A.C. Hollar played football when many young athletes’ resumes already listed military service. A time when long-distance relationships involved hitch-hiking and stamped love letters, and game schedules were typed as “here” and “there,” not “home” and “away.”

Hollar’s skills with Mount Holly High School, Belmont Abbey, the University of South Carolina and semi-pro Gastonia Volunteers have landed him a 2014 induction into the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

“He was a fierce ballplayer. He really liked to get with it,” said Ted Reece, 85, who played quarterback at Belmont Abbey when Hollar was a 190-pound defensive end, the last year the school had a football program. “He was a good, upstanding young man. He had high morals, and we respected him very much.”

Frank Auten, 82, of Boone, played left tackle at South Carolina to Hollar’s right tackle.

“He was about as rough as you’d ever seen in college football. He was fast, and he was rough,” Auten said. “He was one of the finest, and he married a fine girl.”

That girl, Jane, said “I do” to Hollar in 1953 in her hometown of High Point, before he enlisted in the Army later that year. (When he was at South Carolina, she was in college in Greensboro, and he would hitch back and forth, to visit). The marriage lasted just shy of 40 years: A.C. died of lung cancer in 1991.

Hollar was a menace on the football field, but a gentler, family man away from it.

“I have 250 love letters that I still have in a box. About once every five years, I go through the whole thing again,” said Jane Hollar, 82, who lives across Highway 16 in Charlotte, not far from Mount Holly. “He was an MP in the Army, so he had to be kinda tough, but he didn’t have to keep the persona up after that.”

The 1947 Mount Holly Hawks went 6-1-1, with Hollar playing end and wearing No. 20. He already was dating 14-year-old Jane, and the relationship accompanied their stages of growing up – graduations, the Army, attending different colleges. “My cousin was dating his best friend, so we dated so we could all go out. We dated off and on for five years before we got engaged,” she said.

When Hollar played for Belmont Abbey, the media took notice.

He received a varsity letter from the Athletic Council in 1948, and on Sept. 14, 1949, a Charlotte Observer article said: “After a wartime layoff, the return to the top flight by Belmont Abbey has been slow. … Coach Howard (Humpy) Wheeler put his boys to work this week for the October 1 opener with Gardner-Webb and will work them fast. … Things are not too gloomy, with 18 lettermen returning. These boys will form the nucleus of a big, hard-hitting line and a fast, versatile backfield.”

It would be Wheeler’s last year coaching, and the last year the Abbey had a team.

A newspaper article about that season’s opening victory over Gardner-Webb said the first touchdown occurred “behind the beautiful blocking of A.C. Hollar.”

From a loss to Western Carolina: “Instrumental in holding the Baby Cats’ score down was… the stubborn defensive playing of A.C. Hollar.”

An article bylined Bernie Curren, who seemed to enjoy giving people nicknames, said, “At the flanking positions, throttling any ideas of running around Abbey’s ends, are camped Aubrey C. Hollar and ‘Please be careful, hon’ (Pinky) Loehr.”

Hollar’s semi-pro days came next, and the media followed.

Gastonia Volunteers coach Mason Blanton, in a newspaper article about playing Fort Bragg’s service team, said: “Along with A.C. Hollar, who is highly dependable as a good, all-around end, I don’t have much to worry about in that part of the line.”

And from a story about a 58-6 victory over visiting Pembroke: “Bill Fletcher then fired a pass to A.C. Hollar for the touchdown. … Hollar scored on an end-around play for the first of three TDs in the fourth quarter.”

Hollar returned to Belmont Abbey after his football career and got a business degree. He had a two-year-old son by then – and he focused on work and family.

He joined a farm equipment company, moved the trio to Americus, Ga., for three years, and returned to Charlotte, where his second son was born, to work for the Charlotte Ford Tractor Company. His title was Zone Manager – “He had a manager job for about 14 tractor dealerships,” Jane Hollar said. “That’s when we moved to Myrtle Beach and lived 27 years.

“He had more friends than anyone I’d ever known. He never met anyone he didn’t like. He had lots of people who would do anything for him.”

Ted Reece, the teammate from Belmont Abbey, said if Hollar were to be present to accept his Hall of Fame award, “He would be overjoyed. Oh, he would be delighted that what he’d done had been recognized.”

Frank Auten, from the South Carolina teams, said the induction is “a long time coming.”

What would Hollar say in his acceptance speech?

“He’d just say, ‘Thank you,’” Auten said. “Just, ‘Thank you.’ That covers a lot of territory, I think, don’t you?”