Sports Were Taken Away From Him in High School… So He Became a Coach

00:00:10
Speaker 1: And we returned to our American Stories. Up next, we’re going to hear from Richard Herzog, author of Pay Dirt. Through his childhood, Richard always longed for a role model, someone to look up to and help him navigate the hardships he was facing him the home. But his inspiration ended up not being a person at all. It was support. Here’s Richard with his story.

00:00:36
Speaker 2: I grew up in a small section of Gretna, right on the other side of the river from New Orleans, and historically, it’s not much different from New Orleans per se as the culture goes. We had one room with a large number of people living on top of each other in one bed. You had really, at the, in the beginning, you had one bed, so maybe three or four boys were sleeping in at one bed. And then eventually we got some bump beds, so you had one on the top, one on the bottom, and then maybe two or three would land in a big bed, and then my sister would land on a couch in the living room. You were always on the go, too, because, you know, you live by the rule: you just stay outside until it’s time to eat. So you’re, you know, you’re either involved in games that you make up, your own little world of climbing on trains, jumping trains to get to the ballpark as they’re moving. I mean, come on, you got to try that once, right? Swimming in the river, and you could just get up on the barges and jump into the river.

00:01:39
Speaker 3: So that was fun.

00:01:41
Speaker 2: And it was kind of like growing up like Tom Sawyer, and, you know, we didn’t lack for anything because we didn’t know what it was like to have anything. The way I can describe growing up where I grew up, all you needed was a pair of shorts and some underwear, and you were good to go. You know, you didn’t have to work about shoes. Well, you know, in New Orleans, you’re either going to a celebration or you’re going to make one up. There’s never a worry. You just go on to the next day or the next thing and the next event. Now, New Orleans is not a part of this world as far as I’m concerned, but for me, it affected me, seeing how it affected other people.

00:02:29
Speaker 3: The drug life.

00:02:30
Speaker 2: I’ve seen people die at an early age, friends who have lost to overdoses. You know, fighting came early and often, and I was pretty good at it, so, you know, it’s a hard environment to get out of. I mean, they’re entrenched, but it has that kind of spell on you. So, at home, it’s an abusive situation. You know, I’d had my share of abuse. I’d seen more than my fair share of abuse. My mother suffered severely with depression. She’s trying to raise six children in a small house. My dad was a blue-collar worker, and their marriage was one big ball of conflict. I would scratch my head every day, thinking, ‘How did they get married?’

00:03:19
Speaker 3: So I watched a lot of wars.

00:03:21
Speaker 2: You know, then you got to, in this small space, you got to witness alcohol. But you were also living under these guidelines or this, you know, paint-by-color orders. This is what you do. This is how you do it. You don’t ask questions. Get moving. Boom! So your curiosity was shot. So life’s in motion, all these things that are happening inside the home get self and somewhat by sports. It was the one thing I was really good at that I could enjoy. I didn’t, you know, I was lands away when I was playing ball. You know, you can get on a ball field and fresh grass and sweaty uniforms and basically knocking to snot out each other.

00:04:12
Speaker 3: If you’re in football.

00:04:13
Speaker 2: And enjoying it and not get arrested for it, thrown into detention or whatever.

00:04:19
Speaker 3: He was like, ‘Man, I can do this!’

00:04:21
Speaker 2: My mother’s cousin was Mel Ott, and I knew I had some athletic influences in me. You know, I would watch some things on TV. I’d see athletes play, and I’d go out and try to replicate it, and I’d keep working at it until I got pretty good and loved it, just absolutely loved it. Loved competing. You know, I was determined I’d be the best on the field all the time. I played ball at school, so, you know, growing up, had success at sports, had a lot of trophies. Trophies were put on the mantelpiece in a very interesting environment.

00:05:02
Speaker 3: You know.

00:05:02
Speaker 2: I had a shotgun and a record play and a crucifix arounded by it. So, heavy hand at home was coming down on me pretty good, and I’d run scared from everything I’d just witnessed, and then I’d run, trying to get back into the football game, because that’s where the comfort was. And I never got to have in a relationship with someone to kind of self in the blows or maybe give me some sage advice or just point me along the way. So I think, from that part of my childhood going in right before I hit high school, I was wanting something to kind of say that, you know, ‘Richard, you are a decent human being,’ or, ‘you are this,’ ‘you are that,’ and kind of build up my self-esteem a little bit instead of always being held under thumb, and just generally just to feel like being in love. So I was a pretty, pretty confused child. I had a lot of talent from my shoulders on down at that point, but I did not have a whole lot of confidence between my ears.

00:06:15
Speaker 4: Richard went to an all-boys Catholic school. One day, a boy in his class decided to play a prank on the teacher, and when he invited Richard to take part in it, he declined.

00:06:26
Speaker 2: So eventually, the guys caught. And I wanted to check to see how the teacher was doing. I was being sincere. I purposely missed the bus day after school and went and visited in a classroom. She was there grading papers, and I knocked on a door, and we started a conversation, and that’s where really the relationship began. You know, she was heavily influential on me because she was a mother figure to a degree. She was my teacher. She was the first homecoming queen at the University of New Orleans. She was absolutely gorgeous. Now, she had it all, and the way she interacted with me and the conversations we had, I felt like, for the first time, I was learning and actually talking to someone who gave me the time and the attention and felt sincere about it. So your mind goes to these places because you’re hoping and thinking and wishing that this lady’s going to set you straight and help you out.

00:07:39
Speaker 3: You know.

00:07:42
Speaker 4: After Richard talked with his teacher for a while, she offered to give him a ride home from school.

00:07:48
Speaker 2: We walked to the parking lot, and there was a burnt-orange 1972 Montigo, and I thought, ‘Oh, gosh, teachers must get paid a lot of money!’ Yeah, and I got in, and it was, you know, this brand-new smell. And the ride home was unlike anything I’d experienced in my life. It was calm, it was musical, it was fun and funny. It was wit being shared, it was laughter, and it stuck with me.

00:08:25
Speaker 3: But the drive home, you know.

00:08:26
Speaker 2: That day was the first, and then she just asked me if I needed a ride home. So I stopped riding the bus and started riding with her.

00:08:35
Speaker 1: And we’re listening to Richard Herzog, author of Pay Dirt, share his story with us: growing up in New Orleans, small house, one bed, then bunk beds, always on the go. As he said, ‘we stayed outside until it was time to eat.’ Kind of like growing up like Tom Sawyer, he described, but not so much for the home life. The celebrations of New Orleans. Well, lots of drugs, lots of alcohol, and lots of abuse in the family. My parents’ marriage was one big ball of conflict. I was lands away, however, when I played sports, and then that teacher of his, who just taught him about a different world in that car ride home: some peace, some laughter, and some encouragement and love. When we come back, more of Richard Herzog’s story here on Our American Stories. And we’re back with Our American Stories and with Richard Herzog. When we last left off, he’d begun to form what he thought was an innocent relationship with his teacher, hoping she would be a mentor for him. Let’s return to Richard.

00:09:54
Speaker 2: It was the last day of school, and she had driven me home, and, well, I thought, ‘It’s been good.’ But I’ve got all this tightness in me, like I’m a loser. I’m not going to get to talk to her anymore.

00:10:08
Speaker 3: You know.

00:10:09
Speaker 2: I was romanticizing, but I got to accept the reality of it. No matter what I’m thinking, I have to accept the reality.

00:10:16
Speaker 3: She’s married, and I just have to go on.

00:10:23
Speaker 4: Over the summer, Richard had a job working at a local, family-owned restaurant called Purdues.

00:10:29
Speaker 3: I think that helped me move on a little bit.

00:10:33
Speaker 2: You got the things you love. You’ve got sports. You’ve got your job. And so, I…

00:10:38
Speaker 3: learned how to keep busy in that moment.

00:10:42
Speaker 2: And we’re at work one night, and Miss Burdue and stephone and I are just standing nearby, and she says, ‘Richard, you have a telephone call.’

00:10:51
Speaker 3: And I’m thinking, ‘Who’s calling me at work?’ And it was her.

00:11:00
Speaker 2: She said, ‘I’ve been thinking, and I like talking to you and like being with you, and I want to see you again. Let’s get together,’ and away we went.

00:11:11
Speaker 4: It was then that Richard’s teacher told him if he gave up his sports, which practiced every Saturday, they could instead spend that time together.

00:11:20
Speaker 2: By then, I was heavily influenced. Now, she’s my drug of choice, basically. So, you know, whatever she said, I listened to, and it was like, ‘Yeah, okay, she wants to see me, and I’m going to give up sports to do this.’ So, yeah, by then, pretty much far gone. I didn’t tell anyone until it started to get physical, but no one knew what to do about it.

00:11:51
Speaker 4: After several months of spending time together in forming this inappropriate relationship, Richard’s teacher asked him if he would come for a ride with her.

00:12:01
Speaker 3: She was quieter than she…

00:12:03
Speaker 2: normally was. And then she just basically tells me, ‘We can’t go on like this anymore, and we can’t do this anymore.’ I think by this moment in time, people are talking, and there’s still no answers as to exactly what happened, other than that she said she got scared and ran.

00:12:27
Speaker 3: So that’s where it was left, basically.

00:12:30
Speaker 2: I mean, it was like right then and there, so there was so much to deal with. I couldn’t tell my parents, I couldn’t tell the administration. Certainly wasn’t going to go to a priest, and that was the hard part. There’s just no help. It was just shutting the door. I had nowhere to go. I had no one to talk to. I didn’t think anybody would believe me, and so I would see her on a daily basis, and I’m a zombie. I am in a total inexplicable fog. And so that’s how I’m living every day. Two years of high school have gone through. That was excruciating, to say the least. But I was also determined that I was going to get through it. I wasn’t gonna let her kill me. By the time I got out of high school, you know, I had these jobs that were just crazy. They were going nowhere fast. I could accept things as they were; you know, live where I was living, drink beer, get up and do it again, and think life was good.

00:13:32
Speaker 3: You know, I could have settled for that.

00:13:35
Speaker 2: But, and I got to thinking that, ‘You know what? I’ve wasted all my talent, that this is not what I’m supposed to be.’ I just was not fulfilling my potential, I think, God had given me.

00:13:50
Speaker 4: At this point, Richard started going to football games at the high school he’d attended to watch his friend John, who was the quarterback.

00:13:57
Speaker 2: I would sit in the stands, and I would be filled with so much anger and resentment, and not towards John of the team or anything—I was pulling for them—but the resentment of that could have been me. So I would walk out of the stadium during these games, being probably the meanest, maddest person, and everybody else is celebrating, and I’m like, ‘You know, just get away from me, because I’m ready to fight!’ So that was me standing in the fire. I went and I faced that, and I knew it would be hard, but that drove me. I got to do something. If I can’t be a ballplayer, then I’m going to coach.

00:14:45
Speaker 3: then and there.

00:14:49
Speaker 4: Richard’s friend John was being recruited by Ole Miss to play football, and he told Richard he should go there, too, for college.

00:14:57
Speaker 2: I never heard of Ole Miss except for Archie Manning. I didn’t know who Ole Miss was, but I knew who Archie Manning was. Well, does John’s getting recruited? I’m living right next door to him, so all these recruiters are coming in his house. And when he decides that he wants to sign with Ole Miss, Archie shows up at the house, and of course I’m over there, and I’m meeting Archie Manning and Steve Sloan. And so, I got…

00:15:18
Speaker 3: to think, ‘And yeah, man, I really like to go up there!’

00:15:21
Speaker 2: I came up before I actually, you know, enrolled in school and saw it, and I…

00:15:25
Speaker 3: was like, ‘Yeah, I like this place!’

00:15:29
Speaker 2: And getting seven, eight hours away was kind of a cure for me. You know, I could separate myself at that point, and there was something about it that grabbed my soul. But I also know that I’m here to focus, and I want to get my degree, and I want to coach. So I got on that track of, ‘That’s what’s happening.’ And I mean, God must have been looking at me something, because I ended up running the athletic dorm here. I was in charge of 400 athletes, and, you know, then I’m getting to travel with the team, and I’m at some of the practices, and it’s like, ‘Wow!’ But, you know, in all this, the darkness is still there; the problem, the issue is still there. By the law and by definition, you know, it was statutory rape, which I had no idea what that was at the time, because I did not know the difference between improper and improper relationship. In my mind, was like, ‘Well, true, this is how relationships are, whether you’re married or not.’ You know, that you can’t really commit to something, and that’s what I learned at an early age. So I was in therapy, and knowing something was wrong. It was just like a miracle, you know. The lady said, ‘I’m gonna send you to this counselor who can give you this test, and I think she can help you.’ So I took the tests, and I scored high, and that’s not a good thing, but it does give you answers. And the answers for me were to get into the Twelve-Step Program, and I felt like it was the first time I had been in church in a long, long time. But there’s so much empathy and spiritual togetherness that you’re all rowing in the same boat, gone in the same direction, you know, and you just really want to get well. I quit drinking, I started lifting weights, started running, doing all these things, getting healthier.

00:17:37
Speaker 4: After going through Twelve Steps and working with Ole Miss Athletics, Richard then went on to become head football coach at another school in Tennessee and led the team to four state championships.

00:17:49
Speaker 2: So one accomplishment is building on top of the other, which, that in itself, was to therapy, if there is such a…

00:17:58
Speaker 3: thing for me.

00:18:00
Speaker 2: And then as you accomplished something, I gained more confidence. And that’s when I started to think, ‘Okay, I got some confidence here. It’s time for me to be more proactive than I’ve been.’ And I thought that forgiving was important because it all boils down to: she was an adult, and what she did was abuse and caused a lifetime of grief, and I wanted to forgive her. I wanted to forgive myself. Forgiving her was extremely difficult because you’re always caught between forgiving and forgetting, and then the ugly part of me would, you know, the anger would rise again, and I cannot really forgive her. You know, you said you did, but can you really do this? And that was always very difficult. But I felt like I could confront all of it, have some clarity, and, you know, I was like, ‘There’s got to be a voice for people who have had the experience I had.’ This happens to males, too, believe it or not, and I want them to know that if they have this and they’re going through what I went through. They don’t have to take their life. They can win. And, you know, I think the best thing that you can do is forgive. So in the end, I beat it.

00:19:32
Speaker 1: And a terrific job by Madison derrek Ott on the production, and a special thanks to Richard Herzog, author of Pay Dirt, and how he overcame the sexual abuse. And let’s face it, that with sexual abuse—and men face it, too, from women and from men—that’s as important telling those and sharing those stories as when women do. And my goodness, getting to Ole Miss—and we broadcast right here in Oxford, Mississippi—getting seven and eight hours away from what happened to him. But in the end, he still had to face the dark, and the way to do it was forgiveness. We have found that again and again: that when the victim forgives, the victimizer, life begins. The story of Richard Herzog: a terrific overcoming story here on Our American Stories.