John  Lewis Cash, Sr. was born in Brunswick, Georgia on August 5, 1934, to Marian Beckham Cash and Calvin Cash II. He graduated from Risley High School and accepted a four year scholarship to play football at Allen University in Columbia, South Carolina. He received a BS degree in Business Education with a minor in Physical Education. He pledged Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. (Gamma Gamma Chapter), lettered in three sports, and met his future wife Gloria Smythe Cash at the university. He was later inducted into the Allen University Sports Hall of Fame.

After college, he was drafted and served in the U.S. Army as an armed postal carrier protecting mail between Frankfurt, Germany, and Paris France. Upon his honorable discharge from the Army in 1960, he signed a contract to play professional football with the Cleveland Browns. He later played for the expansion Denver Broncos football team.

In 1961, he married his college sweetheart, Gloria, and settled in Washington, D.C. to raise their two sons, John Lewis Cash, Jr. and Bruce Reginald Cash. He worked for the U.S. Postal Service until he retired. He also worked from over thirty years as a coach, mentor, and community center director at Glenarden Community Center, Glenarden, Maryland. He loved his family, friends, fishing, swimming, golf, and beating family, and friend in poker.

He leaves to cherish his memory, his beautiful bride of sixty-one years, Gloria Cash, two sons, and their wives, John (Robin) Cash, and Bruce (Josselyn) Cash, four grandchildren (Morgan, Kennedy, Alaina, and Bryce), two great-grandchildren (Maximiliano and Malahni), a brother, and his wife Calvin (Charlene) Cash, a host of nieces, nephews, family, and friends. He was preceded in death by his parents, a brother James Edward Cash, and sisters Renelda Bennett, Marian Moses, and Margaret Martin.