A teacher helped inspire former NFL player
Through standout days as a defensive end at Mississippi State and an NFL career that included winning the Super Bowl with the Bears, Tyrone Keys never forgot his sixth-grade teacher.
Mary Hagan never drifted far from Keys' thoughts, even after he played for the Bucs and Chargers, retired from the league in 1988 and launched a successful nonprofit in Tampa.
"She just radiated love and compassion," Keys said.
And Keys and his fellow students at Dawson Elementary School in Jackson, Miss., needed love and compassion in the worst way. It was 1970, the first year Jackson's public schools integrated, and Keys said the racial strife surrounding the change engulfed the children in negativity and chaos.
Hagan stepped into the fray and became the first white teacher at predominantly black Dawson. She didn't have all the supplies and tools, but she had a gift for inspiring the students.
"I think the bottom line was we developed a sense of trust with one another," said Hagan, 67. "I was new to them. They were new to me. But I told them at the very beginning we were going to get along fine.
"You've got to enjoy your students. You've got to get the job done, but you've got to make that connection."
Hagan regaled them with personal stories of how she grew up next to Beverly Hillbillies star Donna Douglas in Louisiana. She boasted about her LSU Tigers and the greatness that is SEC football.
Keys specifically recalled how Hagan had him write a paper about the NFL draft and how he could achieve his dreams of playing in the NFL.
"She was the first white person I had ever spoke to," Keys, 48, said.
The turmoil, however, always loomed in Hagan's life. She drew criticism from integration opponents. Attendants refused to pump her gas, and management in her apartment complex threatened her.
"They were harassing me something horrible," she said. "It was to the point that I was afraid."
The worst came around Thanksgiving. Hagan's husband had moved his bride from Baton Rouge, La., to Jackson for a job, but the employer told him if his wife didn't stop teaching at Dawson, he would lose his job.
He returned to Louisiana and got his old job back, but Hagan stayed in Jackson to finish the semester. She refused to give up on the kids.
When she said she was leaving, the students screamed and cried and wailed. They understood the pressures Hagan faced but desperately wanted her to stay.
Hagan, too, cried all the way back to Louisiana. To soften the blow, she left the kids with a poem.
Keys took the poem to heart, wanting to write as he got older, but he couldn't find an address for Hagan. In college, Mississippi State played at LSU twice. Keys woke up early and thumbed through the Baton Rouge telephone book hoping to find her name. No luck.
Years later he saved a pair of Super Bowl tickets for her but couldn't find her.
This year, Keys hired an attorney to help find Hagan. They connected with the help of the Louisiana Department of Education. Since then, they've talked at least six times, including an initial conversation that lasted 45 minutes.
Keys told her about his career and doing the Super Bowl Shuffle with the '85 Bears. He told her about starting All Sports Community Service, a nonprofit that has helped more than 1,000 high school kids reach college.
He told her she was with him for every step.
"I shared with her how she inspired us coming into our school at the time period in our lives," Keys said. "The courage she had and the compassion she had for us as young people, I never forgot it."
Hagan, who became a principal, said Keys' call out of the blue is a defining moment in her career. She has never forgotten her "special class" at Dawson, and she kept a folder with mementos from that time, including the class roll.
"That's what makes the teaching profession what it is. … The rewards you get," Hagan said. "The rewards may not come this year or next year; maybe 20 years down the road a reward may come.
"This is a testament to what I've been preaching all these years."
Hagan's greatest reward continues this weekend. She will be Keys' special guest when he's inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame today in Jackson.
"Society has changed," Hagan said. "It's come around. Thank goodness."
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