There are two iconic celebrities who would be great characters in a Shakespearean tragedy…
America’s Dad, Bill Cosby, and O.J. Simpson! Both fell from grace.
Since the recent passing of O.J. Simpson, I reflected on my “connections” with the “Juice,” a childhood hero. Growing up in San Francisco, I looked up to Simpson, the kid who made it out of the Potrero Hill projects.
My friends and I idealized him, and everyone wanted to be him on the playgrounds of San Francisco when we played football. He came of age during the civil rights movement, which made him a cult hero with whites as well as African Americans.
The irony was he was far from an activist, in contrast to Jim Brown, who was also a great running back.
Many of us remember the white Bronco and the chase. I even remember where I was when that happened. I was chaperoning the Marguerita School eighth-grade promotion party at a church when someone said O.J. was fleeing arrest. We rolled in a TV set and watched in amazement.
That car chase would inspire others to do the same. It is now a Southern California tradition, thanks to O.J. and the white Bronco!
Besides football, it was the iconic Hertz Rent-a-Car commercial that made O.J. even more famous as he ran through the airport to return his rental car. It was really the first time an African American athlete was used to endorse a nationally known product.
O.J. was also a movie star. I watched him in “Towering Inferno,” “Capricorn One,” and the “Naked Gun” series.
They even named the football field at Galileo after him, later rescinded after his fall from grace.
I have a couple connections that relate to O.J. … six degrees of separation.
One of my teachers at Lowell High School in S.F. was O.J.’s football coach at Galileo High School. Mr. McBride was a math and PE teacher. On “The Tonight Show,” O.J. credited him with putting him on the “straight and narrow.” I asked Mr. McBride about O.J. and the teacher was happy for O.J.’s success.
Also, there is a distant, but nonetheless a link … We attended church with Lance Ito’s (the judge who presided over the O.J. trial) parents at Mt. Hollywood Church. Lance himself attended as a youth. Over the years I had two in-person encounters with O.J.
My first encounter was when my buddy Warren Kubota and I saw the football legend at the Royal Theater in S.F. watching a movie called “The Warriors.” He was with a stunningly beautiful woman. That woman was Nicole Brown Simpson. They sat two rows behind us and when the film ended everyone mobbed him in the lobby.
My second encounter was at the Alhambra golf course where we were having our annual faculty golf tournament. At this point, he had already been acquitted of murdering his wife and Ronald Goldman. He sat in the corner by himself, drinking a beer. No one got up to talk to him except one of our teachers. That teacher got a lot of flack afterward from other teachers for doing this.
These encounters really exemplify the fall from grace.
The real question for me would be why would a guy who had everything going for him self-destruct? His image before the Trial of the Century was of a guy who made it out of the ghetto, had a Hall of Fame football career and became a media icon.
It’s a question I think that will never be answered…
Bill Yee is a retired Alhambra High School history teacher. He can be reached at [email protected]. Opinions expressed are not necessarily those of TheRafu Shimpo.