Granbury sculptor has put 21 men in the Hall of Fame, including Gil Brandt
Sculptor Scott Myers did something different this year.
The Granbury resident who has been sculpting Pro Football Hall of Fame busts since 2003 created the busts of former Dallas Cowboys executive Gil Brandt and Johnny Robinson, a former safety for the Dallas Texans and Kansas City Chiefs.
Both will be inducted into the Hall of Fame, along with six others, on Saturday in Canton, Ohio.
They are the 20th and 21st busts Myers has on display in the Hall of Fame. That’s 6.6 percent of the 318 legends in the Hall.
For the first time, Myers, who attended Haltom High School, met his subjects before starting his water-based clay sculpture. Before, Myers relied on measurements and a few images taken at the Hall of Fame class announcement to begin creating the busts.
He drove to Highland Park to meet Brandt at his home and to Monroe, La., to meet Robinson. He took detailed measurements, images and video of their faces and heads. But most important, he said, he got to know them and see up close in the flesh the subtle nuances of their faces, the specific creases in their brows and the twinkle in their eyes.
“Both men look very different in person than in the photographs,” said Myers, 60. “We need to develop some sort of relationship.”
Meeting the men beforehand made Myers’ job easier. He’s on an ultra-tight deadline that leaves very little room for error. As one of only three sculptors in the country commissioned by the NFL and the Pro Football Hall of Fame, he doesn’t learn who he’ll be doing until a FedEx package with the order arrives at his house in early April.
“It’s kind of like the ‘Mission Impossible’ where they’d open the package,” he said.
It typically takes him about two months to finish a bust, but then they’re cast at a foundry in Utah and a mold is made with silicon rubber. That mold is put on top of the original clay. Wax is then poured into the mold and hollowed out before the wax head is bronzed. The finished Hall of Fame busts are a quarter of an inch thick. If they were solid, he said, you wouldn’t be able to pick one up.
The casting process takes time. In fact, the Brandt and Robinson busts just arrived in Canton earlier this week.
“You worry, because you’re up against a deadline. I really sweat that,” he said, “because if the mold isn’t made properly then I have a real problem. If the molds are damaged, then we have nothing to go back to.”
Myers has also been a full-time veterinary surgeon for 35 years. So he knows a thing or two about pressure. Both vocations have helped the other.
“The skills I’ve learned as a veterinarian surgeon and of the anatomy I’ve used with the sculpting,” he said. “And when I started sculpting and working in three-dimensions my surgery got better. I could see with more depth and more volume.”
But it was the early face time he had with both men that really helped him form the perfect likeness. The subjects can pick the age or era they want immortalized in bronze. Brandt, 86, chose a look from his 50s, with special instruction on the hairstyle from his wife. Robinson’s family wanted the movie-star look he had in the prime of his career in the mid-1960s. Robinson is 81.
“It helped me immensely. I had seen photographs, but to see them in person my mind automatically made adjustments,” he said.
To nail the likeness, a relationship is necessary. That made these two subjects so rewarding, Myers said.
The stories he’s heard while creating busts for stars including LaDainian Tomlinson, Charles Haley and Elvin Bethea have been endlessly fascinating. He learned former Houston Oilers linebacker Robert Brazile’s college roommate at Jackson State was Walter Payton. Bob Hayes’ widow told a story of how boxer Joe Frazier hid one of Hayes’ track shoes hours before the 100-meter final in the 1964 Olympics.
“I just hung on every word. To think I was measuring Gil Brandt’s ears and doing his head. You pinch yourself, you really do,” he said.
A tight friendship with Robinson and his family was forged and Myers will be one of his guests for Saturday’s induction ceremony in Canton. It’s only the sixth induction ceremony Myers has attended.
He does have another full-time job, after all.
