So many of Bogalusa’s talented young people leave the area after high school graduation. A number go to college and then on to careers in places all across the country. Others leave Bogalusa to find their way in life: to find a career or simply to get out. Few make their way back.

Robert Temple is one of those who left, made his mark, and then came back. Temple was an athlete at Bogalusa High School during the mid-1970s, a time when it was cooler to drop out than to excel in sports. But excel he did, quarterbacking the Lumberjacks during the 1974 season, playing basketball and holding up a leg of the relay team that took Bogalusa all the way to the state championship in 1975.

After graduation that same year, Temple was awarded a football scholarship to the University of Arkansas-Pine Bluff (UAPB), where he was the starting quarterback for the 1975-76 season. After that first football season he transferred to Southern University in Baton Rouge, still on a football scholarship. But he didn’t stay in Baton Rouge long, and love had everything to do with it. He met his wife, Patricia while still in high school and her in April of 1976. Sometime after the birth of their first child, the Temples moved to Milwaukee, where his coaching career really began. They remained in Wisconsin until 1994 when they made the return trip to Bogalusa.

(Use arrows above to view more photos) Advertisement

Having been an athlete for his entire life, it made sense that Temple would end up coaching, but he had no way of knowing when he started that he’d be coaching for the next 22 years.

It seemed like the natural thing to do to volunteer to coach a son’s Little League, so when his eldest son, Robert Temple Jr., was 8 years old, his coaching career began in Milwaukee. After moving back to Bogalusa, Temple started coaching older boys in basketball, including a couple of his sons and a nephew. He also coached T-ball, coaching another of his sons. Beginning in 1997 and continuing until 2001, Temple coached football for the Bogalusa Sports Association, and during that time his teams were city champions every year but 2001.

Not content to coach just football, he began coaching Little League baseball. The first year, 1999, he coached 14- and 15-year-olds for Bogalusa Little League. Not surprisingly, his team went to the state tournament that year and he was named Coach of the Year.

Robert Temple and his wife are the proud parents of two daughters and five sons. As the boys grew to high school age, Temple volunteered to coach at Bogalusa High School. He started coaching basketball, but couldn’t help himself from volunteering for baseball and track as well. He was the junior varsity football and basketball coach for several years. He went on to become the quarterback coach, a position he held for many years. He had the pleasure of coaching his youngest son, Ralston, at the QB position.

Through the years he was able to coach every one of his sons, something any coach and father would envy. He and his wife have raised seven exceptional children, most of whom were athletes as children and young adults.

The eldest child, daughter Chiketa Temple Morris, graduated from Milwaukee Technical High School and attended Grambling State University.

The eldest son, Robert Temple Jr., is stationed in Florida serving in the U. S. Navy, having already served for 12 years. He attended high school in Milwaukee and graduated from BHS.

Patrick Temple and is family live in Phoenix, Ariz. He served in the Navy for eight years. He also attended high school in Milwaukee and graduated from BHS.

Rush Temple and Russell Temple both graduated from BHS and are seniors at Grambling State University.

Ralston Antoine Temple graduated from BHS and is a sophomore at Grambling State University.

The youngest Temple, Brianna, is a 10th-grader at BHS. She’s been involved in track since 6th grade, when she was, of course, coached by her dad.

Rush, Russell and Ralston each earned MVP honors in football. Rush also was a MVP in basketball.

Last month, the graduating seniors on the Lumberjack basketball team presented Temple with a plaque on senior night, to honor him as he retired. According to head coach Ken Martin, the seniors didn’t want to graduate and without giving him the credit he deserved.

“He always did a great job for the kids,” said Martin. “As a coach, he had the respect of all his kids, both girls and boys. He was a father figure to them all. He treated them as if they were his own,” Martin said.

“He coached track for six years and was a great help when we won our district championship in track.

When I was coaching track, I picked him to be my assistant. I give him a lot of credit for the success of our track program, as well as the basketball and football programs,” Martin continued.

Martin went on to say that he had known Robert Temple as a young man and remembered his leading the Bogalusa track team to the state championship in 1975. “Back when he ran,” said Martin, “he had the fastest time in the nation. And it wasn’t just track,” Martin stressed. “He was also All District in four sports. I believe he was one of the greatest athletes who ever played for Bogalusa High School.

Martin concluded, “I have the utmost respect for him, not only as a coach, but as a man. He raised seven good children, and I had the pleasure of coaching all five of his sons. They were all superior athletes.”

Another coach who remembers Temple fondly is Gary Magee, who coached him as a young man at Bogalusa High. “He was captain of the track team, quarterback of the football team and I believe a forward on the basketball team. He was just a tremendous athlete,” said Magee.

Magee began his coaching career at Central High School, from 1960 to 1968. He coached at Bogalusa High School from 1969 to 1975, giving up coaching to become assistant principal. He went on to become principal in 1990 and retired from the school system in 1994.

“I’d do it all over again,” he said. “ I loved working with children. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do �” retire from coaching.

When asked, Robert Temple said pretty much the same thing: Retiring from coaching was very difficult. “I had a connection with the kids all those years. It was such a great pleasure working with them. I treated them like my own and they responded to that,” he said. “The kids just took to me �” black and white �” came to me with their problems. Young men would ask me about the young ladies,” said Temple.

He looks back, he said, at the coaches who had an influence on his life: Lewis Murray, Gary Magee and others, and felt, he said, “like a part of me wanted to give back.”

And so he has. He still has kids call from college, asking him if he would put together a highlight tape, or just to catch up. Parents of Temple-coached children see him on the street and tell him what a great job he did coaching their kids. Robert Temple has given back as much, or more, as he was given when he himself was coached at Bogalusa High School.

But it’s what he leaves behind �” his legacy as a coach �” that is so profound. Robert Temple made all of his kids better: not just as athletes, but as people. Anyone would be proud of that legacy.