Fomer NFL player OJ Simpson has passed away

OJ Simpson has passed away

TMZ reports that former NFL star OJ Simpson has died at 76 after a battle with cancer. The family posted this message on X.

On April 10th, our father, Orenthal James Simpson, succumbed to his battle with cancer.

His children and grandchildren surrounded him.

During this time of transition, his family asks that you please respect their wishes for privacy and grace.

-The Simpson Family

The name OJ Simpson is most often associated with the deaths of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and Ron Goldman. Although he was acquitted, there are those who believe the former football player committed the murders. This article takes a look at hsi life before and after his footbal years and the aftermath of the night in 1991 when Goldman and Nicole Simpson lost their lives.

The early years

Simpson was born on July 9th 1947 and raised in San Francisco. His mother was Eunice Simpson and his father Jimmy Simpson was a well known drag queen in the area who later declared he was gay and died from Aids in 1986. OJ reportedly did not know his middle name was Orenthal until a thrid grade teacher said it out loud.

A a child, Simpson hustled for money by scalping tickets and collecting seat cushions at Kezar Stadium. He organized high school dances, by securing a ballroom and hiring a band. He made money by charing admission.

Chuck Barnes helped Simpson form business relationships with Chevrolet and ABC early in his football career. By 1971, New York wrote that Simpson was already wealthy enough to "retire this week if [he] wanted to.

And then came Marguerite

The Simpson family lived in the Potrero Hill housing projects neighborhood. When OJ was a young teenager he joined the street gang the Persian Warriors and was briefly incarcerated at the San Francisco Youth Guidance Center. His first wife Marguerite, his childhood sweetheart, described her future husband as "really an awful person then."

After his third arrest, Simpson met with baseball star Willie Mays, who encouraged the youth to avoid trouble. Simpson said it helped persuade him to reform.[16] At Galileo High School (now Galileo Academy of Science and Technology) in San Francisco, Simpson played for the school football team, the Galileo Lions. He graduated in 1965

Simpson married Marguerite in 1969, and they divorced in 1979 after he began cheating on her with Nicole, whom he met when she was working as a waitress at a Beverly Hills nightclub. I can still recall African American women who were furious that OJ had walked away from his wife and two children "for a white girl."

I recall, during the murder trial, hearing older Black people say he would not be in trouble if he had remained with his first wife, who was of the same race. No one knew that with certainty, but this is how people talk about the situation.

Life after Nicole

In 1995, after being acquited for the murders of Ron Goldman adn Nicole Brown Simpson, OJ began a relationship with Christie Prody who was only 19 years old. She was working as a cocktail waitress just as his second wife had done. Once the relationship ended, Prody stated that she often feared for her life when she was with Simpson.

Nicole's family were determined to obtain money from Simpson and filed a civil suit. In February 1999, they Godlman family benefited from an auction of Simpson's Heisman Trophy and other belongings netted almost $500,000. They also tried to collect the former NFL player's $28,000 yearly pension, but were denied.

It was reported in February 2024 that OJ Simpson had prostrate cancer and according to his family this illness is what took his life.