Chasing Heroes

continued

Chace let go of the childhood football Taylor had signed for him when he learned of his hero's arrest for attempted bank robbery in 1975. "That was frightening," Chace recalls. "The crime seemed scary to me in a way. So really I wrote Billy Taylor off at that point. The football that had kind of been preserved got thrown back into service, and eventually it got worn out and lost."

Forty years later, Taylor gave Chace another football. "I'm looking at it right now," Chace says. "It says, 'To Dan, Don't lose this one.' It's signed, 'Your friend, Dr. Billy Taylor Number 42.'"   

[Originally published in November, 2012.]