Billie Wayne Lemons

Who was Billie Wayne Lemons?

Billie Wayne Lemons was a Church of Christ minister from Lubbock, Texas, who played briefly for the NFL Cleveland Browns in 1977 before being released after the team's first exhibition game that season.

Lemons was born to Wayne H. Lemons and Verlene Lemons in Tyler, the seat of Smith County in East Texas. He was reared in Pampa, the seat of Gray County in the Texas Panhandle, where he graduated in 1973 from Pampa High School. From 1973 to 1977, he attended Texas A&M University in College Station on a football scholarship. Lemons made the second team All-Southwest Conference and was honorable mention for two years as an All-American. TAMU was Southwestern Conference champions in 1976, his senior year on the team. Thereafter, he signed as a free agent with the Cleveland Browns, but was quickly released. Lemons received degrees in psychology and sociology.

Lemons proclaimed his conversion to Jesus Christ at the age of eight, and he was called to the ministry in 1972, while he was still in high school. He was also a certified paraprofessional while working in the schools in Pampa and Borger with physical and mentally handicapped children who have violent tendencies.