Ad for Alvin Roy:
Daily Reveille, September 11, 1958.
Microfilm 632 University Archives.
There was a man by the name of Alvin Roy. He had a little health spa down on Oklahoma Street [in Baton Rouge]. It’s no longer there, but I can show you where it was. In the summer of ’58, he had Bob Petit, Jim Taylor, Billy Cannon, Johnny Robinson, Roy Winston who was still at Istrouma High School, and Norbert Roy who went on to Notre Dame from Istrouma High School. All those guys played in the pros, you see. Bob Petit went from a skinny six [foot] nine [inch], 195 pound back to the basket center at LSU to a power forward in the pros who weighed 225 pounds. If Alvin Roy’s not here -- he’s one of the gurus of that business -- I don’t think that LSU, you know, would have been as good because of, you know . . . Taylor, Cannon, all of them were lifting weights when nobody else was doing it. And he had been an Olympic weight lifting coach, but he saw . . . I guess Cannon started lifting weights at Istrouma High School as a junior, his junior year. One year, Baton Rouge High kills Istrouma, okay? Istrouma starts lifting weights and the next year Istrouma kills Baton Rouge High.
-- Bud Johnson, interviewed by Emily Nemens, 2013