Sports
Former NFL player visits Bottineau
Tyler Ohmann
07/09/2013
A special treat awaited those who entered 4-J’s Sporting Goods last Saturday. Former National Football League cornerback Ron Fellows was there signing autographs and taking photos.
Fellows, who played in the NFL from 1981-88 with the Dallas Cowboys and Los Angeles Raiders, made the appearance because he knew owner Jeff Shriver. After opening 4-J’s, Shriver remembered Fellows and was planning on contacting him to see if he would come up, but Fellows got to him first.
“I met Jeff (Shriver) out at Walmart two or three years ago, and I told him that I would come down,” Fellows said. “I called him and he said that he just opened a couple days ago, so it was probably the best time to do it.”
Fellows met Shriver after Fellows’ organization Celebrities in Motion had gotten done doing a program on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation.
Celebrities in Motion tours reservations all over the United States to talk to kids about drugs and to sign autographs and play sports with the youngsters.
Meeting a former NFL player isn’t something that happens everyday. Fellows ended his career with 19 interceptions and two returned for touchdowns. He was also a strong kick and punt returner for the Cowboys in the mid 1980s.
He said that a few people are pretty excited to meet him when he makes appearances, but mostly they are just fun people.
“I’ve been all over the country to a lot of different places,” Fellows said. “Sometimes you get people that are kind of surprised and shocked, but most of the time it’s just really down-to-earth folks.”
Fellows was born in Indiana and went to school at the University of Missouri. He currently resides in Sacramento, Calif.