If you read just one more book for the rest of your life, make it the autobiography of longtime Grambling head football coach Eddie Robinson.

Its title says it all: &uot;Never Before, Never Again.&uot;

Robinson was in the news last week when his family disclosed the legendary coach with 408 career wins is suffering from Alzheimer’s. It’s always sad to hear of anyone battling a life-threatening disease, but it’s tough to swallow when it happens to those we hold on pedestals, the heroes in our world.

Too often we don’t know enough about people in this world who do extraordinary things. They may be too humble, or their story doesn’t really get out until it’s almost too late.

Robinson’s feats at tiny Grambling were well-reported during his final season in 1997, but even he was too humble to boast of the 408 wins, the numerous players sent into the NFL and how he put that tiny school on the map of college football.

Read the book.

I did. All 268 pages in three days, and sometimes I reread some of the best parts.

You’ll read about a guy who was raised in a segregated Baton Rouge in the 1930s, earned a degree in education and found his first job in a feed mill &045; a job that required hauling sacks of corn that were infested with weevils, which of course jumped from the feed onto his back.

You’ll read about a guy who got his first job as head football coach at Grambling in 1941. He was the football coach &045; no assistants &045; and the man for athletics at GSU and the town. He was football coach, basketball coach, baseball coach, PE teacher, high school football coach, playground director, recreation director, part-time dorm director and SID.

That was just the start.

A self-proclaimed dreamer, Robinson did things in his 57 seasons at Grambling many big schools can’t say they did. Grambling played all over the world, and the Tigers had a following like no other small school in America.

After all he did with what little he had to work with, it makes it more saddening to see him suffering from Alzheimer’s at the age of 85.

For someone whose only wish was to be remembered as a great American, who met wife Doris every day at noon for lunch no matter the circumstances and who transcended race at a time when the nation struggled with it, it’s truly sad.

Alzheimer’s, in a way, is an insulting disease. It takes away the mind of people who often have done remarkable things.

It peels away at one’s memory. Soon it’s the little things you can’t recall. Then it’s the people whose name you can’t remember. Soon after family members are no more total strangers than people in a shopping mall.

It robs one of all the knowledge, feats and experience that he worked so hard for.

Robinson wrote, &uot;I want to be ready to answer the call of the ‘Big Tiger’ up there. I want to hear God say, ‘Eddie, you have been a good person, a good husband and father, a good friend, a good coach and a good American.&uot;

When that tragic day arrives, he’ll hear it.

Adam Daigle

is sports editor of The Natchez Democrat. Reach him at (601) 445-3632 or at

adam.daigle@natchezdemocrat.com

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