asfoxseesit

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Born May 18, 1953; got saved at Truett Memorial BC in Hayesville, NC 1959. On rigged ballot which I did not rig got Most Intellectual class of 71, Gaffney High School. Furman Grad, Sociology major but it was little tougher than Auburn football players had Had three dates with beautiful women the summer of 1978. Did not marry any of em. Never married anybody cause what was available was undesirable and what was desirable was unaffordable. Unlucky in love as they say and even still it is sometimes heartbreaking. Had a Pakistani Jr. Davis Cupper on the Ropes the summer of 84, City Courts, Rome Georgia I've a baby sitter, watched peoples homes while they were away on Vacation. Freelance writer, local consultant, screenwriter, and the best damn substitute teacher of Floyd County Georgia in mid 80's according to an anonymous kid passed me on main street a few years later when I went back to get a sandwich at Schroeders. Had some good moments in Collinsville as well. Ask Casey Mattox at www.clsnet.org if he will be honest about it. I try my best to make it to Bridges BBQ in Shelby NC at least four times a year.

Monday, April 29, 2019

Billy D. Fox, 97 May 3

   My Dad passed away August 2, 1999 at age 77, twenty years ago.

    He loved Baseball and had a romance with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Ive often told folks if you want to see my Dad, check out the near last scene of Moneyball, where Brad Pitt is reviewing film of the big fellow at Bat.

    That was my Dad. He hit a home run.

     Last few days Ive come across a couple letters from my Dad's career, some professional and some for the family.

    I will post a few now and some later, so if you knew him or like this posting come back to it in a month to see if there is some new stuff or a revision.

     First, here is a letter handwritten in good cursive writing from the chair of the search committee of Bethany Baptist church, James C Worthy of McArthurville, Gaffney SC  dated November 7 , 1961.
 
   Dear Brother Fox,

   First let me say how much we enjoyed being in your home and meeting your fine family (in Hayesville, NC). We had learned quite a lot about you before, but feel we know you much better now, even though our meeting was brief.

      We had a tiresome but enjoyable trip home through the mountains arriving about 8 pm.

    After giving much prayer and thought about your suggestion of raising the pastor's salary, we feel that it would be to your best interest, as well as ours, not to discuss it with the deacons at this time. We Would like to discuss it with your again on the 26th. We feel that we can work out some satisfactory plan with you, if it is the Lord's will for you to come and be our pastor.
  
    We shall continue to pray that the Lord's will might be done for both you and our church, and know you have been, and will continue to be much in prayer for all concerned.

    We shall arrange for your lodging and meals while you are in Gaffney and are looking forward to seeing you on the 26th. Write me and let me know about what time you will arrive, and I will meet you at the church.

    Wishing for you a safe and journey and remain,

                                        Sincerely,

                                        James C. Worth.


    On May 20th, 1997 Dad wrote me a personal note, as I'm sure he did my sister and brother, handwriting on the letterhead of the Lyerly UMC in Ga.

     Just a word of thanks to you, Marsha and James for my birthday party. It meant a lot to me and glad to see some old friends and receive cards from others.

                                            See you soon, Dad


    Among those who showed up for the birthday party my sister mostly arranged at the Girl Scout Center in Mauldin SC were friends from Gaffney, Knoxville and Newport Tn. I drove His sisters Juanita and Kathryn and her husband Paul Simmons up from Rome Ga. From Knoxville was the first cousin of Roy Acuff, the legend Emil and his daughter and family, and from Dad's first church in Newport Tn, Paul James and his wife Emmadeen.

    I think Lynn Arve was there, and Miss Mauldin whose daughter went to Carnegie Mellon and Atwater Ellers and Penny Cooper were there too.

    About the first day of baseball every year  in Gaffney late 60s through early 70s Daddy would drop the children off at school at make his way over to Big Waggy WAGI FM. You could hear the Station from Greenville to Charlotte and Billy Graham could hear it up in Montreat NC if he tuned in.

     Daddy would try to quote as much of Casey at the Bat as he could. It grew to be hilarious about the fifth year as he always had to bail out about the third verse and host Raymond Parker would say come back next year Billy, maybe you can make it all the way through.

   So here if I can find it is Casey's Revenge

   I love the line

   A Crack! A whack! and out through space the leather pellet flew

    https://www.csh.rit.edu/~kenny/poetry/kcrev.html
    

Monday, April 15, 2019

Furman Seeking Abraham; The Infidel Trump and South Carolina

    Furman's year long study Seeking Abraham on pages 42 and 43 in the appendix takes a look at the founder Richard Furman's son James Clement and his race demagoguery of the Civil War era and early Reconstruction. JC, the Baptist minister and President of Furman when it moved from Winnsboro SC to Destination City Greenville SC and the brow of the Reedy River than now overlooks the Suspension Bridge said things that woulda later made Pitchfork Been Tillman and Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond proud.

    He dismissed his Theology classes in the 1860s to take his students to witness lynchings in downtown Greenville.

     The last lynching in Greenville, lynching of Willie Earle, got international attention in the late 40s. The Judson Bookstore downtown now affiliated with Furman whose campus moved five miles north in early 1960s used to be the courthouse. And Duke Chaplain Will Willimon, a product of Wofford had a day long event on that basketball campus a year ago to commemorate the lynching of Willie Earle.

    So the appendix of Seeking Abraham speaks with near apoplexy about the behavior of the son of the founder  a century and a half ago.

   But as Baptist historian Bill Leonard alluded recently, where is the prophetic voice at Furman when it comes to the politics of Trump and his complicitors in the Upstate, Senator Richard Lindsay and Congressman William Timmons.

    Leonard was a key figure in the development process of the Seeking ABraham document.

    Folks at Furman know well the history of race baiting of SC 's Lee Atwater that as late as the 80s was targeting the great friend of Former Furman president Blackwell, the mayor of Greenville Max Heller, a Jew. But Atwater before he died said you can't race bait like you used to so now time to play the politics of abortion and guns.

     Click on dyingofwhiteness.com .

     But now Trump is tweeting in the worst way about Congresswoman Omar. Where is the 17 member Seeking Abraham Committee  and the Provost office on this one, when it counts, in our time, with the strategic South Carolina Presidential Primary on the horizon.

       Are they as struck mute as Richard Shelby was in Alabama two years ago when Trump implied two of Nick Saban's Heisman trophy winners Derrick Henry and Mark Ingram were sons a bitches cause they had reservatioons about the way Trump spun Kaepernick?

     Congressman Timmons is a product of Christ Church Prep School in Greenville. His father was the money behind the Basketball arena at Furman which bears his Family name. The Christ Church community in Greenville is hardwired to Upstate funding of Furman.

    The slaveholding of Furman's founders is a significant investigation. Let's see comparable energy devoted now to comparable participation and complicity in the outrage of the moment.

    For context also see the Chapter Battle Lines in Jill Lepore's new history of America, These Truths.

   Also google the New Yorker piece on Bullying Omar

  

Thursday, April 04, 2019

My Gaffney classmate Charles Foster; And Shelby and Basketball great David Thompson Remember Flight

      I got word from the West Coast  a month ago that my Gaffney High School Classmate,  1976 Montreal High Hurdle Olympian Charles Foster died Sunday March 31.

      I remember the night we were lined up for Gradudation in May of 71 on the tennis courts to march up the back stairs and into the gymnasium for Commencement. There was a seven minute or so delay, and Foster a few ahead of me in line looked Back and said, Fox, get this show on the road, I'm hurdling out of this town.

    About two weeks earlier I was sitting beside Foster on the top row in the Gym for the Awards Assembly for the academic years 70-71 

    I was sitting beside Charles Foster on Awards day May of 71 when Track Coach Whiteford Smith came out with a big Trophy, I think Athlete of the Year. Before he started talking Foster Said, "That one's mine." A Few Awards later Ramona Ross came out with buttons for all the Chorus participants that year and I said to Foster, One of Those is mine. I was honored that Charles Came over to speak at my Mother's alma mater in October 95 in Collinsville, Alabama before the 96 Atlanta Olympics. He got a nice write up at UNC at their site. Everything said about his infectious personality rings true for those who knew him in Gaffney High

    One summer I was home from college and trying to improve my footwork and stamina for tennis intramurals at Furman. I was running the Steps in the stadium at Gaffney High all 22 of them which was quite taxing running seat to seat instead of the walking steps. Foster was there running hills and I told him I was ready for the challenge on the steps; remember this is about two years before he's in the Olympics in 76.

    I was on about the fourth step when I looked up and he was at the top laughing at me. I was running aware of gravity and he ran in another lightly weighted solar system closer to birds than humanity.

    In conversations that followed Charles Death, Johnny Dawkins told me about a track meet in Shelby North Carolina his senior year, the spring of 1970. Dawkins on a team with Jimmy Baker, Foster and Lewis Huskey was later to set a school record in the 4 by 220 relays. And as I understood the story of that Shelby meet, Lewis Huskey set an individual 220 low hurdles record and Foster came  along right behind him and broke it in a later heat.

    But on that day, Dawkins who later got a degree in screen writing from USC, Southern California, and wrote early script for the likes of Denzel Washington; and his relay handoff the future Olympian  Foster appear to have contested the track team of nearby Crest High School, the alma mater of the writer Ron Rash and the Basketball great DAvid Thompson about whom Michael Jordan once said, before Me, there Was David-- google Rash, Thompson Grantland.

    I'll let Rash take it from there from his Grantland piece of 2011.

   I have one more memory, my favorite, though it took place on cinders instead of hardwood. I was never good enough to play on a basketball team with David, but we did run track together, both members of a 4×4 relay team good enough to place in the state meet. This, too, was a humid evening, but two weeks before our high school graduation, and not in Boiling Springs but nearer to the state’s center. David ran the third leg and I ran the fourth. Here’s the way I will remember it: David is out of the last turn and coming toward me, the hollow metal baton in his right hand. As he nears, I start running and reach my hand behind me. The baton settles in my palm, and for a moment we both hold it — two small-town kids who cannot imagine what they will achieve and what they will lose, but headed into that future, for a moment, together.  end rash quote 

    I'm going with the Legend even though Dawk tells me Gaffney Track Coach Whitey Smith held him out that day in Shelby for another event. But as another friend once told me, the Oscar nominated and award winning documentarian Brett Morgen once told me, between the facts and the Legend, Always go with the Legend.

    On NPR a few years ago I heard the story of some Iranian dissidents, most of whom didn't make it out of their cells. But they did have a space to see Birds fly most days. Inscripted on their wall was: "Remember Flight for the Bird is Mortal"

      The likes of David Thompson--44 inch vertical leap, my friend the Hurdler, Charles Foster, even Dawkins, Rash, Jimmy Baker and Lewis Huskey who had less problems with gravity than the rest of us...….. you get it, Remember Flight!

  

    https://goheels.com/news/2019/3/31/legendary-track-field-coach-charles-foster-passes-away.aspx