First, can you let readers know what you are doing with yourself since you’ve retired from the NFL, and how you got started doing so?

I retired after that tough playoff loss and starting working for Gannett. When I was thinking of retiring, I was very interested in the newspaper business and looked into that business. It was a 9-5 job – it sounded good! I went there and got some training. They created a new job for me – Carrier Recruitment Supervisor – in their circulation department. At the time we had 11,000 youth carriers in the Detroit area that distributed our newspaper. The biggest in the U.S. I was responsible for recruiting kids to do that. Well, I wasn’t going to stand on street corners recruiting kids. I talked to the people at work about going to the public schools and speaking to the kids there. They said yes after talking to their legal department, and I went and gave twenty minute speeches there telling them how they could be young merchants.

I was there for twenty-eight years. I went on disability at the end of my twenty-eight year – due to a wrist injury I had from football that I re-injured at work. They fused some bones and put a metal rod in…. Now, I’m doing a lot of signings….doing the circuit!

How hard of an adjustment was that for you?

It was  a helluva adjustment. That September after I retired I wanted to come back. I missed the camaraderie with my teammates – that was gone. I had a lot of talks with co-workers about football, but it wasn’t the same. I missed the game. The first year I didn’t watch but maybe one or two games.  We didn’t have DirectTV and it was hard for me to watch anyway, When I did, with co-workers, I could tell right away when someone was hurt. They couldn’t understand how, but I knew just by the angles that guys were hit. I watched maybe one or two games, I would only watch when Pittsburgh was playing. But after the fist year I slowly started watching again. By the end of the second year I would watch them every Sunday, with former Steelers and friends John Rowser and Ron Johnson. Now we get together and watch the games – Sundays are sacred now. Church, then football.

You were drafted by the Giants in 1969 but found yourself in Pittsburgh a year later. How did you find yourself in Pittsburgh in 1970 and were you worried about playing time with guys like Hoak and already there?

My second year in New York – I thought that would be my best season. They had two backs – thirty-year-old Frederickson, who had bad knees, and Duhan, a newer guy. They brought in James Coffey from Atlanta but he had two messed up knees too. I was living in Baltimore then – it was close to where I went to school. I was selling insurance in the offseason. I remember I was in the office Monday, getting ready to head out into the field. There were twenty-three agents then – all of us in one huge room. We had phone operator then in the front of the room that ran the switchboard. Well, the operator gets a call, and instead of sending it back to me, she takes her headset off and yells back, “Fuqua! The New York Giants are on the phone for you! It’s Alex Webster.” Well, everyone starts to crowd around my desk. We didn’t even have cubicles. So I say hi to the coach, He says, “I’ve got good and bad news for you.” I said, “ok.” He says, “The Giants made a move today that I think is good for you. The Giants traded you…” Now, all are looking at me in the room, my mouth hanging open. I asked where to. He told me, “To Pittsburgh. Good luck – you probably heard we traded for a running back  – Ron Johnson – today?” I didn’t know that then. I knew Ron actually – from Baltimore. Then, Preston Pearson was traded to Pittsburgh.  I knew Chuck Noll already, from college. The players from Morgan State used to go to Memorial Stadium when they had injuries because it was so close. And Chuck coached there.

At the time, they had Earl Gros and Dick Hoak….Rocky…they had a lot of veterans there. They paired me up with Preston as his fullback – said I probably wasn’t going to make the team anyway! But by the end of the exhibition, Preston an I became the starters, and Hoakie became the running backs coach.

How did you see team adjusting then under new coach Chuck Noll? What did you see him changing that had such a profound affect on the team then and at what point could you and your teammates tell he was building a really special team there?

I met Noll in ’67 with Baltimore. He always gave advice. Noll was not very loquacious. He was a guy that, when he told you something, you paid attention. He demanded it. He was like a CEO. He delegated through his staff. In meetings, he talked a lot about his family and told tales that never added up. We could never figure out what he meant. He was a student of the game even as a coach.

To be successful in Pittsburgh, you couldn’t make mistakes. I learned early, after practice and dinner, you got into the playbook. If you made an error, he didn’t jump on you. He asked you what you were thinking on the play. If you could make sense, he would tell you that he’d consider it, but you do it the way he says. That we play as a team. If you didn’t make sense, he would just ignore you and walk away from you. He always said, “Whatever it takes, but no mistakes.” I studied there more than I did in college. It worked out well. I knew the halfback and fullback plays. He asked me who the tailback was supposed to block when I was to run the ball – he’d quiz me. Me, Preston, Dick Hoak, we all used to get together at 7:10 before 7:30 meetings to go over what we weren’t sure about – to go over those things.

Noll was a man of few words. I remember when we played the Vikings. All week he was telling me that I had to block Carl Eller – I needed to get a stalemate on him. It was a close game, and the play we needed to run was out of the 34 special alignment. I needed to get my shoulder into his stomach and head on his outside hip – not let him get to the outside. We were on the two yard line and I took at run at him – and he ran straight at me. I saw his forearm and he ran right over me, but it was a textbook block, just enough for Preston to get to the outside and score the winning touchdown. As we ran off to the sideline, Noll looked at me. He just nodded. That made my career. All week I heard that I had to make that block. It just shows you how much goes into making a play. He just took my arm and looked at me. Didn’t say anything, but I knew.

Who helped you most to adjust to life both on and off the field as a Steeler, and how did they do so?

A lot of former scouts came back to practice: Bill Nunn, Leroy Kelly… They’d come back and talk to the guys during Spring Training. Leroy told me that because I was a guy coming from a small Black school they’ll think I can’t learn, that I need to get in and stay in the playbook. Now Leroy was doing great in the NFL so I listened to him. I remember we’d get a bushel of crabs in front of the dorms and have been and crabs and talk football. We’d talk about how not to mess up on the road. Leroy would tell me, because of my size, that I needed to get off the ball fast and be quick. He showed me how to run the 40 yard dash. I ran a 4.5:40. But I perfected the rolled-up start that Leroy taught me. The coaches in Pittsburgh would make me run the 40 yard dash 3-4 times, but I’d start with a perfectly rolling start. They’d keep making me run it and Noll would get mad because the clock starts as soon as your hand lifts off the ground, but my hand never touched the ground, and I’d do it each time. After three or four times I would tell the coaches I was winded and they would just say “fine.” I did that for three years and they never did get my true 40 time!

I remember back in the day they didn’t pass much in college. So Leroy taught me also to get Silly Putty and take it everywhere I go. Now I was a very good receiver in Pittsburgh – I caught 50 passes one year – and the Silly Putty worked. Working it every day gave me the dexterity and strength in my hands, cause everyone knows you shouldn’t be catching the ball with your body.

What are some of the funniest on and/or off field memories you have of your time in Pittsburgh? Can you give us a couple of stories?

I remember the first time I was busted with a woman in my room (it turned out to be my wife). It was before the first game ever at Three River Stadium. I met her three months earlier and she stayed late in my room – nothing was happening – but the assistant coaches would do a bed check. I heard a knock on the door so I told her to go to the bathroom and hide. Chuck Noll actually came into the room – he knew I had a great stereo system. Chuck came in with an album and I said “Oh shit”. He wanted to play just one tune. Now I used to blast music – the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida song – at 6:15 in the morning to wake up the team. The players would all get mad but Chuck would tell the guys, you needed to get up early anyway. So anyway, three or four minutes of the song and I’m sitting there while Doris is in the tub with the curtain closed. It seemed like an hour. And then he got up, said to get some rest, and he goes and takes a couple steps towards the front door and passes the bathroom. He takes another step, then turns around and says “Who’s in here?” He opens the bathroom door and pushes the curtain aside and says “Young lady, you have to leave. He has a game tomorrow.” Then he turned to me and said, “This is going to cost you.” I asked him how he knew she was there and he said he could smell her perfume! So the next evening, near the end of the game, Preston Pearson returns the kick-off back to midfield. We run the Statute of Liberty play that gets to the two-yard line. We score a touchdown on the next play, and that was it. I was waiting for it, but I never got fined, but I also never broke curfew again. I sweated the $500 fine all night. I asked him why he didn’t fine me and he just said he didn’t think he needed to.

Ok. Settle the score. Chuck Beatty (https://steelerstakeaways.com/2011/10/30/chuck-beatty/) says he was the best dressed Steeler of all time – better than you, he distinctly pointed out. Is that true? Who should we believe?

His ass was always too big to be a good dresser! He never had the body to wear outfits like I could. Every time we’d go to a new city, we’d both go shopping for the oddest outfit that you could find, that you could never find in Pittsburgh. We were like Ali and Frazier – we would talk trash to each other. We hid outfits from each other before each game so that we couldn’t see each other’s outfits, and we’d have the ballboys get them from our cars after the game.

Beatty never had anything original! I told him once that we killed a cow from Texas – it was all white – just to make my belt, and got my spurs from Roy Rogers’ pistols. I got a glass cane in Cincinnati that went with my cape outfit, and when we went to the airport we always entered the planes from the rear, which is good because they never would have let me take that glass cane if they saw it.

The goldfish shoes came to me. I remember after we broke camp, on the news a newscaster said that Frenchy did it this time! I was in the shower so my wife ran to me and told me they were talking about me on tv, so I dried off and ran in to watch the news. What happened was I had gone to a Dapper Dan event a little while before and ran into a shoemaker there who told me I needed goldfish shoes and he said he could make them for me and send them to me. I gave him a “business card” with the Pittsburgh Steelers address on it. He figured out that it was a Steelers address somehow so instead sent them to Channel 4. So I went down to the station and got them. You could see the flap where you’d put the water into the bottom of the shoes, but boy did they hurt my baby toe when I put them on. I got fish, but every time I put them in there they’d die and float to the top. I started to get hate mail, people said I was just killing fish for pleasure, so I went to Joe Gordon (head of PR at the time for the Steelers) and asked him what to do. He just turned to me and said, “Just keep killing ’em, Frenchy.” After that, it was too much for Chuck Beatty, it just blew him away. Our last dress-off I wore a cape, a cane and had a contest with fans to see who could get me the best hat. Someone made a hat for me with three plumes and I gave the guy $100 and wore that.

Forgotten, maybe to some due to you being remembered for that sense of humor, was the fact that you were a very good running back. What were your strengths as a running back and how did the team utilize you best to help you and the team succeed?

When I meet people I say I was a good blocker and runner. I say I was an above average back at the time, I blocked and caught well, I had a unique way of running with both power but I could also be evasive. If I were to judge myself, I would say I was a solid back. Most important, if I could admire anything about myself, I would say that I kept my mistakes to a minimum. I was similar to our coach, I was technically correct. I wasn’t great, but I was solid.

Ok – you’ve been asked a million times. So I won’t ask if the ball hit you or not!

Well wait! I can tell you this: When I pass on, on the anniversary date of the reception, I have something that people are going to open up and read. I have it set up through my son. I didn’t write it yet but I will. And on the 100th anniversary of the reception, people will finally know what happened!

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