Belton, Texas – One Wednesday, September 5, Walter Abercrombie, former NFL player and current Associate Athletic Director at Baylor University was guest speaker during University of Mary Hardin-Baylor chapel services.
Abercrombie grew up in Waco, one of five children born to his nurse mother and Baptist preacher father. As a young man in the sixties, he remembered dreaming of being like the professional football players he saw on television. He remembered watching the first African-American play football in the SEC.
“To see that lit up my imagination in a way that hadn’t happened up until then,” Abercrombie remembered. “What had seemed to be impossible, began to be possible then.”
With that new inspiration, Abercrombie begain pursuing his goals in earnest. Early in his high school career he sustained a serious knee injury that was, at the time, considered career ending.
“To have the doctors tell me what I had to look forward to was devastating,” Abercrombie said. “Why would God let this happen to me when things were headed in such a positive direction? I blamed Him for letting this happen to me, when He knew my heart.”
