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| | | Middle Grade (Ages 8-12) | Home » » » Bear The Legendary Life of Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant | | | | | | | Description: | | Four days after the funeral of legendary Alabama football coach Paul Bryant, the coach's bodyguard, Billie Varner, was helping Bryant's longtime secretary, Linda Knowles, clean out the Bear's office. Packed boxes and memorabilia lay everywhere. A nameplate and a few yet-empty boxes were all that was left on his huge desk, his high-back chair sitting empty as if waiting for Coach to step through the door once again, sit down, light up a Chesterfield, and make a call to Pat Dye. Finally the last box was sealed, and Varner said to Knowles, "If it's all right with you, let's just stay in here for a little bit longer. I'm hurtin' too damn bad to leave right now."
After a few silent moments, Varner sighed, a sad look on his face, and with a breaking voice said, "Linda, it won't be anything like he said it was going to be. You know, he always said he'd be forgotten as soon as we laid him to rest."
Soon he was recalling a recent trip he had taken with Bryant. "You can bet I heard some more of that kind of talk," he reminisced. "He knew his time was up, and he wanted to go back to Fordyce one more time. He did some talkin' while we rode, almost like he was reviewing his whole life, like he was determined to explain all those memories we just packed away."
"Did he seem happy, Billy?" Knowles asked. "On the trip, I mean?"
"Yeah, he did. He was as content as I've ever seen him." Varner exhaled more smoke, watching it climb toward the ceiling, and a broad grin spread over his face, the first in days. "And you should have heard the stories he told, the things he remembered. Every place we passed, it seemed to kick off a memory or story he had been waitin' to tell somebody for years."
Varner laughed out loud and eased back farther on the couch. He ignored the long ash on his cigarette, even when it broke off and fell onto his shirtfront in a gray smudge. He was remembering. Remembering the Coach's stories, just the way he spilled them out for him on that final trip home.
Home to Arkansas, where it all began. The story of The Coach. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Don Keith | | Hardcover:
| 224 pages | | Publisher:
| Cumberland House Publishing | | Publication Date:
| August 01, 2006 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 1581825625 | | Package Length:
| 9.0 inches | | Package Width:
| 5.9 inches | | Package Height:
| 1.0 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.0 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 6 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
Average Customer Review:
 ( 6 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
Enthusiastically recommended reading especially for football fans.Dec 09, 2006
By Midwest Book Review
Award-wining newswriter Don Keith presents The Bear: The Legendary Life of Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant, a most unusual biography of charismatic football coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. The Bear is based upon a screenplay by Al Browning, Jr. and reads like a fluid novel, yet firmly grounded in actual events and corrects common inaccuracies or misperceptions held about Paul Bryant to this day. A handful of black-and-white photographic plates illustrate this true tale of the vivacious man who turned around a struggling football program in Alabama, led the record in career victories for a college football coach, with 323 major-college wins and had the loyalty and steadfast determination to resist a $1.7 million offer to coach for the Miami Dolphins. Enthusiastically recommended reading especially for football fans.
9 of 10 found the following review helpful:
very very good - very entertainingFeb 13, 2007
By Jon Johnston
"Corn Nation"
Paul "Bear" Bryant begins with Bryant's death and then flashes back to his early life growing up as a poor farm boy in Arkansas. We are presented with stories that establish Bryant's toughness, his willingness to work hard and his drive to become a winner, including the story of how he earned the nickname "Bear".
The book confirms that Bryant was a manipulative SOB who loved his Chesterfield cigarettes and whiskey, but above all loved winning. It presents him as a man who would accept nothing but the best from his players and himself. He was hard when he had to be but taught that hard work was that which made champions. The book doesn't shy away from the more controversial aspects of his coaching career, such as his tenure at Texas A&M where in his first year he drove away all of the players he considered slackers.
Fans will enjoy the book's take on college football as it evolved throughout Bryant's career, particularly the section on Texas A&M's NCAA probation for paying players. Bryant's complaint was that everyone else was doing the same, but only the Aggies were being persecuted for it. The book portrays the 'Bear' as a humble man, denying his greatness even when he surpassed Pop Warner and Amos Alonzo Stagg in all-time wins. Some of the stories about Bryant's antics will have you laughing out loud.
The only negative aspect of the book is the confusion that results when it jumps from one point in Bryant's life to the next without warning. Since it's written in a story-like style instead of a documentary format like most biographies, it's a very enjoyable read. It's understandable why the legend of Bear Bryant is very much alive and continues to grow because by the end of the book, you can't help but admire Bryant and feel much closer to him as a person.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
Awesome BookNov 09, 2006
By Carl Ray
"Hartselle"
If you are an Alabama fan you will love this book. It is a quick read and very interesting.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
A profile of "great commitment and class"Sep 09, 2008
By Robert Morris
This is not a biography of Paul ("Bear") Bryant. Rather, Don Keith provides a profile of the legendary football coach, primarily based on Al Browning Jr.'s screenplay. Keith does not provide his material in chronological order and I think this strategy serves him well as he succeeds brilliantly when offering his response to a question many people ask: "With all due respect to Coach Bryant's numerous accomplishments throughout his coaching career, what was he really like as a person?" We learn that he loved with great passion the game of football, that he hated to lose games and hated doing so with insufficient effort even more, that he was intensely loyal to his family members and friends, that he was an astute judge of talent and an even more astute just of character, that he had an especially versatile personality (e.g. he could charm or intimidate on a moment's notice, depending on what the given situation required), and that almost all of those who coached with him and played for him loved him despite his various human flaws, not because of any success and glory they may have shared with him.
I was eager to read Keith's account in Chapter Six of the first off-campus training session Coach Bryant conducted for his Texas A&M team in Junction, Texas, prior to the 1954 season. There were more than 100 players on the original roster but fewer than that participated in the camp and only about 35 lasted all ten days of intense practice in summer heat that frequently exceeded 100º. So what did I learn about Coach Bryant in this chapter? Not much, really. Certainly nothing that had not been revealed in earlier chapters covering his previous positions at Kentucky and then at Maryland. Coach Bryant was apparently convinced that severe hardship did not develop character, it revealed it. At the Junction camp, he created conditions in which quitters would reveal themselves...and they did. It is worth noting that the team went on to lose nine of its ten games that season but its only victory was against then ranked #1 Georgia and all but one of the losses were by six or fewer points. When asked, Coach Bryant said that - if forced to make a choice -- the 1954 team was his favorite.
Note: Jim Dent has written an outstanding book, The Junction Boys, that examines the ten-day camp in detail.
Statistically, Coach Bryant's legacy includes a record of 323-232, six national championships, and selection as National Coach of the Year in 1961, 1971, and 1973. That is admirable. Two other legendary coaches spoke for their entire profession after Coach Bryant's death in 1983 at age 69. Nebraska's Bob Devaney said, "He was simply the best there ever was." Penn State's Joe Paterno observed, "Even his peers in the coaching business felt in awe of him. He had such great charisma. He was just a giant figure." That said, Don Keith adds that Coach Bryant was also "a man of great commitment and class, and a gifted motivator of men." I am grateful to him for helping me to appreciate the man as well as the legacy he left behind.
Extraordinary book, extraordinary man.Mar 29, 2011
By chelle
"“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” - Anton Chekhov"
I bought this for my husband for Christmas. He was like a kid in a candy store and couldn't wait to start reading it. He savored it slowly, sharing bits and pieces of it with me over dinner. I read it after he had finished and found myself falling in love with The Bear.
I would tell anyone who has an Alabama Football fan in their family to add this to their collection. It is well written, funny, and incredibly charming.
Kudos to the author for delivering such an incredible must have for any Bama fan.
See all 6 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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