Friday, November 1, 2013
‘Let The Ol’ Man Play’
The former American football star-turned minister, one-time confidant of O.J. Simpson, and the man who helped disarm Sirhan Sirhan after he had shot Bobby Kennedy, is still serving Jesus, has released a new album, and has got married again
By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries
BEVERLY HILLS, CA
(ANS) – Roosevelt “Rosey” Grier (born July 14, 1932 in Cuthbert, Georgia) is a giant of a man – he’s 6 feet 5 inches tall – and has played many roles in his colorful life.
Rosey Grier arriving at the Media Fellowship International Praise Brunch
(Photo: Dan Wooding)
Known as “The Gentle Giant”, Grier is an actor, singer, Christian minister, and former professional American football player. He was a notable college football player for Pennsylvania State University who earned a retrospective place in the National Collegiate Athletic Association 100th anniversary list of 100 most influential student athletes.
As a professional player, Grier was a member of the original “Fearsome Foursome” of the Los Angeles Rams and played in the Pro Bowl twice.
After Grier’s professional sports career he worked as a bodyguard for Robert Kennedy during the 1968 presidential campaign and was guarding the senator’s wife, Ethel Kennedy, during the Robert F. Kennedy assassination at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Although unable to prevent that killing, Grier took control of the gun and subdued the shooter, Sirhan Sirhan.
Bobby Kennedy after he
had been shot
It was then that the most dramatic incident took place in his rather amazing life, when on June 5, 1968, a man called Sirhan Sirhan, who was born in Jerusalem to Christian Palestinian parents, fired a .22 caliber Iver Johnson Cadet revolver into the crowd surrounding Senator Bobby Kennedy in the kitchen pantry of the hotel. This occurred shortly after Kennedy had finished addressing supporters in the famous hotel’s main ballroom.
On hearing this, George Plimpton, an American journalist, writer, editor, actor, and occasional amateur sportsman, along with Rosey Grier, and Olympic gold medalist Rafer Johnson were among several men who subdued and disarmed Sirhan after a lengthy struggle.
The giant of a man, Grier, agreed to talk about this fateful event at the Movieguide® 16th Annual Faith & Values Awards Gala and Report to the Entertainment Industry on February 5, 2008, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, California.
“Bobby had just made a speech and we were getting ready to go someplace else but, somehow or another, Bobby jumped off the back of the stage and everyone was out of position and by the time we caught up with him when shots rang out,” said Grier. “We were running to see we could stop all the violence that was going on and then we saw Sirhan with the gun so I went and pulled him up on the stage and then up on a table.
Rosey Grier, bottom foreground, wrested the gun away from Sirhan Sirhan moments after Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot on
June 5, 1968
(Photo: Bettmann/Corbis)
“George Plimpton had been struggling with the gun hand and I just wrenched it out of Sirhan’s hand and put it in my pocket. Later on Rafer Johnson asked me if I had it and I gave it to him.”
The assassination of Bobby Kennedy followed the killing of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963.
“It was a tragedy for the world because here we all were trying to make our world a better place and then evil erupts like this,” said Grier, who had since become an ordained minister.
I asked Grier how different the world would have been if the Kennedy brothers had lived.
“Well, at that time,” he replied, “there was a spirit a spirit of togetherness in this country; of people helping one another; caring for one another and not sitting on the fence, but getting involved and making the world a better place and that’s what should be happening today.
“We are all going to have to get involved if our world is going to turn around from where it’s going.”
I asked Grier if he ever despaired with all the violence still going on around the world.
“Well, violence is very prevalent in the world today,” he said. “People are hating one another and they don’t know why, and the violence has gotten so bad that we have people blowing themselves up to try and hurt people. To me, we don’t know how to deal with that, so I think one way we can help is to learn to respect our friends and neighbors and care about them and that, in itself, will stop a lot of the violence eventually. But it’s going to take a great move of God.”
Between 1994 and 1995, Grier generated great controversy when he became the spiritual counselor of accused murderer and former football star O.J. Simpson.
O.J. Simpson appears at a parole hearing in Clark County District Court in Las Vegas
(Getty Images)
Grier said on another occasion that he went to the jail chaplain in Los Angeles seeking permission to visit and give spiritual support to Simpson, who had pleaded not guilty to the 1994 murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman after a lengthy and internationally publicized criminal trial. (He was later acquitted, but in 1997, a civil court awarded a $33.5 million judgment against Simpson for their wrongful deaths.
“I knew exactly what he was going through,” Grier said in a media interview at the time. “When it seems like everything has crumbled around you and you have nowhere to turn, and there was hope. There was a reason to live. There was a reason to continue on, regardless of what things looked like. That your life could be changed through the power of God.”
During their jailhouse visits, Grier said, he would read the Bible with Simpson, adding, “We would go over Scriptures, we’d pray and discuss various people in the Bible, problems they had, and talk about who God is and what sin is. We talked about all kinds of things in the Bible.”
In a later exclusive interview we me after he had just spoken at the 12th Annual Media Fellowship International Praise Brunch at the historic Beverly Hills Hotel, on Saturday, September 25, 2010, I asked Rosey if he was still in touch with Simpson, who is now serving his sentence as Nevada Department of Corrections inmate #1027820 at the Lovelock Correctional Center. (Simpson was on Friday, December 6, 2008, sentenced to prison for 15 years on charges of kidnapping and armed robbery of two sports memorabilia dealers at a hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. Simpson’s accomplice in the crime, one Clarence Stewart, was also given a thirty-three year sentence. Both were at that time eligible for parole in five years.)
“I have not connected with O.J. since he went to prison,” said Rosey at that time. “I pray for him but I have not connected with him. I have tried to call his family but I can never seem to get anyone.”
When asked how people can pray for Simpson, Grier replied, “Just pray for him. I mean you don’t have to go anywhere to pray. God is omnipotent; he’s omnipresent; he’s omniscient. So, just to pray to God, not just for O.J., but also for whomever you want to. God knows where they are.”
The room at the historic Beverly Hills Hotel, where we talked, was packed with Hollywood notables, including Pat and Shirley Boone, screen legend Rhonda Fleming and Susan Stafford, the original host of “Wheel of Fortune,” was quiet as Rosey Grier shared his story. He told the audience that a Christian friend had taken him to the Crenshaw Christian Center in Los Angeles in 1978. He said that at the time he was a “nominal Baptist.”
“I took along with me my then five-year-old son, Rosey Jr., and that day I gave my life completely over to Jesus Christ,” he said. “From then on I was totally at peace.”
Dan Wooding interviews Rosey Grier
Grier then spoke about a great miracle that occurred shortly afterwards, when he was reunited with his second wife, Margie, and they remarried in 1981. He smiled and then pointed to Margie who was sitting in the audience in front of him, and she waved joyfully to the crowd.
Grier told me, “When I gave my life over to Jesus Christ, there was a big change. When you get divorced from a woman and then you turn around and see her, you then realize that that’s the woman of your dreams.”
I asked Rosey if Margie was a believer at the time they had first met and he said, “No, she was nominal Catholic and then, when we went to church that day with my son and I made my commitment, she was there also and she too went forward and committed her life to Christ, and she knew what she was doing then.
“We all are searching for the answers about life; how to live it to its fullest; and you cannot live it with a vacancy in your heart. There’s a certain place in our heart that we can’t ever fill except with the power and the presence of Almighty God. Once you have surrendered your life to Him, you’ll feel better about your life and your vision will be clearer.”
Rosey said that, as a singer, before he became a committed Christian, he would often share his views from the stage.
“I was always speaking, even before I became a believer,” he said. “I knew how to talk — but I didn’t have a message. I thought I had something to say, but I didn’t until I came to know the Lord. I used to always talk about how we should love everyone and at the time I didn’t know I was talking about God’s love; that He loves everyone and He loves everyone through us.”
I then asked Rosey if he had anything else he would like to say and he replied, “I just want everybody to know that God loves them and He wants the best for them and they should get to know Him.”
I caught up with Grier once again on Saturday, October 19, 2013, at the Media Fellowship International 15th Annual Praise Brunch at the historic Beverly Hills Hotel where, with a huge smile on his face, he revealed at the age of 81, he has married again, to Cindy, following the death from cancer on June 10, 2011, of his beloved wife, Margie.
Cindy and Rosey Grier
(Photo: Dan Wooding)
As they held hands, Rosey said, “She is Cindy, and we got married on April 13th of this year. She’s from Wichita, Kansas, where she had been a grammar school and kindergarten teacher and we’ve known each other for a long time. So, after my wife died, I remembered that she was a teacher and I went and found her. We now live together in Brentwood.” [A neighborhood on the west side of Los Angeles.”
I then asked Cindy what is was like to be married to a man with such an extraordinary background, and she replied, “It’s wonderful. He’s a very godly man and he seeks Him every day to have wisdom and understanding to use his gifts and talents. So I feel very blessed and honored.”
Cindy went on to say, “We first met some 23 years ago at a hotel where he was doing some things for Oral Roberts University, and I was there with friends. Basically we kept in contact through World Impact [Grier is on the Board of Directors of this inner-city mission’s organization dedicated to planting cross-cultural churches among the unchurched urban poor].
“He would come to Wichita a couple of times a year to do events for World Impact — http://worldimpact.org – and one of my friends was a missionary there. So when Rosey came, we would always be there. So, before we were married, we have been a brother and sister in Christ for many years.”
Speaking about Margie, Rosey said, “When my wife was battling cancer for some six months, it was a bad time because everyone wants to live, but when you go ‘home’ you want to know where you’re going. She was a believer so she’s celebrating today in heaven.”
When I commented on Rosey’s age, Cindy beamed and told me, “He’s eighty-one, going on forty, so that’s the great thing, and I’m sixty-four. We’re doing the Caleb thing when Joshua said, ‘I’m now 85, but I’m as strong as I was when I was 40. Give me that land to take.’”
And the Gentle Giant is still doing just that.
Currently, he is investing a large amount of time and effort towards The Prostate Cancer Foundation, an organization founded by Mike Milken and dedicated to the research for prevention and cure of prostate cancer. Rosey has also devoted countless hours with the Milken Family Foundation, co-founded by Lowell and Mike Milken, which is dedicated to promoting education, advancement in medical care as well as research, and enhancing the social welfare of our community.
And if that wasn’t enough, he’s just released his latest Christian album called, “Let The Ol’ Man Play,” and that is just what Rosey Grier is still doing after all these years. (You can details of it at www.roseygrier.com/let-the-ol-man-play).
And, by the way, his website is www.roseygrier.com and the one for Media Fellowship International is www.mediafellowship.org.
I would like to thank Robin Frost for transcribing these various interviews with Rosey Grier.
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Dan Wooding, 72, is an award-winning journalist who who was born in Nigeria of British missionary parents, is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma, to whom he has been married for 50 years. They have two sons, Andrew and Peter, and six grandchildren who all live in the UK. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS) and he hosts the weekly “Front Page Radio” show on the KWVE Radio Network in Southern California and which is also carried throughout the United States and around the world. He is the author of some 45 books, the latest of which is a novel about the life of Jesus through the eyes of his mother called “Mary: My Story from Bethlehem to Calvary”. (Click to order)
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<!–BYLINE:By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries–>