February 15, 1963 Basketball Game: FHS vs. Springfield Central High School

Basketball Statistics, 1964-65 FHS Bulldog Season

These two pages show statistics for the 1964-65 Fayetteville High School basketball team. The pages were complied by Coach Willard Smith. That year, we had a pretty good season and were ranked in the top ten most of the year. That year, FHS traveled for the first time to play teams in El Dorado and Texarkana. We also continued to play teams in Missouri.

The four players who usually started, Robert Wilkes, Kenny Ramey, Bill Crook, and I, had been playing together since the 9th grade at Hillcrest Junior High School, when we lost only one game. Unfortunately, most of us did not grow much after the 9th grade, so the team was not very tall. The fifth starter, who had played in the 9th grade at Woodland, was Louis Bryant. Though we were about the same height, he played as if he were much taller. In addition to the usual starting lineup, Bill Shirley and Johnny McNair played quite a bit every game.

Wilks, our best and most athletic player, was our inside guy and our leading rebounder. Bryant was both an inside and outside guy. I liked to to shoot from the outside and am shocked to see from these statistics that I led the team in shots attempted. No wonder Louis was always calling me "gunner." I really do not remember shooting so much. I just wish we had had a three-point arc in those days. Crook was more of a outside shooter, but since I was shooting so much, he probably did not get to attempt as many shots as he would have liked.

I started the season well, but had a terrible slump about midway through it. For a couple on games, including one important one at Springfield Central, my shots barely hit the rim. It got so bad that I when I took a jump shot, my thumb kept hitting my nose.

Kenny Ramey played guard. He rarely shot, but was a good playmaker and excelled at defense. Unlike Kenny, Bill Shirley was a shooting point guard. Johnny Mac was tall enough to help out at center and good enough to play forward.

Lawdy ah swear, it's Mrs. Shepherd, 1960

Mrs. Shepherd (left)

Mrs. Shepherd was a frequent substitute teacher at Hillcrest Jr. High. I walked into many classrooms to find, with surprise, her standing there waiting for the bell to ring. I instantly knew I would spend the next hour listening to the deepest Southern accent of any person I knew. She was a kindly soul with a no nonsense exterior, and she contributed to my life in one big way: After hearing her talk, I swore that I would never, ever have such an accent -- or anything close to it.

One year, Mrs. Shepherd invited students for a picnic or some kind of weekend get together at her house. As I recall, it was a big old white two-story house out in the country, down a dirt road from Highway 71 before it reached Lake Fayetteville. As the afternoon progressed, a few of us explored the woods around her house and end up traipsing through the trees all the way to the shores of the Lake.

The location of her house, in about 1958, was behind the area where a small shopping center (Barnes and Noble) is now located.  If you drive on the road behind the Shopping Center will can turn off onto Shepherd Lane, which is lined with apartments.

Cousins Jerry and Kay Durning, 1953

Cousins Kay and Jerry Durning

I enjoy this old picture of my cousins Kay Durning and Jerry Durning. Kay was quite a bit older than me, and I did not know her well. Jerry was about three years older, and I saw much more of him through various non-school playground activities and the sports that he played.

Their dad, Bill or Willy as my dad called him, owned a garage on East Huntsville Road, not too far out of town. He made his living for decades fixing cars. The garage was decidedly utilitarian. It was heated by an old wood stove, and was pretty dark when the doors were closed. Plus it had strange smells. I determined at a very young age, after spending a few minutes in the garage, that I had no interest in fixing cars. Fortunately, Bill was very good at what he did and we could depend on him to take care of our auto problems.

Jerry is a good soul: I don't remember seeing him without the smile you see in this picture, though with more teeth. In his younger years, he was a very good catcher who hit for a high average in Fayetteville's Babe Ruth and American Legion Leagues. Also, he played football for Hillcrest anf FHS.

He married Shirley Eans, who was a classmate of mine from the third grade through high school. She was one of the smartest students around.

Pitching for Big State Baseball Camp in Monterrey, Mexico, 1963

Stolen from Gran Hotel Ancira,
Downtown Monterrey, Mexico, 1963

In late July, 1963, after the baseball season ended in Fayetteville, Bubba McCord and I went to Dallas to attended the Big State Baseball camp. It was a blast: baseball all day long in the hot Texas sun.

The camp brought together boys of various ages from throughout the United States to learn more about the game. Typically, the mornings were spent on instruction, then the afternoon was devoted to playing games. Both Bubba and I liked the head coach, Ogletree. And it was fun living in University of Dallas dorms and eating in the college's cafeteria.

Both Bubba and I did well at the camp and impressed the coaches. We were invited to join the Camp's All Star team that was going to Monterrey, Mexico to play some games against local teams there. After getting the o.k. and some cash from my parents, I was able to the make the trip, as did Bubba.

We were scheduled to fly out one night, but when we got to the airport, the airplane had engine problems. After a long wait at the airport, the group of 30 or so boys was taken late in the night to a nearby motel, then we were awakened very early to get on the repaired airplane. Because of these circumstances, I slept through most of my first airplane flight.

We stayed in downtown Monterrey, which was an exotic experience for most of us. The hotel was nice: the Gran Hotel Ancira. The most impressive part of the hotel was a large marble stairway from the ground floor to the mezzanine. I thought it was very classy.

I remember three of the games, in three different parks. We played teams whose players were older than us. As a pitcher, I got into only one game: I was the starting pitcher and that afternoon I threw the only no hitter of my "career."

The trip was a rich experience and, I think, it whetted my appetite for travel. I enjoyed walking around the town to see how people in Mexico lived and to experience the things there that differed from my normal life.

In 2003, forty years later, I returned to Monterrey on a business trip for the University of Georgia. The purpose of the trip was to continue efforts to establish a relationship with the University of Monterrey to facilitate student exchanges and other joint projects. I stayed at a hotel in Monterrey that had a large marble stairway, though its name was no longer Gran Hotel Ancira. As we drove around the town, I kept looking for the baseball park where I pitched my no hitter, but never spotted it.

*********************************************************************
For more about Bubba and baseball, see Bubba's Nemesis: The Battle for the 1962 Championship of the Fayetteville Babe Ruth League at this link:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/59006218/Bubba-s-Nemesis-The-Battle-for-the-1962-Championship-of-the-Fayetteville-Babe-Ruth-League

FHS Basketball, Justin Daniel and J.D. McConnell, 1961-1962

The 1961-1962 Fayetteville High School Bulldogs had an outstanding basketball team led by two superb athletes whose talents were augmented by several other excellent athletes. The best two players are shown in these pictures. J.D. McConnell played guard, putting to use his height, fluidity, and almost magical no-look passing. Justin Daniel was the center, though he was the same height as J.D.; he was a warrior with a hook shot.

I have written a few pages about the season of Justin and, J.D. It is available at this site:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/48613345/The-Season-of-Justin-and-JD

That article tells how the Bulldogs lost narrowly to the North Little Rock team in the Arkansas State Tournament. During that game, the team's main problem was getting the ball up the court: both Justin and J.D. played well against NLR, but the NLR team disrupted the guard play. One of the reasons for this problem was that Troy Steele, a fine player who had been the team's main guard, was missing (see his picture below, front rwo center). When I wrote about the FHS-NLR game, I did not know why Steele was not playing in the tournament. I have been told that he was kicked off of the team (by the principal, not the coach) because he got married during the season.

Young love cost FHS a state championship.

Fayetteville Cub Scouts, 1956-57

Thanks to volunteers such as Eugene Snow, Philip Snow's father, boys at Jefferson Elementary School had their own Cub Scout Pack, No. 40, with eighteen members. The adults who led the Pack 40 were Eugene Snow, Cubmaster; Arlie Silvis, assistant cubmaster; plus committee members Lee R. Ballard, Robert Mhoon and D.R. Yarberry, chairman. William Combs was the Institutional representative and Mrs. Keith Robbins was a den mother.

Cub scouts included Billy Bradley, Jimmy Hawkins, Danny Whitehouse, Michael Wilson, Michael Yarberry, Danny Durning, Philip Snow, Chester Shipman, and Eugene Tucker.

I remember meeting sometimes at Philip Agee's garage on 6th Street, but cannot remember much else about the meetings. Somewhere I still have a cub scout knife.