Gernon Brown

Sport: Coach

Induction Year: 1990

Gernon Brown coached Jesuit High of New Orleans to five state championships in football and 10 in baseball between 1933 and 1948.

He rarely talked about those teams, but he enjoyed telling the story of his 1945-46 basketball team.

When Jesuit found itself without a basketball coach in 1945, Brown—who was the Athletic Director, football and baseball coach, and was teaching math at Loyola at night—took over the basketball team for one year.

“I just read a basketball book, got the best kids and we won,” he recalled.

Brown’s football teams and baseball teams lost a few games when they weren’t winning state titles, but his basketball team posted a perfect 15-0 record that was capped by a 28-27 victory over Istrouma in the Class AA state finals.

Like Rocky Marciano, Brown retired from basketball coaching with a perfect record.

“This is my first, only and last season as a basketball coach,” he said. “If they don’t get a coach next season, I’ll quit everything.”

His basketball team, led by All-Staters, Monroe Caballero, Harold “Tookie” Gilbert and Hugh Oser, reached the Class AA finals with a 60-19 rout of Catholic (Baton Rouge) and a 35-29 semifinal victory over a St Aloysius team that included eighth grad phenom Nick Revon.

The Jays overcame a 7-0 deficit in the first quarter of the title game, taking the lead when they held Istrouma scoreless n the second quarter. Istrouma scored the last six points of the game and had a chance to pull it out of the fire in the last 15 seconds when Jesse Walton, the only double digit scorer in the game with 13 points, stole the ball. But Caballero blocked his shot.

That narrow victory started an amaxing string of titles for Jesuit High teams in 1946.

In May, the Blue Jays won two state championships.

First, the chalked up the school’s first team title in the Class AA track and field meet when Elton Correa won the 100 yard dash in 10.4 seconds, John Petitbon finished the 440 in a dead heat with Fair Park’s Johnny Breahburst at 53 seconds flat, Louis Haught won the javelin throw with 162 feet and Rainey Brown won the discus with a heave of 121-6. It all started when the 880 yard relay team, with Petitbon and Correa running the last two legs, lowered the meet record to 1:33.4. Jesuit had 45 ½ points to 37 ½ for runner-up Holy Cross.

They were running on a soggy track after the baseball championship game between Jesuit and St. Aloysius was rained out.

The title game was played eight days later, giving the 6-foot, 4-inch Oser—who didn’t lose a game in his last two years of prep competition—an opportunity to pitch both the semifinals (a three-hit, 6-0 victory over Holy Cross) and the finals (a two-hit, 2-1 win over St. Aloysius). Stan McDermott led the Jays at the plate with three hits, including a homerun.

During the summer, the Jesuit-based American Legion baseball team coached by Eddie Toribio won the national championship—the first national title for a Louisiana team since 1932. That team included Moon Landrieu, who later became mayor of New Orleans. Ironically, it was Toribio’s only season as a baseball coach.

In December, Petitbon—who later played at Notre Dame—led Brown’s football team to a perfect 13-0 record as the Jays won every game by two touchdowns or more. Jesuit scored a 48-14 victory over Jennings in the Class AA finals. It is the only time that one school won championships in all four major sports in the top classification of the Louisiana High School Athletic Association in the same calendar year. The only school that won three was Holy Cross in 1945, with championships in football, basketball and track (Brown’s Jesuit team won in baseball).

“I’m more salesman than coach,” was one of Gernon Brown’s favorite expressions.

Whether it was because of his salesmanship or his coaching, his teams won state titles in three sports. His 1940 and 1946 state football champions posted perfect records.

The 1940 state champions wrapped up a perfect season with a 26-6 victory over a Lack Charles High team featuring Alvin Dark. Jesuit’s Oliver Joseph Key scored two touchdowns and set up another with a 55-yard interception return of a Dark pass in the title game. Dark and Key both were named to the All-State and All-Southern teams.

The 1943 state champions allowed only one touchdown in their first six games. Their record was marred only by a 6-6 tie with a Warren Easton team led by future Tulane and New York Giants star Eddie Price. Fullback Ray Coates, who later played at LSU, was Jesuit’s only first-team All-Stater on that team. His pass to William Curry provided the tying touchdown in the Warren Easton game.

Norman Hodgins, a second-team All-Stater, scored all four touchdowns in a 25-6 victory over Byrd High in the state finals. Byrd had the top two scorers in the state, Foster Whtie and Dan Sandifer (who went on to play at LSU and in the National Football League). But Sandifer was one of several Yellow Jackets sidelined by a flu outbreak prior to the state finals.

Brown, a graduate of Jesuit High, suffered a knee injury as a plebe at the United States Naval Academy and was afforded the opportunity to attend the college of his choice. He selected Loyola, not for physical education but for the fine arts.

“Give Gernon Brown a piece of chalk and a blackboard, and he can sell anyone on anything,’ said Toribio, who played on Brown’s first state championship football team and succeeded him as the Blue Jays’ head coach 20 years later.

Five of Brown’s baseball players—Charley Gilbert, Tookie Gilbert, Connie Ryan, Fats Dantonio and Putsy Caballero—made it to the big leagues.

Brown died in 1962 at the age of 62. He was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame posthumously in 1989.