Lacey O'Neal Photographs Bob Hayes' Mausoleum

Family, friends, athletes and folks who just looked up to a poor Jacksonville kid who grew up to become a sports legend gathered Thursday to dedicate the final resting place for Robert Lee "Bullet Bob" Hayes.

It would have been his 65th birthday.

When the guests arrived at Edgewood Cemetery for the unveiling and dedication of Hayes' mausoleum, to which his remains had been moved the day before, they saw it covered with a shroud decorated with five Olympic rings. A marble bench at its side was concealed by a cover bearing the famous star logo of his former team, the Dallas Cowboys.

Behind the mausoleum are four flagpoles that now fly the American, Olympic, Dallas Cowboys and Japanese flags.

Larry Upson, former director of NFL officials and now vice president of officiating/operations for the United Football League scheduled to debut in August, said the occasion was a fitting tribute to Hayes' life. "He deserves not just a headstone, but a monument," Upson said.

When the Times-Union in July reported the lack of a marker on the grave of "The World's Fastest Human," Hayes' sister, Lucille Hester of Washington, said that while she had no qualms about covering the cost of a mausoleum, she was a perfectionist about the design.

She said at the time that Hayes left a few choices for what should be inscribed on the tomb and she wanted to make sure it was done "with the respect that you know he wanted."

Hayes won two gold medals in the 1964 Olympic Games held in Japan and went on to become the first track star to make it big in professional football. He played for the Cowboys for 10 years, setting many records, and was named the NFL's Most Valuable Player. He played in two Super Bowls and four Pro Bowls, but has yet to be voted into the NFL's Hall of Fame, which was noted by several people Thursday. He also was the Times-Union Athlete of the Century.

When the drapes were removed by a quartet of family members, guests saw the Olympic rings and Cowboys star engraved at the top of the tomb, which he shares with his mother, Mary Hayes Robinson, who died in February.

Hayes died Sept. 18, 2002, when he was 59. Hester said it was her brother's wish that she provide a mausoleum to recognize his accomplishments five years after his death.

The front of the tomb is inscribed with what guests were told was Hayes' favorite quote, something said by President Theodore Roosevelt in an address at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910, on the role of citizenship in a republic:

"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming ..."

Patrick Pope of the Bob Hayes Foundation Inc. said Hayes was a man who made few requests, but he did ask that Roosevelt's words be on his monument.

"Bob was my hero," said Robert Newhouse, director of alumni affairs for the Cowboys who played for the team from 1972 to 1983, the first two years as a teammate of Hayes. As a young boy growing up in East Texas, Newhouse said, he watched Hayes play on a little black-and-white TV.

"He was the star," Newhouse said. "Without Bob Hayes, there would be no star for the Cowboys."

Lacey O'Neal of Washington presented the Olympic flag, having been an Olympic teammate of Hayes in 1964 as a hurdler.

"Bob was the most generous guy I knew," she said. "He never really knew his greatness."

Roosevelt Freeman of Jacksonville graduated from Florida A&M in 1959, the year before Hayes enrolled as a freshman, and wore his college athletic jacket to the dedication.