Street renaming honors legacy of two honorable SEMO athletes

For the most part, 2020 is remembered as the COVID year -- except for an idea created by former Southeast Missouri State University assistant track coach and professor Dr. Tim Rademaker. That idea was to create a forever legacy in honor of Curtis Williams and Walter Smallwood.

Both men were teammates of Coach Rademaker and were the first two African American scholarship athletes to participate in inter-athletics at Southeast Missouri State University. As such, their relationships have endured since the mid 1960s and continue to this day. He knew them not only as wonderful athletes but as close friends. And as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, he knew not because of the color of their skin but rather because of the content of their character.

Sometimes ideas fall on deaf ears and inaction. That is no longer the case. Last Thursday, the Cape Girardeau City Council voted unanimously to name the stretch of Bellevue Street between Broadway and Pacific the Smallwood-Williams Way.

The idea created more than three years ago became the "forever" legacy of two men honored during halftime of Southeast's last home game this past Saturday. It honors two men who had the dream of competing at the collegiate level in a time our country frowned on such things. It honors two men who had the courage to break the color barrier, compete at a high level and continue their careers as high school educators.

This would not have happened without the relentless pursuit of the idea by Coach Rademaker and assisted by former Mayor Bob Fox, his son Dr. Jim Fox, City Councilman Robbie Guard and university president Carlos Vargas. Your efforts will continue the "idea" forever. Well done!

James Limbaugh, of Cape Girardeau, is a member of the Southeast Missouri State University Board of Governors.