GIVING THANKS FOR
A WONDERFUL LIFE
In the late 1970s in my early twenties, I was president of Duga Wool, Inc., a wool importing company which imported millions of dollars of Australian wool for use by J.P. Stevens & Company. In the early 1970s, despite warnings to the contrary, my brother Henry and I climbed the stairway in the interior of the Washington Monument, twice. That’s when I had more energy than I had sense. Besides, being part Braswell and part Flanders, we paid no attention at all to the exterior signs telling us that we could not do something when we knew dang well could.
After years of being the announcer for the Dublin High School band and a substitute baseball announcer for Doug McLeod. I was asked to serve as a public address announcer at the now demolished Georgia Dome in the game between Dublin and Buford. In the 1990s, I hosted a 10-week morning radio show on WMLT in which I narrated historical events of Dublin, Georgia.
In 1985, as a Deputy Magistrate of Laurens County, Georgia, I signed a warrant for the murder of Dublin convenience store worker Marty Wilkins. Police officials convinced me that there was enough evidence to arrest Henry Wayne Lucas on a first degree murder charge. Lucas was credited with anywhere from hundreds to thousands of murders as America’s most prolific mass murderer. Without going into details, I will say that Lucas told officers details of the killing of Wilkins which were never made public. For more than 15 years, I have served as a Special Assistant Attorney General for the Georgia D.O.T.
One of my more memorable accomplishments still astonishes me. As a sophomore ROTC cadet at Mercer University, I was awarded a marksman medal. Born with a congenital lazy left eye, I could never see a hard thrown baseball. But somehow as I stood, kneeled, and lay prone on the ground, I squeezed the trigger on my rifle at just the right instant to score enough bull’s eyes to accomplish this astonishing feat. Later that year, I was given the award for the Mercer’s most outstanding sophomore cadet surprising many fellow sophomores, who went on to long and distinguished careers in the Army. I was discharged for medical reasons right before I was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant, but I still cherish the life lessons I learned during my four years in the Army Reserve unit.
And speaking of baseball, although my eyes were so bad that I never played organized baseball beyond the 3rd grade when they had teen age girls pitching to us, I did manage to pull off one amazing feat, or at least amazing to me. In a series of field exercises at Dublin High School in 1974, I threw a softball a distance of 94 yards or 282 feet, the second highest throw among students participating in the event.
When I arrived at my son’s very first soccer game, I discovered that there was only one official, Raymond Thomas, on the field. Raymond motioned me to come toward him. He handed me a flag and told me to hold the flag high in the air whenever the center line of the ball crossed the chalk lines around the edges of the field. I was told not to call any other penalties, even if I saw a deliberate punch. It was a good instruction, for you see, I never cared much for soccer and knew few if any rules and there I was, an official in the first real live soccer game I ever saw.
Eh, I am 1/16 Canadian and partially native American, having descended from Chief Powhatan of the Pamunkey Indians during the time of settlement of Jamestown. My wife Kathy is a direct descendant of the only first day settler at Jamestown who left descendants in Virginia. While I was in college, my next door neighbor in Macon was Bobby Whitlock. Whitlock was a keyboardist for Derek and The Dominoes and is famous for his classic piano solo during the latter half of the band’s biggest hit, Layla.
I have hi-fived Gloria Estefan from a front row seat and slept with one of Karen Carpenter's teddy bears and listened in the dark while Art Garfunkel song "Bridge over Trouble Water" acapello in Macon's Grand Theater. I have met and talked to Gary Puckett, Don McLean, Steven Bishop, and the group America.
While I was a young child, one of my playmates was a German-American boy named Peter. Peter’s father was a famous former Nazi scientist and founder of the U.S. Space program, Dr. Werner Von Braun.
At one time, I was listed on the Barnes and Noble best selling list. No bragging here, I was 314,228th. I worked two summers and one Christmas vacation at Pyr-a-larm as a maintenance man a production line assembler of smoke detectors. In the 1970s, I worked for a mere two days as calf feeder and stall cleaner at Parker’s Dairy. I am undefeated in civil trials and criminal bench trials and I plan to stay that way. I am definitely no Perry Mason, but we both fill out trench coats in much the same manner.
As a fifth grader, I had the honor to play right tackle on Ray Prosperi’s midget league Vikings team, which went undefeated and once scored upon. We even shutout the league all stars in the last Cranberry Bowl played in the outfield of Big Hilburn Park. In my late 40s, I coached the last game of the Dublin-Laurens Recreation Authority’s Junior League. Behind the pitching and catching of Joseph Sawyer and Cam Gay, who swapped positions after two innings, we defeated the opponents 15-0 in a run-rule perfect game. To top things off in my son Scotty’s last at bat in rec ball, he one-hopped the center field wall. Had not the third base coach held him up at third, he would have hit the last home run on the legendary field. Anyway, on the next pitch, the batter drove him home to score the last run at Big Hilburn, the same place where I enjoyed my best year in recreation football. My son and I were among the first to play baseball in the world when the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2000. We even had a policeman watch us in the dark. I am thankful to have seen my son Scotty stand at the plate against a major league pitcher, Damian Moss.
My wife Kathy and I joined 40,000 other people in reenacting Pickett’s Charge on the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg along with Ed Bearrs, the senior National Park Service Historian and known as "The Pied Piper of History." Years before I walked across that same valley during a strong thunderstorm and later in the day, I sat all alone on the summit of Little Round Top contemplating the horror which engulfed that site in July 1863.
I dipped my toes in J.R. Ewing’s swimming pool, climbed out of Tallulah Gorge, and participated in an unscheduled and unauthorized race around the old dirt track at 441 Speedway. I even saw Richard Petty race at Middle Georgia Raceway back in the 1960s. I sang in the Methodist youth choir in the first St. Patrick's Parade in 1966, much to the chagrin within earshot of my slowing squeaking voice.
I have personally known seven American heroes who waded ashore or jumped from the sky on D-Day.
My grandmother Scott once owned the largest white crappie ever caught in Georgia, until Theresa Kemp came along and caught it out of her pond off I-16 in Macon (without permission.)
In 2010, I was allowed to attend the second to last launch of the Space Shuttle Atlantis. I sat, watched, waited, and ate in the same places where my idol Walter Cronkite and his colleagues covered the space missions of the 1960s and early 1970s. In less than 4 minutes, the amazing 132nd launch of the shuttle was over with the thrill of a lifetime.I have interviewed the first captain of the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan and talked with two Tuskegee Airmen and the navigator of the Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan in World War II, Kelso Horne, one of the oldest paratroopers who jumped into Normandy on D-Day, and John Neville, the co-pilot of the Dauntless Dotty and the first B-29 bomber to drop a bomb on Japan.
I managed not to swerve around Deadman's Curve on Sunset Boulevard in LA. I caught a foul ball with my lap in Boston's Fenway Park. I have climbed aboard the U.S.S. Constitution "Old Ironsides." I even own an original piece of that naval legend. Not a lover of beer, I drank a Samuel Adams beer in the original Cheers bar in Boston. I have stood atop the Gateway Arch in St. Louis and stood in the shade of the Grassy Knoll in Dallas. I have hugged a general and danced with my darling. I've also made that walked in a horrific thunderstorm and sat up Col. Joshua Chamberlain's rock on Little Round as dusk with no one else in sight.
I graduated cum laude from Dublin High School and Summa Cum Laude from Atlanta Law School, the world’s oldest night law school. But alas, at Mercer University, the state’s oldest Baptist university, I graduated “thank the Lordy.” I guess this mostly Methodist and a mixture of nearly every Christian denomination should have gone to weekly chapel services a lot more often.
I have presented the eulogies of my parents along with those of war heroes, Felix Powell, a Japanese POW and Jake Webb, a D-Day Survivor, and, most humbly my friend, Karl Slover, a Munchkin from the Land of Oz. And speaking of Oz, my son and I and several Dublin friends watched the last film presentation of the iconic movie in Grauman’s Chinese Theater where it premiered in 1939 along with the seven surviving munchkins and several movie stars of the mid 20th Century.. The camera also included me in the 70th Anniversary DVD Edition of the movie.
Blessed more than I could ever imagined, I have met and talked with childhood sports heroes, Johnny Unitas and Mickey Mantle. The list of members of the baseball hall of fame members whom I have talked to include Hank Aaron, John Smoltz, Brooks Robinson, Al Kaline, Don Sutton, Al Kaline, Phil Niekro, Lefty Gomez, and Earl Weaver. When I was six, I sat in Luther Williams Field with the New York Yankee pitching legend, Lefty Gomez, who still holds the record for the most World Series. While there, we greeted all of the Macon Peaches, including their young infielder, Pete Rose.
I talked with CBS anchor Dan Rather and held a door open and gave directions to the Apollo 11 lunar module pilot and second man to walk on the moon, Edwin Aldrin. Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run while I was sitting behind the plate at Fulton County Stadium on April 8, 1974. My son Scotty and I attended the first Olympic baseball game in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and the first Inter-League game in Atlanta against the Baltimore Orioles and Cal Ripken. I have watched in person more than 50 members of the Baseball Hall of Fame, including Joe DiMaggio, play and watched an assembly of the game’s greatest living players who gathered before a World Series crowd in Atlanta at the 2000 All Star Game. I witnessed the first games at Turner Field and Sun Trust Park and the second game and next to last game at Fulton County Stadium. I even saw the Milwaukee Braves and Chicago White Sox play there. .
I saw Vince Dooley, with whom I served on a state-wide history committee, coach his last game in Athens and was there in Athens as a photo journalist on the field of Sanford Stadium when Larry Munson called his last game while my son Scotty, at the tender age of 18, was covering his first college football game while sitting only a few yards away from the legendary Bulldog broadcaster.
Oh, by the way, I own a piece of the moon. I have petted UGA VI in the Bulldogs locker room. I was married in John Wayne’s shirt from “The Cowboys”while wearing one of Jimmy Stewart’s personal ties. Finally, I have watched three total solar eclipses without the aid of any protection, yet I still see. I am lucky graduate of Margaret Hill's School of ball room dancing, where you got to dance with every girl, whether they wanted you to or not.
I was humbly honored to have been awarded the American History Medal by the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Carolyn Watson Community Award by the Dublin-Laurens Chamber of Commerce, the Gold Key Award by the Dublin Civitan Club, and The Community Award by the Dublin-Laurens Chamber of Commerce.
I am beyond humbled and honored to receive the City of Dublin Golden Shamrock Award, the Dublin-Laurens Chamber of Commerce Community Spirit Award, the Carolyn Watson Community Service Award, the American History Award by the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Gold Key from the Dublin Civitan Club, along with a degree from Mercer University and graduating with honors from Dublin High School and obtaining my Juris Doctorate Degree Magna Cum Laude from Atlanta Law School, which then was the oldest night law school in the world.
I am both humbled and puzzled at my 24-year journalistic career with the Courier Herald and Laurens Now Magazine, despite the doubts of two of my veteran high school English teachers.
I will be forever gratified as a founding member of Main Street Dublin and served for 9 years as chairman of the Downtown Development Authority. I was honored to serve as a founder of Theater Dublin and the Dublin Farmer's Market as well as saving the Fred Roberts Hotel and the First National Bank Building.
Nothing could so rewarding as being a little league baseball coach, four-year officer of the Dublin High School Band Boosters, and President of the Laurens County Historical Society for sixteen years and twenty four years as the Dublin-Laurens Museum Director.
But nothing in this wonderful life compares to the blessings from my wonderful parents and grandparents, my wife and best friend, Kathy, my children Amanda, Scotty, and Vicki and my grandchildren Jude and Kieran.
And there are many more. All of these things are somewhat trivial, but they are big part of my most wonderful life. I remain extremely thankful for those things which I have been a part of. On this Thanksgiving day, I urge you to sit back, reflect, and share your most quirky, amazing, and fun memories with your friends and families.
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