“He always demanded much from us. Great man of influence. He defined track and field around here.”

That's former Georgia Tech, Southwest DeKalb High School star, Olympic gold and silver medalist sprinter Angelo Taylor on the death of Atlanta coaching and teaching legend, 80-year-old Napoleon Cobb.

“He had a remarkable impact on the lives of so many young athletes,” the three-time world champion in the 4 X 400 told me this morning from his Atlanta home.

In his storied career, Coach Cobb amassed 12 state titles — nine at Southwest DeKalb, three with Gordon High School — and an induction into  the Georgia Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

He ended 50 years of coaching with a state championship after the Southwest DeKalb High School boys’ track and field team won the Class AAAAA state title in 2015.

Diagnosed with bone cancer in 2014, Cobb told The Champion, “it was the most fulfilling (state title).”

“He was a great leader of men. Track and field was a vehicle he used toward their learning,” continued Edwin Moses, the Morehouse man, and son of a Tuskegee Airman who won Olympic gold in the 400m in 1976 and 1984. “I first met Coach Cobb in 1978 on campus. My eligibility was over, but I was finishing fifth-year physics. Rules were different then.”

Edwin Moses - the Morehouse man, son of a Tuskegee Airman and Olympic gold medalist - remembers Cobb as "a great leader of men."

Edwin Moses - the Morehouse man, son of a Tuskegee Airman and Olympic gold medalist - remembers Cobb as "a great leader of men."

Mr. Moses told me, “I last spoke with him inside the hospital about a week ago.”

Coach Cobb graduated from Atlanta’s Henry McNeal Turner High, and Tennessee State in 1964, where he roomed with the iconic Olympian, the late Ralph Boston.

After teaching and coaching in Illinois and California, he returned to Atlanta’s Gordon High School in 1972, where he coached alongside another sports legend, Buck Godfrey.

Both shared a birthday — born in the same year, at the same hour.

After winning three state titles, Coach Cobb left Gordon in 1978, for Morehouse. He returned in 1989 to teach and coach at Southwest DeKalb.

A life, always intertwined with Morehouse, Southwest DeKalb and Buck Godfrey.

The impact of Napoleon Cobb can be measured by the thousands of young people he influenced through the Atlanta generations.

Angelo Taylor, now 45, tells me: “I will always remember him as tough, demanding but fair. All about excellence.”