Harvey Palmore, former NFL player and Roosevelt athletic director, dies at 75

Harvey Palmore, a former NFL player who became athletic director for the Roosevelt Union Free School District, died Wednesday. He was 75.

Heather Palmore, his daughter, said he died at Moses H. Cone Memorial Hospital in Greensboro, North Carolina, after having advanced heart disease and kidney failure.

He was an offensive guard for the Cincinnati Bengals in 1968 and later played for the New York Jets affiliate teams.

Palmore moved to Amityville in 1970 with his wife, Hazel Palmore. He started as a physical education teacher in the early 1970s at Roosevelt High School, his daughter said, before coaching football and basketball. Although he retired from playing sports, he was never away from it.

“He saw so much and that was his main motivation,” Heather Palmore said about her dad's involvement in sports. “Basketball allows him to tap into a different sport."

In addition to coaching, Palmore said her parents opened their home to players who needed help outside of sports.

“While he was big in stature, he was just a teddy bear with a soft heart and he would give the shirt off his back,” she said. “He was adamant about pursuing your education and excellence.”

Palmore was one of the few Black athletic directors on Long Island in the 1970s and 1980s, said Don Crummell, a girls basketball coach at Roosevelt High School. And Palmore wanted to win and help others, he said.

“There was nothing that he wouldn’t do,” he said.

Crummell, who played football at Roosevelt when Palmore was the offensive line coach, said Palmore was instrumental in helping him get the head football coach position at Roosevelt.

“Being a head coach of a program is monumental,” Crummell said. “He’s been like a real father to me.”

James Jackson, Palmore’s longtime friend, said in 1986 they co-founded the Cruise Brothers Bicycle Club, Long Island's first Black bicycle club.

“As a friend of his 40-plus years, I would say he was stubborn, hardheaded and argumentative,” said Jackson, a retired principal at Edmund W. Miles Middle School in Amityville. “But he also was the kindest and most bighearted person you would want to meet.”

Palmore left Roosevelt to become the athletic director for the South Country School District in 1988. After retiring in 2000 as assistant principal at Bellport Middle School, Palmore returned to Roosevelt to work with Joe Vito, the head football coach.

“He was a mentor to me,” said Vito. “He was so supportive of our coaches. His loyalty was beyond any person I dealt with.”

In 2005, Palmore moved to Greensboro, North Carolina, not far from where his parents had once settled.

Heather Palmore said her father enjoyed life as a grandfather. His grandson Miles Palmore-Middleton chose to attend Wake Forest University to be near his grandfather. Palmore’s last public appearance before his health began to decline was in February, when he attended a high school basketball championship game that his granddaughter Aijah Palmore was a part of.

“They motivated him because they became the thing that he envisioned,” Heather Palmore said. “They made him so proud.”

Born Oct. 19, 1944, in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, Harvey Palmore and his three siblings spent a big part of their childhood in foster care. Their father, Henry Palmore, later reclaimed his children and they settled in Washington, D.C. Harvey Palmore played football at Eastern High School and received a full scholarship to play football at Morgan State University in Baltimore.

Palmore also is survived by daughter Helisse, son Hayward and three grandchildren.

He will be buried at Pinelawn Memorial Park in Pinelawn on Aug. 20, the same day his wife died in 2013.