Taylor Family Oral History

This interview was conducted by Dr. Jeff McLaughlin and David Adams with Marie Taylor, Hawk Taylor's wife and music educator, and Sam Taylor, the youngest Taylor son and former baseball player, on April 18, 2024. Topics included Hawk Taylor as they knew him, what life as a family with a Major League Baseball player was like, how the Taylors ended up in Calloway County and at Murray State University, favorite memories of Hawk, and how Hawk felt about his accomplishments and time as a professional baseball player.

Marie Holifield Taylor is a retired Murray State University Professor of Music, having taught and served as Keyboard Unit Coordinator for 31 years. She has appeared at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Carnegie Hall in New York City, Univ. of South Queensland in Australia, Graz, Austria, and the Church of St. Martin in the Fields, London. One of her many lasting impacts at Murray State was her involvement in The Old Country Church music project, 2008-2009, which recorded hymnal and liturgical music to provide for churches and nursing homes which lacked musical facilities or expertise. Her help and donations were invaluable to establishing the Hawk Taylor Baseball Collection at Pogue Special Collections Library.

She remembers that after other faculty took an interest in Hawk's baseball career there was a brief period of faculty vs. student baseball games. As Hawk was the faculty's "secret weapon," he hit home runs in every at bat. The annual event did not last very long...

Sam Taylor, the youngest Taylor son, followed his father’s footsteps in a career in professional baseball. He earned MVP honors and hit the most homeruns as a player for the Calloway County Lakers. He later won player of the year in 1987 at the University of Kentucky. He played in the Philadelphia Phillies Minor League organization from 1989 to 1995, working his way up from low A level to Triple A before suffering a knee injury in 1994. From 1995 to 1998 he played for various teams in the Western League Independent Baseball until retiring in 1998. Like his father, he earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Murray State University, and worked for various companies, most notably the TVA from 2005 to 2023, before his complete retirement in August of 2023.