Biography Continued

FAMILY & EARLY LIFE
Hayes Edward Sanders was born March 24, 1930 in Los Angeles, CA. His father, Hays Sanders, hailed from Elysian Fields, TX and worked as a municipal garbage worker. His mother, Eva Cook Sanders, hailed from Pearsall County, TX, and was a stay-at-home mother. Ed Sanders was the oldest male child of the family. His older sister, Winifred, born in 1928, died in a Scarlet Fever epidemic, in 1939. Before Winifred’s death, she was recognized as a talented child prodigy. As a child, Sanders was very large and physically strong. At age 12, he was recollected to be the size of a normal 18 year old.

Ed had three younger siblings – a brother, Donald Allen Sanders (born in 1932); a sister, Margaret Sanders (Battey) (born in 1935); and another brother, Joseph Stanley Sanders (born in 1942). Ed Sanders and his younger brother, Donald, collected coffee cans, filled them with cement and connected two of them with a steel bar to make a weight set for exercising. As "Big Ed" grew bigger, faster and stronger, he excelled in football and track and field at Jordan High School. Sanders was known as affable, gentlemanly and highly intelligent. But he was tough and was not to be messed with. Big Ed graduated from Jordan High School in 1948.

Jordan High School Senior Class 1948 

COMPTON COLLEGE SCHOLAR
Compton College After graduating from Jordan High School, Sanders attended Compton College, where he again excelled in football and a new sport, boxing. In 1950, at the National Junior College Boxing Championships in Ogden, Utah, the six-foot four-inch, 220 pound Sanders attracted the attention of Idaho State College boxing coach Dubby Holt and football coach Babe Caccia. "He had a good left hand, and for the big man that he was, he was a real orthodox, skilled boxer," Holt recalled.

IDAHO STATE READY
Shortly thereafter, Sanders was awarded an athletic scholarship to Idaho State College (now Idaho State University) in Pocatello, Idaho, where he boxed and played football. - Idaho State University Sanders won the NCAA Junior Championship in 1949 and 1950. When Sanders arrived on campus he dominated the competition. In his first collegiate fight Sanders knocked out the Pacific Coast Heavyweight Champion. He also never lost a match in a dual meet while at ISU.

Idaho State University 1949 

Sanders met his future wife while attending school in Pocatello native Mary LaRue, who worked as a secretary in the athletic department. Sanders was introduced to LaRue by her brother Jake, who picked Sanders up at Pocatello’s Union Pacific train Station. “I was a student and was on the staff of the ISU athletic department,” LaRue said in an interview with her son Russell. “He was recruited to come here from Compton Junior College to box and play football, and that’s how I met him. We became friends over time and eventually became engaged. We grew on each other.”

Mary LaRue circa 1950s