Billy Cannon - Later Life

Later Life

Cannon became an orthodontist after his pro football career, earning a D.D.S. at the University of Tennessee and additional degrees in orthodontia from Loyola University Chicago. Despite a successful practice, by 1983 he was in financial difficulties from bad real estate investments and gambling debts. He became involved in a counterfeiting scheme and served 2½ years of a five-year sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution, Texarkana. He printed $50 million in U.S. 100-dollar bills that he stored in ice chests, buried in the backyard of one of the houses he owned and rented out. Upon his release in 1986, he regained his license, but struggled to rebuild his practice.

In 1990, Cannon was an honorary pallbearer at the funeral of former Teamsters Union business agent Edward Grady Partin, whose testimony in 1964 had sent Jimmy Hoffa to prison for jury tampering.

In 1995, he was hired as a dentist at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, initially as a contractor. At the time, the prison's dental clinic was in chaos, with many dentists refusing to work and inmates often being unable to make appointments. Cannon immediately set to reorganizing the dental program with great success, and was soon hired as a full-time employee. The warden, impressed with Cannon's work with the dental program, later put him in charge of the prison's entire medical system. Cannon remains the resident dentist at the penitentiary, where inmates typically call him "Legend".

Billy's son Billy Cannon, Jr. played linebacker for Texas A&M and was selected in the first round of the NFL draft in 1984, by the Dallas Cowboys. Cannon now resides in St. Francisville, Louisiana.