wide road of sports. The fact that a champion will be crowned maybe even tonight. And if it is tonight, there will be a guy from Flint, Michigan, Kyle Kuzma who will be bringing home a world champion ring to Flint, Michigan, which is something that I want to do myself for my childhood dreams. Before we run on time, Miss Williams, there are two issues that you're adamant about. The first is with health care, with the multiple knee injuries that you've undergone.

At some point you were out in insurance. Talk to us about that. Yeah. I mean, you know, you have obviously great health care when you're playing. And then a Disney had great health care. But when I lost that health care when I retired and I lost it because I filed for disability and I was denied disability, even though I had all these knee operations as an executive in corporate America, you don't need your legs. And so they ruled against me, which meant that I lost my insurance. And then once you don't have any insurance, you're at the mercy of the marketplace. And this marketplace is not very merciful. Neither the insurance companies, nor the hospitals, nor some doctors, you know. And so it becomes very expensive and unfortunately it cost me quite a bit of money. But I am walking. I have both my legs and I'm proud to, you know, to be talking to you. Before we leave, I do want to share some real sad news about a really good friend and a

significant number of the sports community, Jimmy Lee Solomon, who I went to Dartmouth College with. We were fraternity brothers together, we're great friends. He was assistant commissioner of Major League Baseball. He was head of Minor League Baseball, he's the guy that came up with the civil rights games. Unfortunately, he passed away within late last night. And he's a loss. You know, when you look at what he brought to the sport of baseball, you know, which in his marquee moment brought Jackie Robinson to not just integrate the sport, integrate America, get the conversation on every single dinner table. Reggie Williams, former NFL linebacker, College Hall of Famer, Cincinnati City Council member, and co-author Resigient by Nature, Reflections of a Life of Winning on and Off the Football

Field. If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, that's your future in Black America programs, email us at inblackamerica at kut.org. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and follow us on Facebook. You can get previous programs online at kut.org. Also you can listen to a special collection of in black America programs at American Archives of Public Broadcasting. That's AmericanArchive.org. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin, until we have the opportunity again for technical producer David Alvarez. I'm Johnny O'Hanston, Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America CDs.

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