Percy Oliver, athlete, educator, administrator, and trailblazer, excelled on the field, in the classroom, and as a principal with Miami Dade County Public Schools with a career that spanned nearly 50 years. As a football player, Oliver was the first African American to play in the North-South Shrine football game in the Orange Bowl (1956), the first African American to coach football at an integrated Miami-Dade County high school (1965), and the first African American high school principal to become President of the Greater-Miami Athletic Conference (GMAC), he also appointed the first female athletic director in the county (1984). Percy Oliver served as president of his high school class - Booker T. Washington High School Class of 1949 -for nearly two decades, Bom in Miami, Florida, the fifth of nine children born to the late Percy and Florence Oliver. He celebrated a stellar high school football career as a lineman (offensive and defensive) and in his senior year earned Most Valuable Player on Booker T Washington's championship football team, and received football scholarships to the University of Illinois, Michigan, Notre Dame, and Purdue, but did not accept any of them because he wanted to help support his family. After graduating high school, Oliver enlisted in the United States Air Force, serving during the Korean Conflict, and had the distinction of playing on the Air Force Base's football team.

In 1953, he enrolled at the University of Illinois on a football scholarship, and was drafted by the Green Bay Packers. Despite the rigors of playing football, Oliver graduated in four years with a degree in Education and a major in Physical Education. Instead of continuing his football career, he opted to teach physical education at Attucks High School in Carbondale, Illinois where he taught for two years before returning home to teach at North Dade Junior-Senior High School in 1960. Percy Oliver earned a Master of Education Degree in Curriculum and Instruction, with emphasis on Administration from Florida Atlantic University.. His first appointment as principal at Miami Jackson High, included organizing the school's first debate team, and celebrating having the highest test scores in the county. In 1984, Percy was appointed principal of Homestead High and engineered profound changes in race relations at the school, visited Mexican migrant homes - a first time for the school's principals -and changed the perception of community leaders pertaining to the prototype of principal the school should have. Married to the love of his life, Portia Liggett Oliver, they have three daughters Cynthia Jones, Gerardette Oliver, Jolanda Shepard and son Rodney Forbes; four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. He was a member of St. John Newman Catholic Church. One of his most cherished memories was serving on the committee which welcomed Pope John Paul in New Orleans in 1987.