Kingsport in 1911, Robert Leonard, Bobby Cross

 

Kingsport In 1911 As Told By W.G. “Gould” Davidson To Mary Clement In 1951: 

"Kingsport Was One House Wide and Two Miles Long"

 

"I used to ride up to Kingsport from New Canton [a neighborhood in what is now Church Hill] on an old pack horse with two rolls of wool to swap. There were lots of boats on the river then hauling grain and wool. And a sight o' logs rafted down to Chattanooga.

"I’ve slept all night on the ground where Kingsport is when the river was so high you couldn't ford it or ferry it."

Davidson was born November 19, 1861, in Hawkins County, 3 miles from Rogersville. He has been married four times, each time to a girl from East Tennessee, and has two sons living, Charley, of New Canton, and Jim, of Ellensburg, Washington. A Southern Methodist and a Democrat, he once served as a constable and also as deputy for Sheriff John Barton in Hawkins County.

In the year 1922 alone, he says, he helped capture 272 moonshine stills. He has little sympathy with lawbreakers of any sort. "Any good citizen ought to be a law-abidin' citizen," he says emphatically. "Just because a man is a poor man doesn't mean he can't abide by the law if he tries."

Davidson spent 22 years as a farmer and now makes his home at 533 Peach Orchard Drive, Lynn Garden.

Although he uses a cane for walking, he is still robust. He has a keen memory and a lively sense of humor.

An "exhibition" held at the Bradshaw's Chapel School when he was 14 is one of his most vivid recollections.

"I was just a chunk of a boy then," Davidson explains," but I always had a lot of brass. There were 32 young men on the platform that day. I gave a speech about Indians and I won the medal."

The old man paused for emphasis, and directing his level gaze at his listeners, repeated from beginning to end the oration that won the medal for him - the saga of a lonely Indian in a land won by the white man.

Davidson recalls the time when he could milk 28 cows in an hour and a half, and stack as much as fifty tons of hay in one day.

But in spite of that, he thinks life was better in the old days when Kingsport was just a little boat port on the Holston and beef sold for 4 1/2 cents a pound. His heart is with the carefree days when money didn't mean so much and people took things a bit slower.

"My grandfather, Gould Davidson," he recalls, with a twinkle in his eyes, "owned all the land that Gate City now stands on. But he was an awful feller to drink.

"One day he went into the court house over there at Gate City and the judge fined him ten dollars for cussing.

"Gould pulled a twenty out of his pocket, handed it to the judge, and headed for the door. The judge called to him to wait a minute and get his change. ‘Oh, no, Judge,’ Gould said. 'You just keep it. I may want to cuss again directly.'"

 

 

 Name Your Baby "Bobby"

Bobby was a big name in Kingsport in the fifties and I can trace that fact to a column that ran in the Kingsport Times on Sunday Oct. 16, 1938.

It was a sports column by sports editor Frank Rule and the headline read NAME YOUR BABY "BOBBY"

“Kingsport has had its Bobby Dodd, its Bobby Peters and several other all-something-or-other stars in recent years and now comes along a lad who so far has bewildered this corner by his dazzling feats on the gridiron. Bobby Cifers. well on his way to establish a new scoring record for Kingsport, the Big Six conference and the state, has another year to shine with the Indians, but already he has marked himself as one of the immortals.”

 Those three Bobbys – Dodd, Peters and Cifers - gave us many of the local high school sports stars like Bobby Tate, Bobby Bedford, Bobby Slaughter, Bobby Reagan and Bobby Strickler.

We lost two well-known Kingsport Bobs last month: All-State basketball player Bob Leonard and All-Conference football quarterback Bobby Cross.

 

Robert Leonard RIP

Robert “Bob” Leonard, star of the Dobyns-Bennett basketball teams of the early sixties, died January 18th in Winston-Salem. His obituary mentioned his NBA career. I didn’t remember it, probably because I was in college at the time, the time being before ESPN and sports talk radio.

I dug around and discovered the Robert Leonard-NBA connection.

A May 12, 1966 Kingsport Times-News story was headlined “Leonard Drafted By Lakers” and gives a good overview of his basketball days:

 

Robert Leonard, an All-State basketball player at Dobyns-Bennett High School, was drafted yesterday by the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball League in the fifth round of the NBA draft.

An All-American standout at Wake Forest last season, Leonard now has his chance to have his dream come true, and that is to play pro basketball.

While at Wake Forest, Bob tallied 1,637 points in his 80 varsity games over a three- year period and averaged 20.4 points per contest. His freshman average was a neat 19.9 points per game.

Bob's 1,637 points is the school's third highest. Bob netted 603 points last season playing for the Deacs and he joined three other Deacon standouts in this honor. The others were Dickie Hemrick, Len Chappel and Paul Long.

He was also an All-Atlantic Coast Conference performer for the past three seasons at Wake Forest and picked by the pro scouts to the second team All-American team last season. He made the Helm's All-American squad in his junior year.

Not only did Leonard lead the Deacons in rebounding last season but averaged 23.3 points a game.

 The Winston-Salem Journal of June 29, 1966 picks up the story under the headline “Bob Leonard Fails to Make Laker Roster:”

The pro basketball career of Bob Leonard, the Wake Forest standout, lies somewhere between Los Angeles and Baltimore.

Leonard, picked by the Los Angeles Lakers in the college basketball draft this year, attended tryout camp in Los Angeles recently.

"I did all right," Leonard said yesterday, "but they just have too many guards. They told me that they would get in in touch with Baltimore (the Bullets) to see if they might be interested in having me try out."

The Lakers have signed John Wetzel, who played at Virginia Tech. according to Leonard. "They have always wanted to get a tall guard, and Wetzel is 6-5. I don't know how he will do when he runs up against some fast guards," Leonard said.

Concerning his immediate future, Leonard said, "Right now I just want to get through with school; I can think about basketball later."

Leonard is completing his requirement for a bachelor's degree at Wake Forest by taking one course this semester.

 

True to their word the Lakers got him a tryout with the Baltimore Bullets. According to an Oct. 5, 1966 report in the Winston-Salem Twin City Sentinel:

Paul Long, who will captain Wake Forest's basketball team this winter, and some of his buddies went to Charlotte Saturday night to see the Baltimore Bullets play the St. Louis Hawks in a National Basketball Association exhibition game.

Long was hoping to cheer for Bob Leonard, who is now on the Baltimore roster, but the former Wake Forest captain didn't get into the game. Mike Farmer, the Bullets' coach, used only six players as his team beat the Hawks, 114-109, and snapped a three-game losing streak.

Leonard said he hadn't played much in the exhibition games. He suffered a groin injury early in the Bullets' training camp and it slowed him down some. But he's feeling fine now, has survived the first squad cut and thinks he may stay with Baltimore.

"I'm trying to sharpen every phase of my game now," said Leonard. "Your whole game has to be better to stick up here. I really haven't had trouble with any one thing. I'm just trying to improve everything."

Bob Ferry, the Bullets' center, is one of Leonard's biggest boosters. "I've been in this league 10 years and Bob is the best defensive rookie to come up.”

 

Leonard made it to the final 16 on the roster but on Oct. 8, 1966, he was one of the Baltimore Bullets final three cuts.

He returned to Winston-Salem, finished his undergrad degree and began law school, all the while staying in shape by playing in the local city league.

 

Then on June 12, 1969 the Winston-Salem Twin City Sentinel reported:

Bob Leonard, a former Wake Forest basketball star, is listed on the rookie camp roster of the Carolina Cougars. But Leonard, who is in law school at Wake Forest, says this does not mean that he is trying out for the team.

"I have finished two years of law school and I am in the summer break," said Leonard yesterday. "I have been playing basketball every winter in the City League, on the same team with Whitey Bell (a former N.C. State player). I'm not in mid-season shape, but I'm in pretty good shape. I think it will be fun to go over there and see what I can do.

"I'd like to see Coach (Bones) McKinney again and some of the boys who will be in the camp. I'd like to see how I could do against them. It's sort of a challenge."

[Bones McKinney was his coach at Wake Forest.]

If things go well, will Leonard play with the Cougars?

Bob hesitated. "I just don't know," he said. "I think I would have to wait and make that decision when it comes. I have another year of law school and I have worked too hard these first two years to give it all up."

 

He did decide to go to rookie camp but once again the numbers were against him and he didn’t make the squad.

He finished law school, got his law degree, passed the bar and in 1972 was elected Forsyth County District Judge, at 28 the youngest judge ever elected in North Carolina.

 

D-B Scoring Leaders

From the March 15, 1962 Kingsport Times-News, Dobyns-Bennett basketball’s top scorers of the 1961-1962 season, Robert Leonard’s senior season:

Robert Leonard finished the 1961-62 season with 479 points as Dobyns-Bennett's top scorer, followed by Walker Locke with 346 and Ken Pruett with 186.

Others in order were Eugene Bush, 135; Earl Lovelace, 121; Richard Arnold, 120; John Shipley, 80; Charles Hunley, 69; Dick Nelms, 63; Ron Litton, 35, Tony Poe, 35; Jerry McClellan, 15.

 

 

I never heard anyone call Robert Leonard “Bobby.” It was always Robert or Bob. I had breakfast frequently in the early 2000s with his older brother Charlie and he always called him “Robert.”

But there was another genuine Kingsport “Bobby” who also died recently. Bobby Cross’s full name, as announced in the Kingsport Times when he was born in August 1943 was Bobby Gerald Cross.

Bobby Cross was an Honorable Mention All-State quarterback who led Dobyns-Bennett to its second consecutive state championship in 1960 (this was before playoffs, when polls determined the state champion). He died January 28 at age 80.

That 1960 football team went undefeated against Tennessee opponents, losing only to Roanoke (Virginia) Jefferson High 14-12.

Bobby had been the back up to All-Southern quarterback Wally Bridwell on the 1959 state championship team that went 9-0-1, with a tie against Roanoke Jefferson.

Bobby lived two doors down from me when I was growing up. I can remember him as one of the big kids, playing football in my next-door neighbor’s backyard. Many future D-B football stars came out of those backyard games, including Bobby, Danny Minor, Darwin Compton and Ken Tolliver.

Every now and then the big boys would let a tyke like me play – I was four years younger than the youngest of the gang, and eight years the junior to many.

On one of those rare plays that I got in, I decided to use the “body block” technique that I had just learned on Gary Cox, who was seven years older than me. Needless to say, I got the wind knocked out of me.

The first big kid to run over to me was Bobby Cross, who kept telling me, “You’ll be okay, just take a deep breath.”

It worked. I’m still here.

That was the way Bobby was, a big heart, and the first to notice and run to help when someone else was struggling.

 

I wasn’t much bigger than a football when I watched those big kids play next door. There were usually four boys to a side and they wore out the grass in that yard.

The homeowner, Walter Shankel, was watching the game one autumn afternoon when his friend Grady asked, “Aren’t you worried that those boys are going to destroy your lawn?”

 Walter, one of the calmest people I have ever known, replied, “That grass will grow back. But someday those boys will be gone.”

 

D-B’s 1960 Football Team

D-B’s football team finished first in the state in both the UPI and Litkenhous rankings in 1960 but wound up second to Nashville Litton in the AP poll. Litton, which was undefeated in the regular season, went on to lose in the Nashville Clinic Bowl to Battle Ground Academy. But that was after the final AP poll. D-B actually had more first place votes in the final AP poll but were ranked fourth and fifth on a number of, uh, middle Tennessee ballots.

The Litratings, which relied on a mathematical formula based on difference-by-score, didn’t conclude until after the bowl games. BGA finished second to D-B in the Litratings.

D-B finished with a 104.8 Litrating. BGA had a 101.1, which meant, according to Dr. Frank Litkenhous, creator of the rating system, that if the two teams met on a neutral field, D-B would win by 3 or 4 points.

The lowest ranked east Tennessee team in the final Litrating was Boones Creek with a score of 13.7.

The highest rated team in the state was Chattanooga Baylor with a 108.2 score but they were fenced off into a separate category with seven other private prep schools.