Men in Black (And White) - Referees

Twenty five years ago I wrote a magazine story about the life of a high school basketball referee – the abuse they faced, verbal and occasionally physical, all for very low pay, and the reason they all said they did it: for the love of the game.

My two favorite stories from that article came from an old coach turned radio analyst, the legendary Jock Sutherland:

 Jock told me the first story happened in 1959 when he was at the old Henry Central High. “We were down by about thirty but I was still arguing. I took three or four steps toward the referee but he kept backing up. He bumped into me and said, ‘What are you doing out here? That’ll be a technical for every step back.’ I just held my hands up – what am I going to do. My players took it to mean I needed help and they came out and carried me off. Then they carried me around the gym on their shoulders while the band played. The next day Earl Cox had it in the newspaper under the headline ‘Smartest Coach in the County.’ That story went out over the wire and ended up in Reader’s Digest.”

 When Jock told me that story it had been 40 years since it happened and he got it a tad wrong. I looked it up and the headline really read “Quickest Thinking State Coach? He’s Gallatin County’s Sutherland.” (So he was coaching at Gallatin County not Henry County. And it was actually 1958 not 1959.)

Here’s how Earl Cox, longtime sports editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal wrote it originally in 1958 complete with the original illustration by Courier-Journal artist Ben Ramsay:

 

By EARL COX

Basketball, the game that lures a sizable portion of Kentucky's population into gyms from November through March, has its extremely serious moments.

But the hardwood sport has its lighter moments, too. For instance:

Charley 'Jock" Sutherland, one of the finest shooters Ralph Carlisle ever turned out at Lexington Lafayette, is now coach at Gallatin County High at Warsaw. A couple of seasons ago, Sutherland earned for all time the title of quickest-thinking coach in Kentucky.

During a tight game, Sutherland dashed onto the floor to dispute a referee's decision.

The official indignantly informed Sutherland that for each step he took returning to the bench, a technical foul would be assessed on Gallatin County. Know what Sutherland did?

He yelled for his players to come out on the floor. They carried him back to the bench and he got off with only one technical foul!

 

Jock Sutherland when he coached Lexington Lafayette

For my magazine story, Jock told me a second great referee story, again involving him:

 “Once we were playing down at Hazard and the referee kept drinking out of our Gatorade. Our bus-driver had some vodka and he poured it in our Gatorade. The referee just kept coming over to our Gatorade. His partner asked him if something was the matter. He said it was the best Gatorade he’d ever had. By the end of the game, he didn’t know where he was.”

 

Coach LeRoy Sprankle’s Rules for Athletes

As promised, from the May 16, 1924 issue of the Kingsport Times are Kingsport Central High coach and athletic director LeRoy Sprankle’s rules for his athletes:

 No man will be reserved a plate for the football menu unless he abides, strictly, absolutely and unerringly by the gilt-edge and iron-bound rules formulated by the K. H. S. club, an organization of the Student athletes, for the upbuilding of athletics. The chief clauses are:

1. No smoking under any circumstances.

2. No drinking under any circumstances.

3. No association with questionable company of either sex.

4. No keeping of late hours.

Coach Sprankle has ruled that all candidates who do not sign the pledge to keep the above rules inviolate shall not be allowed to participate in any athletic event.  

 

If a candidate would be a member of Kingsport Central’s varsity team:

1. Be a man, physically, mentally and morally.

2. Be determined.

3. Be aggressive.

4. Improvement.

5. Have the ability.

6. Be eligible at all times.

7. Attend every practice.

To attain these requirements, he advances the following suggestions as aids along the way.

1. Eat plain and nourishing food.

2. Do not eat between meals.

3. Do not overeat.

4. Do not eat much candy.

5. Establish regular habits.

6. Drink a glass of cold water upon retiring and arising.

7. Get plenty of exercise.

8. Toughen yourself - box, wrestle and hike.

9. Study yourself, find your weakness, improve it.

10. Don’t give up. Fight and make your opponent put out his best to beat you.

11. It takes a man to live up to this, are you a man?

 

Those were Sprankle’s guidelines 99 years ago.

 

 

The Night Jerry Lee Came to Kingsport

Jerry Lee Lewis, the Louisiana Wild Man, died back in the fall. My favorite Jerry Lee Lewis story, one of them anyway:

 Jerry Lee Lewis was booked to play Kingsport’s Civic Auditorium on July 24, 1968 on a double bill with Conway Twitty. There were two shows scheduled for that night, one at 8 p.m. and a second at 10.

Jerry Lee was the headliner. Conway was the opening act even though both were equally big stars at the time.

Jim Sauceman told me about the show; his brother-in-law, the late Tiny Day, was the promoter.

“Conway was always late. Jerry Lee’s bus came in the parking lot about 2 p.m. Conway called about 6 p.m. and said he wasn’t going to make it on time. Tiny took the message to Jerry Lee, who said, ‘Killer don’t open for anybody.’“

Killer is Jerry Lee’s nickname. He pretty much gave it to himself. When he was a kid, he called all his buddies “Killer” so they started calling him “Killer.” It stuck and years later it would become even more appropriate but that’s a story for another day.

When Jerry Lee told Tiny that he would not open the show, Tiny replied, “To get your money, you’ll open.”

Jerry Lee hit the stage at 8 p.m. sharp.

1953: Big Stone Gap Soldier Defects

 

Corporal Edward Dickenson of Big Stone Gap returns home in 1953.

(From Pathe newsreel that was shown at Strand Theatre.)

It was a small story below the fold on the front page of the Christmas Eve 1953 edition of the Kingsport Times:

“Friends, Kinfolk Are Bewildered By Decision Of American Captives.”

Twenty-two American prisoners-of-war who were being held in North Korea had chosen to remain in a Communist POW camp, in effect defecting to China.  

They had “turned down their last ‘safe’ chance to return to freedom,” as the Associated Press story put it.

I posted that front page on my blog Christmas week and a reader wondered what had become of the almost two-dozen deserters. Had they remained in a Chinese prison?

I told him I didn’t think they remained prisoners but stayed on a “guests.” But I didn’t know what happened to them, I’d have to look it up.

That kicked up a memory in my head: I recalled that one of the defectors was from Southwest Virginia. I couldn’t remember the details except that he had died after I moved back to Kingsport in 2002. But he wasn’t listed in that Christmas Eve story.

There was a prisoner from Memphis, another from northern Kentucky. But no one from Southwest Virginia.

At first I just dismissed it as one of my “misremberances.”

But I made one more search, this time turning up a ten-years-later story about the POWs from 1963.

And there he was: Corporal Edward S. Dickenson from Big Stone Gap. Eddie, as his father called him in a Kingsport Times story, had been a member of the original group of defectors but by the time of the Christmas Eve story he had reconsidered and decided to return home.

 

The original story about “the captives who wouldn’t come home” made headlines all over the world when it broke in Sept. 1953. The Kingsport Times even sent reporter Virginia Davis up to Cracker’s Neck, a community outside Big Stone Gap, to see what Eddie’s family thought:

"I cannot believe my son has been converted to communism," Eddie’s mother, Mrs. Bessie C. Dickenson told the newspaper reporter.

Bessie told the Times-News she had learned from Elmer Powers of Clintwood, a returned prisoner of war in the same camp with her son, that her son was alive and in good health on Aug. 5. Powers had said that her son was loaded on a truck that day and taken from the camp by the Communists.

Mrs. Dickenson said she had received 30 letters from him since he was captured Nov. 5, 1950, and that in each he had stated his desire to come home. She said he was optimistic during the truce negotiation because he thought he would soon be released.

She said her son's letters had said he was being treated well and was getting plenty of food and clothing and not to worry about him.

"I will not believe this is true about my son [defecting] until it is proven."

 

The Dickenson family awaiting Eddie's return. 

She had a long month of worrying about Eddie. But then on October 21, 1953 a clutch of reporters, including the Times’ Virginia Davis, made the trek up to Cracker’s Neck again. Eddie had changed his mind and wanted to come home.

"Well, thank God . I knowed he was coming home if they'd let him."

She added, “Now I don't think I have a burden to place on the Lord. I just felt like Ed was coming home, and it's been a shame the way I worried.”

The newspaper reported that Dickenson had enlisted in March, 1950, and was a member of the First Cavalry Division. He had attended school at East Stone Gap School, dropping out in fifth grade.

Mrs. Dickenson said she felt Eddie was "doped or something," as she tried to explain why she thought her son went over to the Communists.

Ralph Flanary, who went to school with Dickenson, was outside the home. He told reporters that, "People all around are proud to see Ed come back. Nobody believed he could be a Commie, and I never did think Ed was that kind of boy."

 

The Dickenson home on Powell Mountain. 

The story of Corporal Dickenson’s homecoming was in newspapers all over the country and featured on a Pathe newsreel shown at the Strand Theatre. Many of the papers carried the Associated Press report by “famous correspondent” Don Whitehead, who had won two Pulitzer Prizes as a war correspondent.

It was a good story but Whitehead had another reason to cover it. The Kingsport Times News explained he was already in the area, visiting his father in Inman, Virginia, five miles away.

Whitehead’s story, datelined “Cracker’s Neck, Va.,” began, “Cpl. Ed Dickenson came back to an almost hysterical welcome in the home of his childhood Sunday night and hinted that he may never again leave these hills.

“The young soldier who turned his back on communism after first refusing repatriation as a prisoner of war was almost mobbed by relatives and friends at the end of his 10,000-mile journey from Korea.

“A driving rain splashed on the hills and formed pools of water in the muddy lane leading from the road to the house. But the rain didn't dampen the celebration. Dickenson's brothers, sisters and friends poured out of the house into the rain to smother him with hugs and kisses.

“Dickenson could only grin happily when asked how he felt. Earlier he had said that he was undecided whether he will re-enlist in the Army as he had once said he would do.

“’I said I was going to re-enlist,’ he said. ‘But I've got a lot of thinking to do about it. It's too early to say what I'll do.’

“Dickenson's 73-year-old father, Van Buren Dickenson, said: ‘Ed's just got to stay at home. I'm going to knock him out of that idea of going back into the Army. We need him too bad at home.’

 

Why had Eddie initially decided to stay behind?

Another wire story explained;

“To persuade American POWS to choose communism, the Reds have promised free women, free schooling, free homes and a chance to rule the United States when it is conquered. This is the testimony of Cpl. Edward S. Dickenson, the Cracker's Neck, Va., youth who chose freedom after first refusing repatriation along with 22 other U. S. war prisoners.

As for Van Buren Dickenson’s intention to keep his Eddie at home, that didn’t work out.

The Army decided to court-martial Corporal Dickenson, accusing him of informing on fellow prisoners to gain favors for himself while a prisoner.) During the trial in March 1954, Ed was convicted and sentenced to ten years of hard labor. He served three and a half years before being paroled and returning to Cracker’s Neck.

From May 17, 1954 Life Magazine

He led an uneventful life there.

When the Associated Press caught up with him in 1963, it reported, “Dickenson married a local girl and has four children. He is presently out of work. Until a month ago he had been a laborer for a construction firm in Cracker's Neck, in the economically depressed, hilly section of southwest Virginia.”

Of the 21 POWs, the AP wrote, “Seven stayed. One is dead. Thirteen came back.”

 

The Associated Press returned to the story in 2002, trying to located all the soldiers who had originally planned to defect rather than return home.

Through his wife, Ed Dickenson declined to be interviewed.

 

Edward Swanson Dickenson died on March 7, 2002 at age 71. He is buried in Barker Cemetery in Cracker’s Neck.

Here are links to the Pathe newsreel stories about Ed's homecoming and later his trial:

https://www.britishpathe.com/video/ex-gi-communist-pow/query/edward+dickenson

https://www.britishpathe.com/video/cpl-dickenson-on-trial/query/edward+dickenson