Page 83 - some-stuff-i-wrote-and-some-stuff-i-didn't-(2011)-h-morris-williams

Some Stuff I Wrote (2001) H. Morris Williams

“A walking encyclopedia”... Frances Wilson is an administrative aide in our county school
office. Her voluminous knowledge of school-related information has served four superintendents

well. School Board member Harvey Campbell once said, “Frances Wilson is a walking encyclopedia
of knowledge on school law, school board policy and state regulations.” You can be sure she will

be missed when she retires in December, 1993.
Richardson High School and Memorial Stadium ... CHS is not the only high school with

memories of Memorial Stadium, now in its final season. The black-only Richardson Wolves also
played there back in pre-integration days. Who can forget the great coaching of Richard Anders

(now a school board member) and the late John Burgess? And great players like Glynnel Presley,
Jake Bradley, Leroy Jenkins and Hal Pearson, to name just a few? And a brilliant spirited young

band director named Alphonso Levy? A student memory: the years the orange and green hosted the
annual Turpentine Bowl, back when high school bowl games were almost unheard of.

Deadly diamond-back ... Mattie Kirby Lane (Athens Church Community) keeps a family
memory album that goes back to the early 1900’s. The album recalls the true story told by Mattie’s

grandfather, Pearce Carpenter: A woods rider was working alone deep in the woods when a
diamond-back rattlesnake bit him through his boot on the toe. Fearing a painful death, the man took

his axe and cut off the toe. Then he made it back home and somehow managed to survive.
Sometime later, he was working back in the same area and saw the amputated toe. Out of curiosity,
he took a small stick and pushed the poisoned toe this way and that to look at it. Later, he

absentmindedly used the stick as a toothpick. The man died the next day.
Anyone for Las Vegas? ... The Tallahassee Democrat selects one person each week to

analyze FSU’s game that week and predict the final score in print one day before the game is played.
Gene Cox (CHS, 1952) was featured as guest analyst the first week. His prediction : FSU 42,

Kansas 7. The actual final score was 42-0. And if it hadn’t been for FSU’s magnificent goal line
stand, Gene may have called it exactly.

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