One Way Out: Paul Dunn Jr’s Journey To The NFL

By Judith Smith Wilson

Paul Dunn Jr., was twelve when he saw his first football game in Balboa Stadium in San Diego, California between the San Diego Chargers and the Kansas City Chiefs. When he saw the Chiefs run out of the tunnel in the bright California sun in their red and white uniforms he decided then and there that he wanted to be a professional football player.
He had no idea just how he would achieve his dream but never the less he was to begin his long, difficult journey to the NFL in spite of the many obstacles he would face. Paul grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s in the black community of San Diego called South East. His family was poor having eight children to support so he would have to depend on hard work and scholarships to get through college. He was a wide receiver in Jr. and Senior high school receiving recognition as one of the leading young men in his position in the U.S., and had many offers from colleges around the country. He chose San Francisco State University as it was close to home and their football program was one where they primarily passed the football.
Little did he know that in 1968 the football program would be in jeopardy for all the black players due to threats of violence from militant organizations like the Black Panthers and others that were protesting the Viet Nam war and discrimination in general. Riots were common on the campus and the streets of San Francisco.
Paul had to transfer to another college for his own safety. For a time the Cincinnati Bengals scouts had lost track of Paul, but as fate would have it they finally located him, and in 1970 he was drafted by the Bengals and his life-long dream of playing in the National Football League did indeed come true.
If you love the game of football you will enjoy learning some of the inside facts of the game as told by Paul and some of the trials and tribulations he went through to play the sport that he loved so much. He has a wonderful since of humor and the readers will have a few laughs and may also shed a few tears.
Paul says, “Not everyone can be a super star...it takes eleven men on the team and they all have their parts to play.” The author, Judith Smith Wilson asked Paul if he knew then what he knows now, ie: the injuries he has suffered and the health problems he now faces because of playing the game of football, would he do it all again? Paul replied, “IN A HEART BEAT!”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brighton Publishing LLC
• Release date: Nov 26, 2020
• ISBN: 9781621835837

Judith Smith Wilson

From the time Judith Smith could hold a pencil or crayon she was drawing and coloring. She loved all animals and many of her first paintings were of horses and wildlife. She grew up in San Diego, California, during the Second World War. Her fraternal grandmother took care of her while her parents worked. Her grandmother was influential in encouraging her to draw, even saving many of her first sketches of people. At the age of five the family moved to a small town. It was in the country, and Judith and her dog, Blackie soon became acclimated to the different life style, chasing lizards, snakes and all sorts of critters.In high school she was an art major, and hoped to go on to an art school in Los Angeles to become a fashion designer, but she was young and her parents did not want her to live that far from home. She began her professional art career at twenty five after she married and her one daughter was four and the other a baby. She has sold many paintings and prints all over the world, and won awards, but she always loved keeping a journal about her adventures, and writing letters to friends and family. They would remark to her how funny and informative her notes were.When times were financially tough Judith would go back to the only profession that she was trained for, that of a Collection Manger collecting delinquent bills for a living. She loved it as she could use her writing talents in collection letters in fact her manager would always tell her how efficient her letters were, and they brought in a lot of delinquent money.In the l980’s after her two girls were grown, she fulfilled one of her dreams, to travel. She has traveled extensively, to Kenya, East Africa three times, and Rwanda, East Africa once, and took many photographs and wrote about her great adventures on Safari. She also traveled to Hawaii, Hong Kong, Japan, Tahiti, the Island of Morea, and the Yucatan Peninsula, viewing the ruins of Tulum.This is her first memoir about her families twenty year trials and tribulations in living with a rescued female Bobcat named Precious.

Book preview

Introduction

Playing in the NFL was a dream of mine ever since I saw the Kansas City Chiefs play the Chargers in the old Balboa Stadium in San Diego, California in 1960 when I was 12 years old. When the Chiefs ran into the stadium in those bright red and white uniforms in the balmy California sun, it took my breath away. I thought to myself, This is what I want to do someday.

I was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals in 1970 from Cal Western University, later known as United States International University, a small college in San Diego. I was thrilled that my dream to play in the NFL was finally coming true after all the years I spent in college.

In my rookie year, the Bengals traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to play the Green Bay Packers in a pre-season game. As we ran out of the tunnel onto the field my mind was on one thing only, keeping my focus on the game that was about to begin. The crowd noise was deafening but I didn’t hear them. All I heard was our coach bellowing out plays and encouragement.

The Bengals kicked off to the Packers and down the field we ran, staying in our lanes. Every player had their assignment, to take out that player on the opposite team in their lane so he could not protect the ball carrier. The Packer’s players also have their man on the Bengals’ team that they are assigned to, thus preventing the Bengal’s player from getting to the ball carrier. I was 6’1" and I weighed 200 pounds running the forty-yard dash in 4.4 seconds. So I thought, No problem, I’ll get to that Packer player and take him out before he knows what hit him. All of a sudden I felt as if I had collided with a Mack truck and a freight train all at once, I never saw the Packer player who hit me coming. The two of us went down with a loud thud exhaling grunts, groans, and engulfed in a billowing cloud of dust. I looked up to see what had hit me and saw this huge man who looked twice as large as me, lifting me to my feet by the back of my jersey with his two fingers! As I looked at him he glared at me and said, Welcome to the NFL, DUNN!

As he walked away, I saw that the name on the back of his jersey was McCoy. I later found out that this massive man was Mike McCoy, one of the premier linemen in the NFL.

Foreword

When I was growing up, black and poor, I didn’t really notice it. When you are a child, you don’t understand how you will eventually fit into the world around you, or that there is even a different world out there but the one you experience every day. I was happy when my friends and I could go to the store and buy a ten cent kite and fly it high in the March winds, or sneak into a neighbor’s yard and pick the ripe fruit, or slide down a hill on a piece of cardboard. That was our reality and was all that mattered then.

I was blessed to be born with an athletic ability in many different sports, and to me that was a normal way of life. I was in Junior High School when our sports teams began to go outside of the black community to play other teams in more prosperous communities. As a result, I began to see that there were different cultures, nationalities, and ways of life. There were many other worlds to discover and explore, other ways to communicate and many experiences to be had other than the ones in the black community.

When I traveled to these other towns and communities, I took note of the differences. People were more prosperous, they had better housing, and people were not hanging out on the street corners. When I returned to my home, I realized that these other places had much more to offer in life, and I developed an intense drive to find out what it would take to change my circumstances and achieve a much better way of life for myself.

Some people I knew took notice of these differences and became attracted to them and used the knowledge to change their lives. Others unfortunately never became aware that there were many more experiences to be explored and were doomed to stay trapped in the cement jungle we called the ghetto.

When I chose to change the circumstances of my life is, it was the beginning and the fueling of my, ONE WAY OUT.

Chapter One

My Father’s Ancestry

I was born on July l4, 1948 and named Paul Dunn, Jr. in Little Rock, Arkansas to Paul Dunn, Sr. and Mary Holloway Dunn. My father was trained in the shipbuilding industry, and my mother stayed at home with the children, working from time to time as a waitress. In 1952, the Southern Schools were required by law to integrate with the all-white schools. My oldest sister and brother were in a newly integrated elementary school, and they and other black children had to endure unimaginable harassment. There were also riots in the cities and many nights they were out of control.

My father decided that it was time to move his growing number of family members to a much safer, less prejudiced state so we moved to San Diego, California. I was only four at the time. He soon began a job at one of the shipbuilding factories in San Diego, and we were finally in a calm neighborhood without the constant violence. Unfortunately, the work was not always steady, and when my father was out of work and could not pay the rent, we would have to move many times within this black section of San Diego called South East. By the time I was in elementary school, my mother had four more children, leaving eight of us to provide for. All together there were nine children born to Mary and Paul, with one passing away in infancy in Arkansas.

I vividly remember one spring when I was in elementary school, the family had to move during the day and somehow I was not told. I came home from school to locked doors and when I peered in the window, all the furniture was gone. I didn’t know what else to do so I sat on the front porch steps, confident that someone would come and get me soon. I waited and waited, and finally it became dark. Then I really became scared. About an hour after it was dark my mother pulled up in the car to get me. I guess with so many children she didn’t miss me at first. When I wasn’t there for dinner, it must have dawned on her to look for me.

I do not know much about my ancestry, as most black families tend not to pass down their history because the memories of what they and their ancestors who preceded them suffered under slavery. Those memories were much too painful. After President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 declaring the slaves free, many of them had nowhere to go and most of them didn’t even have last names so they took the last names of the plantation owners. The towns did not want the newly freed slaves, so some of them gravitated to the Northern States searching for their freedom. Many went to the nearest Indian villages where they were accepted and allowed to live close by. The American Indians, like the slaves, were also hostile to the white people. The U.S. Government had broken treaties, stolen their lands and tried to annihilate the Indian tribes. The Seminole Indians in Florida especially hated the whites after having fought three wars with the United States government in the early 1800s. The Cherokee Nation also had many reasons to despise the whites.

My great grandfather and great grandmother (I do not know their names) were both Cherokee Indians living in Oklahoma. After they married they had many children, with my grandfather Will being one of them. Will was born after the Civil War ended in about 1868. He was the first member of my family to be born after slavery was abolished. Will married a black woman (I do not know her name) and they had thirteen children. Will was married twice and both wives were black women. Ruthie was his second wife and they had ten children and my father Paul Sr. was one of them. To this day you will find that there are many mixed children as a result of the close relationships between black people and Native Americans.

Will and Ruthie had a farm in Oklahoma, but eventually it became too difficult for him to do the backbreaking work. Some of his adult children had moved to a town called Corcoran, in the San Joaquin Valley in California and had their own farms and they decided to move their parents there where they could retire.

I first met Will and Ruthie, my grandparents when I was about six years old. My family would travel from San Diego to Corcoran on vacations in the summer. My grandfather was one of the most impressive looking men I had ever seen. With his salt and pepper hair in braids, he looked much more Indian than black. My grandmother was a short, black lady who also wore braids and was the sweetest person. She loved to cook, and could whip up a delicious meal in no time. She would always put a little sugar or jelly in the vegetables so we grandkids would eat them. When it was time for dinner, she would always call us from outside by saying, Come on, babies time to eat.

It gets very hot in Corcoran in the summers, about 110 plus degrees and very cold in the winters, so my grandfather’s oldest son, Uncle Travis moved his father in with him in San Diego where the climate was more moderate. Grandmother Ruthie stayed in Corcoran with her other children and grandchildren.

Will would always cut my brother David’s and my hair with old clippers while we sat on wooden fruit crates. He didn’t talk much but when he did, we all listened intently to his stories of the past. He had a great energy about him which demanded our attention. As I became older my grandfather and I became very close, and some evenings we would sit and watch the sun go down together on those old wooden crates. He always told me stories about life or sometimes we would just watch the sun disappear over the trees and say nothing.

One story that he told me was so traumatic that I remember it to this day just as clearly as the day he told it to me. When he was about ten years old, he and three of his boyhood friends decided to go into town one day just to look around and see what the town was like. In those days it was demanded of a black person to step off the sidewalk and lower their heads if a white person was walking towards you and wanted to pass by, especially a white woman. My grandfather and his friends were young, country kids and not aware of all the ramifications of their actions. They were walking down the boardwalk and a young woman approached them. They not only didn’t step off the sidewalk, but they also did not lower their heads as this woman walked by. She was so incensed that she ran to a group of white men who were standing on the corner talking and told them that these black boys disrespected her by not getting off the sidewalk, and even watched her walk by. This group of men approached the boys and when they saw that my grandfather was an Indian, one of the men lifted my grandfather up by his shirt collar and said, This is your lucky day, boy! You go back to where you live and tell your folks that they will see what happens to little niggers that don’t respect a white woman.

My grandfather said that these men had such a look of hatred on their faces that he thought for sure that they were going to kill all of them, and was surprised when they told him to go home. He said that being an Indian that day surely saved his life.

The men took the other three boys away and my grandfather said that he was so scared that he ran as fast as he could back to his house and told his parents what had happened in town. They in turn hurried to find and tell the other boy’s families, but by the time they found them all and got back into town, it was too late. These three little innocent boys were hanging from a tree!

There was another story he told me when he was an older teenager. He and another black boy had a job in a grocery store in town doing odd jobs and cleaning up. One day the owner of the store along with some other white men saw this other boy out back talking to a white teenage girl. My grandfather saw these men whispering among themselves and told the young man that he’d better go home and tell his parents that there was going to be trouble. The young man decided to slip away and run home. When he told his parents about what happened, they immediately packed a suitcase for him and collected all the money they could find in the house. They then sent him out of town to protect him from being lynched. This young man never returned to his home for fear of what would happen.

I learned many things about life from my grandfather Will. I think of him often and the hardships he must have endured in his lifetime, but he never let life make him bitter. He was a simple man who did not need riches or possessions. He loved to farm, and never learned to drive a car.

One evening as we were sitting watching the sun setting, he said to me, You know there is one thing I do not understand. I said, What grandpa, He said, How old do I have to be before they stop calling me BOY? He passed away at 102 years old.

I have always remembered how sad he looked as he said this, and I try every day to live by his infinite grace and wisdom.

Chapter Two

My Mother’s Ancestry

My mother’s mother was named Roxie and she had also married a Cherokee Indian by the last name of Holloway. They had a farm in Arkansas, and also had three children, Fred, Mary and Millis.

One of the tragic stories passed down by my mother happened in the early ‘40s on my grandparents’ farm in Arkansas.

My grandparents had a beautiful black horse with a white star on his forehead named Dallas. Fred, their oldest son would ride Dallas into town to get supplies from time to time. All the people in the town admired this horse and my grandfather had been offered good money for him but always said that the horse was not for sale. One day Fred rode into town and a white man approached him and said that he wanted to buy the horse. Fred explained to him that his father did not want to sell the horse as he was needed on the farm. The white man was insistent and didn’t want to take NO for an answer. Fred was scared by this man’s aggressiveness, quickly finished his errands, and rode home as fast as he could. Fred ran into the house and told his mother what had happened, and said that he saw the man following him. Soon there was a knock at the door. When Roxie answered it, there stood the man who wanted to buy the horse. He stated again that he wanted to buy the horse, and would give top dollar for him. My grandmother politely told the man that her husband did not want to sell the horse as Dallas was a working horse on the farm. Eventually, my grandfather heard the voices and came out to see what the problem was. The white man said, I want to buy your horse. He is just what I have been looking for. My grandfather said, I am sorry sir, but the horse is not for sale. An argument ensued and it ended with this man pulling out a pistol and shooting my grandfather. The shot was fatal, and my grandmother and the three children watched in horror as my grandfather collapsed and died before their eyes in the front yard!

The crying and wailing of my grandmother and the children scared the man off and he did not even take the horse. This man disappeared and was never prosecuted for the murder. That’s the way it was in the small towns in the South. This black man’s life did not matter.

Roxie eventually remarried a man by the last name of Zackary, and they went on to have ten more children. Most of those children moved to California as adults settling in the Los Angeles, Stockton and San Francisco areas.

When my grandmother Roxie passed, our family went back to the farm in Arkansas for the funeral. My brother and I were just little kids. We loved the farm with all its animals, chickens, goats, pigs, geese, and lots of dogs and cats. We had never seen a farm before and couldn’t wait to get outside to play. The horse, Dallas was still alive, albeit old by now. David and I decided we would investigate the big ol’ red barn. We noticed that just inside the door some peas from the garden had been harvested and were in a large barrel. We were curious about the hayloft so we just had to climb up the ladder to see what was up there. We were playing in the hay when all of a sudden a gust of wind blew the barn door closed. It was dark and scary in there and we couldn’t even see to climb down from the hayloft. About that time old Dallas the horse pushed the door open, found the peas and began munching. His big frame filled up most of the barn door, but at least a little light came in so we could see. However, if we climbed down, how would we get around the horse and out of the barn? With each crunch of the peas it sounded to us like bones cracking and breaking. I said to David, That horse must have some serious teeth to make those kinds of horrible noises! To us Dallas was enormous and being city kids we were frightened of him so we just had to wait until Dallas finished his meal of fresh peas before we could climb down from the hayloft and get out of the barn. Once Dallas was gone, we high tailed it out of the barn and into the house with a big sigh of relief! To this day I can remember that horse and the noises he made chewing on those peas and how intimidating he was. I am almost seventy, and I can still honestly say that I don’t think I have ever been as scared in my life as I was that day.

***

My father was a handsome man about 5’ 10", with wavy black hair, and light skin. He had more Cherokee Indian features than black and of course he was pursued by most of the women in the neighborhood, even though they knew he was married. Even some of my mother’s so-called friends would smile to her face and then try to steal her husband behind her back. This caused a lot of dissent between my parents and put a lot of pressure on my father to stay on the straight and narrow. We kids would hear our parents argue over their problems long after we had gone to