Little did what it took to be great
Bill Santillo, who would become a close friend in their later years, remembers leaving a New Haven Gridiron Club event with Floyd Little at the Omni Hotel and driving past the New Haven Green.
“Right there!” Little said, pointing to a spot in the historic downtown park. “That’s where I earned some of my first money shining shoes to help support my family. Yeah, the Green treated me good.”
Floyd Little, who died of cancer on New Year’s Day at age 78, grew up in a family on welfare, a family with little money and much love. It would be true to also say he grew up to walk with presidents and generals, not to mention run with a football like few in the history of American sports.
Little was heavily recruited by Gen. Douglas MacArthur to attend West Point and later was a classmate of Joe Biden’s at Syracuse, where he grew the legend of Jim Brown and Ernie Davis. When
Little was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2010, then- Vice President Biden called to offer congratulations.
“The last time I saw him before he got sick, he was showing me some pictures,” said Little’s nephew Scott Jackson, the former mayor of Hamden. “The NFL Hall of Fame sends the guys with their ( gold) jackets out as ambassadors sometimes to the poorest neighborhoods in America. And sometimes to other places. He was flipping through the pictures and there he was with the pope.”
Forgive me. I underestimated Floyd Little. He grew up to walk with presidents, generals and popes.
“He lost his father very young ( to a brain tumor) and his mother had six mouths to feed,” Jackson said. “It was always a struggle. For him to go to where he landed, I would say it’s a miracle, but it’s a miracle fueled by his will and his ability to navigate a world that had kind of been up to be against him.”
Yes, it’s true that Little was expelled from Troup Middle School as a seventh- grader for taking on a bully in the ninth grade. Yes, it’s true that he grew up at a reading level below his grade,
was ridiculed and during his Hall of Fame induction speech Little called himself “an angry young man.” Yes, it’s true that because he was held back in the fifth grade, he was ineligible to play football at Hillhouse as a senior and coach Dan Casey worked to get him an appointment to Bordentown Military Academy as the school’s first African American.
He also was a leader. Beware, those who underestimated Floyd Little. By the ninth grade, he was class president. He rose to the rank of second lieutenant at Bordentown. Later, a kid who initially got a 200 score on his SAT would get a law degree at Denver.
As a grown man he would be revered in New Haven, in Syracuse and in Denver. He was the first player to lead the NFL in rushing while playing for a last- place team. He was called “The Franchise” as he ran for 6,323 yards and 43 touchdowns in nine Broncos seasons. His No. 44 was retired in Syracuse. His No. 44 was retired in Denver. As a grown man, he also was a man who brought folks together, helped hundreds of youths, a man capable of uplifting speeches, one he delivered as late as 2019 at the 75th anniversary of the Gridiron Club.
“I’m heartbroken today,” Santillo said. “Floyd got the accolades, the most a football player could get, all the way from all- state all the way to Pro Football Hall of Fame. All this from a man who was disparaged his youthful years in New Haven. Yet across America, from New Haven, to Syracuse to Denver, we all got to love this guy.
“I’m going to miss the hell out of him. When he went into hospice ( in November) and three, four weeks went by, I’m thinking maybe he’ll pull through, maybe pull out one of his miracles.”
Santillo unabashedly calls Little his hero. Before he led crosstown Wilbur Cross to an unbeaten record and No. 1 ranking in the state in 1963, he was a freshman — not eligible to play varsity — watching Little run for four touchdowns against his school at Bowen Field in November 1960. Santillo was awestruck. And dumbstruck.
“I’m listening to these people calling him dummy and stupid and even the N- word,” Santillo said. “I was a ninth- grade kid from a close- knit Italian family. I’d never heard this stuff. But man, did he turn everything around and took off in his life. The way coach Casey spoke up for him, got him to Bordentown, because in my mind he was left for dead in New Haven. I know he was grateful for the people in New Haven who helped him.”
People like Bob Schreck and others.
Chadwick Boseman, who died in 2020 at age 43, played Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall and James Brown in films. He also played Floyd Little in the Ernie Davis biopic “The Express.” The first time I spoke to Little in 1999 for a Hartford Courant series on the best Connecticut athletes of the 20th century, he regaled me with the full story of meeting Davis. How he had just gotten home from a visit to Army when there was a knock on the door at the family’s Kensington Street home.
Syracuse coach Ben Schwartzwalder had appeared unannounced in a snowstorm … with the first African American to win the Heisman Trophy.
“My sisters were overwhelmed,” Little said. “They fell in love with Ernie. He was very soft- spoken, very handsome, very articulate.”
They went over to Jocko
Sullivan’s restaurant. Little and Davis went to the restroom. Each put a foot up on a urinal and started talking and kept talking. Davis was so damn impressive Little blurted out, “Sure, I’ll go to Syracuse.” And just like that, Notre Dame was out. Gen. MacArthur and Army were out. Four other schools were out.
“He is No. 5 of six kids, my mother is the oldest and she’s the only one left,” Jackson said. “I think it’s fair to say that even though ( his illness) was known, it is fresh in how to process it with a person of this magnitude. In a lot of ways this was a matriarchal family, but if there was a patriarch it certainly would be him.
“The next generation, my generation, it’s a lot of firstborn boys. With the family spread out across the country we’ve had to change the whole way we deal with the house of our grandparents Frederick and Lula. It’s incredible what Floyd Little was able to do. He raised a fantastic family. All his children are very successful and grounded, and he was able to touch so many people.”
When we talked several years ago, Little told me all about his son Marc, who was shot in the thigh for the 38 cents he had in his pocket in Los Angeles and nearly bled to death. His lungs collapsed. His kidneys failed. His right leg was amputated. He survived. He went on to become a lawyer and a pastor, and it was Marc who announced his dad’s passing on social media Saturday.
Words of sympathy and admiration spread from Roger Goodell, John Elway, Jim Boeheim, Dino Babers to so many others.
“I will miss my friend,” Biden said in a statement. “He was a good man.”
Santillo didn’t know Little personally until a decade and a half ago. They befriended through the Gridiron Club. He and his wife, Teresa, grew closer to Floyd and his wife DeBorah. By 2010, Santillo and Teresa were sitting near the front at Canton. Santillo was chairman of the Floyd Little Dedication Committee to rename the New Haven Athletic Center in his honor in 2011. Little was thrilled. How many enshrined in the Hall of Fame, he said, also have a building named after them?
Santillo was there when Floyd was inducted in the Greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame alongside Breanna Stewart. And then again when Little spoke to 200 people, many of them honored student- athletes, at the Gridiron Club in 2019.
“I think he took time to meet every one of them,” Santillo said. “It was something.”
In his speech, Little went thorough a five- time process of going from a 200 to 1400 on his SATs and how the people in Princeton didn’t believe he did it without cheating. He has a photographic memory. He went through answers without looking at the pages, starting with spelling cantankerous. They believed him.
“When I was growing up, they told me, ‘ Floyd, you ain’t big enough, strong enough, smart enough or fast enough to play in the NFL.’ ”
Little opened his gold jacket and showed the inscription No. 257 enshrined in the Hall of Fame. Don’t ever underestimate Floyd Little.
“And I have a bachelor’s degree, a law degree, two doctorates, because guess what?” he said. “I made the commitment and the sacrifice. That’s the hardest thing in the world you have to do. If you want to be great, if you really want to be great, you have to do what other people aren’t willing to do.”
Floyd Little was willing.