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Piccolo's actions and family leave a lasting legacy
By Ross Griffith
Guest Columnist

After watching the remake of the movie Brian’s Song and reading the Old Gold and Black articles about Brian Piccolo in December, I was compelled to write this article. I also was moved at a recent basketball game when the student-coordinated Brian Piccolo Cancer Fund Drive presented the university a check for $47,250, making a total of $576,000 raised since students began these outstanding efforts in 1980.

Brian Piccolo was my classmate at Wake Forest and had an impact on the university (and me) in additional ways not known publicly. As a member of the tennis team, my locker was located adjacent to the football players’ lockers. Both of us were members of the Monogram Club (situated in Huffman Residence Hall at that time), and we regularly watched Washington Redskins football games with other "lettermen" in the club. Brian was always friendly, outgoing and witty, consistent with the portrayal of him in the movies and writings about him.

Piccolo’s friendship with Gale Sayers, his African-American roommate of the Chicago Bears, is well emphasized in Brian’s Song and other published works. However, his sensitivity to racial issues actually led to history being made at Wake Forest while he was a student here.

After the 1963 football season, Wake Forest was "in between football coaches" for a significant period of time. Brian Piccolo and our classmate John Mackovic proceeded to coordinate the recruiting of black football players for the entering class of 1964 in the absence of a head football coach.

At that time, Edward Reynolds, one of three black students living on campus, lived in my suite. Brian and John brought a number of black high school recruits to our suite over time. As a result of their efforts, Robert Grant, Kenneth Henry and Willie Smith entered the university in the fall of 1964 as the first black student athletes at Wake Forest. Wake Forest was, thus, the first institution in the Atlantic Coast Conference to integrate its football program.

While I was working in the admissions office in the late 1960s, Brian Piccolo came back to Wake Forest to complete his degree one summer between football seasons with the Chicago Bears. I vividly remember seeing and talking to him as he ate lunch in the cafeteria with our popular trainer, Doc Martin. While on an admissions recruiting trip in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. in 1975, I was thrilled to represent Wake Forest at the dedication of the new "Brian Piccolo Stadium" at St. Thomas Aquinas High School, Brian Piccolo’s other alma mater. Brian’s parents and his two brothers were also proudly in attendance at this very moving event.

In 1985, I began my first year as an academic adviser to entering freshmen at Wake Forest. I also had my first opportunity to select a qualified student adviser to assist me. I chose Lori Piccolo Bruno, ’87, Brian’s oldest daughter, to work with me effectively in this important process during her junior and senior years.

Additionally, Lori and her sister Traci Piccolo Dolby, ’89 eagerly went with me to the 20th Reunion of the Class of 1965. They enjoyed meeting many of their father’s classmates from Wake Forest.

Coincidentally, one of my 2001 freshman advisees is attending Wake Forest on a football scholarship and is a graduate of St. Thomas Aquinas High School, Brian Piccolo’s high school. The legacy of Brian Piccolo continues for me in a most positive way.