Granny Wildcat!

 

Grace Watkins in the 1941 Buccaneer yearbook, published for students of "State Teachers College" – Johnson City, Tennessee

 Grace Watkins - 44 Years Teaching 4th Graders Penmanship 

In the classroom she was Miss Watkins. 

But outside, on the playground, behind her back, 

she was Granny Wildcat.

Grace Watkins spent her career teaching fourth grade at Lincoln School and running the summer program at Borden Mill Park.

But the thing many of her students and colleagues remember is the way she taught Handwriting: with a song.

Owen Allgood can still sing that song: “Up and down and up and down, swing it round and round, toward the Peggy Ann.”

The Peggy Ann was a coffee shop on East Center, next to Armour Drug and almost due north of Lincoln. Miss Watkins was using a local landmark to help her students learn the way to make ovals. “And also teaching you to stay between the lines,” says Owen.

Anna Dickison remembers as a young teacher asking Miss Watkins to help her students. “She did a handwriting lesson for my fourth graders once and, as I remember, she made up the song as she went along, ‘Up and down, up and down, round and round to the Church Circle.” (Church Circle would be west from Lincoln so Mrs. Dickison’s room faced a different direction.)

That song may seem silly today but it worked. That and a lot of practice. At least it worked for Owen. “I won a little writing certificate because of her.”

Then there was the other side of Grace Watkins, the Granny Wildcat side. (Some remember the nickname a bit differently: as Granny Hellcat!)

That was the Grace Watkins who ruled the playground. With an iron hand.

From 1953 Kingsport Times

Owen says, “She made sure everybody on the playground participated. One day I decided I didn’t want to.” When Granny Wildcat spotted him standing by himself, she meted out her own punishment. “She made me play with the girls.”

Anna says Granny Wildcat loved the playground. “She would be at Lincoln school way before 7 a.m.  She volunteered to make softball game assignments.  In those days, we had an hour for lunch; the first 30 minutes were in the cafeteria and then outside on the diamond for a softball game. The kids loved that. She would fix out the schedule like a tournament bracket - Dickison vs., Hawk, Hodge vs. Underwood. We were eliminated until there was a room grand champion. She was always the referee and none of the kids argued with her. My son, Dennis Dickison, who was a student in Miss Hawk’s room, still talks about their room championship.”

The playground was her summer home, too. She ran the recreation program at Borden Mill Park. Again, with an iron hand. At the time of the 2004 Borden Park reunion, Wilma Maness Davis told me how Granny Wildcat ran the park. “In the mornings we'd have to carry out the swings, set up the tennis court, get everything set up. If you didn't carry something out, you couldn't play.'”

Enos Lord had an even more telling story. “One time Miss Watkins went after this boy - I can't remember his name - but he went up a tree. He wouldn't come down. So she went across the street and got an axe and started chopping the tree down.”

But there was a third side to Miss Watkins, a soft side.

Anna says, “Claude Wright, my husband’s uncle, had Miss Watkins and decided her bark was worse than her bite.”

Owen agrees. “She gave me more confidence in myself than any other teacher I had. She had about as big an influence on me as anybody. I ended up teaching school for 32 years because of her.”

He still remembers her admonition: “’Be proud of yourself. I don’t care if the King of England came through that door, I’d be myself.’ I kept looking for the King to come through the door.”

Her influence went beyond students to include other teachers. Anna says, “I was a new and young teacher and Miss Watkins helped mold me as a teacher.  She didn’t have to come teach my class penmanship, but did it during her own planning time.”

After her retirement Grace Watkins was still living up to her nickname, still making noise…and news. Owen remembers reading about her in the Times-News. “She took a trip around the world on one dress. They lost her luggage so she kept washing it out every day. That was a big story in the paper.”

 

From 1948 Kingsport Times

Here is that story from July 25, 1965:

By BASIL RICE

Times-News Staff Writer

With only the clothes on her back, Miss Grace Watkins, left New York in a jet airliner for a vacation in Europe, Asia and Africa.

When Miss Watkins left her home at 1201 Wateree St. she had plenty of luggage filled with plenty of clothes. So did her companion, Miss Anna Barkley of Limestone.

On a bus to New York to meet the other member of the trio, Mrs. Ben Taylor of 446 W. Sullivan St., the two school teachers were told they had to change buses in Washington, D. C.

"That's when the trouble began," Miss Watkins said. "All because of a bus driver, who was first, too quiet and then, too reassuring, I had to wear the tackiest dress I owned on a trip abroad."

Because they were the only through passengers on the bus, the driver instructed them to transfer to a bus next to the one they were on. "How about our luggage?" Miss Watkins asked. 'Now, don't you girls worry about a thing,' she said he replied. "You go in the restaurant, eat a good breakfast, and I'll see that your luggage is transferred to the other bus.""

Arriving in New York, they waited around the bus station, anxiously checking the baggage room whenever a bus from any place south of the city rolled in.

By this time, the two women were ready - very willing, in fact to unload each arriving bus themselves and look for their missing luggage. They were getting frantic.

"Then we realized we had something else to worry about - it was almost time for our plane to leave," Miss Watkins recalled. "If we missed this plane we wouldn't get to see 11 countries and we would lose all the money we had paid for the tour.

"There were no rebates except in case of sickness. Of course, we were both a little sick about then. It was probably a good thing the bus driver didn't show up. We'd probably have thrown him in a baggage department and detoured the bus by way of Alaska.'

Finally, with only enough time to get to the airport by taxi, the two women, still minus their luggage and wearing the same dresses they had worn since leaving Kingsport, left the bus station and went to the waiting jet.

There, they met Mrs. Taylor, who had made the trip to New York by air, rather than by bus. "I guess my luggage would have been gone, too," the former truant officer sighed, "had I traveled with them."

The plight of the two women soon became known to other women on the tour and assistance was offered. Miss Barkley bought a dress in Rome, when the plane stopped for some 10 minutes and another in Beirut, Lebanon.

Meanwhile, two of the women had loaned clothing to Miss Watkins and she made this do during the entire 21 days. She did miss the four pairs of shoes she had in the missing luggage, however.

But once the plane landed in Europe, then took off for the Middle East and the wonderous sights there, the two school teachers almost forgot - but not quite -  their missing luggage.

"There were so many places to go and things to see," Mrs. Taylor recalled, "that it was hard for them to remember their luggage."

In the Holy Land, they visited the Mount of Olives, Place of Ascension, Garden of Gethsemane, Mount Zion, Chamber of the Last Supper and other biblical places. They also attended an early morning service on the Sea of Galilee.

They visited the pyramids in Egypt; the Vatican, Sistine Chapel, Basilica of St. Peter, Coliseum, and Forum in Rome; Tomb of Napoleon, Arch of Triumph, Louvre Museum and Eiffel Tower in Paris.

They saw the colorful changing of the guards, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Windsor Castle and other wonderful sights in and around London.

But not once did two of the party see something they wanted to see very much - several pieces of missing luggage.

"Just name any place in the Holy Land and we were there," said Miss Watkins, telling of the trip from the comfort of her cool front porch. Every now and then she would stop and look down the street.

The missing luggage hasn't been delivered yet.

 

 

From 1956 Kingsport Times

 

Grace Watkins was born in 1896 in Rogersville and died in Kingsport, her adopted hometown, in 1982.

In the early twenties she lived at 589 Sevier. In 1927 she moved to 1201 Wateree, catty-corner from the front door of Dobyns Bennett and at the entrance to White City (her address was often listed in the newspaper as White City). That was where she was living when she died 55 years later.

She started teaching at Lincoln School at least as early as 1921. That was the first time the newspaper listed her as being hired for a teaching assignment. But a 1953 Times-News photo identified her as teaching 30 years, meaning she started in 1923. She retired from Lincoln School after the 1962-1963 school year. Her obituary said she had taught in Kingsport city schools 44 years, which would mean she started in 1918. In other words I can’t say for sure when she first taught in town.

 

From 1953 Kingsport Times

In the early thirties, each teacher in the school system wrote a brief weekly report for the Kingsport Times. Here is Miss Watkins submission for April 6, 1930, an early indication of her interest in penmanship:

4B-Grace V. Watkins

We have been real busy this week with our monthly tests. The grades in each subject showed a marked improvement over last month.

We worked on The American Handwriting Scale Friday and we all like it much better than the Graves Scale we have been using.

The Most Amazing D-B Graduate You've Never Heard of

 

Best All Around - Paul Hug, D-B '27

(And that was the same year Bobby Dodd graduated)

This was originally supposed to be Question and Answer Number 7 in my D-B Quiz in last week’s column:

7. Why didn’t Bobby Dodd go to Vanderbilt?

He almost did, according to the Kingsport Times. UT wanted his teammate, running back Paul Hug, but not him so the two classmates went to Vanderbilt to enroll. UT relented and the two switched to UT. No one thinks Dodd could have gotten into Vanderbilt.

 

But after rereading it, I decided I needed to do more research. Did Dodd and his friend Paul Hug really intend to go to Vanderbilt? And more importantly, who was Paul Hug? I never heard of him growing up. And in Kingsport almost all old D-B football stars were revered.

It turns out Paul Hug was one of the most interesting D-B grads I had never heard of.

I initially had trouble researching him. That’s because his name was spelled both Hug and Hugg. And in one story, the one about Dodd and Hug “matriculating” at Vanderbilt, his name was spelled one way in the headline and the other in the story.

After I finally determined that he was Paul Hug, not Paul Hugg, I found a wealth of material.

I think the main reason I never heard of him growing up was that he wasn’t from Kingsport.

You may recall hearing the rumors that D-B used to recruit players from other towns. And then old timers would pooh-pooh that as sour grapes.

When my cousins in Greene County would tell me that D-B was so good in sports because Eastman would hire their daddies. I would counter that if Eastman was such a great recruiter, then they had incredible talent scouts, they could spot talent in a second grader: the basketball starters when I was a senior included Sam Bedford, John Penn, Larry Overbay and Tim Thayer. Sam and Larry were in my second-grade home room at Johnson Elementary and John and Tim were down the hall in, I think, Mrs. Kersnowski’s home room.

But to my surprise I discovered Kingsport did bring in players, at least in the early years.

Paul Hug was not from Kingsport. He was from Canton, Ohio. I was puzzled when I was researching him and I would find notes in the newspaper that “Paul Hug will be spending the holidays with his parents in Canton, Ohio.”

A 1929 story in the Knoxville News-Sentinel cleared that up. “Paul Hug arrived in Kingsport though his home is still in Canton. The high school coach had come from Canton and persuaded Hug to come to Kingsport, where he played halfback and end.”

The coach? The legendary founder of Kingsport athletics LeRoy Sprankle. When Sprankle came to Kingsport from Canton in late 1921, he convinced Robert “Bud” Hug to tag along from Canton. And a year later Bud’s younger brother Paul joined him.

I can’t find any reference to where the Hug brothers lived but I have heard for years about those rumored out-of-town players living upstairs in the fire hall on Watauga.

Paul Hug lived in Kingsport during the school year for four years before departing for college. He returned at least twice to visit his friend Harold Matthews. (Perhaps the Hug brothers lived with the Matthews family. Or in the fire hall)

And this is where Bobby Dodd enters the picture: Dodd and Hug weren’t just teammates, they were great friends.

Dodd to the News Sentinel in 1949: “Paul came down to Kingsport from Ohio and the folks around there sort of adopted him. He played four years and finished school a year ahead of me. But he waited for me to graduate so we could go to college together. And if it hadn't been for him, I would have never been offered a scholarship. Paul was the guy they wanted, not me. But he would listen to no offers which didn't include me.”

Again from the 1949 Knoxville News-Sentinel for Hug’s obituary (another reason I’d never heard of Hug; he died young):

“After completing their high school work, Hug and Dodd went to Vanderbilt but Dodd failed to meet scholastic requirements there so Hug came back to the University of Tennessee with him. For two years Hug and Dodd were inseparable. They played freshman ball together in 1927 and both pledged Sigma Nu. In 1928 they roomed together at the Sigma Nu House.”

They were part of a 1928 Tennessee team called the “Flaming Sophomores” because it had so many good sophomore players. (Those Flaming Sophs went on to compile a 27-1-2 record in their three years of varsity football at UT.)

1929 Tennessee football team (from Centre College game program)

But Hug was more than a football player.

Coach Robert Neyland told the News Sentinel that Hug was an exceptional student, “maintaining a very high scholastic average in addition to excellence in track and basketball as well as football.”

Neyland didn’t mention it but another football teammate, Fritz Brandt, did in a 1929 feature about the two UT ends. Hug was also a great boxer and wrestler.

The story noted, “Hug holds the heavyweight boxing and light-heavyweight wrestling titles (at UT). This year's schedule on the Hill doesn't include this activity. ‘I wish they'd have a tournament,’ says Fritz, eying Hug threateningly. ‘I'm glad they won't,’ Hug laughs. ‘As long as they don't, I get to keep the title.’”

Hug was named to the All-Southern football team in 1929. He was injured early in the ’30 season and played sparingly as a senior.

When he died in ’49, the News Sentinel wrote, “The play by which most fans remember Hug was the pass he took behind the goal posts from Roy ‘War Eagle’ Witt in 1928 to give Tennessee its first victory over Vanderbilt in over 12 years.”

Vanderbilt was the best team in the South for most of the twenties. When UT hired Robert Neyland, his marching orders were to get the Tennessee football program to the level of Vanderbilt.

Paul Hug's senior entry in the UT yearbook

(Scarbbean was a secret society)

Football star, track star, basketball star, academic star, champion boxer and wrestler. What else could Paul Hug have excelled at?

Believe it or not, crocheting.

The News Sentinel wrote about his skill with a needle in 1929:

“There's another little thing about Hug you should know. Looking at the fellow you'd probably think of everything else before crocheting would come to your mind. But that unheard-of gift in a college man of being able to mend his own clothes is one of Paul's most notable accomplishments and he frequently puts it to use. ‘I don't mind telling you about that.’ Hug says, somewhat defiantly. ‘I'm actually proud of that. You see, I had two brothers at home, one older and one younger, and when I was a kid both of them used always to be running around somewhere. I was the one who had to stay at home. My mother wanted to keep me busy so she taught me to sew and crochet and knit and all those things. And I can still do them. I can darn my socks and I could even crochet if I had to. That's something I'm proud of, too.’”

A 1936 feature in the Kingsport Times noted, “The beautiful Afghan - a 220-square Afghan in pastel shades - is Hug's masterpiece, but he has crocheted luncheon sets, tams, pocketbooks, sweaters, scarfs, a baby blanket and ‘tidies.’ Right now, when he isn't helping Shorty Propst coach the Southwestern (at Memphis) college football team, he works on a white crocheted dress in an intricate double shell pattern for his wife.”

The Memphis Commercial Appeal wrote, “Hug's first fame as a ‘fancy work’ star came when his needle work won several prizes at fairs in Kingsport. Tenn., his home town.”

Paul Hug crocheting in 1936 when he was an assistant football coach at Southwestern at Memphis. 

After graduating from UT, Hug got a job coaching football at Nashville’s Battle Ground Academy. The Nashville Tennessean named him the state’s best prep school football coach in 1933 (“he didn’t do much this year but watch him next year”).

He didn’t do enough the next year and got out of coaching, working for TVA for two years. But it was at BGA that he met his future wife, Jane Briggs. Her father was the headmaster.

In ’36 he was hired as an assistant football coach at Southwestern at Memphis. That was the same season the Southwestern team stunned Vanderbilt in Nashville, winning 14-0.

In 1939 he was named head football coach at Tennessee Junior College at Martin. During the war Hug served as a captain in the Air Force Special Services. He joined Chattanooga Boiler and Tank Company when he returned to civilian life. He had just been named purchasing agent when he suffered a heart attack and died in Sept. 1949.

He was 43.

His obituary was on the front pages of the Kingsport, Knoxville, Chattanooga and Nashville papers and was reported as far away as Miami and Tampa.

All the death notices mentioned what an exceptional athlete he was, beginning at Dobyns-Bennett and continuing through his days at UT.

In 1927 it was Hug, not Bobby Dodd, who was awarded the Bertram Borden Cup as most outstanding athlete at Dobyns-Bennett High.

The year after Hug graduated from D-B the Kingsport Times noted, “Hug holds a number of records, his chief football record being the high mark for touchdowns in one season. Last year Hug scored 27 touchdowns and broke Matt Lunn's record of 22.

“Hug's greatest records are in track. He holds the folowing K. H. S. records:

‘50 yard dash - 6.0 seconds.

‘100 yard dash - 10.6 seconds.

‘440 yard dash - 53.8 seconds.

‘Running broad jump - 19 feet, 6 3-4 inches.

‘Pole vault - 10 feet, 4 one halt inches.

‘Discus - 103 feet, four inches.

But he was more than an athletic star. And a star with the knitting needle. He was featured in three school plays during his time in Kingsport. He sang a solo of “All the World Is Waiting for the Sunrise” in the 1926 K Club revue that was so well received he was called back to sing an encore of “Sometime.”

I don’t think there was anything Paul Hug couldn’t do. A September 1926 issue of the Knoxville Journal, reporting on the prospects for the D-B football team, noted, “Paul Hug has learned to pass with his left hand.”

Of course he had.

 

Dobyns-Bennett's high scoring backfield of 1926, the so-called Pony Express - Hug is bottom right.

Is it true Bobby Dodd couldn’t get in Vanderbilt?

For the answer let’s turn to Dodd’s autobiography as described in a 1992 Times News column by executive sports editor Ron Bliss:

“In six years at Kingsport High School, Dodd only had 14 credits and needed 16 for graduation. But the principal, Charles Koffman, so wanted to see Dodd take his talent to college that he made a deal with him - pass all his classes as a senior and he'd graduate him.

“’Well, I'd never had any idea of going to college,’ wrote Dodd in his autobiography, Dodd's Luck. ‘But I realized, “If I'm gonna play any more football, I've gotta go to college.' So I told him I'd do it.”

“Dodd practiced 10 days with Vanderbilt before his grades came in. The Vanderbilt coaches were aghast and told him he couldn't stay.

“That pointed Dodd and buddy Paul Hug first toward Georgia Tech (which also refused to admit Dodd) and eventually toward Tennessee and General Robert Neyland, who played the two in a freshman game the day of their arrival.”

The D-B Quiz

 

The Dobyns-Bennett Alumni Hall of Fame induction is set for Saturday (Nov. 5) at 11:15 a.m. at Meadowview Convention Center if you are interested in attending.

In addition to my classmate and friend John Walton ’65, the other inductees are Jerry Adams ’75, Jeff Chetwood ’67, Ken Roberts ’50, Don Roller ’55 and George Taylor ’61.

I was in Key Club with Jeff, I went to church with Don, I’ve cruised Broad with George, so I know almost all of them.

Over the years I have talked to many Kingsport civic clubs filled with D-B alums.

By the third go round for each club, I needed new material. So I came up with a D-B quiz.

 

I noticed in writing the above section that I refer to my alma mater as Dobyns-Bennett only once. The rest of the time it’s D-B, D-B, D-B.

In my three years of high school, in fact in my entire 18 years growing up in Kingsport, I don’t think I ever uttered the words Dobyns-Bennett.

It was D-B… D-B this and D-B that. Even our cheerleaders didn’t spell out Dobyns-Bennett. They spelled out Indians.

So in honor of dear old D-B, The Offical D-B quiz (the first version of this was assembled for a speech to the Kingsport Rotary Club.)

Grading is on the honor system.

 

1. Who was D?

2. Who was B?

Obviously they were Dobyns and Bennett. But who was Dobyns and who was Bennett?

James William Dobyns was the first mayor of Kingsport.

W. M. Bennett was the first chairman of the Kingsport school board.

J.W. Dobyns and William Bennett were both Kingsport pioneers.

Dobyns came to Kingsport in 1906 to run what would later be known as Rotherwood Farm.

Bennett came here five years later, in 1911, to run the Clinchfield Portland Cement Plant.

Both were involved in founding well-known local companies that would bear their surnames: Dobyns-Taylor Hardware and Bennett and Edwards Insurance. (It was Dobyns' son Flem who co-founded Dobyns-Taylor with George Taylor.)

Both were directors of the First National Bank, members of the Kiwanis and Kingsport Business Men’s Clubs and pioneering civic leaders.

Both died in 1923, within six months of each other, and both were age 56. (Bennett’s death was attributed in the newspaper to acute indigestion. Alka-Seltzer wasn’t invented until 1931.)

And in one more eerie coincidence, each’s older son died shortly before the outbreak of World War II, W.M. Bennett Jr. in Nazareth, Pa. in July 1940, Ben Dobyns in Kingsport in January 1941, also within six months of each other.

So when it came time to name the new high school in 1926, it was an easy choice for city leaders: honor the first leaders of the city and of the schools.

The result was a unique name known all over the state, Dobyns-Bennett High School.

We know a lot more about Dobyns than Bennett.

Because while the Dobyns’ sons stayed in Kingsport, raising families, staying involved in the community, Bennett’s three children and his widow had all moved away by 1930.

Dobyns’ first official act as Mayor was to declare April 8, 1917 as “Go to Sunday School Day.” When he died in 1923 while still in office, more than 2,000 people crowded Broad Street Methodist for his funeral. Incidentally he was appointed initially by the governor, then reelected to two terms. Women voted for the first time in the 1919 election, the city’s first. There were 750 registered voters, 15 percent of that total were women. 75 women cast votes in the election.

What we do know about Bennett is that he was intensely interested in the education of Kingsport’s children, both black and white.

When the city began its campaign of building schools, he pushed for a new building for the colored students. And in fact the board of mayor and alderman hired an architect to draw up plans for a new colored school building in the spring of 1920. It was to open in the fall.

That was pushed back again and again. One of Bennett’s last acts on the school board was to announce that the new colored school would be built in 1923.

After his death Kingsport’s black community voted to name the new colored school for him. The Kingsport Times reported the resolution read,  “We, the colored citizens, in a mass body at the Central Baptist church, voted unanimously to ask the city and board of education to name the school in honor of him who lived such a worthy life among us; we wish to do something so that it will be to his renown and stand in token of his goodness; a man in whose sight the color of skin or the texture of the hair had nothing to do with the person; to do him honor we ask that the school may be known as the ‘Bennett School.’”

The board had even passed on first reading a bond issue for the school. No colored school would be built until 1929, three years after Bennett had been honored in the name of the other high school. So instead the new colored school was named for Frederick Douglass.

Had the city not dragged its feet on building a new school for the black community, the name Bennett would have already been taken. And considering the athletic successes of Douglass over the years – winning state championships in both football and basketball – the name Bennett High School would have been famous all over the state.

So D-B might instead have been Dobyns High.

There is another possibility for the first school name. The first city manager of Kingsport was William R. Pouder, who had been city recorder in Johnson City when Kingsport hired him away. He resigned after two years in office in a dispute “with certain citizens.” (Who do you think those “certain citizens” were? J. Fred Johnson? John B. Dennis? Both, since citizens is plural?) Pouder was instrumental in getting the city up and going since no one on the first board of mayor and aldermen had any previous municipal government experience.

What if we had named the high school after him?

Pouder High.

Wonder what the nickname would have been?

All I’m coming up with is the Pouder Burns, not a very appealing nickname.

 

 3. How old was Miss Elmore when you were in her class?

Grace Elmore came to D-B in 1926. She taught Latin until 1962. Miss Elmore died in December 1987. She was born December 10, 1891.

She was a legend. In 1949 Look magazine sent a reporter and a photographer to cover her annual student Bacchanalia.

At the end of her life, she told Times News womens’ editor Betty Benkey about her job interview with superintendent of schools Ross N. Robinson when she came to Kingsport in 1926.

"He told me I could not get married if I wanted to, that they didn't have any married teachers and were not going to have any married teachers. Nor could I go, if I was invited, to a dance. I must tell him the night before if I was going to a dance. I asked why was that, and he said 'so I will know not to expect you to be prepared to teach the next day.’”

Sally Chiles Shelbourne (D-B ’63) in a Kingsport Times News column remembered her time in Miss Elmore’s class. “Miss Grace always wore makeup and reapplied it at the beginning of every class without the aid of a mirror.”

 

 4. How old was Miss Ramer when you were in her class?

Ruth Ramer came to D-B in 1936 to teach English. She retired in 1964 as a guidance counselor and died February 1984. She was born February 19, 1898.

Incidentally Nancy Necessary Pridemore was born August 20, 1919.

The real veteran teacher in Kingsport City Schools was Home Ec instructor Lucile Massengill, who came to D-B the same year as Miss Elmore, 1926, but continued teaching until 1965. (She moved to Robinson in 1956.) She was born in 1899 and lived to be 100.

 

 5. What was the first D-B football game on radio? Who were the announcers?

D-B at Milligan Sept 27, 1940 on WKPT-AM. No, it wasn’t Martin Karant who announced the game. Bob Poole, who also did the Man on the Street radio show, did what the newspaper called “the running story” with Steve Douglas providing “color and statistical details.” Douglas was the station’s program director. WKPT had only been on the air for two months. The second D-B game on radio was at Erwin Oct. 18, 1940, three weeks later.

 

6. Where was the first D-B?

Trick question.

Wateree Street in the building now known as the old D-B.

Kingsport Central High was what we know as the old Washington Elementary. It was located on East Sevier at Watauga. The building has been renovated for senior living.

 

  7. Who was the first principal of D-B?

If you said Harry Groat, very good. Not correct but very good. Harry Groat was the first principal of Kingsport Central High School.

C.K. Koffman was the first principal of D-B in 1926-1927.  He was also the last principal at Kingsport Central High School in 1925-1926.

 

 8. Who did D-B defeat for its first ever football victory?

Kingsport Central High – not yet D-B – defeated Abingdon 7-0 in 1921 for its first ever football victory. It was the eighth game of that initial season.

D-B’s first ever victory came against Norton, Virginia on Saturday Sept. 25, 1926. D-B scored 30 times, winning 193-0, still a school record for most points and largest victory margin.

Teams normally played 12-minute quarters in 1926 but D-B line coach Charles Koffman – who doubled as school principal - asked the Norton coach Jay Litz at halftime if they wanted to shorten them to eight minutes for the second half. Litz readily agreed.

Litz went on to be a successful insurance broker in Wise, Virginia.

There’s a story (published in the 1964 Times-News) that Bobby Dodd was so bored near the end of the game he went to the sideline during the final quarter and traded his leather helmet for a cloth painter’s cap, turning up the bill as he ran back on the field.

 In 1983 Times-News sportswriter Ken Datzman found a Mendota dairy farmer named J.R. "Baldy” Baker who had been a tackle on that Norton team and remembered the 193-0 plastering well.

Baker said the game was played in Kingsport before 1,000 fans.

"That was probably the best high school team ever put together in Upper East Tennessee or Southwest Virginia," said Baker about the D-B team - coached by LeRoy Sprankle.

Dobyns-Bennett's multitalented backfield (the "Pony Express") included Bobby Dodd, James Duncan, Paul “Whitey” Hugg and Frank Meredith. "We spent most of the day on the ground," said Baker, who played four seasons at Norton. On the ground was face down.

Baker couldn’t recall any pep talk at halftime or chewing by coach Litz. "He grumbled about missed blocks and those things," said Baker, "but I can't recall anything in particular.”

D-B didn’t go on to an undefeated, untied season. Instead it finished 7-2. The team averaged 60 points a game, thanks in part to the lopsided opening victory over Norton. The first seven wins were all shutouts.

Dobyns-Bennett 193, Norton 0.

Dobyns-Bennett 41, Harlan (Ky.), 0.

Dobyns-Bennett 51, Milligan Jayvees 0.

Dobyns-Bennett 57, Greeneville 0.

Dobyns-Bennett 75, Elizabethton 0.

Dobyns-Bennett 63, Jefferson City 0.

Dobyns-Bennett 60, Johnson City 0.

The last two games were a different story:

Knoxville 3, Dobyns-Bennett 0

Middlesboro (Ky.) 15, Dobyns-Bennett 6.

Charlie Kohlhase kicked the field goal to beat D-B in the Knoxville game. Dodd, an All-American at Tennessee who coached Georgia Tech to three national championships, Paul Hugg and Kohlase became teammates at Tennessee.

Dodd told Datzman that D-B ran into a tough ballclub and lost in a "horrible, rainstorm" at Middlesboro.

You might think Norton went on to lose every game. But it didn’t according to Baldy Baker. "I think we broke even in our league (Wise County). We weren't that bad. We lost to Bristol 13-2. And they had Beattie Feathers and Gene McEver on their team. Dodd, Feathers and McEver went on to be All America players. All three played for Gen. Neyland at Tennessee."

 

9. That 193-0 defeat of Norton was not the first time a Kingsport football team had topped 100 points. When was the first?

Kingsport Central High, led by Frank “Gabby” Meredith, topped Bristol 100-0 on Saturday Nov. 14, 1925. Star Bobby Dodd, along with three other starters, didn’t play until the score was 56-0. They had been suspended for breaking curfew.

Jitney Blankenbecler told Bill Lane of the Times-News in 1983 that the game was played on the land between City Hall and Mead.

Lawson Reams, who was a cheerleader, told me the cheerleaders were rooting for the team to miss the extra point after the final touchdown – a three-yard run by Dodd – so the game would end 99-0.

 

10. Who was D-B’s first band director?

It wasn’t Paul Arrington – famous band director for my generation. The first was S.T. “Fess” Witt. He had been a student “under Kepler,” according to the yearbook. He came to Kingsport in the fall of 1926 from the Newport News Naval Band. He retired after the ‘51-‘52 school year (the alley next to old D-B is named for him) and was replaced by Paul Oxley, who left in 1955, replaced by H.L. O’Hara. Paul Arrington arrived in 1957.

Kingsport Central High didn’t have a band but had a Glee Club under the direction of Miss Augusta Riley, older sister of Mary Erin Riley, famous junior high English teacher.

The first music supervisor, beginning in 1919, was Miss Alice Feeney from Oxford, Ohio.

 

Two bonus questions about Kingsport, not D-B.

11. Where was the first paved road in Kingsport?

Broad, Shelby, Commerce and Cherokee were the first to get rock, according to the June 22, 1916 Kingsport Times.

Dale Street, near the Bristol Highway, was the first to get paved, according to Barney Pendleton, who said his mother told him that. I found confirmation in the Aug. 5, 1919 Kingsport Times.

 

12. J. Fred Johnson was the father of the town. What did the J stand for?

He died Wednesday Oct. 4, 1944. All stores in town were closed for his funeral. He was born on June 25, 1874, in Hillsville, Virginia, the son of J. Lee Johnson and Mary Pierce Early Johnson.

His first name was John and in the 1880 census his last name was spelled Johnsan

J. Fred Johnson was a charter member of Kingsport’s Rotary Club.

When the local Rotary Club was founded in 1923, the Kingsport Times published the list of charter members “with their classifications.”

Sam Pyle, contractor.

O. S. Hauk, physician.

Irwin Fuller, ladies' ready-to-wear.

Bill Jennings, banker.

"Doc" Hillman, 5 and 10 cent store.

Number six on the list:

“J. Fred Johnson, capitalist.”