The things
Barry Wilmore has done are the stuff of dreams.
Astronaut. Ace pilot. Hero. It’s a brief description, sure, but as he stood up behind the podium Wednesday night at the NCAA’s Honors Celebration as part of the organization’s annual convention in Indianapolis, the man who earned the NCAA’s highest honor – the Theodore Roosevelt Award – has one reoccurring dream -- being the one thing again that started the whole ball rolling.
“I’ve never dreamt about being in space,” Wilmore said. “I’ve never dreamt about taking off or landing on an aircraft carrier, and, I kid you not, the reoccurring dream that I have is that I finally get an opportunity one more time to play college football.
“Coach says, ‘Now’s the time. Get in there.’ And as you would guess, I can’t find my helmet. So I start grabbing the other players’ helmets and none of them will go over my head, and I can’t get into the game.
“That dream reminds me of two things, or tells me two things. First, I obviously have the largest head on the team, and second, I will never really play this game again. This game I love, that I loved. But I can always say that I am a college football player. Always.”
The Theodore Roosevelt Award is named after the former United States president, who helped oversee the NCAA’s creation in 1906. It is awarded to a graduate from an NCAA member institution who earned a varsity letter in college for participation in intercollegiate athletics, and who ultimately became a distinguished citizen of national reputation based on outstanding life accomplishment.
The main thing Wilmore stressed, however, was how football gave him the opportunity.
“We know education broadens our opportunities, does it not?” asked Wilmore. “And then, to play a sport that I loved. They didn’t recruit me – I’m still a little upset at that – but I went to the coach, Don Wade was the coach at the time, and I went to his office. He didn’t know me from Adam. I said, ‘Coach Wade, I’d like to play football.’
“He said a few things, then he said one thing – I don’t know if he said it to everybody, but he said it to me – he said, ‘Son’ -- (mimics a spit) Coach Wade chewed a lot of tobacco, so he did a lot of spitting – ‘Son, if you stick it out all the way to your senior year, you will always be a college football player.’ And I tell you what, that stuck with me.
It certainly wasn’t easy – a realization that would pay dividends as he learned the importance of discipline, hard work and commitment.
“We ran gassers, and after a particularly not good showing on Saturday, it was the following week, and I remember this well,” Wilmore said. “We’re doing our conditioning and we’re running gassers, sideline, near hash and back, far hash and back, far sideline and back. We called them ‘ringers’ because we were running for the ring. Now I don’t remember how many gassers we ran, but I got to the sideline after the umpteenth gasser and I was like – and I know some of you know what I’m talking about – if Coach says ‘On the line’ one more time, I will die.
“And you know what Coach did? Coach says, ‘On the line. Go.’ And I ran it. And I didn’t die. And Coach did it again. Coach did that from the point that I knew I would surely die, if I had to take another step, we ran seven more of those ringers. You don’t think that doesn’t take you to a place that you didn’t think you could go? You don’t think that doesn’t make you mentally, emotionally, physically tough? That’s what college athletics does.
“By the way, the next day, I had a differential equations test and an electronic circuits test. I passed the circuits test. We won’t talk about the Diff-E test. But that’s what college athletics does – affordable education. It paid for some of my college, my education. Oh, I am so thankful for those opportunities.”
After walking on, Wilmore started the final three games of the 1982 season at defensive end.
But 1983 saw a knee injury, sidelining him in Gary Darnell's first season as Tech's head coach. He came back as a backup strong safety in 1984.
In May 1985, Wilmore earned his bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, becoming one of the first graduate student-athletes in Tech history, then, in the following season, switched to outside linebacker.
In his final season with the Golden Eagles, he prospered. He recorded 143 tackles, the third highest single-season total in program history. He made 21 tackles against Austin Peay, which stood as the second-most in a game at Tech.
In addition to that, Wilmore was selected to the College Sports Information Directors of America's Academic All-District team as well as the Super Squad Defensive Team by the Leonard's Losers football publication. He was also selected as the season's Robert Hill Johnson Award recipient, the Tech football team's highest honor. Wilmore also earned a Scholar-Athlete Award from the National Football Foundation and College Football Hall of Fame.
Wilmore later received his master's degree in both electrical engineering from Tech and aviation systems from Tennessee in 1994.
As Wilmore addressed his daughters, explaining how important it was to get that opportunity, he expressed his love for the sport and what it provided.
“Your daddy loved playing college football,” Wilmore said. “I loved playing with guys like Billy Stover, Wayne Cravens and Danny Crooks, Dewayne Alexander and this game, this system provided an education, an opportunity for myself and for so many of us. And just like your nana and your papa told me and my brother Jack, ‘You will go to college.’
Following his Tech career, Wilmore became a naval officer and pilot, logging 6,200 hours of flight time and 663 aircraft carrier landings as he completed four deployments from the USS Forrestal, USS John F. Kennedy, USS Enterprise and USS Dwight D. Eisenhower as he flew A-7Es and F/A-18s. He flew support missions during Operations Desert Shield, Desert Storm and Southern Watch and also flew 21 combat missions during Operation Desert Storm.
He later became a test pilot, participating in the development of the T-45 jet trainer and was a systems and fixed wing flight test instructor for the United States Naval Test Pilot School and was a flight test instructor at the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base.
In July 2000, Wilmore was selected as a pilot by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Following two years of training and evaluation, Wilmore was assigned technical duties on all propulsion system issues including the space shuttle main engines, solid rocket motor and external tank, and served on the astronaut support team that traveled to Kennedy Space Center in support of launch and landing operations,
Wilmore made two space flights aboard space shuttle Atlantis twice for STS-129 – serving as the pilot -- and STS-135 – the final flight of the space shuttle program as the designated capsule communicator.
From September 2014 until March 2015, Wilmore returned to space as a member of the Soyuz TMA-14M crew to the International Space Station for Expedition 41/42 for a 167-day mission. During the mission, humans manufactured off-world for the first time as the ISS' 3-D printer made a tool with a design file sent from the ground to the printer. The tool was a ratchet wrench needed by Wilmore, who otherwise would have had to wait until the next supply mission.
Wilmore used his space experience to illustrate the gravity of the realization of what he had accomplished to try to illustrate to those in attendance that they too could reach the impossible.
“You’re outside the International Space Station on a space walk,” he said. “You are traveling five miles a second, so you are orbiting the planet every ninety minutes. You with me so far? And you are in a one-man space capsule shaped like a person and you are working, you are busy, you are sweating because you’re busy, and you’re walking by your hands, obviously not by your feet, and you don’t let go with your hand until you’ve got a good grip. You don’t want to become famous for the wrong reason by floating off a structure, right?
“As you’re going, you’re in the middle of the station, you go around a corner, then, all of a sudden, there is a radiator right in front of you. Now the radiators transfer heat from the avionics, which build heat into some fluid lubes and finally winds its way outside the space station and is dissipated into space through these radiators. Now, this was an early radiator that we used during the build of the space station and I knew it was there as I came around the corner. I did not know that it was completely reflective – like a mirror.
Wilmore continued, “So I come around this corner and, all of a sudden, for the first time ever, I see me in a space suit from head to toe. And I look at that guy, and like you heard in the video, I look out and I see those gold solar rays and they’re silhouetted against the silver of the station and it’s like spit-shined. Then, I look back at that guy, then I look back at the curvature of the Earth and the beauty of the planet going by at five miles a second and I look at that guy again. I look down – (Hawai’I alum, former Denver Broncos kicker and NCAA Silver Anniversary Award recipient) Jason (Elam), you’ll appreciate this – I see Hawai’I below me. Are you with me on this? And I look back at that guy and I said, ‘How did you get here?’
Wilmore has received numerous medals and honors, including the Navy Meritorious Service Medal, five Air Medals – including three with the Combat 'V' designation, six Navy Commendation Medals – with the 'V' designation. He was awarded the Aviation Officer Candidate School's Distinguished Naval Graduate Award and was on the initial Naval Flight Training "Commodore's List With Distinction." He was honored twice by the U.S. Atlantic Fleet as the Light Attack Wing One – Pilot of the Year in 1991 and the Strike Fighter Aviator of the Year in 1999. In 1998, Wilmore was the recipient of the Strike Fighter Wing Atlantic's Scott Speicher Award for Weapons Employment Excellence.
In 2003, Wilmore was inducted into the Tennessee Tech Sports Hall of Fame, and, in 2010, was named an Engineer of Distinction by the Tech College of Engineering, and was conferred an honorary doctorate in 2012.
Wilmore currently serves as a member of the Tennessee Tech Board of Trustees and will hold that role until his term expires in 2021.
Winners of the NCAA's Theodore Roosevelt Award
1967: Dwight D. Eisenhower (United States Military Academy, football)
1968: Leverett Saltonstall (Harvard, rowing)
1969: Byron "Whizzer" White (University of Colorado at Boulder, football and basketball)
1970: Frederick L. Hovde (Minnesota, football)
1971: Christopher C. Kraft, Jr. (Virginia Tech, baseball)
1972: Jerome H. Holland (Cornell, football)
1973: Omar Bradley (United States Military Academy, baseball)
1974: Jesse Owens (Ohio State, track and field)
1975: Gerald Ford (Michigan, football)
1976: Thomas J. Hamilton (United States Naval Academy, football, basketball and baseball)
1977: Tom Bradley (UCLA, track and football)
1978: Gerald B. Zornow (Rochester, football, basketball and baseball)
1979: Otis Chandler (Stanford, track and field)
1980: Denton Cooley (Texas, basketball)
1981: Art Linkletter (San Diego State, basketball and swimming)
1982: Bill Cosby (Temple, football)
1983: Arnold Palmer (Wake Forest, golf)
1984: William P. Lawrence (United States Naval Academy, basketball, football and tennis)
1985: Robben Fleming (Beloit College)
1986: George H. W. Bush (Yale, baseball)
1987: Walter J. Zable (William & Mary, football)
1988: Not awarded
1989: Paul Ebert (Ohio State, baseball and basketball)
1990: Ronald Reagan (Eureka College, football)
1991: Althea Gibson (Florida A&M, tennis)
1992: Jack Kemp (Occidental College, football)
1993: Lamar Alexander (Vanderbilt, track and field)
1994: Rafer Johnson (UCLA, track and field)
1995: Bob Mathias (Stanford, track and field)
1996: John Wooden (Purdue, basketball)
1997: William Porter Payne (Georgia, football)
1998: Bob Dole (Washburn University, basketball)
1999: Bill Richardson (Tufts University, baseball)
2000: Roger Staubach (United States Naval Academy, football)
2001: William Cohen (Bowdoin College, basketball)
2002: Eunice Kennedy Shriver (Stanford, swimming and track and field)
2003: Donna de Varona (UCLA, swimming)
2004: Alan Page (Notre Dame, football)
2005: Sally Ride (Stanford, tennis)
2006: Robert Kraft (Columbia, football)
2007: Paul Tagliabue (Georgetown, basketball)
2008: John Glenn (Muskingum College)
2009: Madeleine Albright (Wellesley, swimming, rowing and field hockey)
2010: George J. Mitchell (Bowdoin College, basketball)
2011: Ann E. Dunwoody (SUNY Cortland, gymnastics and tennis)
2012: Will Allen (Miami, basketball)
2013: Tony Dungy (Minnesota, football)
2014: Billy Mills (Haskell Indian Nations University and Kansas, track and field)
2015: Mannie Jackson (Illinois, basketball)
2016: Peter Ueberroth (San Jose State, water polo)
2017: Beth Brooke-Marciniak (Purdue, women's basketball)
2018: Barry Wilmore (Tennessee Tech, football)