Paul "Bear" Bryant

"Bear" Bryant (1913–1983)

Born in Moro Bottom, Arkansas, on September 11, 1913, Bryant was the eighth surviving child (three died at birth) of a total of nine. He had four brothers and four sisters and was the youngest boy, with one sister born four years after him. Their home was a three-square-mile area called Moro Bottom (sometimes referred to as Moro Bottoms), an unincorporated place where seven families lived.Bear Bryant played football at University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa. After serving in World War II, he became head coach at the University of Maryland and Texas A&M University. He is one of America's top best football coaches that at the time he reached his death he had won more games than any other coach.Under Bryant, the Alabama Crimson Tide won national titles in 1961, 1964, 1965, 1978, and 1979.  Bryant won this last championship with a perfect season, including his defeat of Lou Holtz’s Arkansas Razorbacks in the Sugar Bowl. He announced his retirement in 1982, with the Crimson Tide winning his last bowl game, the Liberty Bowl in Memphis, on December 29. 

Less than one month after winning the 1982 Liberty Bowl, sixty-nine-year-old Paul Bryant died of a heart attack. Following a funeral, which ran for three miles, he was buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham, Alabama. A month after his death, he was suprisingly awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, by Ronald Reagan. At the time of his death, he was the all-time most successful coach in American college football history.