by Ray Sanchez 01.05.14
The year 2013 was sad in one respect: So many of our former sports heroes passed away during the year. One of the most recent who passed away and who perhaps never got the recognition he deserved was D. Joe Williams.
UTEP has been credited with being the first university in Texas to recruit a black athlete. And it is so – for a major university. But D. Joe Williams was actually the first black athlete to be recruited by a Texas college, period.
Basketball player Charley Brown entered what was then known as Texas Western College in 1956 but Pan American College enrolled D. Joe Will iams to play baseball two years earlier, in 1954.
Williams lived with the cloud of not being recognized as the first Texas black college player all his life.
BUT WILLIAMS was anything but a rabble rouser. He went about trying to convince others that he was indeed the first in his usual polite, soft-spoken, mild-mannered way. He had little success.
Still, D. Joe Williams deserves to be called a legend in Texas lore.
In 1954 he participated on the Pan Am cross country, baseball and track teams, took third place in the Big State Conference in the 880 run and sixth in the mile and batted .265 in baseball.
WILLIAMS MOVED to El Paso in 1970 and lived and taught school in the El Paso area. Highly educated, he taught science and coached at such local schools as Fabens, Montwood and Tornillo.
At Fabens, Williams’ 1973 cross country team won second in the state. During his five year tenure as head coach, his teams won district titles three years.
Williams was also a successful freshman and junior varsity football coach at Fabens and Socorro.
He died on Dec. 15 in an ambulance which was taking him to the hospital after suffering a stroke. He had suffered from heart, leukemia and other problems for some time.
Williams has been inducted into the El Paso Baseball Hall of Fame, the Texas Black Sports Hall of Fame and The Lower Valley All Sports Hall of Fame in Edinburg.
Perhaps the El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame will get around to inducting him, too, this year. He would be so grateful. Politely, of course.
TRIVIA QUESTION: Who won the British Open both in 1971 and 1972? Answer at end.
SPEAKING OF the El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame, start getting resumes ready for anyone you may want to nominate for induction. Meetings of the board of directors will begin this month .
Another person I’d like to see inducted this year is Gene Semko. The Burges High and UTEP grad is one of the most highly respected football officials in the nation. He has worked some of the most important games in college football, including a BCS championship contest.
And this past week, as Dr. Paul Huchton of El Paso noted in a letter to this writer, there was Semko working the Rose Bowl game between Stanford and Michigan State.
Semko has been nominated for induction into the El Paso Athletic Hall of Fame several times but has been passed over.
THE DRAWER in which I keep my crystal ball was rattling. I opened it and out popped the obnoxious orb. “I told you, I told you,” it gushed. “You’ve been criticizing me for picking the UTEP football team to have a winning season and didn’t but you’ve said nothing about how I predicted how the Dallas Cowboys would do.”
I shuddered. “Okay, go ahead and brag..”
It cleared it’s throat. “ I told you there’s something wrong with that organization, that as usual they would make a lot of noise, win some games, lose the crucial ones and flop at the end of the regular season. And that’s exactly what happened.”
I was in no mood to hear anymore. I picked it up, put it back in its drawer and slammed it shut.
ANSWER to trivia question: Lee Trevino.