TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – The Alabama Crimson Tide has lost a legendary member of their football program. Eddie Conyers passed away on January 27th at the age of 97.
Friends, family, and those touched by his life gathered for a memorial service at First Baptist Church in Tuscaloosa on Thursday. Keith Pugh, a former Alabama wide receiver and the current pastor at First Baptist said he is almost surprised that this day has come.
“Eddie Conyers was one of those guys I thought would live forever,” Pugh said. “He was like the Energizer Bunny, just kept going and going and going.”
Conyers began his career as a practice referee for the Crimson Tide in 1962, under the regime of the legendary Paul “Bear” Bryant. By the time David Smith had arrived as a walk-on quarterback in 1985, Conyers had already been officiating for 20 years.
“Most people, they’d be liable to call it a career,” Smith said. “But he kept going for 40 more years after that. He wouldn’t leave. He loved it so much, and everybody loved him as well.”
Smith, who now serves as an SEC official, recalls how even though Conyers would tell the same jokes over and over, the jokes still produced truckloads of laughter every time.
“I don’t know of a single official that was there who didn’t laugh just as hard the last time as he did the first time he heard them,” Smith said. “He was so good at telling those jokes.”
Jeff Allen, who has worked with the Alabama football program since 2007, says he learned many lessons from his time knowing Eddie Conyers. However, one lesson was the most valuable.
“If you want to impact people, make them smile,” Allen said. “That’s what Eddie did.”
Allen also emphasized the unshakeable joy and enthusiasm Conyers brought to the practice field every single day.
“Eddie had a joy about him and a way about him that was evident to everybody who knew him,” Allen said. “And that type of joy only comes from one source.”
That source of joy was his faith in God. And Conyers’ faith is what gave Cedric Burns, who has been with the Alabama football program since 1979, the confidence to assure Conyers’ wife, he is doing much better now.
“Mrs. Peggy,” Burns said. “Eddie’s in a better place. He is just waiting on us to get there.”
“God puts us on this earth to impact other people,” Allen said in his closing remarks. “To brighten their day, not to weigh it down. Eddie Conyers accomplished that mission.”
