Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 29, 1993 TAG: 9312290109
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: RUTH S. INTRESS RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH
DATELINE: RADFORD (AP) LENGTH: Medium
Though Taylor appeared puzzled, the woman continued. Was he still teaching philosophy? "No," he said, "I'm in athletics now."
Taylor - as in Chuck, Radford's longtime athletic director - still gets a kick out of the story. His father, Charles D. Taylor - Radford's even longer-serving philosophy chairman - relishes it too.
As for the woman, "I never told her," Chuck Taylor said of the mix-up.
"But I told Daddy, `See, you haven't changed a bit.' "
There's a definite resemblance between father and son. But more striking is the easy flow between them, with thoughts started by one and finished by the other as they lean back on a sofa like aging athletes, which they also are.
They golf together, though these days, said Chuck David, 47, "each of us is at least 10 strokes off the game."
Years ago, added Charles Duey, 70, "We played intramural basketball here together until I ran into a wall and got too old."
That was in the early 1970s, when Chuck became Radford's acting director of the department of health, physical education, Dance and Recreation. "We had driver's ed and the horses for the equestrian classes, too," he said.
Overseeing such a mishmash of a department might have prompted Taylor's rapid departure. But less than a year after his arrival, the Board of Visitors of the growing school voted to launch an intercollegiate athletic program with Taylor as its director.
The former women's college had recently gone coeducational and the program needed all the help it could get. So short-handed was Taylor that he recruited his father, who had pinch-hit as a golf and track coach in his early academic career, as the official timekeeper.
"Nobody got paid anything then, but it was fun," the senior Taylor said of his clock-stopping stint at Radford games, which he still attends religiously.
Confusion on the court at the time earned the two Taylors new names: "The Younger" and "The Elder."
The titles have stuck. Though all students don't always make the connection, the athletes who venture into the department of philosophy and religious studies quickly realize that Taylor The Elder is an even tougher taskmaster than their coaches' coach.
Professor Taylor's students also learn that, like the ancient Greeks, he views athletic development as no less important than mental prowess.
It was the senior Taylor, himself the son of a high school principal and basketball coach, who instilled in his only child a passion for sports.
In his 23 years at Radford, Chuck Taylor has built the fledgling athletic program into one that wins a good share of games under the dome of a $5 million athletic center that opened in 1981.
Charles Taylor has built a different monument. An ordained minister, he has married, buried and baptized countless area residents, some of whom he has also taught during his 27 years at Radford. The philosophy and religious studies program further bears his mark. It's grown from three to 10 faculty members under his leadership.
Professor Taylor, who earned his doctorate at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, had been a parish pastor for seven years when he was invited to teach at Kentucky's Union University, his alma mater.
"I hadn't been there three weeks when I knew that's what I wanted to do with my life," said Taylor, who soon will retire from the deanship to return to the classroom full time.
Through the years, Taylor has continued his ministry, filling in at various churches. "It's been a good outlet for the school," he says. "And I wasn't forced into a decision between the two."
The Taylors are an institution at Radford, where Chuck's wife, Cheryl, has occasionally taught mathematics, and where Chuck's mother, Anne, served for years as head of the Baptist Student Center.
For the two men, a closeness that could have been stifling has not been, in part because of the separateness of their fields, and because they never expected to work together.
"Athletics is a very transient profession. There's no way we could have planned this," said Chuck Taylor. "Dad realized Radford was a good place. I stumbled into it and I've grown to realize the same thing. It's been more than a place to work."
by CNB