A father’s legacy
Carl Albert star and Oklahoma State commitment Jason Taylor II carries the memories of his father with him on the football field.
MIDWEST CITY — Jason Taylor II crossed the goal line and nearly cried.
None of his teammates or opponents were nearby. Just the open space and the roar of the raucous playoff crowd.
Taylor still felt a presence he badly missed.
He looked to the stands to locate his ecstatic family, but he knew his father, the one person he wanted to see the most, wouldn't be there.
“It just came over me,” Taylor said. “I felt like he was there.
“I wanted to hug him.” Taylor is a ballhawk safety who helped Carl Albert win the 2016 state title and committed to Oklahoma State. Those are successes his father never got to see.
His father, Jason Taylor, was killed 10 years ago.
Jason Taylor II still carries his father’s legacy each time he takes the field.
Since that playoff win against Altus one year ago, there isn’t a touchdown he scores or a turnover he comes up with that he doesn’t think of his father.
Those memories push him to be better, to make sure he avoids the innercity lifestyle he could have led.
“I think football is a bridge,” Taylor said.
•••
The orange helmet that featured a blue lion outlined in white always caught Jason’s attention.
He often picked up his father’s Langston University football helmet and tried it on. Jason and his father laughed each time it engulfed 5-yearold Jason’s head.
Jason was pleading to play football.
His father had played defensive line at Langston, using the scholarship to move from Chicago. Football had given him so much. But he and his wife weren’t quite ready for their son to suit up in pads and a helmet.
Jason’s mom, Garlynn, was letting her husband make that call. In the summer of 2007, he changed his mind.
He drove Jason to the park, handed him cleats and told him to join the practice in progress. Not long afterward, Garlynn arrived, unaware of what was happening.
They saw the joy on their son’s face.
“We’re going to keep that going,” she told her husband, who beamed with pride.
A few weeks later, Taylor’s new black T-shirt arrived with a school picture of Jason. He was missing his front teeth in his wide grin. Chicago was in the background with the words, “Heir to the throne.”
He proudly wore the shirt on the football sideline that week. It’s one of Jason’s final football memories with his father.
“I looked up what heir meant,” he said. “From the beginning, he saw it in me that I could do it.”
•••
It was New Year’s Eve when Garlynn went one way and her husband went another with plans to meet later at a party.
Within minutes, she received a harrowing phone call.
Taylor had been shot and killed outside a north Oklahoma City convenience store, the result of an ongoing feud. A young family’s future was forever altered.
“It was just us at that point,” Garlynn said of she and her three children.
Jason II turned 8 the day before. Now, his hero was gone and he needed guidance.
Football, despite his interest in other activities, remained his driving force.
“I knew that would give him a connection with his father, even if it was a short time,” Garlynn said. “And he was just good.”
Within a few years, Garlynn moved her family to Midwest City. She had heard great things about Carl Albert, where her parents were nearby to help while she worked to raise three kids.
Jason, then in the fifth grade, often still thought of his dad. Sometimes, a word would trigger an emotional response.
But he had found a new home and a way to a better life.
“We did anything and everything to make sure he could flourish being from the inner city,” Garlynn said. “We didn’t want him being like everybody else.”
••• Jason rarely offers the details.
Few coaches know about his father. Jason, a naturally quiet person, preferred it that way.
He instead chooses to honor him in subtle ways.
For a while, Jason taped his cleats the way his father always did. Bright colors under and over the shoe.
When he suits up Friday against Lawton MacArthur to open the Class 5A playoffs, he’ll wear a neon yellow shirt under his pads like the one he wore when his father put him on a team.
Each game, he thinks of his father watching. What would he see?
Jason has grown into a 6-foot-2, 180-pound star for the defending champion Titans. He’s known as a dangerous receiver and safety.
“Throughout the year he’s made some catches just on the sideline that most people don’t make,” Carl Albert coach Mike Corley said. “His knack to be around the ball, a lot of players have that and a lot of players don’t.”
Those ball-hawking skills led OSU to Taylor last winter. He committed in August surrounded by his family and teammates.
His father was an OSU fan. Jason had always questioned that choice. But during his sophomore year at Carl Albert he started to like the Cowboys.
It became a natural way to honor his father.
“When I got that offer and I committed, I felt like maybe it was supposed to be like that,” Taylor said. “I’d think that he would just be happy — but not too happy. He’d be pushing me still.”
Some might say he never stopped.