First to Deborah and Floyd and his family blessings to you all – may HE be with you always during this time.
I want to try and write something that is not all sad and I hope I do. I wanted to go from being a Craniac to telling you about my meeting with Floyd Little and finally provide you with some information about his recruitment to Syracuse.
I'll never forget this singular moment. It was a very special evening in my life when I met Floyd Little walking back to Kimmel Hall about 7 P.M. on the sidewalk of Marshall Street back in September of 1963.
I was tired from football practice and not in a wonderful mood when I heard steps coming up behind me and the words “hey rookie slow down.”
It was Floyd with this never ending smile on his face asking how I was doing. He took a few steps ahead of me and turned his face towards mine put his arm on my shoulder and stopped me. I recognized him immediately because I was a walk on to the freshman football team and knew him from practice in back of Manley.
We were on the same team. He said “hey Phillips where are you going so fast?” He then asked me my first name, he knew my last from the tape across the front of my helmet. I told him, Bill. He shook my hand and asked if something was wrong and I told him I was still hungry but most of all that I didn't beat him during sprints after practice again. He said “hell man, I go all out just to beat you and I do a 9.7 hundred and that's not slow, you should be happy because I think I am the fastest on the team. Don't you ever let my speed make you this way. I have to lean to beat you so you are as fast as I am.” He grabbed me by the arm and we continued arm in arm together smiling up Marshall Street. My personality changed in a second and my smile didn't go off my face until I went to sleep. Floyd in that moment was changing another persons life into a huge positive – that's the way he was and we were immediate friends and would smile at each other at practices all that year. Floyd is a blessing to anyone who he meets. I'll always remember what he did for me.
But Cancer takes everything from you. In my case my sister “Bobbie” in 2014 who was eight years older than I but still close. She was a beauty, runner up to Miss New Jersey in Atlantic City and Judy a wonderful woman I lived with for ten years also died in the same year. I remember, as I took care of Judy, what the disease does to you. You sometimes become numb to the person as it progresses but I think I have been proudest of myself of anything I have done in life to have taken care of someone so courageous I loved who was eaten away by it.
It took both but not the beautiful memories I have of them.
Dick in Mich blessings to you and your family.
And again to Floyd, smile down at me and I will be a better man still because of your doing so. I love you, man. Everyone does.
The following link I must not have done something correctly here but if you want to read how Floyd became Orange just Google: How Floyd Little Decided To Play Football At Syracuse. The story and a few pics will be available to you. It is a great read. Ben & Ernie on a snowy night in New haven.
How Floyd ended up at SU...hope the link works: How Floyd Little Decided To Play Football At Syracuse: The Non-Hollywood Version | ThePostGame.com
