Class of 2015
Zeb McDowell
In an era when statisticians didn’t exist, and boys played sports purely for the love of the game, Zeb McDowell excelled at everything he attempted, until loss and destiny made him walk away.
It was in the days of segregation, when McDowell, 83, attended Reid High School in Belmont; and he laughs sometimes at the joy of it all, when he sees the memories on the pages of the 1952 yearbook.
“They didn’t keep records then like they keep them now, you know. They didn’t take a whole bunch of pictures, either,” he said. “I was looking, trying to find a group picture. You wouldn’t think about it, back then….keeping records, or anything like that.”
McDowell was born in 1932 and grew up in Mountain Island, out by the dam, in a home with three brothers and four sisters, on land that his family farmed and where sports became not so much something that required skill, but something that took up the time.
“Well, there wasn’t nothing much else to do but play sports and go to school. That was our relaxation, playing sports,” he said, then laughs. “Well, I enjoyed playing sports because always, most of the time, the girls would like you more. So I had quite a few girlfriends. But I was a nervous-type person, so I had to do something all the time. Just like I am now – I can’t sit around.”
In springtime during high school, McDowell played baseball, where he had a natural edge in being left-handed and, when he wasn’t covering centerfield, he got to pitch. “Matter of fact, I was the only left-hander on that team. That was to my advantage, because my left-handed curve ball was different than the rest of them,” he said. “My curve ball, and my under-handed pitch.”
Under-handed?
“Yes, ma’am, I’d sling it under-handed instead of coming over the top.”
He said his team finished second one year, in the state tournament.
Come fall, McDowell got to play left tackle and do what he enjoyed most. “My favorite sport was football, because I loved to hit somebody,” he said, laughing again. “We went from county to county, and we had to ride the bus. We played all the schools in Gaston County and Mecklenburg County.”
In winter, McDowell was the basketball team’s 6-foot center. And again, his being left-handed was the secret weapon. “My favorite memory was that I was the big boy in basketball, and I had a pretty good left hook. A lot of people would be on my right side, then they found out I was left-handed,” he said.
Throughout high school, McDowell played season after season, doing his best and devouring every moment, like a kid at a parking-lot carnival, before the big trucks pack it up and move it along. He did well enough that colleges found out about him, and North Carolina A&T offered a scholarship.
But that’s when destiny stepped in.
Sports had been his pastime, his joy, but it would not be the job that paid for McDowell’s college education. The athlete had to step back, and let the young man he’d become step forward.
“My father died. There were four kids still at home so I had to help Momma with four kids,” he said. “I knew I had a scholarship, but the most important thing was I told my father on his deathbed I would take care of Momma and the family…. There was a blood clot… He said, ‘Take care of Maw for me,’ and that’s what I did.”
Wardell McDowell Sr. died at age 48.
Zeb McDowell found work with Duke Power and stayed with the company, he said, about 35 years, including a segment at the McGuire Nuclear Station. “Scary? Yes, ma’am, that sure was. You had to keep your eyes open the whole time,” he said. “But I worked my way through the whole system. Every Duke Power plant, I worked at it.”
His decision to follow his father’s wishes has guided his life in a positive way.
“Ever since then, I’ve been blessed. Really been blessed. I have my health and my life and my strength, and I’ve never really been sick,” he said. “I had a job, and I was able to take care of my momma and my brothers and sisters, so I know the Lord blessed me from there.”
His mother, Rosie, born in 1906, lived to be 101.
McDowell still lives in Mount Holly. His first wife died, and he married Stella about 18 years ago, he said, and she brought three more children to the family. He runs a concrete business with the boys because, like he said, he just can’t sit still. Makes him nervous.
“We pour concrete just about every day. Driveways, sidewalks, at buildings, we don’t back off anything,” he said.
He likes to follow the Carolina Panthers, used to watch the Washington Redskins, and keeps up with Michael Jordan and the Charlotte Hornets, but he gets fidgety if they aren’t winning. The Hall of Fame induction, he said, surprised him. “But quite naturally, I’m going to be happy,” he said. “My grand-kids and my great-grand-kids, they can see where I’ve come from.”
Max Sherrill
On a 1940s summer day, two young boys emerged simultaneously from their company-built homes in the steam plant neighborhood where the Catawba River carves a horseshoe plateau, and stepped tentatively into the gravel street to form a friendship from which they would never back away.
“I walked out my back door into my backyard, which faced his front yard, and we looked at one another, and slowly moved toward one another as 6-year-olds would do, and when I got to my side of the road, I wouldn’t cross. And when he got to his side, he wouldn’t cross,” said Don Killian, who can vividly recall the moment of 72 years ago. “We looked at each other, and later we’d argue about how long we just stared at each other. Then one of us said, ‘How old are you?’ and the other said, ‘Well, how old are you?’ and that started it right there. “We continued to talk, and moved toward the center of the road, sizing one another up. Before that morning was over, we set over in his yard and talked and talked… We just hit it off. He was so friendly.”
The other child was Max Sherrill, and he was a bit bigger, and for some reason Killian decided to call him ‘Goot.’ Mr. Sherrill called Killian ‘Little’un.’ And like the friendship, the nicknames also never went away.
Mr. Sherrill would grow up to know success in baseball – in high school, in college, and in the late nights and long bus rides that defined the minor leagues. Killian became an educator in the subjects of cognitive psychology and sociology. But before they grew up to become men, they had the time of their lives.
“Our personalities complemented each other. We were just joined at the hip, I guess you could say. He was always kidding around, and I was more serious about things,” Killian said. “I always wished I could be as jolly as him. He’d say, ‘Little’un, you’re too serious about your stuff.’”
The boys’ daddies worked in Duke Power’s Riverbend machine shop – together – and the children passed time with games. “We’d play too much and didn’t work enough. We played every sport you could mention, and we’d create our own seasons,” Killian said. “We’d have baseball season, then tag football season, then marbles season – they’d all last about a month – then rubber gun season.”
A rubber gun was built from a square board, a clothespin and rubber band. Baseball season got more creative. “We’d hit rocks with a broom handle. We’d cut the broomsticks the length of the bat, and pick up a rock to hit the size of a pecan. You’d be amazed what that does for your eyesight,” Killian said.
Early thrills produced older skills.
Baseball remained the constant, and Mr. Sherrill pitched while Killian played shortstop in junior high and high school, then on American Legion teams. They played for Mount Holly High, where Mr. Sherrill helped lead the team to the 1954 and 1955 Little Ten Conference titles, with a 29-4 record those two years. That ’54 team, Killian recalled, was Class A state runners-up. The Sherrill family moved to Stanley his senior year, which put the best friends in different jerseys for the first time.
“Max was torn. But when we played baseball against each other, he’d say before the game, ‘Now, I’m gonna bring you some heat from time to time, but you and I both know you’ll get it right,’” Killian said. “I could tell when I was gonna get his fastball. I knew what was coming.”
Killian went on to play four years at Davidson, while Mr. Sherrill joined Pfeiffer for one year before the call came from the Chicago Cubs.
His senior year in Stanley, Mr. Sherrill had met a girl, Linda Thompson, daughter of well-known coach Dick Thompson, whose household had strict rules about boys. “I always knew who he was. We met when he was a senior, and I couldn’t date till I was 16, but Max was not scared (of Mr. Thompson),” Linda Sherrill said. “So, on September 25, 1955, when Mount Holly was playing Cherryville, Daddy told me, ‘Well, I guess I’ll let you go with him this time. Nothing will become of it.’ And look what happened.”
They were married for 22 years, and had three children, Anne, Matthew and Mike, who died in 2012 from cancer.
When the Cubs called, the couple went to Pulaski, Virginia, where Mr. Sherrill, a 6-foot-3, 220-pound right-hander, went 2-10 with a 5.95 ERA in 62 innings. The following year, in Paris, Illinois, with the Class D Paris Lakers of the Midwest League he went 10-12 with a .420 ERA and 164 strike-outs.
After three seasons in the Cubs organization, the Sherrills moved on to Class B ball with the Washington Senators and Boston Red Sox clubs in Raleigh and Wilson, N.C.
“Our days and nights were mixed up, so we’d sleep during the day and then after the games, we’d go out and get pizza,” Mrs. Sherrill said. “We had a wonderful time. We’d go on road trips to Morehead City and the beach, and I have such good memories of that time.”
Mr. Sherrill played six seasons in the minors, ending in 1962. He had an overall winning record his three seasons in B ball, at 17-12, with 20 starts in the 71 games he took the mound.
When faced with the choice of relocating to Bismark, North Dakota, for Class A, Mr. Sherrill said no. Too cold, too far. He came home to Mount Holly.
“He worked for Eastern Airlines. One day on a whim, he rode over there and they hired him on the spot,” Linda Sherrill said. “He did ramp service. He held the wands to show the planes how to get in and out, and he survived all the layoffs. He’d bring home these little models for the boys, like real planes.”
Mr. Sherrill died in 1998 after a battle with diabetes. The couple had divorced in 1984.
The Mount Holly Hall of Fame induction, Linda Sherrill said, would have pleased him.
“I was tickled to death, when I heard,” she said. “I thought that one year in Stanley would have made a difference, but his whole life was in Mount Holly. That’s where his best playing days were.”
“He was a cut-up but he was competitive. He encouraged you, he pumped you up,” Killian said. “He’d say, ‘Little’un, you can hit this clown!’ He kept us loose. Looking back … I could not have asked for a better teammate.”
Phil Roberts
Phil Roberts’ life of perpetual motion had two beginnings: a telephone call to Mount Holly Elementary School that sent the first-grader running home in a race to beat the school bus, and a yellow legal pad from his dad on which his tiny hands logged numbers in neatly columned rows.
The phone call, from Roberts’ mother to the school office, came on February 2, 1970. Roberts’ family lived on West Catawba Avenue, just beyond the cemetery and about a mile from the school – two houses away from where the county drew the line for bus transportation. His baby sister, Penny, was sick, so would someone please get word to the boy to walk home?
“I took off down the road and was trying to beat the bus home. It was something fun to do. I didn’t get to be bussed, so I figured I’d show them, and beat it home,” Roberts said. “I enjoyed it so much that my first nine grades I ran to school and ran home.”
About that time, Roberts’ father gave him some legal pads from work, and the child logged his distance each day – from the house, through the property by the middle school, past the gymnasium, down to his school and home again.
“It started out as rows of numbers. So the first day was a mile, and I wrote a ‘1.’ Then I’d put a ‘2.’ Then I’d add up the total,” he said. “My original log was pages and pages of columns and numbers. I also would write the weather: ‘It is cold.’ Or ‘It’s hot.’ Or ‘It’s 30 degrees.’ It kind of evolved.”
As of mid-June this year, that ‘1’ had become 160,200 miles – each distance carefully recorded – enough for Roberts, 52, to have run from Mount Holly Elementary to San Diego, Calif., and back 34 times. His milestones along the way – high school records and college records that still stand – have earned him a spot in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.
“I’m very honored. I’ve been a runner for a long time, in high school and college, but it’s an honor for the town to recognize it,” Roberts said from his home in Greenville, Tenn., where he’s dominating the State of Franklin Track Club’s 50-54 age group.
On June 13, he won a 5K race on a rolling, hilly course by 3 minutes. In May, he was first among 321 competitors in 13 age groups and won by 35 seconds. The second-place guy was a teenager.
Roberts’ scampering to and from Mount Holly Elementary gave him a chance to notice details of his neighborhood.
“As I got older, like third grade, I would run more on weekends. I would see trails off of roads where people would go with their motorcycles or 4-wheelers and I’d run them,” he said. “In sixth grade, I had to run through the junior high to get to the elementary school, and one day someone asked me if I was going to run track.
“I didn’t know what it was, so I looked it up in the encyclopedia. I went out in seventh grade and found out I was good at running, and I’ve been running all along. I got better and faster and stronger at it. It led to a junior high championship in the half-mile and mile.”
Roberts said he ran a competitive 4:30 mile as a high school sophomore, but his best time was 4:26.
Word got to college scouts, and he said 72 colleges sought his attendance. “It was the way I ran,” he said. “Over the years, my thing was to be a front-runner, pushing the pace. And I would do that against people who had way better times and accolades, but it didn’t matter. I made them prove it. College coaches looked at me as a catalyst for their team … someone who’s going to make others push, too.”
Because it was close to home and family, Roberts chose High Point College (now High Point University), but he switched to Western Carolina after one year. After his red-shirt season, he ran everything from the half-mile to 10,000 meters. His legal-pad log book was showing about 105 miles per week.
Western Carolina still lists him as the record holder for 1,500 meters (1986, 3:55.10); 3,000 meters (1985, 8:19.59); 2 miles (1985, 8:59); 3 miles (1986, 13:50.80); and 200-meter Steeple (1985, 5:55.70).
He graduated in 1986 with a degree in physical education, then stayed for graduate courses and worked as an assistant track coach for five years.
He met his wife, Kris, at Western in 1988 and they married in 1989. She earned a Master’s in psychology, and her job took them to their current home in Tennessee in 1991, where she is the director of the crisis consultation team for the Department of Intellectual Disability Services for the state.
The Roberts have four children – three boys and a girl – born two years apart. The oldest is 22 now and pursuing an MBA, one is a student at East Tennessee State, one is a recent high school graduate and the fourth will be a high school junior.
Phil Roberts, when he isn’t competing or training, spends his time passing his knowledge along, to share his joy of running. “I coach runners. I have a few runners that I’ve personally coached, and I’ve coached at the high school where my sons went and my daughter goes,” he said. “I coach cross country, and we just got track this past year. I’m the only non-faculty coach there.”
He said he still runs 50 to 70 miles per week. Not only for the workout and the physical benefits, but because in addition to all the awards and records in his career, he still has a goal.
“I would like to be a national champion among my peers. I’d like to win a national championship for (USA Track & Field) Masters runners,” he said. “I would like to become dominant in my age group.”
Laura Randall Woodhead
During high school, when social privacy was non-existent and cliques were formed for the sake of companionship, only a few close friends knew that Laura Randall was living two separate identities, and that one of them was leading her to greatness.
Randall, now Laura Woodhead, was a swimmer, and when she arrived at East Gaston High School in 1982 after years of competing for private clubs, swimming was not one of the school’s sports, and her training sessions and state championships were unknown to her classmates.
“I enjoyed swimming in Charlotte (at the Mecklenburg Aquatic Club pool at Sharonview Country Club, now SwimMAC Carolina) and having a separate life outside of school that only my closest school friends really knew about. I was able to focus on school during the day and my swimming the rest of the time,” said Woodhead, who would leave home at 4:20 a.m. six days a week, practice before school, then drive back to MAC in the afternoons. Sometimes, she said, her mom would drive her through the morning darkness, then wait, asleep in the car. “Years later,” she said, “I would thank her. I was very fortunate to have incredibly supportive parents.”
Woodhead’s persistence led to multiple USA Swimming North Carolina state championships, before she took control of changing her athletic anonymity and got East Gaston a swim team – a team consisting of one person. “I wanted to be able to represent East Gaston at the state high school swim meet, so during my freshman year, I petitioned to swim solo,” she said. “Two years later, there were several other club swimmers at East Gaston who also wanted to swim, so we worked together to start a team.”
She convinced her German teacher, Mardi Lambert, to act as coach/sponsor. During her four years at EG, she finished in the top 8 in all her events at the NCHSAA 3A State Championships, winning sectional titles in 1985-86 and was runner-up at states in the 100-breaststroke in 1986.
College letters came, and suddenly the girl who first jumped a pool at age 5 at the Mount Holly Swim & Racket Club was reading recruiting prose from the University of North Carolina, Duke, Columbia, UCLA and Stanford, among others. “I visited Stanford during the summer before my senior year, and I fell in love with the school and the coach, George Haines, so it was always a front-runner,” she said. “I just had to convince my parents to let me go so far from home.”
Woodhead was a seven-time NCHSAA state championship finalist and East Gaston’s female Athlete of the Year in 1986. At Stanford, where she focused on breaststroke and individual medley, she was part of two PAC 10 championship teams, in 1987 and 1988, and helped lead The Cardinal to second place at NCAAs in 1987. All that has led her to be inducted into the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.
Her junior year at Stanford, Woodhead had surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff and torn labrum in her right shoulder, and she made the decision to retire.
It had been a long career: Six seasons at Mount Holly’s pool, with a pile of county championships and records (including a 14.4 in the 8-under 25-yard freestyle, that may still stand). Winning her first state championship at age 11 in the 200 IM in 1977, with the Gaston YMCA Gators and later swimming for the Johnston Memorial YMCA. Qualifying for the U.S. Nationals at age 15. Winning several USA Swimming and zone all-star titles in freestyle, breaststroke and IM, and being ranked in the top 16 nationally.
But it was time to move on and, after graduating from college in 1990 with a political science degree, Woodhead returned to Mount Holly to begin her quest to be a lawyer, and worked alongside Charlotte lawyer George Daly. She also coached age-group swimmers at MAC. But there was something about California….
In Spring 1991, she returned to the West Coast for law school, and graduated in 1995 from the University of California-Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. For the last 13 years, she’s worked as a corporate attorney in the pharmaceutical industry, including the last seven with BioMarin Pharmaceutical Inc.
But like a lot of athletes who retire, who move on with their lives away from sport, Woodhead found out in 1993 that permanently walking away is only permanent until you walk back.
She was recruited that year to join the master’s swim team at The Olympic Club in San Francisco, where she proceeded to finish in the top 16 at nationals in breaststroke and IM and win a national title in 1996 at the U.S. Short Course Nationals in the 200 mixed relay. She returned to Stanford’s campus in 2006 for the FINA World Masters Swimming Championships to swim the breaststroke leg of the Olympic Club’s silver medal winning 200 Medley Relay.
She married Jeff Woodhead – who rowed crew at UC-Berkeley – in 1997 in San Francisco, and they have three children – Dylan (a rising high school senior), Quinn (high school sophomore) and Ella (born in 2004). The family lives about 11 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
“Our children have grown up in and around the water. It has been so rewarding for Jeff and I to watch our children participate in sports,” she said. Dylan was recently named to the USA Water Polo Youth National Team, Quinn plays on an under-14 water polo team and Ella swims, and plays water polo and basketball. For 25 years, the Woodheads have belonged to the South End Rowing Club on Aquatic Park in San Francisco.
And while California has their heart, Mount Holly still has the ability to tug her back to the place called home.
“I’m truly honored to be recognized by the Hall of Fame in my hometown. I’m so thankful to have grown up here with the support of my parents and family and many friends, neighbors, classmates, teachers and coaches,” she said. “This community had such a positive impact on my life, and I’m forever grateful.”
1954-55 Hawks Baseball
The Boys of Summer, they weren’t; at least not in the postseason.
For the Mount Holly High baseball team of 1954, the North Carolina Class A state runners-up, the script for the playoffs somehow forgot the part about lazy, sunny afternoons with nine innings of fastballs, the crack of the bat, dirt-cloud slides and screaming umpires. In fact, the path to the state championship game, when the Hawks lost to Hertford, sometimes meant not even taking the field.
These were the boys of the rainy spring, the boys of the unusual circumstance, who could advance with the flip of a coin, and win despite an opposing pitcher’s no-hitter.
Archives show a line-up of Benny Carpenter (1B), Tommy Crawford (2B), Don Killian (SS), Tommy McIntosh (3B), Don Lee (C), Dicky Kirby (LF), Dean Sherrin (CF), Tommy Lee (RF) and pitchers Max Sherrill, Tommy Wilson and Forest McIntosh. Other teammates were Laney Funderburke, Barry Black, Bob Black and Ted Hager. Seth Kirby was the manager, and Ken Bost coached them.
The Hawks’ intriguing post-season began with the Little Ten Conference tournament, when they were tied 1-1 in a best-of-3 series with Dallas. The rains came, heavy rains, enough that league officials said the deciding game could not be played and the team that advanced would be the team that guessed heads or tails.
The Hawks advanced.
The first and second rounds of the playoffs also were cancelled by rain.
Again, up went the coins, and onward went Mount Holly.
After winning a third-round game over Allen Jay High School from High Point, the Hawks faced Kernersville for the Western North Carolina 1A title, and this time, they got to play baseball.
In the first game, the Kernersville pitcher threw a no-hitter, but that didn’t matter to the Hawks, who used several errors, four stolen bases and a suicide squeeze in the bottom of the ninth to win 3-1 and give Max Sherrill his 12th consecutive win of the season. Sherrill gave up four hits and struck out 12.
Kernersville won the second game 7-6.
Then, on May 29, 1954, Sherrill threw a four-hitter and the Hawks got 10 hits to win 9-0 and advance to the state championship – the farthest any baseball team from Mount Holly had ever gone. The team finished 13-4, and along with the team of 1955, has gained entry into the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.
The 1955 team was Western N.C. 1A runner-up to Colfax, marking two consecutive years the Mount Holly team had postseason victories – which hadn’t happened since 1930.
1967-68 & 1968-69 Hawks Basketball
Football and baseball were the premium sports at Mount Holly High School in the 1960s, until the hiring personnel took on a man named Joe Spears, who formed a bunch of tall teenagers into winning athletes and gave that school something it had never seen.
“Joe was offered the coaching job, and he said it was only fitting that the school had wins in basketball and he wouldn’t accept that the school would continue with a losing record,” said Gary Neely, who was a 6-foot-3 guard on the teams of 1967-68 and 1968-69 and is friendly enough with his former coach to be on a first-name basis. “It took him awhile, but he got the boys and girls teams to levels they had never known before.”
The boys were all between 6-foot-1 and 6-foot-5, and they took over the gym later in the afternoons, after the girls finished running the bleachers. When it was time for away games, the whole crew would pile into the same bus, driven by a man named Leroy, who Neely said was their good-luck charm.
The 1967-68 boys team went 21-4, which got people’s attention, since the previous year’s gang was 12-9. “It sort of all came together. We had height and skill in shooting the basketball. He (Spears) was doing well with the talent he had, and he was building winning teams,” said Neely, who was a sophomore in ’67-78.
Neely and freshman Freddie Whitt (6-3) were the guards, Chick Moore (6-5) played center, and juniors Richard Jessen (6-4) and Dan Hope (6-1) were forwards. W.T. Clayton, Keith Hopper and Robbie McCorkle rotated in.
The team started the season with a 10-game winning streak, with a win at Tryon on a play that wasn’t executed the way it was called, and the girls started 10-0 also, and the people of the town took notice. “The very first game, we had less than a week to practice, because some of the guys played football, which had just won the state championship,” Neely said. “It was tied 54-54, and Coach Spears called time with 11 seconds to go, and we had the ball. He devised a play to get the ball to Richard with the final shot with 5 seconds to go, which would give us time if he missed. It was all perfect, except the ball came to me, with 5 seconds to go, and I took it and I made it. They (Tryon) had the ball inbounds with 4 seconds to go and took a desperation shot, but we won 56-54 and that started the 10-game streak, which was unheard of in Mount Holly.”
The boys lost three games the remainder of the season, but regrouped to win the conference tournament. “After that, we went on to win our first two games of the district tournament and were actually winning the final game at the end of three quarters, but a very good Hibriten team in Lenoir sprung a full-court trapping press on us and won going away,” Neely said.
Moore and Hope were seniors, and the following year Hopper and McCorkle became starters, and the crew was ready to prove that their success was legitimate. “We had outstanding players, and we were expecting great things for ourselves, but we sort of under-performed,” Neely said. The team started 7-7, but since that was not the standard they’d set for themselves, the boys went on another 10-game win streak, like the year before. “Only this time, it was at the right time of the year,” Neely said. “We won our last couple of regular-season games, then won three tournament games to win the conference tournament for the second year in a row, then proceeded to win the district tournament, including winning three more games in a row and beating Dallas in the finals. It was the fourth time that year we beat Dallas.”
That put the Hawks in the Class 2A state tournament in Winston-Salem, seeded eighth at 17-7, and facing a first-round game with the No. 1 seed, 26-0 Vaiden Whitley High from Wendell, N.C. in Wake County. Maybe it was talent, maybe it was a reputation to uphold, maybe it was a combination of everything the Hawks wanted to be, that led them to defeat Whitley by 15 points that Wednesday and advance to the semifinals. But since they were sitting in Winston-Salem without hotel reservations, the celebration occurred on the 85-mile bus ride home.
“We made the bus trip back to Winston-Salem on Friday, then lost the semifinals game to Bertie High School from down East, then lost the consolation game to Hendersonville,” Neely said, “so we finished No. 4 in the state for Class 2A at 18-9. But more importantly, we’d advanced farther than any basketball team from Mount Holly, girls or boys.”
With both teams being inducted into Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame, that success will forever be marked in history. “Those were good times,” Neely said. “It was good for Mount Holly and good for everyone connected with the team. Joe got us to levels that we’d never seen. Kudos to him, for being outstanding.”
Community Spirit Award Barry Jessen
Barry Jessen has four folding chairs in his grey Chevy Trailblazer, a cooler for bottled water, and a schedule dictating when to go fuss at annoying Little League umpires who can’t distinguish the obvious difference between a ball and strike.
“For all the years they used to fuss at me for refereeing, now I get to call the umpires out for a bad pitch,” said Jessen, 72, who is not one bit bitter, and laughs when he discusses outings to watch his twin grandsons play in Stanley’s 10-year-old baseball league, or his granddaughter cheer for the Hawks at Mount Holly’s middle school. Jessen has reached that chapter when he can sit on the sidelines in street clothes, but he hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be the ref. “It’s a thankless job. You can’t please everybody,” he said. “I found out about that real fast, but it didn’t bother me.”
Jessen’s involvement in Mount Holly sports, which has earned him the Community Spirit award in the city’s 2015 Sports Hall of Fame class, stretches from being a three-sport athlete at Mount Holly High School from 1957 to 1961, to 23 years of Saturdays in stripes, refereeing Optimist Club basketball at the Mount Holly gym for five, six hours straight. For free.
“As I recall, there wasn’t a recreation department in the city. So, having been involved in sports and athletics all my life, I wanted to help and do something,” he said of his stint from the 1970s into the 1990s. “The basketball was my passion. The pay was that we got the satisfaction of helping, and I enjoyed every minute of it. You have to contribute somehow, and that’s the way I wanted to do it.”
“He truly loved the game and the opportunity to help kids develop good basketball skills and better knowledge of the game,” Jessen’s wife of 49 years, Camille, said of her husband’s Saturday ritual. “He took special interest in watching the youth that he had coached progress. As these young ballplayers advanced to the high school level, he spent many Friday nights at East Gaston football and basketball games watching many of the Optimist players play their games on a higher level.”
Barry Jessen and his three brothers grew up within walking distance of Mount Holly’s schools. He played baseball and basketball at Mount Holly High, and also put in time on the football field. He spent four summers playing outfield for the Mount Holly-Paw Creek American Legion team. “Back in those days, it wasn’t like this day and time. We didn’t have the electronic games like kids do now. Sports is what we did,” Jessen said. “My daddy worked in textiles, and we didn’t have a whole lot like they do nowadays. I enjoyed it, and I still have a lot of memories of the fun and fellowship.”
Jessen graduated from King’s College in Charlotte with a business degree, then spent three years enlisted in the Army, which included a year in Vietnam.
He married Camille, who is one year younger, in 1965. They met when she was still in eighth grade, and he asked her to a square dance at his church. “His brother had to come pick us up, because he wasn’t old enough to drive,” she said.
Jessen’s decades at the Optimist Club are just one fragment of his contributions to Mount Holly. His two sons, now 43 and 41, were East Gaston athletes – one tennis, one golf. “So, I still wanted to help. I was in the Booster Club. I mean, if your sons are participating, you should help,” he said. For nine years, he was in charge of the school’s concession stand on football Friday nights. “They needed someone to go to the wholesale company and get the stuff. It was a long day, and a small concession stand, but they needed somebody,” he said. “After the boys graduated, I stepped aside.”
There’s a difference, however, between stepping aside and being on the sidelines. “Even in his retirement years, he’s still helping the community,” Camille said. “You will find him every Wednesday morning at the CRO (Community Relief Organization) giving his time. He has always enjoyed helping serve his church, Good Shepherd Lutheran – sing in the church choir, visit shut-ins, be a chauffeur for doctor appointments, cook pancakes for breakfast, wash dishes, cut grass, deliver meals, work with the youth, replace light bulbs, paint a fellowship hall and always support many of the church young people at their sports events.”
Jessen worked for 35 years with the Ferry-Morse Seed Company, as a company representative in the Carolinas and Virginia. He retired at age 65. Which gives him plenty of time to use those folding chairs in the Trailblazer.
So, how much of his life has been spent playing, officiating or watching sports?
“Oh my goodness, it’s impossible to know. Four years of high school, three years of Legion ball, I don’t know,” said Jessen, who still enjoys taking the family to Atlanta for a weekend, to watch the Braves. “But time wasn’t important. You would be there because you wanted to do it. I worked very hard at it, but I enjoyed it.
“I had a blast.”
