Death finally beat Hank Bullough. He passed away Sunday night at age 85, but the Michigan State Hall-of-Famer robbed death of at least another five years while recovering from health scares.
Bullough, a national champion as both a player under Biggie Munn (1952) and assistant coach under Duffy Daugherty (1965 and 1966), suffered a major stroke when he returned to his Okemos home alone one in night 2014. His wife Lou Ann came home to find him; Hank was rushed to the hospital.
The tough old guy recovered from the stroke and subsequent hospitalizations when his health took a bad turn.
Bullough staving off death reminded of a Richard Pryor line in his 1979 movie, “Richard Pryor: Live in Concert.” Pryor referred to John Wayne getting off his death bed to live longer. He pictured Wayne flicking death from his shoulder and said mimicking Wayne’s voice, “Get the f— out of here, death.”
Recovering gave Bullough time over the next five years to watch two grandsons finish their Michigan State football careers, Riley in 2016 and Byron in 2018 (Max finished in 2013). He also was proud of granddaughters Holly and Chloe running cross country and track for the Spartans. Hank and Lu Ann had returned to the Lansing area following Hank’s long NFL coach career as a defensive coordinator and head coach with the Buffalo Bills.
I know he was as proud of the his granddaughter runners as his football grandsons because he brought it up when we talked football.
Everyone in Spartan Nation owes Hank a debt of gratitude beyond his football playing and coaching careers. Hank was the one the one that gave me the keys to unlock the back story and significance to the Underground Railroad in my book with Jimmy Raye, “Raye of Light, Jimmy Raye, Duffy Daugherty, the 1965-66 Michigan State Spartans and the integration of college football.”
They key was southern black high school coaches held Daugherty in great esteem. They sent their players to him to escape segregation. Hank explained when Duffy was invited to speak at a coaches clinic in the late 1950s in segregated Atlanta, he was upset that the black high school coaches were denied entry. He subsequently put on a free clinic for the coaches then and into the future.
Those coaches included Willie Ray Smith in Beaumont, Tex., who sent Duffy his son Bubba and Gene Washington among others, and William Roberts in Anderson, S.C., who sent George Webster. Hank explained explained in those days a high school coach was the most influential person in the recruiting process.
With that door to go through, I was able to make a detailed case why no university or coach did more for the integration of college football than Michigan State’s Duffy Daugherty and the players, black and white, for the integration of college football.
Sadly, the accepted story among the national media has been Daugherty got lucky with a handful of black recruits from the segregated south and that Duffy needed Alabama coach Bear Bryant’s help finding players.
That’s a myth debunked in Raye of Light. In reality, Bryant dragged his feet on integration. He also admitted in court lawsuit deposition, brought by the Alabama Afro-American student association for failing to recruit black athletes, he had no knowledge of black athletes in his state or the South. He said on film in an interview that black athletes he knew weren’t qualified academically or good enough athletically.
Duffy was not a passive bystander as that myth portrays. He was a courageous leader in the face of racism.
Another myth has been that 1970 USC-Alabama game was a pivotal moment in the integration of college football. That is based on a fictional (failed) movie script former USC player John Papadakis wrote and successfully spread through the grapevine. Aiding the Bryant misinformation campaign was writer Keith Dunnavant, a Bryant apologist, with distorted facts.
Many Spartan Nation fans now understand this, but I keep looking for the national tripwire for proper credit to be accredited to Duffy, his coaching staff, his players and then-Michigan State president John Hannah.
Unfortunately, the national media remains focused on Bryant folklore and a fictional narrative surrounding the USC-Alabama game.
This year is the 60th anniversary of Daugherty’s first Underground Railroad passenger among 44 southern black recruits from 1959 to 1972. They were from eight states across the south. The exceptions were no players from Alabama, Tennessee and Maryland.
At the start of the season, I wrote a story titled “Fourty-four Underground Railroad legacy facts” to explain the previously untold story that Bullough helped unlock, steering me down the right road to the truth.
RIP, Hank Bullough.
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I invite you to follow me on Twitter @shanny4055
Tom Shanahan, Author: Raye of Light http://tinyurl.com/knsqtqu
— Book on Michigan State’s leading role in the integration of college football. It explains Duffy Daugherty’s untold pioneering role and debunks myths that steered recognition away from him to Bear Bryant.
http://shanahan.report/a/the-case-for-duffy-and-medal-of-freedom
Don’t believe the myths at Duffy Daugherty’s expense about Bear Bryant’s motivation to play the 1970 USC-Alabama game or myths about the Charlie Thornhill-for-Joe Namath trade. Bear Bryant knew nothing about black talent in the South while he dragged his feet on segregation.
http://www.shanahan.report/a/forty-four-underground-railroad-legacy-facts
http://shanahan.report/a/myths-that-grew-out-of-1970-alabama-game-with-usc
http://shanahan.report/a/mystery-solved-in-thornhill-and-namath-myth
David Maraniss, Pulitzer Prize winner and biographer; “History writes people out of the story. It’s our job to write them back in.”
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