The History Of The Foley Lions To 1955

By Keith Lester Smith

The town of Foley, Alabama was founded by John Burton Foley, a very successful businessman from Chicago, and was settled by individuals and families from all over our great nation. This community grew to love its football team and supported it passionately.

Through the perspective of Foley High School, we see one of the most tumultuous times in our nation’s history, a period that defined the history of the United States. These individuals lived through the Great Depression and two World Wars to emerge as the greatest and most powerful country in the history of our planet.

Our citizens, not only in Foley but also throughout every corner of our nation, were guided by a deep respect and reverence for the Bible. Our hope and prayer is that this book will serve as a reminder of our Christian heritage and the importance of seeking the guidance of our Creator in everything we do if we hope to remain free and strong.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664241916

Keith Lester Smith

Keith Smith was born to Lester and Elaine Smith in Foley, Alabama on Friday, September 29, 1967. His father became Foley’s head coach in 1969, and Keith was immersed in Foley football growing up. He graduated from Foley in 1986 and later from Faulkner University. Keith returned to Foley in 1990 where he worked for 24½ years at Foley Middle School and Foley High School. In 16 years as the head football coach at Foley Middle, Keith led the Lions to seven county championships. His experiences in Foley gave him unique access to a plethora of information about Foley football. Keith was married to the former Jaime Leigh Shutt in 1999, and the couple has three beautiful daughters – Abby, Lydia and Rachel. Keith is a deacon at the Foley church of Christ and is now working at Snook Christian Academy.

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THE

HISTORY

OF THE

FOLEY

LIONS

TO

1955

KEITH LESTER SMITH

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Copyright © 2021 Keith Lester Smith.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written

permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

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not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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ISBN: 978-1-6642-4190-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-4191-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021915659

WestBow Press rev. date:  11/09/2021

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Foreword I

Foreword II

Preface

Introduction

Establishment Of Foley, Alabama

Establishment Of Baldwin County Education

1906-07

1907-08

1908-09

1909-10

1910-11

1911-12

1912-13

1913-14

1914-15

1915-16

1916-17

1917-18

1918-19

1919-20

1920-21

1921-22

1922-23

1923-24

1924-25

1925-26

1926-27

1927-28

1928-29

1929-30

1930-31

1931-32

1932-33

1933-34

1934-35

1935-36

1936-37

1937-38

1938-39

1939-40

1940-41

1941-42

1942-43

1943-44

1944-45

1945-46

1946-47

1947-48

1948-49

1949-50

1950-51

1951-52

1952-53

1953-54

1954-55

Appendix

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T his project has been a mammoth undertaking that has been nearly 50 years in the making. In that length of time, there have been a multitude of individuals who have helped to greatly lighten this load. In that length of time, I know that I will inadvertently leave out some people from the following list, but I am going to attempt to recognize some of those who have contributed to this work and helped make this book a reality.

One of the greatest resources in our research has been the back editions of area newspapers. I am indebted to all of the editors and writers of The Onlooker, going back to 1907, who have so faithfully followed our school and football team over the years and have reported so many details of the results from Friday nights, as well as other important school happenings. I am particularly thankful and grateful to Cindy Dean and other employees of the paper who, during Christmas break of 2014, allowed me to come into The Onlooker offices a half dozen times to look through back issues of the newspaper. Microfilm of The Onlooker did not have any back issues before 1910, but the local newspaper office had all of the original newspaper issues going all the way back to 1907, as well as other issues that were missing in the microfilm records. Those original back issue copies were very important to me in filling in missing information of our early school history. Every time I left their office during that holiday season, a mess of small paper particles was left behind on the desk and floor. None of the staff ever complained or said a word of protest when I would return the next day. John Underwood, one of the best sportswriters in the area, also gave me important assistance regarding this work. Amber Kimbler provided valuable help to me as well.

Other newspapers have been very important in filling in details of past seasons such as the Baldwin Times, the Fairhope Courier, the Robertsdale American, the Baldwin County News Herald, the Pensacola Journal, the Mobile Press Register, as well as newspapers from Milton, Crestview, Brewton, Flomaton, Geneva, Evergreen, Atmore, Jackson, Citronelle, Chatom, Monroeville, Anniston, Montgomery, Lucedale, Gulfport, Biloxi, Bay St. Louis, New London (CT), Greenfield (MA), Neptune (NJ), and others. I am grateful to the employees of the State Archives in Alabama for all of their assistance over the years in accessing many of these newspapers. The State Archives in Mississippi were very helpful in providing more details of a number of games played against opponents from that state.

Joseph W. Gex, II of The Sea Coast Echo and the Alumni Director of Saint Stanislaus College provided some very interesting background information on Doc Blanchard. Darron Fantroy, one of my best friends at Faulkner University, worked with the church of Christ in Pearlington, Mississippi one summer over 30 years ago. While there, Darron drove to Bay St. Louis one day and got copies of articles related to Doc Blanchard’s high school playing days. Those articles helped provide very useful information for this publication. Alan Sealls, legendary local weatherman, helped in pointing me in the right direction to find 1930 weather records to help us to determine which game was canceled that season.

I am thankful to the following people for granting me permission to quote from their publications and organizations: Parks Rogers (Onlooker and other Gulf Coast publications), Ben Thomas (Mobile Press Register), Lisa Nellessen Savage (Pensacola News Journal), Moe Pujol (Geneva County Reaper), Robert Blakenship (Atmore Advance and Brewton Standard), Lee Peacock (Evergreen Courant), James Fletcher (Santa Rosa Gazette), Bo Bolton (Monroe Journal), Willie Gray (Citronelle Call and Washington County News), Blake Kaplan (Daily Herald), Geoff Belcher (Sea Coast Echo), Joseph W. Gex, II (Rock-a-chaw), Linda Heath (South Alabamian), Timothy Dwyer (New London Evening Day), Laura Gardner and Joan Livingston (Greenfield Recorder Gazette), Paul D’Ambrosio (Asbury Park Press), James Bennett (Anniston Star), Bo Krift (Montgomery Advertiser), Lae’l Hughes-Watkins (University Record and other publications of the University of Maryland), Bill Stanford (A Story of Pine Apple), Russ Moore (Foley Hi-Lites and Foley High School yearbooks), Craig Smith (Bay Minette yearbooks), Eddie Kryder (James Dumas unpublished accounts of the history of Foley) and Jeanette Bornholt (community and school records of the Foley Public Library).

There is no way to adequately thank Jeanette Bornholt of the Foley Public Library for all of her assistance. She has gone out of her way to help me in my research of back issues of local newspapers and to give me copies of articles pertaining to this project. She has also, on her own and out of the goodness of her heart, done research herself on the background of some of our coaches and others when I had reached deadends in these areas. Her collection of records of the early history of local communities and schools was priceless in helping to complete our investigations.

Bonnie Donaldson at the Foley Train Depot Museum had a treasure trove of material. She was very generous with her time and talents and was a tremendous resource to me in this research. Her loss has left a tremendous void in the hearts of those in our community. I am also thankful to LaDonna Hinesley and Barbara Hoerz for the valuable assistance they provided in locating information for me.

I am deeply indebted to the City of Foley for backing this project. I appreciate the help of Suzanne Kellams, Michael Thompson, Vickey Southern, Mayor John Koniar and the members of the City Council for making the publication of this book possible. Our city founders would be very proud of the job that our present city officials are doing in leading our city in the 21st century.

I am thankful to Snook Farms for sharing with me an extensive collection of early Foley photographs to use in this publication. They have preserved many images of our early history which would have otherwise been lost. I am thankful to Harriet Outlaw, my wonderful third grade teacher and local historian, for providing copies of early school photographs in the collections of Baldwin County. John Jackson and many other great writers of The Onlooker have written wonderful articles about local history which have been very valuable to this work. Nelson Hamilton preserved many images of various stages of our local history. I am grateful for the help of his son, David Hamilton, in sharing pictures from the Hamilton Collection. I am very appreciative to Michelle Dillon and Ross Moore, two outstanding teachers at Foley Middle School, for giving up an entire Saturday in March of 2010 to photograph our former Foley Lion football coaches. Those pictures are priceless!

I appreciate the generosity of the Snook Foundation. Their assistance in funding the football history project undertaken by Rusty and Jake Pigott has been very helpful in this work.

I want to thank Rusty Pigott, Jake Pigott and Clark Stewart for their help in many of the interviews which were conducted and used in this book. I appreciate the generous donation of their time and talents in these efforts. I appreciate the encouragement of Todd Watson and the Quarterback Club to begin the writing of this history. I am thankful to Russ Moore, Ann Nichols, and many others at Foley High School who have provided much assistance to me.

I appreciate the help that the staff at the Mobile Public Library has given me over the years. Sherry Johnston at the Evergreen Library was very generous with her time in assisting me, as well as Lee Peacock from the newspaper in Evergreen. Mexie Robinson, Christy Packer, Selena Garza and the entire staff at the Baldwin County Department of Archives and History were very helpful to me as well.

I want to briefly recognize those from some of our nation’s higher institutions of learning that have helped provide background information on some of our former coaches: Karen Dreessen from Morningside College, Anne Turkos from the University of Maryland, Bill Nunnelly, Jennifer Taylor and Elizabeth Wells from Samford University, Pam Shelton, Kirk Purdom, Jim Urbanek and Lauren Rogers of the University of Mississippi, Larry Dougherty of Temple University, Richard Bedard, Heather Claisse and Heather Gawron of American International College, Andy Wood from Holmes Community College, Ron Mears from the University of Memphis, and members of the sports information offices, registration offices and libraries of Auburn University and the University of Alabama all gave their generous assistance in this work. Gwen Whitlock of Auburn University provided online access to their collection of the Glomerata, Auburn’s school yearbook. Donna Adcock, Jenny Buttery and Kevin Ray from the Univeristy of Alabama helped with background information. Brad Green from the Tuscaloosa News also helped provide important details to this publication.

I want to especially thank all of the former players, students, faculty, family, friends and fans who have been kind enough to write me or allow me to interview them either by phone or in person. Their stories and memories have added greatly to this work. Among those who have helped in this way were Thurston Adams, Fred Aitken, Edsel Anderson, Chuck Bancroft, Donald Barnett, Mickey Miller Blackwell, Pete Blackwell, Rick Blackwell, Becky Underwood Brechtel, Carl Breckner, Flois Brice, Mary Jean Bryant, Clifford Callaway, Ida Callaway, Richard Callaway, Anna West Campbell, Carlisle Childress, Carol Cleverdon, George Coaker, Lorna Dale Cook, Ben Coxwell, Erick Crosby, Earl Cross, Anthony DeMarlo, Rudolph Doering, Tom Dukes, James Dumas, Jane Martin Dwyer, Sue Dwyer, Janet Faris, Lillian Fell, James Bud Flowers, Ina Flowers, Kerry Flowers, John B. Foley IV, Jane Fondren, Kathryn Ann Ford, Brett Gaar, Rebecca Gaffney, Paul Gaubatz, Della Gebhart, Thomas Gebhart, Adrian Green, Tiny Hall, David Hamilton, Nelson Hamilton, Dean Hansen, Clara Breckner Heilmeier, Burt Hinson, Arthur Holk, Joe Holladay, Broox Holmes, Charlie Hoover, Marion Teeny Howell, Mason Howell, Winfred D. Gyp Howell, Ivan Jones, Julia Jones, Britton Kelly, Jim Kelly, Roger Lee Kirkland Jr., Sammy Kirkland, Harriet Kleinberg, Judith Underwood Krippel, Claude Lipscomb, Shastady Lucas, Belle Manning, Bubba Marriott, Brad McKinnon, Bill Meredith Jr., Dendy Messick, Brian Odom, Thomas Odom, Edward O’Neal, Harriet Outlaw, Leslie Potter, Faye Rachel, Oscar Rich, Marvin Roberts, Melvin Roberts, Paul Roberts, Therese Roberts, Ruby Robinson, Tommy Robinson, Sandy Russell, Tim Russell, Kenneth Schultz, Paul Schultz, James Shoots, Jean Shroyer, Henry Smith, James Smith, Mae Smith, Robert Leslie Smith, Marjorie Snook, A. P. Steadham, Roy Steadham, Georgia McKenzie Stewart, Susan Stewart, Geraldine Stiffler, Steve Street, Beverley Strickland, Herbert Styron, Evelyn Gaar Survant, Alan Thorpe, Kim Tuthill, Kenny Underwood, Larry Underwood, Lyle Underwood, Marcline Underwood, Steve Underwood, Tom Underwood, Vaughn Underwood, L. D. Wallace, Billy Walker, Trae Ward, Andy Wenzel, Drew Wenzel, Rod Wenzel, Barbara Williams, Amy Wilson, Lee Wilson, Margaret Wilson, Jody Wise, Winton Wise and Clarence Younce.

I appreciate Tom Stoddard sharing transcripts with me of several interviews that he conducted with former players and coaches. I am thankful that he preserved great memories that would have otherwise been lost. I appreciate him allowing me to quote from his book entitled Foley Steps Forward, as well as that written by his mother, Doris Rich, entitled When Foley was Young.

I want to thank Mickey Miller Blackwell for keeping a very detailed scrapbook on the playing days of her husband Cecil Blackwell. It provided details to games from 1938 through 1940 that I could have found nowhere else. I want to thank her family for helping to provide me access to this scrapbook.

I want to thank Kim Tuthill for allowing me access to the scrapbook of her grandfather, Ray Davis. He served as Foley’s head football coach in 1944, and the scrapbook provided some detailed background of his very successful college career before coming here.

I appreciate Billy Walker for allowing me to use his scrapbook. It was very helpful in filling in details related to 1953 and 1954.

I want to thank David Parker for the exhaustive research that he has done, not only of the history of Foley football, but also of the history of every team in the state of Alabama. His tireless hours of research provided much background on our opponents that I would have been unable to find otherwise. His website, Alabama High School Football Historical Society, is fantastic!

I want to thank Brett Young, my brother-in-law, for all of his assistance and advice. He provided valuable guidance and direction in helping me to get started in citing the references used in this book.

I want to thank Westbow Publishing for making my dream of printing a book about Foley football a reality. They have been a fantastic company with which to work. I appreciate their professionalism and the conscientious way that they have guided me through this process.

I want to thank my mother, Elaine Smith, for all of her guidance and instruction over the years. She spent many, many hours researching ancestry.com and other internet sources to provide much background information on coaches and players that greatly aided this project. She went the second mile to reach out to former students and players to find missing information for me. Her efforts have added immeasurably to this volume.

I want to thank my father, Lester Smith, whose love of Foley football was the catalyst for this project in the first place. He started researching our football history in the early 1970s and passed that love of our history, and history in general, on to me. I also asked him to write a summary of the years that he and Ivan Jones directed the Foley Lions from 1955 through 1985. He did an outstanding job with that task. He also took on the daunting job of proofreading this book. He was an excellent English teacher at Foley High School, and he offered many suggestions to improve this work. I appreciate the many months he spent reading and correcting this manuscript.

I want to thank my wife, Jaime, and my daughters, Abigail, Lydia and Rachel, for all of their encouragement and patience with me during the many long hours that I have spent at the computer in researching, typing and revising this manuscript. I hope this finished product is something that they will enjoy and of which they will be proud over the years to come.

In beginning this work, I had aspirations of producing a literary masterpiece. The more that I worked on this manuscript, the more I took on the role of an editor rather than an author. I wanted to record these events in the words and expressions of the people who actually lived these events and made this history. I realized that I could not improve on the way that they told the stories themselves. My job just became the task of trying to place all of the stories and events in the place in the book where they fit the best. I have not always succeeded in that effort. As I look back on this work, I see its many imperfections and shortcomings. I finally realized that I have to be OK with imperfection in this book, or it would never be published. There is only one perfect book that has ever been written, the Bible. If anyone reading my book has any information, stories or corrections to what I have recorded here, I welcome you to send those to me. My e-mail address is [e-mail], and I would love to hear and have your stories. My original intent was to continue this history through the present day. Upon finishing this work, it is hard to think of jumping right back into another book, so I refrain from making a promise at this time of another volume on this topic. But I also won’t rule it out. Anyone with stories from 1955 to the present day who would like to share their stories, please send them to me. If I have them in an e-mail form, it would make it very easy for me to copy and paste them into another manuscript at some future point.

John Snook, owner of Gulf Telephone Company, once wrote, It is best to simply state that, for the benefit of future generations, let these sites be saved from destruction of any type at all costs. For once they are gone, they are gone forever. [¹] Through his efforts, the Foley Train Depot was preserved for future Foley citizens to enjoy. Uncle John believed in preserving old buildings and structures, but he also believed in preserving written history. Arthur Holk, a 1944 graduate of Foley High School and the mayor of Foley for 20 years said, I think that John and Marjorie Snook had great foresight. When I was the mayor, I could call John concerning anything, and the next thing I know it was done. He had sent his crew out to take care of it. John did great things for me, and Marjorie too. All that she has done for the community and for Baldwin County is remarkable! This book is a far cry from anything close to a literary masterpiece, but I hope that it will at least help to preserve some of our past history that would have otherwise been lost forever down the streams of time.

FOREWORD I

F ootball in the Deep South – 1920s

This was the beginning of the Golden Age of football in the Deep South.

Georgia challenged the powerful champions of the east: Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton.

Yale was champion of the group in the late 1920s, and it was thought that Georgia was brash in asking for a game with this indomitable team.

The sports writers wondered if the Georgia country boys would be awed at playing the game in the big Yale Bowl.

At any rate, Georgia took a train north to New Haven and gave Yale a sound beating, the worst it had had in years. Comments were like This just could not be! Yale was supposed to be unbeatable.

Later, Alabama was invited to play the champions of the powerful Pacific Coast group. It was New Year’s Day and the opponent was Washington State University. The place was the Rose Bowl at Pasadena. The University of Alabama chartered a train and traveled west to Pasadena, California. They showed the world how football could be played. They conquered the boys from Washington. This game, along with the Georgia-Yale game, were harbingers of the Golden Age of football that was to come to the Deep South.

At this time, the Universities of Georgia, Alabama and Auburn were considered small country colleges with Auburn having only 1,800 male students. Auburn University was officially known as Alabama Polytechnic Institute.

At about this time, 1928, Foley High School was called the gentle Orange Eaters. Then it exploded out as the Fighting Foley Lions. From this time on, Foley High was to be reckoned with and considered with teams of central and south Alabama high schools.

Thurston Adams

Foley Lions Head Football Coach (1928 – 1930)

August 4, 1994

FOREWORD II

W hen I became head coach of the Foley Lions in 1969, I knew that Foley had a great tradition. I had played on what many considered the greatest team in Foley’s history, the 1961 team that went 10-0, won the state championship and scored a school record 433 points while giving up only 6 points. I knew about the great job that Coach Ivan Jones had done in his tenure of 14 years prior to 1969, winning 110 games and never having a losing season. I had heard about the great 1930 team from some of the locals who had played on that team, which was coached by Thurston Adams. That team was 8-0-1, the only undefeated team prior to 1961. I had heard of great players such as Cecil Blackwell because I had played with his son Rick. I knew of Jack Heilmeier and other great players that I had heard people in the community talk about for many years. I was curious about the rest of the history of the program, what the other records were of past teams, who the great players were and the great coaches. I had played with some of the best players ever in our county such as Ken Stabler, Anthony De Marlo, and Don Foster and had seen play the great Bobby Lauder, Raymond Christensen, and Billy Walker from Coach Jones’ outstanding 1955 team. So I was curious about all the other players and teams from the beginning of football in 1924 to the beginning of my tenure as coach.

In the early 1970’s I set about going through old Foley High School yearbooks and old Foley Onlookers and talking to former players about the history of the football program at Foley. My goals were to find out every score of every game Foley had played up until that time, the names of every player who had played for the Lions, the records of all the head coaches at the school and all the long runs, passes, interceptions and other outstanding individual and team statistics that I could find. That is how the project started and it stayed that way for approximately the next 20 years. I did not find out everything I had set out to do, but it was a good start. My son Keith then took it to the next level and did much more research on this project, thereby expanding it into the outstanding book that you are now reading. He found out more information about teams and individuals and then went even further to research the early history of the city of Foley and the early history of the school.

A special word of thanks needs to go to the Foley Onlooker and the various editors and others who were there during the many years this project was being done. They were extremely helpful and cooperative in every respect, even letting me take the old Onlookers home many times to do my research.

But most of the credit needs to go to Keith Smith for doing a wonderful job covering the 31 years of Foley football from its beginning in 1924 through the 1954 season. He truly loves Foley and the football program. I am proud of the great job he did in writing this book, which has been needed for a long time, but I am prouder to call him my son. He is special.

Lester Smith

Foley Lions Head Football Coach (1969 – 1985; 2001 – 2004)

PREFACE

I had the privilege of corresponding with Coach Thurston Adams by mail more than a dozen times. He was always very patient with me and generous with his time. I asked him to write a forward for this book twenty-seven years ago. I am only sorry that it has taken me so long to finish writing this volume and to get it published. I wish he and the other individuals who are the subjects of all of these wonderful stories were still around to enjoy this book.

This book has been nearly 50 years in the making. Lester Smith, the head coach of the Lions for 21 years, started researching scores and records of past teams to remind the players of the tradition that had been left for them. He increased the scope of this work in the intervening years by compiling lists of team members for each year as well as individual stats such as long scoring plays and total touchdowns scored.

He began publishing a detailed brochure prior to each season beginning with the 1975 season. The bedtime stories that I often heard in my childhood years were the heroic deeds of guys like Kenny Stabler, Anthony DeMarlo, Don Foster and many others. With the publishing of the brochure, I got my first look at past teams, records and scores. While other kids went fishing, hunting and camping, many of my weekends involved looking through old volumes of The Onlooker with my Dad, which the paper had been kind enough to let him take home on Friday afternoons. I would flip through those pages, mesmerized by stories of Coach Adams, the Roberts twins, the Dumas brothers, the Gallagher brothers and the mighty Orange Eaters. My Dad’s interest in these matters became an obsession for me.

While still in high school, I began calling former players to find out more information. In my college years, I began writing former players and many were quick to respond with great stories about their time at Foley High School. In my college years at Faulkner University in Montgomery, I discovered that the State Archives had back issues of most of the papers ever published in Alabama. Many afternoons when classwork was done, I drove the few miles down the Atlanta Highway to downtown Montgomery and scrolled through the microfilm at the State Archives. Trips to the Mobile Public Library and to the University of West Florida looking through past issues of The Mobile Register and The Pensacola Journal respectively, soon followed. We conducted a couple of video interviews in the early 90s but as my time serving as the Head Coach of the Junior High Lions began in 1993, my focus turned to the present and these stories of the past began collecting dust.

The juices got to flowing again as David Parker continued researching Foley football history and the history of all of the high school football programs in the state. He found a number of other scores that we had been unable to find, which was exciting news to me and motivated to me to jump back into mysteries of the past.

The impetus to this specific work began in the spring of 2007. Coach Todd Watson and the Quarterback Club asked me to write a brief history of the football program at Foley. Spring break of that year was spent writing a summary of Foley football, and this brief sketch turned into 17 pages with very little effort. Over the decade that followed, I have been working steadily as time has permitted in expanding that summary into a full-fledged book.

We received a grant from the Snook Foundation in 2010 to purchase equipment to digitalize all of our old 16mm game films. Rusty Pigott and his son Jake expanded this project to do extensive video interviews with former players and team members, and their research has been indispensable to this written project. Our oldest film that we still have is the 1955 McGill game. I started thinking about writing this book in volumes, with the first volume being the period before the start of our film project. That time frame from 1924 through the 1954 season was 31 seasons. From 1955 through 1985, only 2 coaches served as head coach, Ivan Jones and Lester Smith, which ironically enough was also 31 seasons. It seemed fitting to break the book up into volumes accordingly. This volume fills in the gap before our film records started.

One of the challenges in working on this present volume has been that some of the written and spoken accounts do not always match up. Sorting through these contradictions has been a challenge. When there is a discrepancy, we have tried to accept the account closest in time to the event under consideration. I have learned from personal experience that the more time that passes, the more likely we all are to misremember things or to get the details of events confused in our minds. I have quoted extensively from the people who were participants in this history as well as those who wrote about it at the time. I may have done too much of this sort of thing, but it was important to me to allow them to tell their own story in their own way. It has also been a challenge to determine the exact spelling of some of the names in this book as some had multiple spellings from the various sources. Also, we have not always been able to determine exactly the first names of every individual mentioned in this book. I have done the best I could in that regard.

Someone may ask why a book about football at a local high school should be written. Football has meant a lot to the people of the South, of Alabama, of Baldwin County, and Foley over the years. It is an exciting game filled with great drama. Nothing has brought more people together, captivated our imaginations more, caused more excitement, and created more collective memories over the years for the people of Foley and the surrounding areas than the Friday night (and day) football games of the mighty Lions. The great triumphs and the disappointing losses are etched in our collective consciousness. I believe that it is worth preserving these memories and occasions.

As I dug deeper into this subject, I figured out that you cannot tell the story of the football team without discussing Foley High School and its origins as well. Along the same line of thinking, you cannot adequately discuss Foley High School without discussing to some degree the origins of the town of Foley, as well as that of Baldwin County and the surrounding area. In searching extensively to find missing game scores and outcomes – we are missing only five that I know of at this time – I ran across a number of articles related to interesting tidbits of our local history. I am not trying to rewrite history or undermine books written by others on the history of the town of Foley. I hope that some of the historical information that I have recorded here will serve as a supplement to other books that have been written on the subject and also to give some context to what was going on here leading up to game day. I have found some of the off the field stories to be just as captivating as the events that occurred on the playing field.

The more that I have studied the lives of the subjects of this book, the more that I have been blown away by the quality of people who have worked at Foley High School. I think this to be true of all of our former employees, but especially the members of the faculty and staff employed here during the time period of World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II. The question that has remained in my mind throughout my research is What made these individuals so great?

The generation of World War II is often called America’s Greatest Generation. Both sets of my grandparents were young married couples at this time. My grandfathers answered America’s call to action after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, along with thousands of others throughout our country, as our nation emerged triumphant in one of the greatest military victories in the history of the world. The women on the home front made many sacrifices and kept the families going. Many also worked in war time factories helping to manufacture the military equipment needed to carry on the war effort. Others worked in military hospitals caring for the wounded.

What was it that made that generation so special? In researching the material for this book, it is evident what made them so great. President John F. Kennedy, a member of that generation, summed it up very well in his inaugural address delivered in January of 1961: In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage. Let every nation know that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.

President Kennedy’s comments about his generation, the generation of which the scope of this book focuses, cannot be improved upon. These men and women grew up in the time of the Great Depression. They learned what it was to go through hardships and to make sacrifices of self for the good of the whole. They knew what it was to do without things. They were fiercely loyal and committed to a cause. When the war landed on our Hawaiian shores, the country galvanized like never before, united in the cause of defeating the enemies of Democracy around the globe. Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito never had a chance.

They carried this commitment and determination over to every facet of their lives when the war ended. They were good employees, faithful spouses and dedicated parents. One thing that has impressed me over and over in studying the backgrounds of all of our wonderful coaches of the past is the great character that each possessed. Everyone of them were great, godly men who tried to serve the Lord by serving the athletes and students of the community in teaching them more than just a game.

I believe many of the qualities these men and that generation possessed came from their unwavering faith in the Word of God. The majority of citizens throughout our entire nation were in their respective houses of worship every time the doors were open. They were taught right from wrong in the home. The godly values and morals that they received in worship services and at home were strongly reinforced in the school houses throughout the country. While today, God has been expelled from school in much of our nation, He was welcomed with open arms into the schools of America during the first half of the 20th century. Among requirements listed for teachers in a 1922 Foley school attendance register was the requirement that the Bible be read to students every day in school. Every school register continued to list Bible reading as a daily duty of every teacher in the State of Alabama until 1973. Today, many problems face our nation. American families are falling apart at the seams. Schools around our country are facing shocking acts of violence, and a lack of discipline never before witnessed on American soil. Perhaps it is time to welcome God back into the classroom and proudly teach the things found in His Word that He commands thee this day for thy good (Deut. 10:12-13).

Unfortunately today, academia has convinced many of our citizens to reject the Bible without even reading it and to accept the unbelievable claims of atheistic evolutionists without any critical thinking on their own. Evolution is one of the most racist pieces of propaganda ever perpetrated on American culture, but people have been bullied into accepting it without questioning it at all. Evolution leaves the honest inquirer with many unanswered questions. Why is Venus spinning in the opposite direction of Earth and many other planets? Why do comets still exist if they cannot last billions of years? How is it possible that the oceans have less than 4% salinity when millions of tons of extra salt are added to its volume every year? If the Moon is getting more than an inch further from the Earth every year, wouldn’t the Moon have been touching the Earth at one time if the dating for the Earth and the Universe is really billions of years? If the Earth and planets are billions of years of age, how is it possible that we and other planets still have a magnetic field? For instance the Earth has lost nearly 20% of its magnetic force since records have been kept over the last 200 years or so, meaning that there should be no magnetic field left at all if it really is as old as evolutionists claim. How could every plant and animal on the planet today have come from one common ancestor when true science clearly shows us, just as the Bible record states, that everything reproduces after its kind? Charles Darwin predicted in Origin of the Species or Preservation of the Favored Races that many transitionary fossils would be found linking existing life together. After over 160 years of searching, none has been found. Not one! How is it possible that dinosaur fossils have recently been discovered which still have soft tissue in them if they are supposed to be millions of years old? The biggest hurdle of all is the question of how could life have come from non-life when great scientists such as Louis Pasteur and others have already conclusively proven that rotting meat does not turn into flies and cheese does not turn into mice.

The most important thing that evolution needs in order to stand is time. If you remove the time factor from the study of evolution, this false theory cannot stand. It falls flat on its face as the piece of garbage that it is. I think the main reason that honest geologists misdate the age of the world and the Universe is ignorance of the global Flood that engulfed the planet less than 5,000 years ago. Some scientists argue that the Earth, still covered with 70% of water today which would completely cover the world with a mile and a half of water if perfectly round, could not possibly have ever been completely underwater. With the same breath, they claim that Mars, a planet which today does not have even one drop of water on it at all, was once covered entirely with water. I am missing something in this logic. I don’t get their reasoning.

Evidence of a global deluge can be found all over our planet. The theory is that the layers of sedimentary rock that cover the world as the geologic column were deposited over millions and millions of years. However, an honest examination of these layers indicates that they were deposited very quickly, because there are no signs of substantial erosion between the layers as you would expect if it occurred slowly. Fossilized dinosaur manure has been found in large quantities which again indicates rapid burial. Dinosaur and human footprints have been found in the same layer of rock together, indicating that the two were not separated by great lengths of time. Marine fossils have been found near the summit of Mount Everest. Giant oysters have been found 2 miles above sea level in the mountains of Peru, and the last time I checked oysters do not climb very well. The oldest deserts on the planet are less than 5,000 years old. The oldest tree on the planet is less than 5,000 years old. The oldest coral reef on the planet is less than 5,000 years old. If you study population growth patterns of today and go backwards, there would have been only a handful of people on the planet 4,400 years ago. Time is the straw man on which evolution stands, and common sense destroys its skeleton.

However, today in many parts of our country, to use one’s common sense to question the beliefs of the establishment will lead to frowns from the majority and to one being ostracized and made fun of by the world’s intellectuals. What a sad state of affairs and an idea that our nation and city’s founding fathers would have been appalled by not long ago. The Onlooker praised the victory of William Jennings Bryan over Charles Darrow in the Scopes’ monkey trial in 1925 in Tennessee. However, the liberal media of that day twisted Darrow’s defeat in defending evolution to the point of appearing like a victory, and evolution has taken a stronger and stronger stranglehold on our public education system ever since, particularly in science and history. It is mindboggling to me that the Bible for centuries has been the subject of vicious attacks from skeptics, while at the same time the theory of evolution is carefully protected from even the slightest scrutiny. That is because those who believe in the theory of evolution believe it by faith and protect it as their religion. They will not tolerate anyone questioning any part of this impossible theory. In my view, if evolution is going to be taught, Intelligent Design should be taught side by side with it.

John Scopes was found guilty for teaching evolution in a Tennessee public school. Preachers were urged to carry on nation-wide offensive warfare against teaching evolution in public schools. Our local paper lamented the death of William Jennings Bryan who fought evolution. The Onlooker editor declared, We would rather take for the truth the teachings of the Bible than the so-called ‘discoveries’ of scientists upon which the basis of evolution teaching rests. [²] To this statement I join with a hearty Amen. I have great respect for true observational science and the great discoveries that have been made due to the study of physics, chemistry, medicine and such like. However, I have zero respect and only contempt and hatred for the pseudo-science of evolution, science falsely so called (I Timothy 6:20). I am tired of beating around the bush any longer and playing nice while evolutionists actively try to destroy the faith, morality and spirituality of our nation and world.

We wonder today why the youth of our nation have such low self-esteem and problems with self-confidence and self-image. For the last several decades, we have been telling young people that they descended from animals, that they are nothing more than a highly evolved animal. This causes some people to have a low opinion of themselves. It leads others to think they are more highly evolved than everyone else and therefore better than everyone else. Belief in evolution caused Adolph Hitler to kill 6 million Jews and plunge the world into World War II, a conflict that led to over 60 million combat deaths. Belief in evolution led Russian leader Joseph Stalin to kill over 30 million of his own people. Belief in evolution lead Mao Tse-tung to kill over 40 million of his own people in China.

If we want a better world, let’s go back to the Bible and teach our young people that they were created in the image of God. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them (Gen. 1:27). With that mind set, they must be made to realize that they are just as good as anyone else and no better than anyone else. For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith (Rom. 12:3). We all need to be reminded that we will all stand before the judgement seat of Christ on the Last Day of history and will give an account of the things we have done before receiving our eternal sentence based on how we have handled the Word of God. Our ancestors realized this truth and understood the seriousness of Solomon’s wise words: Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14). Researching this book reminds me of my own mortality. The subjects of this book were once young and had their whole lives ahead of them. So many have now passed on into eternity. The same will happen to each of us one day as well. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment" (Hebrews 9:27). The only thing that will matter in that Day is whether we are in Christ (Romans 6:3-4; Galatians 3:27) because salvation is in Christ (II Timothy 2:10; John 14:6).

To our ancestors, family really meant something. When two people married, they were committed to each other and to their family through good and bad until death do us part. Divorce was not in their vocabulary. They understood that God hates divorce (Malachi 2:15-16). When Jesus said, What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder (Matt. 19:4-6), they took that statement very seriously. They put their spouse and children above their own selfish desires. Today families are falling apart at the seams. Marriage is being defined to be anything that we humans imagine it to be, and we have confused our young people to such a degree that they do not even know if they are a man or a woman. That is truly a sad state of affairs. Hopefully in the future we will go back to believing what our ancestors believed and trust the words of Christ on the subject of marriage.

The Greatest Generation was born in an era when alcohol was hated and not glamorized as it is today. A saloon that was opened in Foley in 1906 did not last long because it was not supported by the public. The local citizens were outraged at that institution’s existence, and its doors were soon closed. By 1916, Alabama had become a dry state and by 1920, America had become a dry country. This only changed with the passage of the 21st Amendment which ended Prohibition in 1933. The 21st Amendment is the only amendment in American history that was passed by state conventions. Had an attempt been made to pass that amendment in the same way that all the others were passed, it would have never gone into effect. Contrary to the propaganda of today concerning the mistake of Prohibition, the vast majority of Americans in 1933 still hated alcohol and the evils that it brings to society. They agreed with what Solomon said on the subject. "Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise (Proverbs 20:1). Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder" (Proverbs 23:31-32).

The Greatest Generation was not only concerned with what went into the body, but also what went into the mind. They wanted to protect the youth of their day in terms of the music and messages that they heard, as well as the movies and material that they viewed. Frank Barchard, editor of The Onlooker, wrote an editorial in the early 1920s concerning the movie theater that had been recently opened. Some of our citizens were questioning whether a motion picture theater should be allowed to operate in Foley. The movies at that time were not filled with the immorality, vulgarity and profanity that appear on movie screens, televisions, and computers of today. Their objection was based on rumors they were hearing of the immoral lifestyles of some of the Hollywood actors and actresses of that day. Mr. Barchard defended the existence of a movie theater in town by saying that those were simply rumors and that no one knew whether those accusations were true. Interestingly enough, he agreed with the critics, that if the rumors were true regarding the immoral lifestyle of these stars of the screen and stage, we should stop giving them our support by patronizing their films, and our theater should cease operation. Mr. Barchard and the people of his day would not only be shocked by the ungodly lifestyles of many celebrities of our day, but would also be appalled at what is disseminated to the public of today in the name of art. We in our day need to do all that we can to guard and protect our youth from the unbiblical influences now permeating our society in all of its various forms in the so called entertainment industry. Unfortunately, there is a lot of truth to the old adage, Life imitates art.

Our city founders were committed to attending church services every time the doors were opened. Arthur Holk, a 1944 FHS graduate and Foley Mayor for 20 years, stated, That’s one thing Daddy taught all of us boys. If you couldn’t go to Sunday school or church on Sunday morning, you weren’t able to go somewhere Sunday afternoon. And we always put our nickel in the collection plate. He made sure every one of us had our nickel to put in the collection plate. In the minutes of a meeting of the City Council held on March 22, 1915, the first year of the incorporation of Foley, the council passed a law that it was a violation for any business to be open at any time on Sunday. Citizens were expected to be in attendance at church services on the Lord’s Day.

James Flowers, a 1952 FHS graduate, remembered his Mother teaching him an important lesson. You always hear about trying to pull the wool over your parents’ eyes. Back after my Dad died, I had some friends that played baseball for Bon Secour, and they played on Sunday afternoons. Well, that particular Sunday, they were going all the way to Rosinton to play and were going to leave about 12 o’clock to go there. My Mother always made us go to Sunday school in church. I got to thinking, ‘If I go to Sunday school, I’ll miss my ride with them to go to Rosinton.’ So, I told my Mother, ‘I don’t feel good.’ She said, ‘You don’t feel good?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t feel good at all. I think I’ll stay home today.’ She said, ‘Okay, stay.’ She could read me like a book. So, they came here from church after 12:00. Well, I could see them coming down the road. I said to my Mother, ‘Well, I’m going to go to Rosinton to see the game.’ She looked at me and said ‘I thought you were sick.’ I said, ‘I feel better.’ She said, ‘No. If you’re sick this morning, you’re sick now. You’re not going to the ball game.’ So, I went out on the porch and just waved them off. I didn’t go to the ball game.

As we previously stated, our teachers were once required by law to read the Bible to their students daily. Ida Callaway, a teacher in Baldwin County for 50 years, said, In the classroom, I started the day by reading a few verses from the Bible, and all repeated the Lord’s Prayer. I found a teacher’s lesson plan from 1932-33 at Foley Elementary that started the day with 20 minutes of Bible instruction. R.L. Smith, a teacher and principal at FHS for 14 years, said, From the time I entered first grade until I left Foley in 1960, a teacher’s signature on the monthly report testified that he had read a passage from the Bible at opening exercises each day. There was a Bible on every desk, and you just picked up the Bible, and you opened it up. There were no directions as to how long the passage should be. I remember experimenting at Elberta with the practice of having students choose a passage and read it. One little boy chose the shortest verse in the Bible, ‘Jesus wept.’ After that, I chose my own and did my own reading. No more than a minute or two could be devoted to a Bible reading in a high school classroom that had 5 minutes to do that, call roll, and make announcements before a class change. As I said, I found that it was best to choose the Bible passage myself. I usually stuck to Psalms. They were safe, pleasant, and it was a good way to settle kids down. I don’t think there was any harm done anywhere. It was a good way to start.

I sometimes hear people complain today (and I am one of them) about the Supreme Court gradually removing any mention of God from any public setting in our nation. I think that in doing so, our nation has suffered great harm and has been taken further and further away from God. However, it is not the entire fault of the Federal Government that our nation has become so secularized. The government has passed no laws forbidding us from attending church services. The government has not scheduled athletic events on Sunday. The government has not required us to go hunting or fishing on the Lord’s Day. We have done this to ourselves. Let’s go back to making the first day of the week SONDAY once again and make sure that we are in the house of worship with our family, friends and neighbors so that our generation has the chance to hear the lessons that helped create the Greatest Generation.

Our Greatest Generation did some great things and set examples in many areas which ought to be emulated by us. However, they were not perfect, just as no one but Jesus lived a perfect life. The most embarrassing chapter in American history is the institution of slavery which existed for almost 250 years. The actions of our nation in this regard are shocking and very difficult to explain. Over the last 48 years, more than 60 million unborn American children have been butchered in their mother’s womb. That is also hard to understand and something that cannot be justified. The same was true of slavery. It was something that could not be justified, yet people tried to do just that. Nearly as bad is how freed African Americans later had their rights trampled upon for another century, even after the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.

The Bible teaches that God is no respecter of persons. "Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, ‘Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him’ (Acts 10:34-35). Paul wrote, For there is no respect of persons with God" (Romans 2:11). At least seven times in the New Testament, we are plainly told that God is not a respecter of persons and hates the practice of showing partiality and bias toward others. Since that is the case, we should not be respecters of persons either, but rather follow the Lord’s admonition to Samuel on the occasion of selecting a son of Jesse to replace Saul as the king of Israel. God told Samuel not to look at the outward appearance or to one’s height but rather to one’s heart (I Samuel 16:7). David was selected to be the next king because he was said to be a man after God’s own heart (I Samuel 13:14). People today and in all history should be evaluated by their heart and inner beauty rather than by their outward appearance or the amount of melanin contained in their skin.

I have often wondered how slavery and racial oppression could have ever happened and been allowed in the land of the free and home of the brave. Slave holders were in the minority in our country, even in the South. Like so many other things, all it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing and to say nothing. When slavery was finally ended by the most terrible war ever seen on this continent, people still wanted to justify themselves instead of admitting the error of their ways. Instead of being welcomed into a free society, freedmen were often trivialized, marginalized and terrorized. They were shunned and avoided and made to feel inferior. Laws throughout the South were passed to keep the races separate and Plessy vs. Ferguson promoted the idea of separate but equal.

Reading the pages of The Onlooker in the first half of this century, the reader of the 21st century will come across ideas and views that in our minds are difficult to comprehend concerning their thinking. However, with that said, Foley was very progressive in its views along racial lines in comparison to most places. The city was founded in 1905, 40 years after the end of slavery. Black citizens who came to Foley came because they chose to live here. The founding fathers of our town were from Chicago, Illinois, the land of Lincoln, as well as other Northern towns. While their views of people with darker skin were not always as enlightened as we wish that they had been in some cases, they did not approach close to the level of venom that was seen in other parts of the Southeast.

According to a Mr. F. McCloud, at the end of 1906, there were no black residents in town and only a few who worked in some of the nearby local winter resorts. Two years later, in 1908, an editorial that appeared in the paper spoke of the importance of education for our children, both white and black. W. H. Monteith, Foley’s first settler, and Frank Fesler, the founder of The Onlooker, were among members of the Baldwin County Republican Committee who met at the Foley school house on May 30, 1908 to nominate the Republican county ticket. One of the items that they were determined to fight was the injustices of the poll tax. [³]

Following a controversial speech to an African American assembly on the Eastern Shore in 1927 by Clarence Darrow, an atheist and white attorney from Chicago who had defended the teacher tried in the famous Scopes’ case, Ligon A. Wilson, the black principal of the Eastern Shore Industrial School in Daphne, wrote a letter to The Onlooker to distance himself from the views of Darrow. Mr. Barchard responded, We are pleased to present to the paper’s readers so broad and intelligent a view as that written by this scholaristic principal. Mr. Wilson stated, "For ten years, we have been here in Baldwin County trying earnestly and diligently to build up a better relationship between the two races, a better understanding and consequently a more sympathetic solution for all of our common problems. We here, however, know because of the