Page 55 - some-stuff-i-wrote-and-some-stuff-i-didn't-(2011)-h-morris-williams

Some Stuff I Wrote (2001) H. Morris Williams

You Read About Them

May 4,1993

This is my thirty-third column since I started writing back in September 1992. If you have
been reading this column from the beginning, here’s some of what you have read about.

Some “Favorite Teachers” like Lucy Simpson, who taught the first ever geometry class at

CHS and Evelyn Mixon, who started the school newspaper, “The Columbia Tiger.” And a highly
popular CHS principal the kids called “Wild Bill Feagle.”
The tragic “Unsolved Murder” of 33-year-old Darlene Messer - the case is still unsolved.

And the unrelated but equally tragic three teenagers “We Won’t Forget” who died so needlessly in
the prime of their young lives.

The “Eerie Things” included the story of a football coach who dreamed in detail of the
outcome of one of his games, then the next night watched the dream come true. And the young

woman who believed a “red star” she had seen in the night sky was an omen of the impending end
of the world - and the “star” turned out to be the red light on top of the city water tank.

The euphoria of CHS winning a state championship “Twenty-Five Years Ago,” led by Brian
Johnson, Robbie Dobelstein, Craig Busby and a stout defense. And “Lake City’s Pro Athletes” like

Pat Summerall, Randall Jackson and Scott Adams.
“When CHS Played Cuba” told the historic account of how our high school became the first

and only one in the USA to play a foreign country in football. And you read the answers to “A
Bucket of Questions” about the traditional Lake City-Live Oak Old Oaken Bucket rivalry, including
the poem of the same name by Samuel Wordsworth.

“The Birth of LCCC” told how political leaders G. T. Melton, W. E. Bishop and F. W.

“Shorty” Bedenbaugh got us our college. And we saluted “Ten Who Paved the Way” to political
progress for local African-Americans.
The “Azons and E -Phi’s” brought back a ton of memories to a lot of locals. And “Naughty

Boy Warnings” reminded many of the days when we had a Naval Air Station during World War II.
We learned “When A. K. Black Speaks” - or anybody in his family - there is lots of local

history to be learned. And that “The First CHS Yearbooks” - from ‘Homeruns’ to “The Pine Burr’
to the first ‘Columbian’ - can tell us a lot about the way things were way back when.

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