>For more than 20 years he’s been part of the Cutthroats, a group of old school CSU players, who get back together at Homecoming and especially reach out to help support the football program and the school throughout the year.
>Over the weekend, Lawhorn finally was enshrined in the Central State Athletics Hall of Fame.
He and the six other inductees – Barbara Aaron (tenins), Hugh Powell (track), Dean Richards (track), Victory Simmons (football), Iniquia Snell (women’s basketball), Danaea Williams (women’s basketball) – were honored at a Friday luncheon at the Dayton Marriott and then celebrated with their families on the McPherson Stadium field Saturday during the Marauders’ Homecoming game against Fort Valley State.
“It was a glorious day, one that I had been waiting on for a good while,” Lawhorn said over the weekend. “I went into the Hall of Fame with a lot of great names this year.
“Central State was the right place for me all along.”
‘I was kinda mean’
He wasn’t sure that was the case when he was coming out of Roth in 1974.
His senior year, the Falcons won the Dayton City League and he drew looks from several colleges.
He said he wanted to play for the Kentucky Wildcats and thought he might get an offer, but it didn’t materialize.
Although CSU had shown interest when he was at Roth, he first thought he wanted to go someplace further than a 40-minute or so drive from his home on Oberlin Avenue, where he grew up with seven siblings, the children of a “railroad man” and “a homemaker,” as he put it.
He went to visit his uncle – his dad’s brother, Lee Ernest Lawhorn – who lived in Fort Lauderdale and a two-week stay turned into two months.
“But Central State had a coach who was recruiting me – Coach Davis – and when he heard I wasn’t playing football that fall, he got ahold of my parents and told them if they could get me back up here and enrolled in school for the winter term, I could play football that following fall,” Lawhorn said.
“My dad called me and I came home and next thing I was at Central State.
“And when I went out for spring football, they moved me from defense to offensive line. That first week they had me on second team. But by the next week I’d moved up to first and then one day a photographer from the Dayton Daily News came over to get a picture of me and Coach Jim McKinley.
“That’s when our coach said right there in the paper how he ‘planned to build an offensive line around freshman Early Lawhorn.’”
CSU did that and Lawhorn became known as one of the best linemen in NAIA football.
Lawhorn explained his embrace of the offensive line -- after primarily playing defense in high school – to CSU sports information director Nick Novy, who did a video interview with him leading into Hall of Fame festivities:
“I was the only freshman to start and I started all 10 games. I liked the contact. I was very good at blocking and…I was kinda mean.”
He said that attitude surprised him, but that it was part of the transformation that came over him when he put on a helmet and lumbered out onto the field, first as a 235-pounder, later at 265, his best weight he said, and for a while up to 280.
“I just enjoyed protecting the guys behind me.”
And these days CSU could use a couple of linemen like Lawhorn.
Marauder quarterback Kendall Boney was sacked five times in CSU’s 32-17 loss Saturday. In the past three games, Central State quarterbacks have been sacked 18 times.
Lawhorn – who is a keen observer of CSU football – now lives in nearby Yellow Springs and was over watching practice the other day again.
He believes the program is in the process of making an upturn, as has the entire university in recent years, he said.
‘I just waited for my turn to come’
As hall of fame classes were decided at CSU over the years, Lawhorn – as if the plight of many offensive linemen in many aspects of football – seemed to be overlooked.
And that’s pretty tough when it comes to him.
“Yeah, I’m about 350 now,” he said with a laugh.
He’s been a big presence around Wilberforce for a good while.
He worked as a security guard and a tour guide at the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center next to campus for several years and now he works with the parks and recreation department in Yellow Springs.
His involvement with the Cutthroats is especially noteworthy.
Every spring the group feeds the players and coaches at the annual spring game and, Lawhorn said, they collect money amongst themselves to give a bit of a scholarship to a student in need.
“Central State is a perfect place for a student to come,” he said. “The university has really grown. When I went here it was really small, but now its three times the size. They brought the agriculture program back, added all kinds of new programs and faculty and, on the football side, they have great facilities and are building more.
“A student has everything he needs here to succeed.”
Lawhorn knows about CSU success and that was always in the back of his mind when past Hall of Fame classes were announced.
Again to Novy: “It bothered me, but I didn’t let it control me…I knew it would come one day. I knew in my heart what I’d done and that that couldn’t be taken from me.
“I just waited for my turn to come.”
It did this weekend and when Lawhorn took the field Saturday with his wife Stephanie – his first wife, Patricia, died – and some of the rest of his family, they all were bathed in sunshine.
Turns out South Florida – except for the palm trees – had nothing on Central State.
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