The scrapbook’s paper pages are cloudy-yellow, almost brown, from age. Scotch tape secures fragile newspaper clips beside black-and-white photos of a man who pushed hard to be an athlete, hopefully a successful one, in an era struggling with deprivation, the Depression and home-felt impact of World War II. Some pages, brittle enough they might crumble, recently were preserved in photographs – pictures of the pictures – just in case.

The book recounts the journey of Howard Horton, born in 1922, the youngest of 12 children. His family had a farm in Indian Trail, then in Mount Holly in the 1930s, and “that’s what kept them all alive during the Recession was having all those kids to work the farm,” says his son, Shea Horton. “Grandma never turned anyone away or let them go hungry.”

Howard Horton died in 1996 at age 74. From an era of handwritten record-keeping and newsprint scripted on manual typewriters, his family has assembled a storyline of a man who loved family, lived for football and proudly served his country in the war. It’s earned him a spot in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

“I’m sending articles that say my uncle was a good player. I can’t find any stats,” his niece, DeLina Furr says, in an e-mail, following his selection. The e-mail has 13 attachments. “I assume that’s OK.”

Furr has the scrapbook with Gaston Gazette and Charlotte Observer stories. She has old Mount Holly High School annuals and a gold boxing buckle engraved “1940 175 lb. Champion Novice.” Two of Mr. Horton’s sisters had kept his news articles, every letter sent home during the war, and letters from Chapel Hill, when the University of North Carolina invited him to play fullback.

Mr. Horton lettered in football and baseball at Mount Holly High and was All-State Honorable Mention in football and All-Conference second team in basketball. The school didn’t fund a boxing team, Shea Horton says, so Mr. Horton and his buddies formed a Golden Gloves team. He graduated high school in 1942, they think, though his ring says ’43. “There may have been a year or so when he had to help family,” Shea says. “Just help them out because times were so hard. I wish I could have had a tape recorder and let him tell the story all the way through, but…you know… wishful thinking.”

“He had a great, loving family but no money to send him to college,” Furr says. “They made sure he was in school, but they didn’t know about the ballgames or getting uniforms. He did that all by himself. He just went to school, and he loved sports. He had an older brother – they called him Dizzy, after Dizzy Dean – and he and Howard would play in the neighborhood, and when Howard got into high school he would play basketball and box, but it was the football, especially.

“I know Pearl Harbor interrupted his life.”

Mr. Horton joined the Army after graduation, Furr says, and saw action in Germany.

“He was in Central Europe, at the last of the battles,” she says. “We didn’t really know the extent of this, but he played football overseas while he was there. They had organized teams, for recreation. He would play in Monte Carlo and other places. It was toward the end of the war, and he had a good time.”

Shea says the athletic director at Carolina heard of Mr. Horton’s skills and got word to him to talk about playing football in Chapel Hill when he returned from overseas. “I think the A.D. had some contact here in Mount Holly,” Shea says, “and everybody knew Daddy was playing football. Word-of-mouth says how good he was. And they found out he was playing in the Army. The guys would come off the front lines and, to have something to do, go watch a ballgame, when the war started to wind down some. They’d fly the football players on a plane to where they’d play. He’d play in thunder and lightning. He didn’t car. He loved it.”

Mr. Horton played in the UNC backfield alongside first-team All-American halfback Charlie ‘Choo-Choo’ Justice, who finished second in 1948 in voting for the Heisman Trophy. That 1948 team went 9-0-1 and was ranked No. 3 when they played in the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans on Jan. 1, 1949, against No. 5 Oklahoma. They lost 14-6. “I’ve got the ticket, and a picture of him boarding the plane,” Shea says. “He said when Choo-Choo would run, people couldn’t tackle him. Daddy said he was a good player.”

Mr. Horton stayed two years at Carolina before coming home to take care of his mother and elderly sisters. Years later, Shea says, the school “sent a big ol’ picture of the Carolina stadium in 1948 and it had Daddy’s name on it. They wanted him to come down and they were going to honor him at a football game, but Daddy’s health wasn’t too good and he didn’t make it.”

Mr. Horton had married after the war and had three sons – the youngest died at age 6, from a brain tumor. Shea’s brother, Dean, is a physician in Raleigh. The marriage faded, and Mr. Horton raised the boys as a single dad. “Yeah, it was pretty much by himself,” Shea says. “He worked and raised us, along with our two older aunts. They’d keep our clothes clean, and Daddy would work.”

But, always, there was football. “He always found a way to play, for mill teams, anything he could do. And I think that’s a credit to him to do all that in that time period,” Furr says. “I was raised in Knoxville and I would come down every summer and when I graduated (from Tennessee) and I came to live here, and I got to know him as a young adult. Howard pretty much taught me the game of football. We would watch with him, and that’s how I learned.”

Shea Horton says he’s glad his dad made the Hall of Fame because, even without photographs of statistics, or a wall of trophies, there was an unbreakable love for the game.

“There’s been a lot of changing around here. It’s progress in motion,” Shea says of Mount Holly. “I like having him in there because he loved sports so much. I’m glad my two aunts kept his stuff. They weren’t hoarders, but they kept the important stuff.

“Daddy used to take us, when we were little, to watch football games every Friday night. The Mount Holly Hawks. And we’d have a good time. My brother and I would stand on our tip-toes and watch. Sometimes, we’d try to sneak off and go slide down the hill, but Daddy would always grab us by the collar and remind us why we were there:

‘We’re here to watch football.’”