Dobyns Bennett Basketball Salutes Douglass High School 

Douglass High School served Kingsport's black community for almost four decades, closing in 1966 with the completion of integration in the Kingsport schools.
Over those four decades there were parallel programs of excellence with both schools winning state championships in football and basketball. In 1946 Douglass basketball went a step farther, competing for a National Championship Tournament for all black schools.
This Saturday, Feb. 1, D-B Basketball will pay tribute at its game to all those great teams and great athletes who competed for Douglass. Many, many Douglass alums are expected to be on hand to participate in the celebration.
That 1946 basketball team was a special group. Because Douglass was a small school most athletes played basketball and football. The next year, the Douglass football team won the state championship for black schools.
Vernell Allen, the star of the '46 team, returned to Kingsport ten years ago when Douglass' trophies were returned to the old school, now V.O. Dobbins Center, and installed in a special trophy case.
I wrote about that ceremony.

It was the first week in March 1946. Dobyns-Bennett had just been knocked out of the regional basketball tournament by Friendsville so the eyes of Kingsport basketball fans turned to the scrappy bunch from Douglass High.

The Big Tiger, as the Kingsport Times called the team, was on a roll. The team had won the Appalachian tournament in Bristol and the Regional tournament in Knoxville and was heading to Nashville to take on Woodstock High of Memphis for the Tennessee Negro High School championship.

The Tigers were led by Vernell Allen, nephew of Douglass principal Van Dobbins, and a recent arrival in Kingsport. Vernell’s father had died the previous summer and Vernell, his mother and his two sisters came to Kingsport to live with the Dobbins family.

Vernell was back in Kingsport in 2010 and he recalled how he was immediately indoctrinated in the Dobbins ethic: “to stay out of trouble, to be a positive example to the other Douglass students, and to excel at everything thing you do.”

And he did, especially the excel part.

He was the leader of the Douglass team that jumped out to an early lead in the state championship game and coasted to a 32-26 win.

Allen was named to the All-State team and was also named the tournament’s Most Valuable Player. He had averaged 12 points a game over the season.

That Douglass team didn’t excel at first. It had been slow to jell, probably due to integrating a new player – Allen – into an established squad. They lost four of their first ten games and certainly didn’t look like a district champ, much less a contender for a state title.

The team seemed to turn its season around in late January when it got revenge – and how – for an earlier loss, pounding Bristol (Tennessee) Slater 54-8. That began a string of 12 wins, including a convincing 45-35 victory over traditional power Alcoa Hall High. A close loss to Bristol (Virginia) Douglass was followed by a six-win run that culminated in the state championship.

But the Tigers season wasn’t over.

In 1945 the athletic director at Tennessee A&I State College – as Tennessee State was known then - had created the National Negro High School Basketball Tournament to decide a national champion for all-black schools.

Kingsport’s Douglass was invited to represent the state of Tennessee. The 16-team tournament included teams from Florida, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Virginia, and the defending champion, Oklahoma City Douglass, which was placed in the same bracket with the Kingsport squad.

Kingsport Douglass Coach C.C. Kizer took a ten man squad to Nashville:

Vernell Allen, Grant Banner, Ralph Banner, DeArmond Blye, Wallace Blye, Wendell Brown, Bobby Graves, Bobby Joe Johnson, Johnny Johnson and Andy Watterson,

Bobby Joe, a reserve on that team, told me in 2010, “We thought we were good. Till we got to the national tournament.”

They faced St. Louis Vashon High in the first round.

The Kingsport Times story told the tale. “The Tigers could not match the smooth-working St. Louis club, and fell behind early.”

The final was 41-17, dropping Douglass into the losers’ bracket, where they faced the defending national champs.

It was the same story. Oklahoma City raced out to a big lead and won 34-18.

Two days later Booker T. Washington of Cushing, Oklahoma defeated Middleton High of Tampa, Florida 44-40 for the national title.

But the story doesn’t end there.

The trip gave Vernell Allen exposure to the Tennessee A&I staff, who offered him a basketball scholarship. After graduating with a degree in education in 1950, he taught in Shelby County for three years then moved to Michigan to work on his master’s degree at Wayne State.

He and his sister Augusta were featured in a 1955 Kingsport Times-News story about distinguished Douglass graduates. “Augusta and Vernell were outstanding students at Tennessee State. She is now teaching English in Lexington, Tennessee.” The story noted that while working on his master’s, Vernell had a “recreational job that pays $3,600 a year.” That was a nice salary in 1955, especially for a student working on a degree. He received his master’s in education in 1958 and spent his career as an educator in Detroit.

 Vernell returned to Kingsport in 2010 for a ceremony dedicating the new trophy case at the V.O. Dobbins Center, which had been Douglass High in 1946. His basketball MVP trophy had been discovered in a storage room at D-B and he smiled broadly as he placed it in the new trophy space.

He smiled even more broadly when asked about his daughter Geri Allen, a well-known jazz composer and pianist, who has worked with everyone from McCoy Tyner to Ornette Coleman. If you Google Geri, almost every story includes this sentence: “She cites her primary influences to be her parents, Mount Vernell Allen Jr, and Barbara Jean Allen.”

Vernell had taught her that Dobbins family ethic: stay out of trouble, be a positive influence and work to excel.

In 2010 I wrote this about the return of the Douglass High athletic trophies to their rightful home:

The trophies finally came home.

After more than four decades the sports trophies that the students at the old Douglass High School won have been returned to their rightful home, in a trophy case in their old building.

When Douglass, Kingsport’s historically black high school, closed in 1966, all its trophies, including a state basketball championship trophy and a state football championship trophy, were moved, along with all the Douglass students, into Dobyns-Bennett.

Some of the trophies went into Dobyns-Bennett’s trophy case but because of a shortage of space, many of the Douglass trophies, along with a number of the D-B trophies, were packed up in boxes and forgotten.

Well, forgotten by the people who packed them up.

But not by the students who won them.

Last Friday, after a ribbon cutting ceremony dedicating the former Douglass building as the V.O. Dobbins Senior Complex, a number of Douglass’ graduates gathered in the community room for another ceremony, the return of the Douglass trophies.

Among those in attendance were Vernell Allen, the star of the 1946 basketball team that defeated Memphis Woodstock to win the state basketball championship, and Bobby Joe Johnson and Jack Pierce, who were members of the 1946 and 1948 football teams that won state championships.

Jack Pierce, who played tackle, remembered the trip to Chattanooga to play the powerhouse black school Howard. “We drive up in our ratty old bus and look up at this school. It was as big as D-B.”

Douglass had only fifteen players and after all 15 had piled off, a pair of Howard students wandered over to take a look at their opponents.

“One of the fellows looked us over and said to his friend, ‘If I’d known the circus was coming to town, I’d have stayed out of school today.”

Howard soon learned that this was no circus team. Douglass ran over, around and through the Howard eleven, winning 26-13 and moving closer to the state championship game against Knoxville Austin.

They topped Austin for the state championship 14-13 on a halfback pass from Buddy Bond to quarterback Bobby Joe Johnson. “Although covered Johnson picked the ball out of the air,” this newspaper reported.

That marked Douglass’ third state championship in three years, two in football and the one in basketball.

But over the years those trophies got misplaced – and there never was a 1946 football trophy. But last Friday they were brought back together, shined up, repaired and in the case of the ’46 trophy replaced.

And returned to their rightful home.

Douglass trophies back where they belong.

• Coach DeVault
• How a Baptist preacher's son from tiny Watauga Academy in tiny Butler, Tennessee became head basketball coach at Dobyns-Bennett

Chris Poore began his third year as Dobyns-Bennett boys basketball coach this season. And if history is a guide, he should be in the head coach’s seat for a long time.

Basketball has always been the model of stability at Dobyns-Bennett.

Take away the brief period after LeRoy Sprankle resigned in mid-season in 1942-43, when D-B had four different coaches in five seasons, and you have a number of coaches with long, successful runs:

LeRoy Sprankle – 1921-1943

Guy B. Crawford – 1947-1960

Buck Van Huss – 1967-1990

Charlie Morgan – 2000-2017

And then there’s the early sixties, when D-B had three different coaches in four seasons.

That little anomaly began on Jan. 2, 1960 when word leaked out that long-time coach Guy B. Crawford was resigning effective at the end of the season. Crawford had won eight conference championships and finished third in the state three times and second in the state twice.

It was mysterious that Crawford would resign mid-season but there were a lot of mysterious things about Crawford’s career. He would die a mysterious death two years later after playing late into the night in a high stakes poker game.

Guy B. was only ten months removed from finishing third in the state when he abruptly bolted for….

No one knew.

Things started to become clear on Feb. 2, 1960.

The Kingsport Times reported that Joe Lister was resigning as Morristown basketball coach to enter private business.

“Kingsport Dobyns-Bennett coach Guy B. Crawford last night had no comment concerning the vacancy left by Lister's resignation. Crawford has previously stated that he would probably stay in the Big 7 Conference, and that he has reached verbal agreement with an unnamed school. Speculation has centered on Morristown as Crawford’s next position.”

And so the search was on for a new D-B basketball coach.

On March 27, 1960 in his Point of View column in the Kingsport Times, sportswriter Don Algood wrote:

“Rumor has it that the choice lies between present assistant coach Bob DeVault and Elvin Little of Lenoir City [who had won the state in 1958]. Probably the hottest candidate of all, Hampton's Walter ‘Buck’ Van Huss, decided against applying even before taking his Bulldogs to Nashville to pick up the Tennessee title [only days earlier]. Vernon Osborne of Alcoa [which had won the state in 1959] applied, then withdrew his name. Another hat thought to be in the ring belongs to Sam Dixon of Appalachia. Incidentally, a lot of folks seem to think DeVault was removed from contention when Swick stated that a combination basketball-baseball coach was sought. Not so, says soft-spoken Bob. ‘I coached baseball when I was at Elizabethton, and I told Mr. Swick that I could and would take baseball here. However, I think it would fit better into the coaching program here to have a baseball coach who could assist with basketball - that is, if I were the basketball coach.’ DeVault assists with spring football and scouts for head football coach Bill Jasper in the fall – and is in line for a lot of credit for D-B football victories.”

Science Hill hired Elvin Little before D-B could get around to making an offer.

Out of nowhere emerged a new candidate, Dwane Morrison, who had turned around the basketball program at Anderson (S.C.) High in only three seasons. In his second year his team had finished third in the state and in March 1960 they had won South Carolina’s 3-A high school basketball championship.

Plus he was willing to coach baseball.

He was hired.

On Nov. 18, 1960 the Kingsport Times wrote, “D-B's 1960-61 basketball team will take the court - against highly-regarded Sullivan - with the familiar red bandana-waving figure of Guy B. Crawford missing from the sidelines.”

(Incidentally Sullivan was coached by D-B grad Dickie Warren, class of ’53, who was never mentioned in this coaching search or any future D-B coaching searches, although he certainly had the credentials. Dickie would retire from Sullivan Central in 1999 with 922 career wins.)

Times sportswriter Don Allgood talked to Morrison before his first game as D-B head coach.

“Although no one is going out of his way to put him there, Dwane Morrison is a man decidedly ‘on the spot.’ If anyone put the 30-year-old Kentuckian there, it was his predecessor, Guy B. Crawford - by winning 341 of 414 games in his 13 campaigns at D-B. How does Morrison intend to meet this challenge? ‘By just being myself,’ he says. ‘I think you just have to be yourself and do the best you can . . . It's really difficult to follow someone like coach Crawford. There is a little more pressure.’ Morrison feels Dobyns-Bennett’s winning tradition will help him. ‘The community spirit and the school spirit make it easier. They back you 100 percent. When you have to start from scratch, it takes a long lime to build up ... I know. I've been through it.’ Most D-B fans already know how well he succeeded in that situation, at Anderson, S. C., where basketball was at low ebb when he took over. ‘Anderson was just nowhere,’ he says. ‘We even played one team Anderson had never beaten.’ Two years later, in 1959, Anderson was third in South Carolina's Triple-A division. Last spring Morrison's boys took it all.”

One aspect of being “himself” meant introducing a new pattern of substitutions. Morrison used a platoon system, substituting five players at a time. Joe Eversole, who was the manager on that team, told me Morrison told him he knew he had to do something to differentiate himself from Guy B. and he settled on the platoon system.

Morrison had success with the method: his first D-B team went 36-3, finishing second in the state tournament. But not everyone was happy with platooning. Charlie Leonard used to tell me that Morrison had the best player in the state – that would be Charlie’s younger brother Bob – and he only played him 18 minutes a game.

After his second season, ending with a loss in the Region One tournament, Morrison got an offer he couldn’t refuse.

From the May 21, 1962 Kingsport Times:

“Dwane Morrison today marked his 32nd birthday by accepting the position as number one assistant basketball coach at the University of South Carolina. Morrison has been head basketball and baseball coach at Kingsport Dobyns-Bennett for the past two years. Including a one-point loss in the state championship game, Morrison's D-B teams won 62 of 70 games.

“Speculation on his successor has already started. Two of the top candidates are expected to be Bob DeVault, assistant at D-B since 1950, and Walter (Buck) Van Huss of Hampton. Both men this morning indicated considerable interest in the vacancy.”

Four days later, on May 25, 1962, the Times reported:

“Hampton Mentor Van Huss Nixes D-B Hardwood Post

“He gave three reasons for not submitting an application. ’First,’ Van Huss said, ‘I've got too many ties in Hampton. Then I’m 42 years old and that’s not a good time to be moving around.’ Van Huss concluded by saying, ‘It would cost me $1,000 to $3,000 to sell my house here (in Elizabethton). and buy another one in Kingsport.’”

I was on the D-B team at the time and we heard that Van Huss told D-B officials that he couldn’t leave Hampton at the time because the community had just built him a new gym.

Five years later, after DeVault left for a coaching job in Winston-Salem (where he won the state championship), Van Huss apparently was ready; he took the D-B job, beginning a 22-year run. 

Bob Devault coaching 1935 Watauga Academy girls basketball team

When Bob DeVault took D-B’s head basketball job in 1962, he already had 27 years of experience in coaching.

He began coaching at age 21, coaching girls’ basketball in 1935 at Watauga Academy in Butler, near Elizabethton (now referred to as Old Butler because TVA flooded the town in 1948 to create Watauga Dam and Lake).

Coach DeVault had graduated from Watauga Academy before attending Furman College. He taught and coached at Watauga Academy until the war. (He also coached football.)

Bob DeVault caching Watauga Academy football in 1936

After returning from the service, he took a job at Elizabethton High and was hired away in 1950 by Guy B. Crawford.

DeVault and Crawford were the exact opposites in personality. Guy B. was flamboyant; DeVault was soft-spoken. In my three years with the team I never heard Coach DeVault utter a profanity. The maddest I ever saw him was in a game against Chuckey-Doak. He disagreed with a call and threw down his ever-present clipboard. His anger was magnified by the sound of the clipboard, which landed exactly flat, creating a loud bang.

When Guy B.’s body was taken to the funeral home after his sudden death, Mrs. Crawford was too upset to identify the body and asked Coach DeVault to drive to Morristown to perform the i.d.

The Night Elvis Came to Kingsport - 1955

Billie Mae Smith in 1955, when she dated Elvis - and the photo he gave her. 

When Col. Tom Parker announced in the spring of 1976 that Elvis was coming to play three consecutive nights at Johnson City's Freedom Hall, I was editor of the Kingsport Times News' Saturday magazine, Weekender. When a big act came to town coverage usually fell to me. I had written a full page story about Alice Cooper, another full page story about Bruce Springsteen, even a full page story about Chubby Checker. 

Elvis wasn't doing interviews - he hadn't done an interview in years - so I needed an angle. The angle fell in my lap when my colleague Lyndia Frazier asked if I knew about Elvis' previous show in town, at the Civic Auditorium. I'd never heard of it. Elvis in Kingsport? She didn't remember the date or even the year but she was sure Elvis had played the Civic Auditorium. 

I started digging around, a detail here, a name there. Eventually I talked to almost everybody involved in the story, from WKIN station manager Dia Bahakel, who had promoted the show, to Billie Mae Smith, who had gone on a date with Elvis after the performance, to Wayne "Booge" Allen, her boyfriend, who was not happy about his girlfriend going out with Elvis. 

Over the years since 1976 I have talked to some30 people who were at the show, filling in details on Elvis' one night in Kingsport. 

To celebrate Elvis' 85th birthday, here is the story of that night 65 years ago. 

Wayne "Booge" Allen in 1955

Wayne “Booge” Allen never saw it coming.

He knew his girlfriend Billie Mae Smith and her friends were going to a show at the Civic Auditorium.

He had no problem with that. After all he was planning to spend the evening hanging out with his buddies.

He and his pals were in his green and white Chevy Bel Air, heading downtown to cruise Broad. They were stopped at the light at the corner of Center and Wilcox when Booge looked over at the pink Cadillac convertible to his left. And what did he see but his girlfriend, Billie Mae Smith, sitting next to some greasy haired dude.

Booge would recall, “She leaned over and rolled down the window and told me to come down to her house later, there was someone she wanted me to meet.” Allen remembered thinking he didn’t want to meet the guy with her.

The guy with her was Elvis.

It was Sept 22, 1955 and Elvis was in town for his first, last and only Kingsport date. He was traveling with a couple of country acts, Cowboy Copas and the Louvin Brothers, and Elvis was the middle act on the bill. This was a couple of months before he signed with RCA and four months before his breakout hit “Heartbreak Hotel.”

Billie Mae didn’t have any idea who Elvis was before the show. “I was 20 years old then and I managed Huddle’s Record Shop. Back then they let you play the records before you bought them. A salesman came in with records that Elvis had recorded. I had never heard of Elvis but after hearing the recording I ordered some to sell. The salesman said, ‘Here are some tickets to an Elvis show that will be at your Civic Auditorium in September.’”

The Kingsport show was promoted by WKIN-AM deejay Chuck Foster and WKIN station manager Dia Bahakel. They had rented the Civic Auditorium and advertised the show on their station. 

Admission was $1.25 and in 1976 Bahakel told the Kingsport Times that a grand total of 270 people were in attendance.

Elvis opened his set with a joke - “Where is Kingsport, Tennessee anyway?”-  before launching into his first song, “Rock Around the Clock.” He played for half an hour, closing with the ballad “I Love You Because.”

That’s when the real story begins. During intermission Elvis and his band, the Blue Moon Boys, set up in the hall outside the stage door and signed autographs and sold photos for fifty cents. Darla Hodge recalled in ’76 that he pointed to her and said, “Hey Liz, hey Liz Taylor, come up here.” She did and he gave her a photo autographed “I love you, Liz - Elvis.”

After signing a few autographs, he led a group of admiring girls outside to show off his pink Cadillac.

Billie Mae Smith and her two girlfriends came up. When one was too shy to ask Elvis for any autograph, Billie Mae spoke up.

“I went up and I said, ‘When you get through showing off your car, my friend would like your autograph.’ He said, ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you want it?’”

Billie Mae said she replied, “’Not particularly.’ I was playing hard to get.”

He asked her name, she told him and he invited her to come back stage after the show was over.

“I told him I might.”

After the show, the three musical acts gathered round while Bahakel counted the money. After taking her cut, she divvied up the proceeds. She paid Elvis and his band $37 and change for their show.

Enter Billie Mae Smith, no longer as standoffish. She joined Elvis in his Caddy. He was hungry so she steered him to the local hangout, Jimmy’s Steak House at 3101 Memorial Boulevard at the Upper Circle where they had club sandwiches.

But first Billie Mae told Elvis she wanted to cruise Broad.

Billie Mae said, “I remember I kept looking at his hair because he had a permanent in it so that when he shook his head a curl would fall in his eyes.”

Billie Mae and Elvis were stopped at the red light at Center and Wilcox when Booge pulled up. And Billie Mae told Booge to come over later.

Once back at her house, she invited Elvis in for a cup of coffee. They were sitting at the kitchen table, talking and sipping coffee, when she heard a commotion outside. Booge had reappeared.

One of Elvis’ bandmates met Booge and told him, “You’re not wanted here.”

Wayne didn’t take this too well. “I said, ‘The hell with you; two can play this game.’” He raced down to the Texas Steer Drive-In - it was on Center just before you got to Kingsport Press - picked up two of his friends, and returned to Billie Mae’s.

“I told the guy outside that if he wanted trouble there was more than one of us now.”

Elvis and Billie Mae heard the noise and came out. Billie Mae introduced Booge and Elvis. But they didn’t shake hands.

Allen remembered, “Elvis said, ‘I’m breaking this guy’s heart. Maybe I’d better leave.’”

Billie Mae took Booge aside, told him everything would be all right and sent him home.

Elvis didn’t stay much longer. It was the last night of the tour and he was anxious to be back to Memphis. Just one thing before he left,

“When we went outside to leave, he reached out and pulled me up close to him and kissed me. My knees went weak. He had the softest lips I have ever kissed.”

It was a goodnight kiss for all time. “It was very thrilling.”

Booge came back later and circled the block but Elvis had gone.

Happy New Year - 75 Years Ago

This is how Kingsport greeted the New Year 75 years ago today!