Stewart Blue, track and field: a love story

         No one we know loves the sport of track and field more than Stewart Blue. He might have his equals, but no one loves it more.

       And it's been that way for almost 60 years.

       He was a standout high school track guy and even better in college ... and he has remained involved with the sport ever since, for decades now as a meet official, a timer, overseeing an event, as an umpire or as a referee. 

       So he knows the rules, he has to OK the disqualifications and he has to care ... and he does. 

       The tall man loves him some track and field, and appreciates its athletes.

       If there is a meet at Texas A&M, he will be there. If there is a meet at LSU, count on Stu. The Louisiana high school state meets? He's missed only two since 1972, only because they conflicted with college conference championship meets to which he was committed.     

Stewart, with daughter
Jamie and wife Karen.

     (In one of those, his daughter was running as a quartermiler for Louisiana-Lafayette, the school that when Stewart was competing -- also as a quartermiler -- was known as the University of Southwestern Louisiana.)

      He loves his wife and his daughter, son-in-law and two grandkids, and he has a life. But track and field is, a part of his being.

      A number of recent bouts with prostate and brain cancer have been hurdles to clear. But he's been hurdling since those early 1960s days at Byrd High School in Shreveport.

     As a Byrd senior in 1965, he was part of the last state championship team for Coach Woodrow Turner, the last of nine top-class titles in a 12-year span. Blue finished second in both the high and low hurdles at the state meet.

     He was a popular figure with competitors, open and friendly and garrulous, easy to spot (he's 6-foot-4) ... and talented.  

     He lives now, as he has for years, in Lafayette. But he also spends much time in Cut Off (deep on the bayou in southeast Louisiana; home of LSU head football coach Ed Orgeron). That's where daughter Jamie Blue Guidry lives with her family.

      She is marketing director for the company that owned the plane that crashed in Lafayette last December on the day of the LSU-Oklahoma national semifinals football game, and Stu and his wife Karen have been in Cutoff to help with the two grandchildren.

      And this year -- as with everyone else -- Stewart's track-field schedule was rudely interrupted. It ended with the SEC Indoor Championships before the pandemic hit.

     But he’s looking ahead to 2021. 

     On the schedule — if conditions permit — are the SEC and NCAA indoor meets at Arkansas, the completion of his 45th year of meets at LSU, the Olympic Trials next summer as an umpire, and the referee job at the SEC Outdoor Championships at College Station in May.

      For this article, however, we reflect and take a long look back.

---

     Stewart credits Woodrow Turner and Scotty Robertson, two of his Byrd coaches — legends both — for giving him his greatest career boosts and motivation.

     First, though, came a Robertson evaluation. After a week of basketball "games" and drills in a P.E. class as a sophomore in 1962, Stewart heard that basketball wasn't a fit.

     Scotty's bad news: “He said that I couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time," Stu remembers. "The good news (for him) was that I would not a basketball player; that my name would be ’floor’ if I tried because I couldn’t jump off the floor.”

     But Woodrow Turner, listening to that conversation, called Stu over to his desk.

     “He started to flatter me, which was his norm,” he recalled. “Since I had thrown the discus at Youree Drive [Junior High] and won consistently he said to go out and work with Jack Pyburn -- his 170-foot [state-record] discus ace -- in his sixth-period track class.”

       So he became a discus thrower at Byrd and also a hurdler, although his junior high coach didn't think that would happen. But Turner had a vision.

      “As I look back, he was a unique individual," Stu says. "He

Stewart Blue, Byrd High hurdler

had a knack for looking at a kid and dreaming of what [track or field] event that kid could do...and then he would sell it to him.”

      And Turner “flattered me by saying that I looked like a fine future hurdler....who could also throw the discus....and if I walked the way he said walk, talk the way he said talk, stay away from booze, cigarettes and girls, and remove the word ‘can't’ from my vocabulary, that he'd get me a scholarship in two years. At 6-4, 148 pounds, and nerdy, I bought into it.

     “Then the unthinkable happened. I would win both hurdles races and the discus, a triple that was unheard of in track and field. As promised, two years later the [college] coaches started coming.”

     That included majors (such as LSU, Tennessee, Baylor, Houston, Tulane), most of the state schools [then-Division II]  and even the U.S. Military Academy was a possibility.

       He made a last-minute decision to attend USL, not the usual call for a North Louisiana athlete or Byrd graduates, not what his family or friends recommended or wanted.

       But he liked Lafayette from competing in the Southwestern Relays and he eventually found the area to his liking ... for good.

       At USL, after a rough start and thoughts of transferring, he surprisingly began running the 440-yard dash and sprint relays, events he had not run at Byrd.

      “Scared to death,” he recalled. “I began working under a grad assistant whose philosophy was that everyone is a quarter miler until they prove they can run something else.”

       Another surprise: He adjusted quickly, setting a USL school record on his first try … at home in the Shreveport Relays college division on the Byrd track and beating ex-Byrd teammates Greg Falk and Jimmy Hughes, both All-Staters at Byrd who finished first and fourth in the state meet and were now at Northeast Louisiana.

     It was especially a surprise for Coach Turner and Hughes, who “laughed at me” when he said he would run the 440 (because the hurdles field was filled). They weren’t laughing after the race.

     That spring, he won the Gulf States Conference 440-yard title, again beating Hughes and Falk. (He won the event again as a senior in 1969.)

     He settled in at USL after a rough start and thoughts of transferring, picked up a nickname “Bluebird,” and became the school's best quartermiler to that point.

      And he built a good relationship with Bob Cole, the USL coach who put together a squad that won conference titles in Blue’s first three years there.

    “After I graduated I traveled with Cole to all of the meets and helped him at home [meets],” Stu said of his start in officiating. “We fished constantly at his Toledo Bend camp after he retired in 1984 and when he was in town, I wined and dined him … still.

      “He turned out to be my best man when I married and I took care of him while he fought cancer and until he died in 2007. I was honored when his children asked me to deliver his eulogy. Coaches called him my ‘daddy.’

       “He had the personality of a brick wall. But he knew how to communicate and motivate and he knew how to love people, if not show it. John McDonnell (who came from Ireland to run distance races at USL in the mid-1960s), as the most prolific track coach in the NCAA of any sport, gave Cole credit for all of his successes and for teaching him how to motivate athletes.”

       After graduation, Stu's goal was to be with the FBI, but it did not develop. What did after a few weeks of waiting was a position with a drug company in New Orleans. He went into sales and left in 1993 as Pfizer’s Houston-New Orleans district manager, starting his own consulting company with two former teammates.

       Meanwhile, his track and field world expanded. He began helping USL conduct its home meets, expanded his area high school connections and when Pat Henry became the LSU coach in 1988, he found a champion.

     Henry's LSU teams won 27 national championships until Texas A&M hired him away after the 2004 season, and he's added nine with the Aggies. And Stewart Blue is a believer.

       “He has built the overall finest facilities in the world in College Station,” Stewart opines, “$100 million worth. Oregon will open its world’s finest outdoor facility next spring and I am anxious to be there working the [Olympic] Trials.”

     He works meets at ULL, LSU and Arkansas, but with any conflict, his first allegiance is to A&M, no matter that it’s a five-hour trip.

       “They do everything right,” he says, “and gave Pat a venue that has made track and field better.”

      Stewart can (and does) name-drop many of the greats — athletes and coaches — he’s met, a who’s who of American track and field. Good story about one of them: Carl Lewis.

     Lewis was helping coach at his alma mater, University of Houston, and as a meet referee, Stu had to ask him to leave the competition area during the long jump. Gist of story: He had to tell the gold-medal, prima donna (“Do you know who I am?”) to return to the coaching area in the stands.

     Lewis finally did. As he walked away, Stu thought to himself, “Did I just say that to Carl Lewis?”

---

     His Shreveport roots -- and plaudits -- return to two names.

Jerry Byrd Jr., Byrd assistant
principal, and Stewart Blue
show off the 2017 Class 5A
girls state championship
trophy, the first in track and 
field for Byrd since Blue's 
senior year (1965).

     One that those of us in sportswriting can appreciate: “Jerry Byrd was a great man whose [Shreveport Journal] articles were a factor in me getting the attention I did. I am eternally grateful to him and his memory will always be with me.”

     The second was Scotty Robertson. The bearer of bad news one day in the fall of 1962 gave him a moment to remember in 1974.

    On one of Stewart’s working trips to Ruston, in Robertson's last year as basketball coach at Louisiana Tech, they had lunch and when he had to leave to get back home to help officiate a track meet, Scotty offered advice.

     "He told me to get back to Lafayette and leave the sport better than I found (as an official)," Stu recalled.  "He reminded me that I had competed at meets that didn't have many officials and that everything in my life -- jobs, people, relationships -- would be connected to and made possible by the free education I received because of track ... and I should give back to what has turned out to be a great life, as he predicted.

    "And he was right.

    “It's 50 years later, and I'm still trying,” he added. “I've been all over the country with the sport and have developed some great friendships with talented people. And it's been a labor of love for those friends and the sport.”

      But the finish line is ahead. "The years to do that stuff are getting shorter," he says. "I'll go as long as my wife lets me, which might be 1-2-3 more years at most.

    “I've been extremely blessed and remember my roots, and those who "brung" me.”

     So he thanks the sport, and he's done his best to make it  better.

T-Willie found his calling in teaching and officiating

T-Willie Moore: A man in charge.
(photo by John James Marshall)

     His name is Clyde Oliver Moore, but few people know him by that. If you say T-Willie Moore, they'll know him.
      That is especially true in Shreveport-Bossier and across North Louisiana when it concerns high school football and any kind of baseball.
       For the past 45 years or so, T-Willie has been one of the most prominent, and most respected, football referees and baseball umpires in that area.
       He has worked hundreds of games; no, probably a thousand-plus. And he's still working -- at age 70, with no intention of stopping.
       Just last week he was umpiring baseball games in Jonesville, La., and Ruston, and this week he's off to DeQuincy. It's playoff time, so the games are taking a trusted veteran umpire a pretty good way out of Shreveport.
       But his life is much more than football or baseball, and always was. June and T-Willie, married since 1972, are the parents of two daughters and grandparents of seven (five girls, two boys). The kids and grandkids live in Texas and South Carolina, so there is time spent there by JuJu and PaPaT.
       And as long as he's been refereeing or umpiring, the

T-Willie, June -- and seven grandchilden

Moores have been teachers, and devoted to their religious beliefs and their community.
       For 40 1/2 years, until he retired in May 2012, he taught Algebra I and pre-algebra at one location. First it was Eden Gardens Junior High, then it became Caddo Middle Magnet in 1982.
       And Mr. Moore was one of the most popular teachers there. We know this, having asked some of his students -- anytime I meet someone who attended Caddo Middle Magnet, I ask -- and parents who had children at the school.
       Like T-Willie, June also taught math. But she eventually went into administration and retired in 2007 as an assistant principal at Caddo Magnet High School.
       Even now, T-Willie takes the occasional substitute teaching job, and he and June have a fulfilling commitment -- for more than 20 years, a couple of nights (or days) a week they have mentored students in math at church.
       "God is good. All the time," T-Willie says. "I have been really blessed to do what I love -- teaching kids and officiating. I knew the Lord wanted me working with kids. I hope to bring glory to Him in what I do and help others."
       Monday night, when I called, they were busy at LSU-S, helping serve a breakfast-type meal prepared by their church Sunday School class to Shreveport Baptist Collegiate Ministry students studying for finals.
       If you have known T-Willie for some time -- and we have been friends since the mid-1960s -- and you talk on the phone or meet, this is almost a certainty. He will end conversations with "love you, man." I am not the only one who has noticed that.
       Athletics -- baseball, really -- was how T-Willie Moore first became known in Shreveport, and how we met.
       He was a pitcher, an unusual one, in high school and American Legion baseball, and then -- surprisingly -- even in college at Louisiana Tech, where we arrived together as freshmen in the fall of 1965.
---
       He was the youngest of five brothers, all two years apart, who grew up on Leo Street (Broadmoor neighborhood) in Shreveport. Their father, Johnnie, was a salesman for a wholesale lumber company; mother Frances was a homemaker.
       Clyde came through the area schools -- A.C. Steere Elementary (grades 1-3), then Arthur Circle when it opened (grades 4-6), Youree Drive Junior High when it opened in 1959 and Byrd High School (1962-65).
       The nickname came from the kids he played baseball with in fifth grade, and from then on he was "T-Willie." Even his school teachers knew him by that name.

No fastball, but three years as a pitcher
at Louisiana Tech.

      At age 11, he began playing SPAR Midget ball for the Optimist Rebels as a pitcher-shortstop.
      By high school, it was evident that he was not going to be a fastball pitcher. But he could make a baseball spin and dance, and he was especially successful as a change-of-pace pitcher following the harder-throwing "aces" of the Byrd High and Cobbs Barbecue (American Legion) teams, Dale LaVigne and James Gillespie.
       "I couldn't break a window," he said, "but I tried to hit spots and change speeds -- slow, slower and slowest with the knuckle curve change-up -- almost like slowpitch softball," he said.
       It was Pete Barrouquere, a sportswriter for The Shreveport Times covering baseball at the time, who was impressed with T-Willie's "stuff" and began calling him "The Snake Doctor" in stories.
       T-Willie's best game, as he recalled, came in the Legion state semifinals in 1965 when he relieved LaVigne against the Lake Charles Stevedores, retired 24 of the 27 batters he faced and was the winning pitcher. He was supposed to start the next game, too, but after a rainout and a day's rest, Cobbs coach Woodrow McCullar decided to start LaVigne again.
        Later that summer, in a conversation at lunch one day at McCullar's drug store (right across the street from Byrd High), Mr. McCullar -- one of the best Legion coaches for a couple of decades in Shreveport and a good mentor of pitchers -- told T-Willie he would not pitch in college baseball.
        "He didn't know my heart," T-Willie said, reflecting on that.
        McCullar also didn't know that Pat Patterson, who was the Byrd baseball coach in Moore's junior and senior years, would begin his long tenure as baseball coach at Louisiana Tech in 1968 and '69.
        T-Willie did not make the Tech team as a freshman, but he was a big influence on a longtime teammate through their kid years.
       Glenn Theis had been the third baseman at Byrd when they were seniors, and after he struggled so badly at the plate, he was not going to play at Tech ... until "T-Willie invited me to go out with him and Jim King because practicing baseball was a lot of fun."
        Theis would develop into Tech's top hitter and an all-conference second baseman his last two seasons.
        "I owe so much to him, and I will never forget what he did for me," said Theis, who remained in Ruston to live and work after college.
        "Beside his helping me, I have great love and respect for T-Willie," he added. "... He worked hard to get where he got in every area of his life, and he made a difference in so many lives. He is always so much fun to be around.
        "... And he was a very smart pitcher who used his mind over any outstanding natural ability.
        "Best of all, he is such a great guy."
---
        It was at Tech in a math methods class that T-Willie met the pretty auburn-haired girl named June Flowers, and they dated his senior year.
       But after graduation, in 1970, T-Willie was drafted into the U.S. Army -- at the height of the Vietnam conflict. However, he got a slight break ... if a stint in the unforgiving cold of South Korea was a break (better than being shot at Vietnam).
       June began teaching math at Youree Drive in 1971. When T-Willie returned from Korea in January 1972, his military time done, he began teaching, too. They were married July 20, 1972. (I remember that date -- and always remind them that I do. I was at the wedding and still have the souvenir napkin with the date on it.)
       "She was a straight A student, and I was a P.E. major," T-Willie noted. "Just like you," he told me, "I married way above what I deserve. She is a wonderful wife, mother and grandmother. I have been truly blessed."
       June took a three-year maternity leave from teaching (1977-80), and Karen and Janet were born. By this time, T-Willie's officiating career was established.

T-Willie and Gene Johnson (background)
about to call a Louisiana Tech vs.
Grambling game at Fair Grounds Field.

       It had begun at Tech. A physical education course in officiating piqued his interest, he began calling intramural basketball games, and "Gravy" (Pat Patterson) arranged for T-Willie and (basketball player) Charles Deville to call a high school game while they were students.
     Back in Shreveport, longtime recreation department boss Chris Sidaris got him into baseball umpiring for SPAR games at the Anderson Island field in 1972 and then assigning him high school and Legion games.

       "Gene Johnson and I worked a lot of high school games together since we were teaching together," he recalled, "and I worked junior high basketball [for years] while teaching at Eden Gardens."

       Helped by Bob Molcany and Lloyd Boyce ("Sarge") -- two umps any Shreveport-Bossier baseball kid from the late 1950s through mid-1970s knew -- he began working college games at Centenary and East Texas Baptist in 1975. He called college ball for 37 years.

       (Eventually the Shreveport Regional Umpire Association was formed, and T-Willie assigned the Legion and college crews for games at North Louisiana schools and East Texas Baptist.)

       Two college baseball memories:

       "LSU played Northwestern State in Alexandria," he said, "and NSU had a lead going into the ninth inning when LSU tied it up on a close call at home plate. Dave Van Horn (then the NSU coach, now in his 15th year as the University of Arkansas coach) came out [and argued the call] and covered up home plate (with dirt, a la Billy Martin], saying I wanted them [LSU] to win. He got tossed. LSU won in the 12th inning. I thought to myself, I should have called [the runner] out, so I could get back to Shreveport earlier (and NSU would have won).

       "Pat Patterson, when I was a player at Tech, was ejected from a game at Nicholls State for taking his hat off and banging it against his leg while arguing a call. Years later I had a game at Tech and Pat came running out at me on a call. He took his hat off and started banging it against his leg, saying 'don't throw me out, don't throw me out, T. I'm just trying to fire them up.' It took all I had to keep from laughing at him. I didn't toss him, and they didn't win."

       As the assignment secretary for the Shreveport regional association, T-Willie said he would have "our members meet at my home and go over rules and mechanics. We did this before each college and Legion season."

       Even now -- as you will see -- that is part of his routine. When I called him early one evening in late February, he was at a scrimmage involving several teams at North Desoto High (near Shreveport) and he was evaluating and instructing young umpires on their mechanics.

---      

The football referee, since 1973

     T-Willie began officiating football in 1973, influenced by second-oldest brother Bobby, who was a high school official for years in Shreveport-Bossier. (In fact, his name was in a game story or two -- much to his dismay -- courtesy of a young sportswriter in Shreveport. That's all I can say about that.)

     "I was supposed to be the clock operator for Green Oaks vs. Mansfield," T-Willie recalled, "when Clark Matkins got sick, so they put me at the umpire position. Jack Ferrell was the referee and told me I needed to call something. In the second half, I [finally] threw a flag. Jack asked me what I had. I turned and saw the No. 52 green, so I called holding on him. I had no clue, but things kind of settled down a little.

       "I haven't umpired [in football] again in the last 45 years.

       "I started working on the end of the line and refereed four games the first year. I still didn't have much of a clue, but since I umpired baseball, they thought I knew football."

       Now he does.

       Mike Thibodeaux was a big-time college basketball official (Southeastern Conference group) for 27 years until hip injuries forced him to retire. He also has been the assigning secretary for high school officiating in Northwest Louisiana for football for three decades and baseball for four years. And he appreciates T-Willie Moore.

       "After 46 years in baseball and 44 in football, T-Willie still is excited about every game he works," Thibodeaux said. 

       "In baseball he treats every game the same, from Class 5A to Class C," he added. "He still works just as hard in every game.

       "I have worked baseball games with T-Willie at Fair Grounds Field where Centenary was playing LSU and there were 6,000 fans there and I have worked Class C games where there were 20 people there and he works just as hard no matter what level." 

       In football, Thibodeaux said, "He always has his crew of six officials prepared for the game. Even though he has the same crew for 10 weeks, T-Willie always has a solid pregame where his crew spends 30 minutes going over positioning, rules and at all times hustle. Nobody will outwork T-Willie on the field."

---
      Mike Suggs has been coaching football at Byrd for 26 years, the last 19 as head coach, and said, "Through the years, I've had T-Willie as an official many, many, many times, and seen him do football and baseball games often.
       "You know you're going to have a quality person, a nice guy and a professional."
       Suggs said that "no official is going to get all the calls right, and as a coach you're going to complain some. But you go back and look at the films and realize that sometimes when you complain, the official did get it right.
       "With T-Willie, year in and year out, he's going to do a consistent job. He's going to treat you right, treat the kids right. He's consistent and that's important to know. That's something you always want. You appreciate that as a coach."
---
       Glenn Maynor was a high school and college pitcher in the late 1980s/early 1990s when T-Willie umpired a few of his games and since 1995, he's been the Haughton High School baseball coach.
       "He's chatty," Maynor says. "He talks to everyone. He's vocal -- not in a bad way; he talks to players, coaches. He's cordial, very professional, and pretty fair."
       But there was one day, one game, a couple of years ago ...
       "He ejected me," Maynor said, "one of the two times I've been ejected as a coach. Granted, I deserved it; it was warranted. [In arguing a call] I said the wrong thing. He had made some pretty rough calls earlier in the game. I thought I had a valid point."
       Maynor said as the argument developed -- it was a bunt play and a throw to first which, as Moore recalled, hit the batter/runner who was well inside the baseball when the throw hit him in the back (an out) -- "he's looking at me and I knew I had screwed up. I could see by the look on his face, he's thinking, 'I'm going to have to eject him.'
       "Next time I saw him, when he had one of our games, I apologized," Maynor said, "and it was fine after that."
---

T-Willie Moore has made thousands of strike calls in his long
 baseball umpiring career. (Photo by John James Marshall)

       John James Marshall observed T-Willie's officiating as an athlete, sports writer/editor and as an American Legion baseball coach for a few summers.
       "He is just so fair," JJ said. "He's never putting on a show like some officials or umpires do. He's so level-headed.
       "[As a coach] I always felt obligated to ask about some calls because you had to stick up for your team," he added, "but he would explain it, and you knew he would be calm about it. Not like some of those umps you see on TV that start arguing with the other person."
       Doug Bland, a football and track star at Woodlawn High in the mid-1960s who went on to play football at LSU and is a longtime insurance agent in Shreveport, has been a football official for 27 years, 20 as a referee.
       "T-Willie, as you can probably guess, is highly thought of by all his fellow officiating team members," Bland said. "That also carries over to the coaches. I know coaches breathe a sigh of relief when he is assigned to their games.
       "He knows the rules and, more importantly, knows how and when to apply them. He does a great job of explaining them to coaches even though sometimes they don't agree. He is always willing to help new officials, which has improved the overall performance of our association. He works all levels of football -- middle school, jayvee, varsity -- which helps the young officials."
---
      The reward in officiating, says T-Willie, "is enjoying calling a game where both teams have an equal opportunity to win the game, and nobody noticed that we [the officials/umps] were there."
      The rewards are just as great in mentoring kids.
      "June and I started teaching preschoolers when our girls were young," he said. "When the girls moved up to the young department [at church], we did, too." They have continued working with middle and high school students at church.
      "We have a motto at our church that "every member is a missionary," T-Willie said. "It is such a blessing helping others and encouraging them."
      It is the same in athletics.

      "T-Willie, after all these years, still loves the game and the kids," said Thibodeaux. "He is still giving back to the game with his time and is still respected by coaches and officials every time he steps on the field.
       "The three most important things I can say about T-Willie," said Thibodeaux, "are (1) He is a dedicated Christian man; (2) a dedicated family man; and (3) a dedicated official.

       "I am happy to say he is my friend."
       Many of us share that feeling about Clyde Oliver ... T-Willie.

       Love you, man. 



This recent standoff with a Calvary baserunner heading for home plate did not
 go well for the umpire. The runner banged into T-Willie Moore and bowled him
 over. Playing to the spectators, T-Willie climbed to his knees and signaled "safe." 

 

 

     

It's true: Welcome to The City of Byrd

       My Woodlawn friends are going to love this, or maybe not. But this happened, so they should accept it.
       I spent parts of last Saturday afternoon and evening figuratively visiting The City of Byrd -- and it was a good experience.
       OK, I "crashed" the Byrd High School Class of '65 50-year reunion, and no one stopped me. But crashed isn't exactly correct; I was invited. Visited with a couple of dozen old friends -- yes, I had friends over there -- and they did not make me sing We Are The Jackets.
       But I could have; I know the words. Heard them far too often in the 1960s. Same for the Notre Dame Victory March, which also is the Byrd Victory March.
       Actually, I went to school with some of these people when I lived in the Line Avenue area of Shreveport. And I went to Sunday School, religious school, at the Jewish places of worship, and was in the B'nai Zion Temple confirmation class of 1962 with a dozen future Byrd High graduates. By then, I was about to be a Woodlawn Knight.
       On Saturday -- when I drove from Fort Worth a day ahead of my speaking appearance at the annual Shreveport-Bossier Holocaust Remembrance Service -- I was invited to a reunion of those Temple/Byrd High people.
      Ben Sour Jr., my best friend among the Jewish kids from the time we first met in about 1958, organized the reunion. In the 50 years since we all graduated from high school, I had seen only a couple of them.
       The afternoon get-together at a Shreveport restaurant was -- honestly -- exciting. I was happy to see them, and vice versa. Because a few didn't make it, and were in town for the Byrd reunion -- plus I wanted to visit longer with some others -- Ben suggested I also attend the night dinner for the '65 Yellow Jackets at East Ridge Country Club.
       So, a drawing of Jack The Jacket was the only thing guarding the entryway. I joined the Jackets.
---

With my friends Ben Sour, Danny Goldberg, David Goldberg

       I have written this about the Sunset Acres/Oak Terrace/Woodlawn kids of the late 1950s/early
1960s: They welcomed me, and accepted me, and were my friends. They were a big part of my life.
       The same for the Temple kids. I always considered them a classy group, smart kids from good  families, and almost all were much better at and more dedicated to the religious teachings than I was.
       On Saturday, it was hello again to Ben Sour, Roy Adell, Jay Cheatham, Cyrelle Gerson, Robert Levy, Fred Phillips, twins Danny and David Goldberg, Stephen Katz, and Marilyn Meyer.
       I thank them for the friendships and the memories of classes with Mrs. Sylvia Katz and, in our ninth-grade year, the confirmation grind under Rabbi David Lefkowitz Jr.  We were all in it together.
        There is a unique bond with one of the girls in the class, which I will get to at the end of this piece.
         But there also is a bond with four of the guys who were athletes in junior high and then at Byrd -- Fred Phillips, the solidly built offensive guard in football; Danny Goldberg, the tough All-State defensive end; lanky David Goldberg, a starter in basketball; and Jay Cheatham, a good-looking dark-haired, strong All-State outfielder.
         I was a manager for the Oak Terrace and Woodlawn teams that competed against the teams with these guys, but I didn't root against my friends. I was proud of the Jewish kids.
         Didn't like losing to them, though, and as Danny Goldberg kept reminding me, "You guys didn't beat us in anything."
         Well, it's true. Woodlawn was 0-3 vs. Byrd in football in my high school years. And, as I've written previously, it was a bitter rivalry. That was the game each year in Shreveport-Bossier; crowds of 20,000-plus.
          One of my friends who played football said to me a couple of years ago that he "played terrible against Byrd; I always regretted that." I had to laugh at that; it's a little late for lament. Believe me, I got over the losses years ago.
           In basketball, after going 0-for-almost four seasons against Byrd, we routed them in my senior year -- one of our four wins (in 25 games) that season when one of my best friends, Ken Liberto, scored 37 points, hitting 19 free throws. That was in 19 attempts.
          And in baseball, best I can remember, we won six of eight games vs. Byrd in three years. So we didn't lose in everything.
          But, yes, Byrd was king in football those years, district champion twice and robbed of a chance for three in a row.
          Then, too, Woodlawn did quite well in football after we graduated -- five consecutive wins (all of them one-sided) against Byrd from '65 to '69, five district titles in a row, one state championship and six trips to the state semifinals in a 14-year period (1965-78).
           Byrd in that time: no district titles, no semifinals.
           I think the Woodlawn people can feel OK about the '60s and '70s. Besides, we also had a great school.
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          I always loved the history of the older schools in Shreveport-Bossier, the tradition -- whether it was Byrd, Fair Park, Bossier or St. John's (later Jesuit, now Loyola College Prep), Booker T. Washington. Once I became a sportswriter, it was a treat to go to the schools and visit.
          I was a fan of all of them, and now I have friends from all the schools in the area.
          My opinion: Byrd remains Shreveport-Bossier's "star" school -- the best academics, some of the best athletics. It was certainly that way in the 1960s. Those people at Saturday night's reunion have reason to be proud.
          All the schools were terrific then, but Byrd probably is the closest to what it was then. Its magnet-school program and its active alumni base have kept it that way, and they are updating the building and grounds, which have been there since the school's first year (1926).
          Here was one of the fun parts for me Saturday night -- not only seeing the Temple kids, but also talking with others who were athletes.
          There were old friends from baseball such as James Gillespie, who looks young enough to still pitch nine innings, and Glenn Theis; and some football players who I'd seen play but had never met -- Gene Hunt, the inspirational quarterback; Robert Pirtle; Bill Erwin, a tremendous all-around athlete in junior high and high school; and Joe Walker, who (as I told him) I considered the unsung hero of the team, a big-play guy at receiver and cornerback.
          Two other longtime friends from that Byrd Class of  '65: pitcher-turned-umpire/referee Clyde Oliver "T-Willie" Moore and Shreveport Captains owner-operator Taylor F. ("Frosty") Moore.
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Gene Hunt, still No. 10

        I wrote about Dr. Gene Hunt previously, in relation to the Byrd-Woodlawn rivalry and his opposing QB for two years, Trey Prather.   http://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2012/04/dr-hunt-delivered-for-byrd.html
        Gene gave a rousing speech at the Class of '65 gathering Saturday morning in the Byrd auditorium. That night, as I approached him, he was busy talking to someone and, before I even spoke, he handed me a CD entitled The Sounds of Byrd.
          I didn't even have to ask.  But I did laugh, and I gladly accepted. A few minutes later, I had a nice talk with Gene.
          On the drive home to Fort Worth the next day, I listened to the 30-minute CD, which includes sound bytes from 1964-65 -- football practice with coaches revving up players, the "Go West Day" against Fair Park to end the regular season, tunes from the Byrd band, songs from the choir, skits and cheers from cheerleaders and the pep squad, pep rallies with the principal, J.H. Duncan, firing up the students, the P.A. describing game action while Byrd wrapped up the district title with a 14-0 win against a very good Fair Park team.
           And then the raising of the Victory Flag back at the school, a rousing version of We Are The Jackets (I got chills listening to it, and sang along), the students chanting "We're Number One" (and they were), and then the Byrd alma mater.
           I discovered about a year ago that the We Are The Jackets tune is adapted from the theme song of the movie Giant.
           Listening to the Byrd alma mater -- which the CD narration said has been used since 1943 -- I thought I was hearing Love Me Tender. So when I got home, I did some research.
           Wikipedia says Love Me Tender, written for Elvis Presley for the 1956 movie, "puts new words to a new musical adaptation of the Civil War song Aura Lee, published in 1861. ... It later became popular with college glee clubs and barbershop quartets. It was also sung at the U.S. Military Academy."
            Hey, do you people at Byrd do anything original? Aura Lee, Giant, Notre Dame Victory March ... At least -- I think -- the Woodlawn alma mater and fight song were original compositions by our first band director, Richard Jennings.
            But, look, I loved the CD. We are the Jackets -- best of all!
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            There was one more reunion within the reunion for me. Ben Sour happened to mention the name Stan Gove. When he did, I almost jumped. Stan graduated in the Byrd Class of '65, but in 1957-59, when we moved to Sunset Acres, he and his family lived just across the street from us. I jumped their back fence hundreds of times to get to the Sunset Acres Elementary playground.
            We were friends and playing companions; he was in my sixth-grade class. So to see Stan -- whose family moved to the Byrd district as we entered junior high -- after all these years was another treat.                      
             Of all the people at the reunion, though, I went back further with one girl -- Marilyn Meyer (married name Kaplan for the past six months). When I saw her Saturday afternoon, the first thing she said was, "I remember in third grade ..."

Marilyn Meyer Kaplan

        On Jan. 12, 1956, the day we arrived by train in Shreveport at 7 a.m.-- after leaving The Netherlands by boat 15 days earlier --  I was enrolled at Line Avenue Elementary School that afternoon. Marilyn was in my classroom that day; she was in my third- and fourth-grade classes, then again for five years in Sunday School.
        She was, as I told her, the smartest girl in the class -- in fact, in any class she was in.  
        Talking about those days was an emotional few minutes for me. I remember how difficult it was to make the adjustment to a foreign place. http://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2012/05/at-first-i-got-in-line.html             
        "You were cute," she said, "and you were small. I was small, too, so I liked that. You ate strange food, and I remember that I was fascinated because you were from a different culture. That's always fascinated me throughout my life and career."
       She also remembered my frustration -- "books slamming and desk-pounding" -- and that "sometimes we liked each other, and sometimes we didn't." And, yes, I remember that, too. But when she apologized for her behavior, there was no need. Because I was not an easy kid to know.
       It's all ancient history now, and the seniors of 1965 -- Byrd, Woodlawn, etc. -- are somewhat ancient. But those of us still here are not history, and for that we're grateful. And I'm grateful that for one night, I hung out in The City of Byrd.
       Danny Goldberg laughingly told me that if I was around for their 60th class reunion, they might award me an honorary degree from Byrd.
       I told him that I have 10 years to think about it. I'm thinking my Woodlawn friends are not going to approve.