Hard tackler at his best hitting books
Cormier's smarts paid off after SMU football success12:56 AM CDT on Sunday, March 15, 2009
When Jerry LeVias was only a sophomore at Beaumont Hebert, and already a star, a freshman trying to impress the football coaches nearly knocked him out in practice.
The new kid, a tuba player straight out of band hall, quickly learned he'd hit the wrong note.
"Do you know who that is?" a coach screamed.
"Yes, sir."
"Are you crazy?"
"No, sir."
The tuba player was then instructed to follow LeVias around to make sure nothing happened to him.
Rufus Cormier followed LeVias, all right. All the way from Beaumont to SMU.
Hayden Fry once described Cormier (pronounced Cor-me-AY) as if he were a triangle turned on its point: 6-foot, 220 pounds, 47½-inch chest, 32-inch waist. Ran a 10.3 100-yard dash. Colleges from all over wanted him. But the only major Texas schools interested were SMU and Houston.
Like LeVias' prospects before him, it had nothing to do with ability.
The headline leading The Dallas Morning News' sports section on April 3, 1966 and announcing Cormier's signing read, "SMU Inks 3 Negroes."
LeVias came first among black scholarship football players in the old SWC. Cormier was in the second wave. Fry moved him from fullback to nose guard his sophomore year, when a knee injury ended his season early. He returned as a junior, and in a 28-27 Bluebonnet Bowl win over Oklahoma, he was voted the outstanding defensive player.
Injuries clouded any thoughts Cormier had of a pro career, but there was a reason teammates kidded him for carrying so many books.
He went to law school at Yale, where Bill Clinton was a peer. In 1973, Cormier was appointed special assistant for the House Judiciary Committee's impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon.
Cormier eventually moved to Houston's Baker Botts, where, in '81, he became the prestigious law firm's first black partner. In '97, Houston's River Oaks Country Club named him its first black member.
Oh, he married well, too: his high school sweetheart, Yvonne, also an SMU alum.
Together, they produced three children who would earn degrees from Princeton, Yale, Virginia and Stanford.
"Rufus is the smartest person I know," is how Chuck Hixson, an ex-teammate and SMU quarterback, puts it, "and the second-smartest person in his family."
Last month, Hixson and other teammates gathered to help the SMU Letterman's Association honor Cormier with its Silver Anniversary Award, recognizing contribution to community.
In his acceptance, Cormier said, "Our strength as a society, like that of a team, lies in a sense of responsibility to each other. It was at SMU that I began to appreciate the importance of that obligation."
Cormier's wisdom and eloquence has long been old hat to his SMU teammates.
"When Rufus insults me," LeVias says, "I don't know it until I get a dictionary."
He was kidding, of course. Calling his old friend "one of the people I most admire," Cormier took his one and only cheap shot at LeVias long ago. He didn't know any better. But he sure learned, didn't he?
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