Enchanting People of New Mexico - The Charley Johnson Story

The Fresh Chile Company Podcast

It was with sadness that I learned on Wednesday that former NMSU, St. Louis Cardinals and Denver Bronco quarterback Charley Johnson has passed at age 85. It wasn’t his intention to leave Texas and come to New Mexico. A couple things happened. He was raised in Big Spring, Texas. A super athlete in high school, he intended to play football in college. One problem: he got a football scholarship to Schreiner Institute which is now Schreiner University. But the year that Charley Johnson arrived at college, the football program where he intended to play football was cancelled. Charley Johnson was determined to play collegiate sports, so he checked around and through several coaches we was able to find Presley Askew, the basketball coach in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He transferred to the College of Agriculture and Mechanical Arts and started taking courses in Chemical Engineering. While a student, the college changed its name to New Mexico State University. One major problem he couldn’t fix was that the football coach, Warren Woodson didn’t have a football scholarship to give him. Charley and his family didn’t have the money for him to just attend but he was able to get a scholarship for Aggie Basketball and an odd thing happened to him.

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