Johnson, 45, of Napoleonville, said the university has provided him with a temporary space to showcase his “special” football helmet and memorabilia collection.
The archives room, housed inside Ellender Memorial Library, currently has more than 300 of Johnson’s helmets and other artifacts on display.
“It killed me,” Johnson said of the condition of the helmets when he opened the storage up in early June to take a look. “I had to put them there after we moved out of our home to another home that was smaller. cheap nfl jerseys I didn’t have room for them in the new home, so I had to rent a storage for them.”
Johnson said he wrote Nicholls, LSU and the Terrebonne Parish Public Library Main Branch to see if they would be interested in displaying them for a while.
“I was stunned when I actually got a personal phone call from Dr. Stephen Hulbert (of Nicholls),” he said. “He told me that someone from athletics would get back to me, but that was sort of last I heard about it.”
After being redirected a few times, Johnson got linked up with Cliff Theriot with the Nicholls Archives.
“He and another woman told me to bring them some examples so I did,” Johnson said. “They like what I had and were interested. They told me to bring as much as I could and they would provide the cases to display them.”
Theriot said the size and scope of the collection surprised him.
“It is larger than I could have imagined,” he said. “What’s nice is we have each helmet identified with the school’s name, mascot and state.”
So where did these helmets come from?
To answer that question one must go back to a better time when Johnson’s father, Raymond Sr., was still alive and well.
Johnson said his father spent much of his adult years teaching and coaching in Assumption Parish.
After retiring in 1996, Raymond Sr. life was cut short when he died from a heart attack.
Following the funeral, Raymond Jr. decided to dedicate a room in his home celebrating his dad’s favorite pastime: football.
“When it was getting close to football season is pretty much when I saw him at his happiest,” Johnson said. “I remember when I told my wife (Desiree) I was planning on doing this she was kind of hesitant to support me because I think she knew my history when it came to sticking with things.”
Through the years, Johnson steadfastly wrote an average of six letters a week asking coaches from around the country if they could spare any items, preferably helmets, in memory of his fallen father.
Johnson concentrated his efforts on NFL teams initially before switching his attention to colleges and high schools.
Soon, responses began flooding in. Some of the coaches sent decals, while others shipped him game helmets, media guides, autographed pictures and even a few jerseys.
After building his collection up to more than 300 helmets, Johnson was about to stop when something changed his mind: his mother, Rosa.
In 2010, Johnson’s mother’s condition forced her to spend her final months at Thibodaux Regional and Baton Rouge Medical Centers.
“I remember one of the last conversations I had with her,” Johnson said. “I had just gotten off the phone with a coach about a helmet and she wanted to know how many more I was going to get. I told her I was going to stop at 400. The crazy thing is she died when she was 76, and I just so happened to have 324 helmets when she passed away. When you add 76 to 324, you get 400.”
The next year saw Johnson stepping up his efforts to reach 400 helmets, which he achieved on May 26, 2011.
“A friend of mine gave me my 400th one on the one year anniversary of my mother’s death,” Johnson said. “It took me basically 11 years to collect 324, but only a year to get the last 76.”
Having the chance to share him and his father’s passion with others is a dream come true for Raymond Johnson Jr.
“The funny thing is at first I don’t think they believed I had as many helmets I did,” Johnson said. “One of the things my mom always told me was, feels better in life than to prove someone wrong.’ She was right. I actually brought so many things over there they finally had to tell me to stop.”
Theriot said he loves the story behind the collection and is glad the archives can host Johnson’s display through January.
“The students and faculty that come in here are amazed by how many things he has,” he said. “What I love is it isn’t just helmets, but pictures of his father as well as letters from coaches and jerseys. cheapnfljerseysonlinee Plus, the timing of it couldn’t be better with football season going on right now.”
Current Nicholls State head coach Charlie Stubbs and former coach Jay Thomas even contributed to the collection.