On the night before Walter Payton died from bile duct cancer 10 years ago Sunday, he couldn’t speak. Feebly, Payton pointed to his lip as he lay in bed and asked his sister, Pam, to trim his mustache.
That was the image stuck in Pam Payton Curry’s mind when she walked into a warehouse four years later to approve the life-size sculpture of her brother. The sculpture’s mustache had to be perfectly trimmed just like Walter requested the last night of his life, Pam told local sculptor Ben Watts.
“I wanted it to look like a better replica of him than the one in the (Pro Football) Hall of Fame,” Payton Curry said. “And it does.”
This is how you honor Walter Payton with a statue.
To meet the family’s challenge, Watts researched photos and news clips to match every conceivable detail: Payton’s 5-foot-10, 205-pound frame, his tree-trunk-like 30-inch thighs, the eyes looking downfield, the spikes wrapped with tape, the size of the thigh pads. Walter’s brother, Eddie, even agreed to pose for Watts after noticing the nose on the bust was too narrow.
When Payton Curry saw the finished product in clay before it was sent to be bronzed, the striking likeness overwhelmed her.
“She was visibly shaken,” Watts recalled.
Once Payton Curry composed herself, she reached into her purse for a photo to show Watts exactly how to sculpt her little brother’s mustache. Watts happily obliged, attending to the minutest of details and treating the project like the labor of love it was.
Watts’ baby sitter as a kid was Alyne Payton, Walter’s mother, and nearly every boy in Columbia younger than Walter idolized him like Watts did. Nearly every man in the town of 6,500 did too.
Out of that universal reverence, the whole Payton Project started.
A couple of years after Payton’s death, an anonymous fan sent former Columbia newspaper publisher Ken Prillhart $100 and a suggestion to build a statue. That led to the formation of a committee that quickly raised $50,000, commissioned Watts and dedicated the statue in a ceremony that still causes some who were there to choke on their words.
“When they unveiled it, his mother couldn’t talk,” Watts said of the 2003 gathering. “That told me I had done a good job.”
When it came time to decide where to put the statue, there was no debate or controversy like what has transpired in Chicago involving the Park District, the Bears and the Payton family. There was a consensus on the committee: Nowhere made more sense than Walter Payton Field.
About 10 yards from the end zone, atop a marble base surrounded by a bed of knockout roses, a bronzed “Sweetness,” in his familiar Bears No. 34 uniform, carries the ball under his right arm as he plants his left foot. The pose is vintage Payton. The image is eerily lifelike, down to the thin mustache.
An engraved sign beneath the statue says, “We are stronger together than we are alone.” Before Columbia High School home games, each player touches Payton’s arm before running onto the field.
“To the people who knew Walter and grew up with him, it’s a reminder of who he was in Columbia,” Payton Curry said.
To everyone who sees the structure, it means something different.
To legendary Mississippi high school coach Charles Boston, the statue eventually takes his mind’s eye back to the kid who played the drums in the marching band he talked into playing football in the 10th grade. But the first thing that pops into Boston’s mind has nothing to do with football or music.
“I think of integration,” he said. “Walter had a lot to do with this community coming together.”
Before the 1970 season, all-black John J. Jefferson High School — where Payton spent his first three years of high school — integrated with Columbia High. Boston, who coached Payton at Jefferson, was moved into an administrative role and replaced on the sidelines by a white coach, Tommy Davis.
The bond between Payton and Boston always was strong. Boston would be the guy who later threatened to report a Kansas recruiter to the NCAA for staying with the Paytons and giving Walter a fancy car to drive around town. The Kansas coach moved out, and Payton eventually moved on to Jackson State.
Even before that, Payton showed his loyalty to Boston by protesting the decision to replace him at Columbia by sitting out spring football. The irony is Payton ultimately would help ease racial tension in the first year of school integration.
Sensitivities were high enough that in the season opener for Columbia after Payton scored on two long touchdown runs, two white men approached Boston. They wanted to know if Payton raising his index finger the final few yards of those runs signified the black power sign.
By the end of that 8-2 season, after many more touchdowns, everybody knew that was just the way Payton celebrated.
“Sports was a unifying thing and a reason we didn’t have problems other places had,” Boston said.
To Michael “Doby” Woodson, the statue elicits images of the friend he started playing football against when they were 7-year-olds trading stiff-arms. The best buddy he never could talk into sneaking a sip of beer and the teammate he chased up and down the steep hills of Columbia Country Club to train. The inspiration for so many other poor kids.
“He had a dream and followed that dream,” Woodson said.
To some in Columbia, the statue represents an overdue good-will gesture to the Payton family. Back in December 1978, Edward Payton, Walter’s father, died after experiencing seizures in a Mississippi jail where he was placed after being arrested on suspicion of drunken driving. Local reports show an autopsy later indicated Edward Payton had no alcohol in his blood and police were cleared of foul play. But the incident created some uneasy feelings, according to Boston.
“After that, I think Walter once said he was from Jackson, where his mom moved, and not Columbia,” Boston said. “I think that healed. We always felt like this was his home.”
To current players at Columbia High School, such as Derrick Bourne, the quarterback hoping for a college scholarship, the statue symbolizes a goal.
“It makes you want to try your best because of what kind of legacy he left,” Bourne said.
To their coach, Doug Norris, the statue serves as an unspoken pep talk before every home game.
“It reminds these kids to try to have a little bit of that effort,” he said. “As generations pass, the memory is less and less, so we need to show kids who he was … and we could probably do a better job of that to be honest with you.”
Ten years after Payton’s death, in his hometown, they are doing the best they can.
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Close to mom’s heart
When Alyne Payton walks onto Soldier Field on Sunday for a halftime tribute marking the 10th anniversary of her son Walter’s death, she plans to have him next to her heart, as usual.
“One time somebody wanted to make a coin of Walter, like a silver dollar, and he gave it to me,” said Payton, 84. “I like to wear that around my neck, so he’ll be present (Sunday).”
She was scheduled to fly into Chicago on Saturday from her home in Jackson, Miss. The Payton family will be escorted onto the field by former Bears Matt Suhey and Dennis Gentry. The Bears organization reaching out to the Payton family, 10 years later, touched her.
“It’s wonderful they are remembering him like this and Walter would be very proud of it,” Payton said. “He loved Chicago. And coming up there makes you think of him being gone more than you think of it every day. It will be pretty emotional.”
— David Haugh
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More pics a click away
Check out more photos of Walter Payton’s statue and alma mater at chicagotribune.com/paytonphotos
dhaugh@tribune.com
