RIP Bernie Custis

[Argo57]

A true pioneer who carried himself with dignity and class, RIP Mr.Custis.


https://www.thestar.com/sports/footb...ead-at-88.html

[jerrym]

Without what Bernie initiated the CFL would be a far lesser league.

[jerrym]

Spent today talking to people who knew Bernie Custis. He was pioneer but the man changed countless lives, one by one, as a teacher & coach.

— Drew Edwards (@scratchingpost) February 24, 2017

[argolio]

Didn't know he went to Syracuse. So that's how Tony Gabriel was able to go to there.

RIP

[jerrym]

Former Argo QBs Chuck Ealey and Conredge Holloway comment on what Bernie meant to them.

Ealey, who quarterbacked the Tiger-Cats to the 1972 Grey Cup championship, remembers meeting Custis when the two played basketball in Hamilton.
“He was a total gentleman in everything he did, totally respectful in every way possible,” said Ealey. “You would never have known that Bernie played in the CFL and (what) he went through (because) I don’t ever remember him having a conversation about it.
“It was kind of one of those things you know but you don’t have to get into. You move on with your life and deal with the people around you.”
While Custis deserves the recognition he has received, Ealey believes Canada warrants praise for not caring about his skin colour.
“What Bernie did has allowed the bridges of thought to be dealt with,” Ealey said.
“A lot of it has to do with Canada itself. It gave Bernie a chance and gave me a chance, another quarterback that came after. It was the cultural aspect of the country. Bernie being the first black quarterback to come into Canada (meant) yes, this can be done and there’s no issue other than your ability to play. I think that was important.” ...


Condredge Holloway, a trailblazer himself after becoming the first black starting quarterback at Tennessee and in the Southeastern Conference in college, said it was because of Custis that being black wasn’t an issue when he came to the CFL in 1975.
“There were black quarterbacks everywhere,” said Holloway, who won Grey Cups with both Ottawa and Toronto.
“The joke was; the NFL doesn’t have a black quarterback because they are all in Canada.”

http://www.cfl.ca/2017/02/24/ealey-h...-custis-paved/

[Will]

I really didn't know much about Custis aside from the ceremony that the Tiger-Cats had for him back in 2011 I want to say. There is no doubt however that he had a significant impact for African-American or African-Canadian players in the CFL.

[jerrym]

A class act all the way.

It was a longer memorial than most, but you don’t bid farewell to a legendary pioneer/caregiver/educator/gentleman with anything less than the full 360. A steady, emotional, stream of friends, family, extended family, fellow coaches and former players took to the microphone at the Burlington Performing Arts Centre Friday afternoon and with their words and, sometimes, tears painted a complete, moving and often funny portrait of Bernie Custis, who died last week at the age of 88.
The former Tiger-Cats player, scout and spiritual adviser, the longtime teacher and principal, the ultra-successful coach of the Burlington Braves, Sheridan College Bruins and McMaster Marauders, the first African-American quarterback in professional football. All of those were Bernie Custis, but Bernie Custis was more than all those, as speaker after speaker made crystal clear on Friday.
“Bernie feasted on life, then graciously shared his table with everyone, ” said Rev. Tim Graham. Similar praise – in different words by diverse voices and through personal parables – was presented throughout the memorial and in the theatre lobby before and after.
The assessments and memories were unanimous: Custis was a gentleman, a listener, a motivator, a man of peace and love who felt actions spoke louder than the words he surely had to suppress, especially in his youth when the position of quarterback was subject to active apartheid.
Custis was a coach and an educator and to him they amounted to basically the same thing. Disseminating life lessons.
The room was peppered with his former players and it was easy to see that in the Hamilton-Burlington football community, the common denominator always seemed to be Bernie Custis. All tiers of football, from commissioner Jeffrey Orridge representing the CFL to assistant coaches in house league, came out to celebrate him.
On the stage, and in the private conversations, those players talked of his favourite directive, especially in the face of adversity: “Gentlemen, show poise.”
Custis drove Tony Gabriel to his alma mater, the University of Syracuse, which in turn gave Gabriel a full four-year scholarship that opened the door to not only a hall-of-fame pro career, but the education that helped him lead a rewarding life after the game. “He was a gentleman, ” Gabriel said. “I don’t even remember him ever getting mad on the sidelines.”
Custis was never bitter, and he had plenty of reason to be. He’d faced prejudice in high school and university ball, and after pivoting the 1951 Tiger-Cats well in the second year of their existence, coach Carl Voyles would not let him under centre again. It was, Custis told The Spectator in the early 2000s, racially motivated. But he said it without rancour.

http://3downnation.com/2017/03/04/be...an-peace-love/