A) Osi and Blair celebrate the Giants' win at the 2008 Super Bowl B) Mentor and Bishop Carl Fisher encouraged Blair to leave the "nest" C) Blair, the youngest of seven, was a serious student focused on achievement

The Power of Three

Posted February 11, 2010

GROWING UP A DEVOUT CATHOLIC in Los Angeles, Blair Liggins has never forgotten the words of encouragement his mentor, Bishop Carl Fisher, always offered him: Believe in yourself, and you can accomplish anything.

Bishop Fisher became California’s first African-American Roman Catholic bishop in 1987 and got to know Blair when he was a student at Our Lady Queen of Angels High School. Blair was one of only a handful of African-American students there at the time, and Fisher took him under his wing.

“Bishop Fisher was a rock star,” Blair recalls. “You can imagine having someone that high profile make time to take me to a Dodgers game, or to get a burger, or whatever. He was willing to spend time with me, and he was always about seeing me develop as a person to try to accomplish great things in my life.”

Leaving the Nest

Bishop Fisher encouraged Blair to travel outside California for college. “He said, ‘How are you ever going to learn to fly if you never leave the nest?’” Blair remembers. He took Bishop Fisher’s advice and ventured far from the nest — from L.A. to historic Tuskegee University in Tuskegee, Ala.

There Blair dedicated himself to getting as much from the experience as possible. “I was extremely studious — the one literally walking around campus with a briefcase,” he says. He joked he took his studies so seriously he “might have needed a little loosening up.”

At Tuskegee Blair encountered a teenager who seemed he might need the kind of mentor he had in Bishop Fisher. The student was Osi Umenyiora, who is now a defensive end for the New York Giants. At the time, though, Osi was a 14-year-old kid sent by his parents in Nigeria to live with his older siblings who were fellow students and among Blair’s closest friends at Tuskegee. His parents wanted him to get an American education by attending high school in nearby Auburn.

“When Osi came, one of the things his brothers and sisters and I talked about is even though we were really just kids ourselves, when you have a younger person around you try to set a good example,” Blair explains. “I tried to help set that example by showing him the importance of being professional in all you do,” he says. Blair went out of his way to make Osi feel like part of the group, even when it meant just playing video games together.

Blair encouraged Osi in another area as well. He saw that with Osi’s size, strength, and natural athletic ability, he had the potential to be a great football player. Ironically, Osi had no interest in football at first.

“It looked like a very foolish game to me,” Osi recalls now, “before I began to really understand it.”

Blair continued to urge him to try, and finally Osi went out for and made the Auburn High School football team. Blair attended nearly every game, a trend that continued when Osi went on to play ball at Troy University, and when he signed on with the Giants in 2003. “He’s just been there all along,” Osi says.

Meanwhile, Blair continued his dedication to success in school and went on to earn his Masters in Economics at Tuskegee. He was then recruited by Regions, and today, still in his mid-30s, is a successful Regions Morgan Keegan Trust Officer.

And Osi (whose name, appropriately, translates to “from today things will be good”) is known as one of the NFL’s best defensive ends. He was voted to the Pro Bowl in 2005 and 2007 and shares the record for the most sacks in a single game in NFC history. He memorably helped the Giants win the Super Bowl in February 2008, and naturally, Blair was right there.

“I remember being down on the field with him after the game, confetti falling on my eyes and Osi doing interviews all over the place,” says Blair.

“He made the Pro Bowl that year,” he continues, “and they gave him this gigantic suite in Hawaii. I’ll never forget sitting there, looking over the water. I grabbed him and said ‘Os, who would have thought, from our days running around Auburn, of you being here today?’”

In a way, it is hard to imagine a 14-year-old boy moving from Nigeria to Alabama, playing his first football game as a high-school junior, and ending up in the NFL.

Osi says, “I can tell you, without Blair, there’s no way I could be where I am.”

Paying it Forward

For both men, the wish to give back in the spirit of those who’ve helped them along the road continues today. Osi is a founding “Play Maker” for the Make A Play Foundation, an NFL-player-driven organization which helps to address poverty, famine, disease, and other crises in Africa.

For his part, Blair is dedicated to a program spearheaded by his employer, Regions Bank, in which Regions bankers teach financial literacy to Alabama schoolchildren. He works with local kids through other organizations such as Junior Achievement. He’s a tireless advocate for the city of Birmingham, which he’s grown to love, always encouraging others to join him in civic causes. And he feels passionately that his profession itself is an extension of his desire to help others. “It all stems from being able to serve people, even with their financial needs—whatever they may be—and give thanks to the people who have helped me to progress and accomplish things in my life,” he says.

People, he notes, such as his old mentor, Bishop Fisher.

“Bishop Fisher was always willing to hang out with me and encourage me,” he says. “I found that to be a great example of how you should treat people—you don’t do things because you have to. It’s okay to take the time simply because you want to see people do good.”

BLAIR LIGGINS is a Regions Morgan Keegan Trust Officer in Birmingham, Alabama.

Everyone has a story.