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People SearchFind an individual who either played a sport or was a member of a support group. Search by last name by clicking on the first letter of the person's last name.
Mr. Walter Guillory
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Home Phone: 337-237-7415 60 years later, Robinson remains MLB’s greatest legacy Local builder John Broussard remembers his father’s passion for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and remembers having a Jackie Robinson autograph model bat when he was a kid. Local radio personality Jay Walker remembers Robinson retiring rather than accepting a trade to the hated New York Giants. Walter Guillory is younger than either Broussard or Walker, and was way too young to ever see Robinson play. But Robinson was part of a life-changing experience for Guillory, now executive director of the Lafayette Housing Authority. That experience had little to do with Guillory going on to a standout baseball career at then-USL, or his four-year professional career with the Oakland Athletics, but it’s one he vividly remembers, especially this weekend when Robinson is honored as part of the 60th anniversary Major League Baseball’s integration. Robinson became the first black major leaguer in the 20th century in 1947 with the Dodgers and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962. About a decade later, Guillory got his introduction to Robinson’s trials and travails through an unlikely source – his second-grade teacher in Loreauville. “I was one of those rug rats that was always playing jokes on teachers, just being a kid,” Guillory said. “Miss Provost made me and a couple of other guys do some punishment work for something we did.” Guillory amped up his punishment by rubbing carbon paper onto Miss Provost’s car. “She said she was going to fix me good,” Guillory said. “The next day at school, she came up to me and gave me a book and said I had to read it.” The book was a biography of Robinson, one that went into detail describing the problems Robinson faced as baseball’s first black player in a time before the civil rights movement swept the nation. “Even as a second-grader, when I read that and what he went through, I said right then and there that I was going to play high school ball, college ball, pro ball,” Guillory said. “That inspired me … what she was telling me was look at what this person did to make life better for you, and that I needed to get my act together.” Guillory went on to play four years with the Cajuns from 1982-85, signing with then-coach Mel Didier out of New Iberia Senior High. And he could relate, in a small way, to Robinson’s groundbreaking efforts since he was the Cajuns’ only black player for part of his career. “With the teammates I had, there was never an issue with race,” he said. “The guys were just great to me. I wasn’t the first, but whoever was, it was Jackie Robinson that sort of opened the door for that person. “If he (Robinson) had not gone through that, I probably would have thought twice about going to USL, wondering if I really could do that.” It was many years earlier that Broussard had that bat with Robinson’s name imprinted. “I remember it had that really thick handle,” Broussard said. “The Mickey Mantle one had the thin handle, but my dad was a Dodgers fan.” Broussard said his father talked often about the Brooklyn team, one that moved to Los Angeles before the 1958 season. “He followed (Roy) Campanella, all those guys,” he said. Walker, a transplanted New Englander and an Acadiana resident for nearly four decades, handles radio broadcast duties for UL’s athletic teams. He’s also likely the area’s foremost Dodgers fan, although he didn’t start following the team until its first couple of years after moving from Brooklyn. By that time, Robinson had left the game. He was traded by the Dodgers to the New York Giants after the 1956 season, but he chose instead to retire at age 37. “He decided he’d rather retire than accept a trade to the Giants,” Walker said. “That’s because he had class.” Originally published in the Daily Advertiser April 15, 2007
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