Author Jim O’Brien with Mel Blount
Mel Blount grew up on a large farm in Vidalia, Toombs County, Georgia, a region best known for producing sweet onions as well as one of the sweetest defensive backs in Steelers’ and National Football League history.
As a youngster, Melvin Cornell Blount became aware of workers on nearby farms, hired hands, sharecroppers, and he noticed that when they got older and were no longer as strong and efficient as field workers that they were cut loose and turned away from the farm. One day they were just gone.
I recall riding in a chartered bus with the Steelers when they played an exhibition game in Knoxville, Tennessee and we passed a handsome landmark home that had a big sign in the yard that read THE BLOUNT MANSION.
“That was probably owned by some slave master who gave me my name,” said Blount for all to hear, and smiled at his own observation.
Actually, the home on Hill Avenue was owned by William Blount, the only territorial governor in the Southwest Territory.
When he joined the Steelers in 1970, the same season quarterback Terry Bradshaw came on board, Mel Blount saw how the coach, Chuck Noll, cut veteran standouts that simply didn’t fit into his plans to build a championship team. They just weren’t up to speed.
Blount with his wife TiAndra
Blount made it his business to make sure he learned what he needed to learn to stay in the NFL and wanted to be in a position to some day call it quits on his own terms. He played 14 seasons and 200 regular season games and holds the team record with 57 interceptions. He retired after the 1983 season. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1989.
His size, speed, strength and bump-and-run tactics restricted receivers so much that the National Football League changed the rules on what defensive backs were permitted to do in order to give receivers a fairer chance to catch the ball.
While he was playing for the Steelers, Blount got involved with business and corporate types in town and offered his services where needed. He still advises young players to get to know the right people in Pittsburgh. He convinced former teammate Louis Lipps, for instance, that he’d fare better career-wise here than in his hometown of Reserve, La.
When Blount retired from the Steelers, team owner Art Rooney Sr. recommended him to then NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle to serve the league office as Director of Player Relations, a position he held for seven years.
Blount developed a ranch and boys’ home in Vidalia in 1983 to help troubled youngsters to get straightened out so they could have productive and rewarding lives. Then in 1989 he did the same in Claysville, on a 300-acre spread out in Washington County.
He’s been at it ever since. He and his wife, TiAnda and the staff work with the kids in a Christian-driven environment out in what Blount terms “God’s country.” He likes to share their success stories.
As a youngster in Vidalia, Blount enjoyed cowboy movies and loved the likes of Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Joel McCrea and Tex Ritter. He’s become cowboy at home on his own range. His trademark is a large white cowboy hat and he wears cowboy boots, which makes him loom even larger than the 6-3, 220-pound man he is.
People are always telling Blount, a formidable figure at any gathering and still in great shape at age 70 – he would turn 71 on April 18, 2019 -- that he looks like he could still play for the Steelers. He’s familiar with the dozen books I have authored about the Steelers and he often says, “You keep us alive!”
When we spoke last month I told him I wish that were true. His teammate and dear friend, defensive end L.C. Greenwood had just died at the age of 67 from kidney failure following his 16th back surgery. Dwight White had died in 2008, at 58, following back surgery. Ernie Holmes died the same year in an auto accident at age 59. There were 13 Steelers from the first four Super Bowl teams of the ‘70s who had died before they were 60 years of age.
Blount was aboard one of his horses at his ranch in Claysville, talking to me on a cell phone as he practiced for competition in the National Cutting Horse Association (NCHA), a circuit in which he still excels and picks up some paychecks. I told him it was the first time I had ever interviewed anybody when they were on a horse.
I had covered a little horse racing in my early years, but never interviewed a jockey aboard a horse.
“You have to guide boys and steer them straight,” he said of his efforts at his boys’ home.
It has been my honor to write about Blount and so many former Steelers who have moved on into what Noll termed “their life’s work.”
I worked on a book about Noll and the Steelers of the ‘70s and I believe it is “the definitive work on the head coach and his Steelers.”
I had an opportunity after Noll retired to spend several hours with him and his wife, Marianne, at their home in Upper Saint Clair and one in Sewickley. I didn’t realize when I started on the project just how many notes, newspaper clippings, and legal pads worth of interviews and photos that I had in my files. I felt that as far as members of the media were concerned, only the late Myron Cope enjoyed a closer relationship with Noll.
Two Hall of Fame Steelers, John Stallworth and Mel Blount.
In researching the book, I visited many of the Steelers in their homes such as Rocky Bleier and Andy Russell, and in the offices of Randy Grossman, Jack Ham, Mike Wagner, Tunch Ilkin, Craig Wolfley, Judge Dwayne Woodruff, Art Rooney Jr. and Moon Mullins, Franco Harris and in Manhattan with Terry Hanratty, at golf outings with Mel Blount, Lynn Swann, Frenchy Fuqua, Glen Edwards, and over the telephone with Ted Petersen, J.T. Thomas, John Stallworth, Larry Brown, Jon Kolb, Cliff Stoudt and Coach Paul Uram, Coach Dick LeBeau and trainer Ralph Berlin.
I did earlier interviews with Dwight White, Ernie Holmes, Joe Greene, Jack Lambert, Mike Webster, Bill Cowher, Sam Davis, Art Rooney Sr. and Dan Rooney.
I was struck by how profound their thoughts were about their experiences with Noll and the Steelers.
For more information about Jim O’Brien and purchasing his books, visit, www.jimobriensportsauthor.com or email him at jimmyo64@gmail.com
Photos by Jim O’Brien