The story has been told and retold.On a muggy Halloween night in 1959, Billy Cannon fields a punt against an undefeated Ole Miss team in Tiger Stadium. He shakes off a seemingly endless array of tacklers in an 89-yard romp to the end zone — the only touchdown scored in a 7-3 LSU win. 
To see news clippins of Cannon’s career at LSU, click here.It’s the definitive play of the halfback’s illustrious career, marking his number 20 as the first retired number in LSU football history, netting him the prestigious Heisman Trophy and eventually helping him to a successful stint in the  American Football League.But exactly 50 years later, it’s the Halloween run people remember. It’s the highlight of a College Football Hall of Fame career and the reason he will make a rare appearance Saturday at Tiger Stadium.On a muggy Halloween night in 1959, Billy Cannon cemented himself in the psyche of Louisiana by racing 89 yards to a touchdown and a newfound status as a living legend.The Philadelphia storyDr. Cannon sits alone in a booth at Sonny’s Pizza in St. Francisville.He made the 22-mile drive from the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where he is the head of the dental clinic.It’s been nearly 40 years since Cannon retired from football, though it hardly shows. Beneath his collared shirt sit the same broad shoulders and powerful biceps that helped him to a Heisman Trophy and a professional contract.Shaking his hand is like squeezing a block of wood.At 72 years old, Cannon looks quite capable of running over an opposing linebacker, and his eyes glint with countless stories of when he did just that for a living.”He has a farm up in St. Francisville where he raises thoroughbred horses,” said his daughter Bunnie, who works in the University Chancellor’s office. “If you ever see him with those horses, you can see he’s still so strong.”Cannon’s life began on a cotton farm near Tucker, Miss., though his birth certificate says Philadelphia, Miss., because it had the nearest courthouse.”They taught us the three R’s in Philadelphia — reading, writing and the road to Baton Rouge,” Cannon said.The old college tryPaul Dietzel sat in Billy Cannon’s living room in the spring of 1956. He was one year into a rebuilding job at an LSU football program that had just three winning seasons in its last eight.Cannon was the prize of a class of seniors that would eventually lead LSU to its first national title. He scored 39 touchdowns as a senior at Istrouma High School in Baton Rouge, earning the team a state championship.Billy made the decision to attend LSU just weeks before he graduated.”I think the people of North Baton Rouge helped Billy make that decision,” Dietzel said. “People used to pack stadiums to see him play in high school, and they wanted to see him play in Baton Rouge.”Meet the Cannons Billy married his high school girlfriend, Dorothy, or Dot, after his freshman season at LSU. He had three of his five children — daughters Terry, Gina and Dara — before he left school.Billy worked nights in carpentry and construction, a violation of NCAA rules, to help make ends meet.”If they found out about it, they never said anything to me, and it wouldn’t have mattered if they did,” Billy said. “It’s one of those subjects that’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.'”Billy’s college accolades and professional contracts didn’t permeate the household. He took his children out for pizza every Friday after their softball and baseball games.”I look at him as Billy, and the kids looked at him as Daddy,” Dorothy Cannon said. “Those girls had him wrapped around their fingers, just like all little girls do.”To Bunnie Cannon, her father had an enigmatic profile, the same one that survives today in a restaurant booth in St. Francisville.”His presence was huge,” she said. “If he walked into a room, you knew it … There’s just something about him that mesmerizes people.”See Billy run Billy Cannon relives the play countless times: In videos, eye-witness accounts and in his own mind.It’s been 50 years, but the details never fade. It’s almost like the moment happens every night, and maybe to some degree it does, in the empty vastness of Tiger Stadium.It was the first sell out since LSU had expanded the stadium’s capacity by enclosing the south end zone in 1953. A total of 67,500 people watched the drama unfold, though as Cannon and Dietzel often quip, apparently everyone in the state of Louisiana managed to find a ticket.The No. 3 Rebels and No. 1 Tigers have slugged their way to a 3-0 score in favor of Ole Miss.Ole Miss quarterback Jake Gibbs punts the ball high into the night sky. It’s Halloween, but it is hot and humid, and the field is soggy from the afternoon rain.The Rebels charge downfield. The ball lands gingerly at LSU’s 16-yard line, and Billy Cannon snatches it off the bounce from his own 11.Then, he runs.He zigzags between two defenders at the 20-yard line; he breaks an arm tackle at the 25, and he’s cut his way out to the opposing sideline where he’s picked up a convoy of blockers.”It’s funny — you remember looks in guys’ eyes,” Cannon said. “You remember fine details that there’s no way in hell you’re supposed to remember that. But you do.”He sidesteps a lunging Rebel at his own 35, and suddenly it’s just Gibbs between him and pay dirt.”He just shook me off,” Gibbs said. “I had tried to kick the ball out of bounds, but the field was soft in spots, and Billy decided to give it a chance.”Gibbs concedes he may have tried to tackle too high, but Cannon can’t let him off that easy.”I want people to know it was the only tackle he ever missed in his four-year career at Ole Miss,” Cannon said. “But the bad news is it’s the only one he attempted.”Billy Cannon trots into the end zone as Tiger Stadium explodes.”He ran through and around and over everyone. He put it into second gear,” Dietzel said. “Billy was a track star in addition to a football player, and there’s not another athlete in America that could’ve made that run.”Dorothy Cannon watches her husband become an LSU legend from the stands with Billy’s parents. His father, Harvey, had recently had a heart attack, and the excitement was almost too much to take.”All I could do was watch the run and look back at his daddy, and watch the run and look back at his daddy,” she said. “He got very quiet and pale, and I remember thinking, ‘God, don’t let him have a heart attack.’ But everything turned out all right.”Contact David Helman at [email protected]