LAND O' LAKES, Fla — Once an All-Pro lineman, he’s now an all-star weed puller.
Why Sonny Bishop spends so much time picking and pulling is less about his lawn and more about one’s roots.
“It’s really an awakening,” Bishop said.
Old timers may remember Bishop as a fierce blocker during the 1960s for the Houston Oilers. After football, he was in the real estate business.
“Then the oil crunch came,” said Bishop, 79, so he moved to Florida to try his hand at construction
Many hands now work for Sonny’s construction company, Ervin Bishop Construction, a masonry company in Land O’ Lakes.
His latest project? He and his wife Maryann turned their home into a safe place for nature.
But this is no farm. They’ve named it — and it’s a mouthful — the Rosebud Continuum Sustainability Education Center, where hope is in the air and the grounds are used for research.
“We bring kids out here on field trips,” Maryann Bishop said.
Naturally, there’s no talk of Sonny’s past battles with Raiders, Broncos or Bengals.Instead, it’s about the future of ospreys, butterflies and bees.
The place is enormous 14 acres and -- to the Bishops -- magical. It even has a dragon.
"The Dragon" is a biodigester which turns food scraps into methane gas for power. It also produces fertilizer, which helps make the nearby greenhouse green.
All to educate. It all started with a weed. A few years ago, someone came here from a local government agency looking for an invasive plant, of which the Bishops had many.
Sonny Bishop does his best to keep those plants out. Though it has also pulled him in, closer to his roots.
Sonny Bishop has Native American blood. This property is now named after the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota, where he was born
Is this his best building project yet?
“I think it will turn out that way,” Sonny Bishop said. “I was a little skeptical going in. And I’m not one of those who think the world is going to end tomorrow and that we’re going to kill ourselves. I think we’re going to destroy it for future generations. Now is the time to save it."
Here’s an old lineman out in front and making a path for the rest of us to follow.
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