FSU athletic leaders show racial progress.
Willie Taggart was asked about becoming Florida State’s first black football coach, and he gave a good answer in his opening moments on the job Wednesday about opportunity and appreciation. But Vernetta Edgecomb’s answer would have been better. She died a few years ago.
Her husband, Eldred, who crossed the street from their MiamiDade home to visit their son’s grave each night, died some years before her.
Bill Peterson, who coached their son, Calvin Patterson, is gone as well.
And the police sergeant, Frank Daws, who cried when finding Patterson dying of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, bringing a tragic end to Florida State’s first black football player — well, he’s gone, too.
Time’s a curiosity. The closer you stand to it, the more static the world looks. Unchanged. Unsurprising. It’s why some people shrug off a question about Taggart being named the first black coach at Florida State.
Doesn’t the school have a black basketball coach, Leonard Hamilton? And a black athletic director, Stan Wilcox? Aren’t we past race being an issue at all?
Stand that close to time and you miss the progress. You don’t see 50 years of steps leading to a school’s top three athletic names being black men. You miss FSU assistant coach Joe Gibbs, of Washington Redskins fame, recruiting Patterson in 1967 with the idea another black player would enter Florida State with him.
You miss the other recruit, Ernest Cook, then switching to Minnesota due to so much “Klan mail,’’ as he called it. You miss Patterson ignoring that same mail and the 41 black students at FSU writing that fall in the corner of classroom blackboards, “Go, Calvin, Go.”
You miss Patterson being announced as the starting running back on the freshman team. You miss him moved to reserve. Then moved to safety. You miss Florida State having, “Old South Weekend” to honor the Confederacy at that time. You miss him COMMENTARY not being allowed to enter restaurants with the team, struggling to the point he never played a varsity down and committed suicide his senior year.
You miss history becoming a battlefield over him. Florida State dropped his name. It touted three players who came the year after as the first blacks to play at FSU. It wasn’t until a friend and former teammate, Tommy Warren, went to the school president, T.K. Wetherell, more than a decade ago and started a campaign to remember Patterson that things changed.
Wetherell had been Patterson’s academic advisor. He, too, said he never understood what happened. He brought Patterson’s memory back to campus. Warren, who became a Tallahassee lawyer, started an endowed scholarship in Patterson’s name for the FSU law school.
When they wanted to put Warren’s picture up on the law-school wall, as they do for all donors. He had them put Patterson’s picture instead.
“I’m not all that surprised, fortunately, Florida State hired a black football coach,’’ Warren said from his Tallahassee law office. “I think that’s a result of progress that’s been made, at least in our community here — the FSU community of alums, boosters, fans, students, etc …’’
“I don’t want to get into making a prediction when it might be there’s African-American football coaches at other schools in the South. But here, in the community I know something about, this decision reflects a prevalent attitude.”
The University of Florida has never had a black football, basketball coach or athletic director. Miami has had black football and basketball coaches. Florida State’s top three positions are all filled by black men. Does it matter? Should it? Is it something Taggart, who grew up a Seminoles fan, even thought about?
“I’ve thought about it, but not much,’’ Taggart said Wednesday. “I figured out, for the most part, wherever I go, I’m going to be the first African-American coach. So I didn’t think about it much. But I do understand my role. I do know a lot of people are counting on me to do well. I appreciate that.”
A nice answer. A good answer. The only better answer would have been if Vernetta or Eldred Edgecomb were still alive to say what it means. As it was, her answer on her son’s death — “It’s a mystery, whatever happened” — can measure the pain and the progress of Taggart’s hiring.