With Bradenton, Miami behind him, Ray Bellamy enters FHSAA hall of fame

This wasn’t supposed to be part of the plan, Ray Bellamy will tell you. He was supposed to be a general in the United States Army. His days at the football stadium were supposed to be spent in the bleachers, playing drums with the Lincoln Memorial High School band.

The only thing that was supposed to happen, Bellamy says, is that he would get out of Bradenton and his life in a family of migrant workers. The details weren’t necessarily important. He dipped his feet in everything — academics, athletics, music, student government — as an excuse to keep from working the fields. Football didn’t join the equation until he was a sophomore at Lincoln and Miami began to poke around in search of the perfect player to break college football’s color barrier in the South.

The rest of his story has become that of legend. He was a star wide receiver for the Hurricanes until a car crash derailed an NFL career before it began. He was student body president at the University of Miami. He’s in both the Hurricanes’ hall of fame and Lincoln’s, and now he has a third to call home. Long overdue, the Florida High School Athletic Association inducted Bellamy along with nine others into its hall of fame Sunday at the Hilton University of Florida Conference Center Gainesville.

“I never thought about this,” Bellamy said. “I really never thought that this day would come, but it’s awesome. It means everything to me because any time someone in the state of Florida recognizes and thinks that you did something that was important to the community and to our country, it’s great.”

Bellamy, who now lives in Tallahassee and works for Florida A&M University, was joined by his mother, Mary, and sister, Mary Denise, plus a handful of old Miami friends. Jim Rydell, who was Bellamy’s freshman roommate and campaign manager at the U, followed him with a camera throughout the evening to document his latest accomplishment.

Bellamy was the 10th and final inductee in Gainesville and was welcomed with the most extensive speech of the night. Tony Segreto, who covered Bellamy as a reporter at WTVJ in Miami, spent more than four minutes recounting just a few of Bellamy’s many accomplishments during the rapid-fire induction ceremony.

“It is an honor to induct this last gentleman,” Segreto began. “He should be in the gentlemen’s hall of fame.”

Even if Bellamy had never touched a football, he would’ve been a success in some walk of life. He didn’t even think about joining the Trojans football team until a teacher at Lincoln challenged him to. He didn’t think about the reverberating effects his presence in Coral Gables would have until much later on. At the time, he was only concerned with making something of himself.

But Bellamy became a star in Coral Gables almost immediately.

“I was his bodyguard,” Rydell joked. “I used to keep the women away from him, but it didn’t work.”

He set records with the freshman team then racked up 549 receiving yards as a sophomore. A car accident between his junior and senior seasons derailed a likely NFL career, so he pivoted. As a senior, Bellamy became the first African American to be voted student body president at Miami.

Bellamy’s mother always encouraged him to find activities which would keep him from working the fields. With his 6-foot-5 frame and never-ending fingers, he had the ability to play football anywhere, as long as someone would take him.

The someone was Dr. Henry King Stanford, the university president in Coral Gables, who was determined to find the perfect player and person to break the color barrier. The Hurricanes scouted scores of stars at Lincoln and eventually settled on Bellamy.

Bellamy now cites Stanford as one of the most important figures in his life and the book he’s working on is tentatively titled “Henry’s Plan.”

Others placed in similar situations, he said, may not have lived to see this day. Calvin Patterson, Florida State’s first black football player, committed suicide the day before his senior season began. It takes a perfect collision of circumstances to live the life Bellamy has. Sunday’s honor was a recognition not just of the wide receiver, but of everyone who brought him to his highest point.

“I was armed and dangerous, and I was armed with two things: I was armed with God’s blessing and I was armed with knowledge,” Bellamy said. “Knowledge and a commitment to do what’s right is all you’ll ever need.”

This story was originally published September 25, 2016 at 11:18 PM with the headline "With Bradenton, Miami behind him, Ray Bellamy enters FHSAA hall of fame."