Robert Lavern Shannon is a former high school football

High school football

High school football, in North America, refers to the game of football as it is played in the United States and Canada. It ranks among the most popular interscholastic sports in both of these nations....

 coach best known for coaching the East St. Louis Flyers to six Illinois and two national championship victories. Shannon left East St. Louis in the mid-90s after he became fed up with fiscal mismanagement in the school district. He coached for several other high schools before retiring from coaching in 2007 at the age of 63.

Shannon and the East St. Louis Flyers were the subject of the book The Right Kind of Heroes, by newspaper reporter Kevin Horrigan, who is now a columnist with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch is the major city-wide newspaper in St. Louis, Missouri. Although written to serve Greater St. Louis, the Post-Dispatch is one of the largest newspapers in the Midwestern United States, and is available and read as far west as Kansas City, Missouri, as far south as...

. The book chronicles the Flyers' 1990 and 1991 seasons, during which they lost the state championship and then won it back. Pro football player Dana Howard

Dana Howard (American football)

Dana Howard is a former American football player.In high school, Howard played for the East St. Louis Flyers, where he was coached by Bob Shannon. At the University of Illinois, Howard won the 1994 Dick Butkus Award, presented annually to the best linebacker in college football...

 and baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

 player Homer Bush

Homer Bush

Homer Giles Bush is a former Major League Baseball second baseman who played for the New York Yankees, Toronto Blue Jays and Florida Marlins. He was a part of the Yankees 1998 World Championship....

, then a high school football star, are among those in the book. Pro football player Bryan Cox

Bryan Cox

Bryan Keith Cox is a former American football linebacker who played twelve seasons in the NFL from 1991 through 2002. He was a member of the New England Patriots club that won Super Bowl XXXVI...

, who played for Shannon's Flyers in the late 1980s, is also mentioned.