The Big O is gone.

My friend. My teammate. The man who helped me through the biggest cultural change of my life is gone. James Curtis Owens died today, March 26, 2016. I knew it was coming. We all knew it was coming. But knowing and living beyond it leaves a hurt and pain deep down in my soul.

I first saw the Big O on a Friday night at John Carroll Athletic Field on Montclair Road in Birmingham, Alabama. I was a junior at John Carroll High School, playing my first full year of organized football. We were a small, rag tag, undersized bunch playing about two classifications above our ability and size level. We didn’t win very often.

The opponent was Fairfield High School. They were good. They had a starter named James Owens, who would later sign with Auburn University, becoming the first African American to integrate a major state university in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi… the Deep South. Now, he was warming up across the field from me. A running back, he was tall, lanky and wore a horse collar around his neck. He was about 6’2” and weighed close to 210 pounds. He looked dangerous. Ready to kick some you know what!

Our coach had warned us about him. He’d then gone on to tell the lie that coaches tell outmanned teams when they are about to get slaughtered by a bigger, faster, better team with bigger, faster, better players.

Referring to Owens, our coach said, “Hey! He’s no better than you. He puts his pants on one leg at a time just like you do.”

We all knew that was bullshit. Putting his pants on like we did had nothing to do with playing the way we did. This guy was All-State in football and track. He ran the 100 hundred-yard dash and threw the shot-put. He was a monster. I was glad as hell I wasn’t on defense.

It wasn’t pretty. He left carnage on the field. I don’t remember the score but it wasn’t close. After it was over, I watched him walk off the field where he had dominated us. Having integrated Fairfield High School football he was now heading off to be one of the first blacks in the Southeastern Conference.

Two years later, I would join James and Virgil Pearson, also from Fairfield, and Auburn’s first African American Athlete, Henry Harris, at Auburn University.

As a basketball player, Henry often travelled in different circles. For Virgil and me, James became our Daddy. We nicknamed him “Daddy O.” He was strong like our fathers, but gentle towards us, who had followed him. We not only respected him, everybody, on and off the field and in the athletic complex, held James in high esteem. Integration made things socially awkward but everybody respected James for his quiet, dignified courage. That respect lasted all of his life.

Our special friendship lasted from 1970 until his death. Like close friends we drifted apart throughout the seasons of our lives but we always found each other again because of the love and respect we had for our shared experience.

Henry left Auburn University after his senior basketball season. Virgil left his sophomore year, looking for a different experience. For the next two years on the varsity football team It was just James and me, as athletes of color. For the rest of his life we always relived that experience.

Between us we realized there was no one else in the world who shared that loneliness, that moment in our lives where we carried the pail of integration uphill without much assistance from those who could have helped us along. Those times were about providing for those whom would follow. We knew that. It kept us going.

James kept me grounded. He talked me down many times when, emotionally, I was way over the top. Over time, we embraced our teammates and they embraced us with that special bond that comes from the shared experiences of being teammates and winning games. During the two years when James and I were the two black pioneers on the team, we won 19 games and lost 3. We were a part of something bigger than us.

Throughout the decades that followed we talked a lot about those times. We always circled back to that experience. What had been a painful part of our lives had become, by the 21^st century, a memory of achievement, a gift that we gave to all who followed at our university, not just the black athletes. We also grew to love our teammates and they loved us back. Today we are teammates for life. It ‘s more than a slogan. We live it.

James is an Auburn University icon. He doesn’t need for me to tell everyone about his contributions. Look around the university and you will see his accomplishments in the faces of the young men on the football team, the basketball team, the track team, the baseball team and in the faces of the young women on the softball team, the basketball team and all the other sports that did not exist before integration.

He will always be remembered for what he gave to Auburn University, the state of Alabama and college football. I will always remember him as my friend.

I’ve been involved in Television since the late 1970s. In those days of yesterday, I worked in television news at the local CBS affiliate in my hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. I was young, fresh, and somewhat of a hit in town because I had made a name for myself as pioneering black athlete at Auburn University. I was also one of the first two blacks anchors to be featured on the television evening news in Birmingham. It was fun! I learned a lot from very experienced people who were outstanding at what they did. I’m grateful to them for what they taught me. 

In the 1980s I did my first paid acting gigs. Some were for big screen movie theatres and many were for the small screen of television. I occasionally continue to do these, working as an actor for the big three networks, CBS, ABC, NBC, and pay channel HBO, among others. These jobs have always been fun, paid well, provided work opportunities throughout the United States, and opportunities to attend dress-up, star studded premiere parties in Los     Angeles. I’ve worked with stars Carroll O’Connor, Della Reese, Brad Pitt, Ed Norton, Candice Bergen, Luther Vandross, Sally Field, Alfree Woodward, Lawrence Fishburne and many, many others.

One season, I hired on as a radio sports analyst for a Canadian League football team and traveled all across Canada broadcasting games.

Never satisfied, and always seeking more, I’ve written a play, had it produced in Los Angeles, and wrote an autobiography that was published and sold in national retail outlets.

So it seems only natural, at least to me, that an evolutionary move would be to write, produce and direct a film for broadcast television.

That’s where Quiet Courage comes in. Quiet Courage is the story of James Owens, the first African American college scholarship football player in the powerful Southeastern Conference Deep South states of Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. Owens made history by signing with Auburn in 1969. He says now “I didn’t know what I was getting into.” My two favorite taglines from the film’s promotional materials are, “Owens loved his University. She learned to love him back;” and, “He was Bo Jackson before there was a Bo Jackson.” The film premiered on Auburn’s campus on November 10 to a sold out crowd of 350 excited and very appreciative supporters, who laughed, cried, and stood to applaud as the ending credits rolled.

Back to television. The film Quiet Courage will make its broadcast debut on November 26^th on the nine-station network belonging to Alabama Public Television. To say I’m excited is an understatement. Working as talent on television is a role I enjoy, but producing, writing, guiding and directing this project from ideas, to concept, financing, preproduction, hiring, collaboration, post production and identifying a broadcast partner is a joyful feeling of immense satisfaction.

Quiet is quite a story. It’s a story I’ve always wanted to tell. James is my friend. We were roommates for a couple of years at Auburn. I lived much of his story with him. To be entrusted with it is quite an honor. If past experience is an example, Quiet Courage will be around for a while. Talks with other broadcasters continue. DVDs are for sale at bestgurl.com.Check it out. You’ll laugh, cry, and gain a full appreciation for the film’s title and its relevance to the protagonist. Quiet Courage, “the ability to face difficulty, uncertainty, or disturbance without being deflected from a chosen course of action.”