Peggy Wynne Taylor "remembers" how it was 'way back then.

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Hey Guys and Gals, here's the first "way back then" story from a classmate in over a year!  Thanks, Larry! 

Our Teachers Never Forgot Us!

Ok, Louis, here we go!  Your begging has moved me to try out my creative juices in a story about one of our teachers in our former lives.  Coach Ray Collins, I believe, was our PE coach in junior high school,and maybe a math teacher as well as our senior high school basketball coach.

 This is my story:

I was a big Memphis Chicks (a AA minor league baseball) fan in the late 50`s and early 60`s.

One night at a game, my friends and I got a little excited, as the Chicks were beating the Birmingham Barons, pretty bad, if I might say so thanks to our high decibel vocal support.  In the middle of the game, out of the box seats below and up to the bleachers, comes Coach Collins--big as life.

To us, his words were, " I heard all the excitement, and I knew the that voice"  He was referring to me, of  course.  It seems, he had a family member in Baptist hospital, across the street from the ball park and he was taking a much-needed a little break away from the hospital.  We had a good visit, and he sat with us the rest of the game which the Chicks won.

Another time Carl Boley showed up about the same way.  I believe his child was in Baptist hospital for some time.

We were a pretty loud bunch at the time.

The team owner, Mr. Nat Buring, sent an usher for us, to join him in his private box for the rest of the season.  He thought we should be down in the box where we could see better, but, you know, I missed the bleachers.

                                                                       Larry

Ed. Note:  This dates Larry.  The Chicks, short for "Chickasaws," lost their stadium to fire in 1960, and if Larry was a fan like he said he was, his faithful attendance made up a healthy proportion of the total attendance for the year of 48,000.  This dismal attendance and similar poor attendance throughout the league led the Southern League to shut down after the 1961 season, so Memphis was without professional baseball 'til 1968.  

I love this little story, because it carries many moral lessons.  First, there's the reward for enthusiastic expression of your heart-felt support for your team--i.e., Larry and his friends were having the time of their lives getting so involved in the game.  I envy that kind of fan--you know, the ones that can urge their team to victory by the sheer volume of their exhortation.  They really have their adrenalin--and endorphins--going.  This exercise, all by itself, is good for their health--both physically and mentally.  The fact that the team owner recognized their rabid support by bestowing on them the prized seats is a secondary--but no less real--reward, also.  No doubt, their sitting in the presence of "the big guy" did nothing to quench their spirit, and, I daresay, they had fun in the box seats, but, like Larry tells us, the great joy of a baseball game is in what you yourself bring through the turnstile with you, not what the team is doing or where you are sitting.

The second great testimony here is that of the nature of our teachers in the Sheffield City Schools system.  Who in the world was Little Larry Hall?  Why, he was a real person!  A kid that was, for a while, entrusted to the care and teaching of a person like Ray Collins, an adult and a Sheffield teacher.  He was not a nameless face in the classroom or on the playground, a part of the vast herd of untamed animals into which his job was to try to inflict some fact or two, some knowledge and appreciation of sports or whatever the assignment he, as a teacher has been given.  Our Sheffield teachers knew us as individuals.  They cared about us, and, as others have told in these stories, they became our friends years after high school--if we let them be.  A number of us never knew this, nor did we appreciate that this experience could be ours, too.  We learned too late what great people our teachers were.  Thank goodness, some, like Larry, had the good fortune to know that these great teachers could be great baseball fans (or great whatevers) and good friends. 

This little essay is also posted on the Personal Reflections page where we post all of the short stories about our time at SHS.  

You, yes you, Dear Reader, need to send in your impressions of the days of high school in Sheffield.  It would be good to write short essays on one specific episode that moved you a lot, and send in several of them, so we can alternate stories and keep these pages renewed and fresh, inviting classmates to keep on returning to this website.