Alan Page ruled on and off the field
Alan Page grew up to be a Hall of Fame football player, but he always wanted to be a lawyer. He loved watching “Perry Mason” on TV, and the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case ignited something in his young mind.
”I can remember as a 9-year-old, 1954, reading newspaper stories about the Brown vs. Board of Education and somehow, don’t’ ask me how, understanding the significance of what the court had done,” he said of the Supreme Court’s ruling the segregated schools were unconstitutional. “I was fascinated by the power the law has to bring about change. “
And so Alan Page grew up to be a Hall of Fame football player and the first African-American member of the Minnesota Supreme Court.
“It was a big deal, but in my world it wasn’t,” Page said. “It was an opportunity for me to serve, it was an opportunity for me to perform as well as I could. I suppose to some degree it makes it clear that whether you’re a person of color or not, you can have the talent and the skills and the wherewithal to perform the judicial responsibility at a high level.”
In 1945, Page was born in Canton, Ohio, where his bust now rests in the Hall of Fame. His parents told him to do the best he could at whatever he tried. Every parent says that, of course, but that message stuck to Page’s brain and wormed its way deep inside.
”If you’re going to be a garbage collector, be the best garbage collector you can be,” he said. ”If you’re going to be a doctor, be the best doctor you can be. Fortunately for me, don’t ask me why, I took that to heart. I think one of the problems people run into is there’s a tendency to perform at the level of the competition. In doing that, in trying to do that, most people don’t play to their full potential.”
http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/alan-page-ruled-on-and-off-the-field-021014
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