Robert Crespino

Robert “Bobby” Crespino, a standout football player at the University of Mississippi who went on to play eight seasons in the National Football League, died July 29, 2013 at Emory University hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. He was 75.

Born on January 11, 1938 in Duncan, Mississippi, Crespino suffered from asthma as a child and was so sickly that his parents held him out of first grade. He eventually grew out of the asthma, and his mother’s homemade ragu, or “gravy” as his family called it, bulked him up. He was soon playing football with his older brother, Junior, and cousins on the neutral ground along Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans, where his grandfather, a Sicilian immigrant and owner of a shoe store in the French Quarter, had managed to buy a rambling pink house. Bobby’s parents lived there for a time before moving to Benoit, Mississippi, where they opened a small grocery.

Crespino excelled in four sports at tiny Benoit High School. His parents, knowing that he needed stiffer competition if he were to win a major college scholarship, closed their store and lived off savings for a year so that Bobby could attend Greenville High School his senior year. The gamble paid off when he won a scholarship to Ole Miss.

In Oxford Crespino joined the football dynasty then under construction by coach Johnny Vaught. He was a key contributor to two of the most successful teams in school history, the 1959 “Team of the Decade” and the 1960 Sugar Bowl champions. Invited to play at the Senior Bowl, he was named most valuable player for the South squad, setting a record for receptions and receiving yards. Yet the best thing that happened to Bobby at Ole Miss, by far, was that he met Barbara Hardin of Macon. They started dating in their senior year and married soon after graduation.

Crespino was the first round pick of the Cleveland Browns in the 1961 NFL draft, the tenth player taken overall. He played three seasons in Cleveland before being traded to the New York Giants, where he played another five. All told, he appeared in 107 games and had 58 receptions for 741 yards and nine touchdowns. He retired in 1969. He is a member of the Ole Miss Sports Hall of Fame and the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.

Crespino applied to his post-football business career the same discipline and determination that had led to his athletic success. Shortly before his football retirement, he spotted an opportunity to bring cable television to his wife’s hometown of Macon. He worked tirelessly to build the business, selling subscriptions door to door and laying cable lines himself to connect the nearby towns of Brooksville and Shuqualak. Combined with a retail electronics and appliance store, Crespino was a leading member of Macon’s business community for thirty years.

Always a great teammate, Crespino contributed much to his community and church. For over twenty years he served as Alderman at Large for the city of Macon and was a stalwart member of Corpus Christi Catholic Church, where he helped oversee a renovation of the sanctuary and the construction of a fellowship hall.

For all his sports success, for those who knew him personally Crespino will be remembered most as a generous and loving father and good company always for a round of golf, eating oysters, or watching a football game. He was also a devoted husband par excellence. He and Barbara missed their fiftieth wedding anniversary by only a few months when Barbara succumbed to a cancer that she had fought for far longer than anyone thought possible.

In his final years Bobby suffered from multiple physical ailments, a number of which stemmed from his football days. Despite this, he remained active and upbeat until the end, a source of inspiration and fun for the family members and caregivers who looked after him.

He is preceded in death by his brother Samuel Joseph “Chris,” wife Barbara, and son Robert Jr. He is survived by his mother-in-law Dotsy Hardin, his daughter Mary Lou Mitchener (Keven), his son Joe (Caroline), and five grandchildren.

The family will receive visitors from 4:30 to 6:30 pm on Thursday, August 1 at St. Richard Catholic Church in Jackson and from 1-2:30 p.m. on Friday, August 2 at Corpus Christi Catholic Church Fellowship Hall in Macon. A funeral mass will be held at Corpus Christi at 2:30 pm with a brief graveside service to follow in Oddfellows Cemetery. Cockrell Funeral Home of Macon, Ms is entrusted with arrangements. You may sign online guest book at www.cockrellfuneralhome.com.

Memorials can be made either to St. Vincent de Paul Society at St. Richard Church, Jackson, or to the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy at Boston University (http://www.bu.edu/cste/), which is conducting state-of-the-art research on football and head injuries. Bobby has donated his brain and spinal chord for the important research being conducted there in hopes that the game of football, which provided him with so many opportunities, can be made safer for future generations.