I guess no student at Sheffield High during the Fifties wouldn't put Coach Wright at or near the top of their list if asked to name our teachers back then.  He was the most loved, feared and admired member of the faculty.  He was considered to be the "Dean of Coaches" in the Tennessee Valley, and "his boys" on the football and baseball teams still think of him as their mentor and friend.

Coach Wright was a teacher, too.  Some of us have personal memories of him in the classroom more so than on the side of the football field or in the dugout or on the practice fields where he built his renown.  I, personally, admired him and respected him because he knew his subjects and demanded the best in the classroom.  I learned this the hard way.  By not focusing on his algebra class, I earned a "C" on one of his quizzes.  This was the lowest grade I had received up to that time in high school, and he told me that he knew I had not prepared for that exam.  He encouraged me, but he did not patronize me, and that was the last time I took an exam without serious preparation.  That was the last time I got a "C," too.  By maintaining his strict high standards, he, in his own way, helped mold me into a serious student (if not an obsessive-compulsive one).

Others of you, no doubt, have your own tales of encounters with "Coach."  Please share them with us on this tribute page.

Coach was never a quitter.  After 27 years at SHS, Walton R. Wright stepped into retirement in 1965 but was named director of Sheffield's Recreation Department, a position he held until 1973.  He immediately went to work as a volunteer at Helen Keller Memorial Hospital and amassed over 2,000 hours in service during his twilight years.  In 2002, Coach Wright died at age 91.

Walton R. Wright

Walton R. Wright, 91, of Sheffield, died Tuesday, Jan. 16, 2002.

Visitation will be from 11:30 a.m. until 1 p.m. today at First Methodist Church, Sheffield.

A 1 p.m. funeral service will be conducted at the church following the visitation. Burial will be at KP Cemetery, Russellville. Morrison Funeral Home, Tuscumbia, is directing.

Wright was a native of Winston County, Ala., and a 1929 graduate of Russellville High School, where he lettered in football, baseball and basketball.

He earned a B.S. degree from Birmingham-Southern College in 1933 and an M.S. degree in education from George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville. While at Birmingham-Southern, he was a three-sport athlete, receiving the Hugh W. Robertson medal for outstanding athletic ability. He served as vice president of his junior and senior classes, and was a member of Pi Kappa Alpha social fraternity and Kappa Phi Kappa honorary.

Wright began his coaching and teaching career at Madison County High School in Gurley, Ala., followed by one year each at Falkville and Hackleburg high schools. He accepted a position at Sheffield High School in 1937, where he taught algebra and geometry and coached athletics.

After assuming his new position as head football coach in 1937, Wright’s teams won 29 of their first 36 games, establishing a pattern that continued throughout his career. During his 27 years at Sheffield, Wright’s teams suffered only five losing seasons.

From Oct. 15, 1943, through Oct. 5, 1946, his teams won 25 consecutive games. In addition to two undefeated, untied seasons, Wright teams had six seasons in which they lost only one game. During his career, SHS won seven Tri-Cities Championships. In 1948, he was selected as one of the coaches for the first Alabama High School All-Star game at Tuscaloosa.

Wright initiated a competitive basketball program at Sheffield and coached baseball for 11 years, compiling a record of 80 wins against 11 losses. He retired as a teacher and coach in 1965 and was named director of the Sheffield Recreation Department, a position he held until 1973, at which time he began work as a volunteer at Helen Keller Memorial Hospital, giving more than 2,000 hours in volunteer service.

Coach Wright’s distinguished and rewarding career has been generously recognized by the communities that he loved. In 1973, Sheffield High School’s football stadium was named in his honor. He was inducted into the Birmingham-Southern Sports Hall of Fame in 1983 and the Alabama High School Sports Hall of Fame in 1994.

He was an inaugural inductee to the Franklin County Sports Hall of Fame in 1998 and the Colbert County Sports Hall of Fame in 2000. He was honored by his town with "Coach Walton R. Wright Day" in 1987 for "50 years of shaping the lives of the youth of the city of Sheffield."

Coach Wright was a member of First United Methodist Church in Sheffield for 54 years.

He is survived by his wife, Mildred Caldwell Wright; daughters, Mary Settle Cooney, Sheffield, and Frances Dee Munger, Summerdale, Ala.; one son, W. Robert Wright Jr., Nashville, Tenn.; two sons-in-law, Dr. Joseph C. Cooney and Jack McDavid Munger Jr.; seven grandchildren and their spouses, Dr. and Mrs. Joseph C. Cooney Jr., Robert H. Cooney, Mr. and Mrs. Jack McDavid Munger III, Mr. and Mrs. Evan Caldwell Munger, Elisabeth Leigh Hubbard and husband, Christopher Hugh, SSgt., and Mrs. Christopher Wesley Wright, Rebecca Barrett Wright; four great-grandchildren, Olivia Settle Cooney, Kaitlyn Marie Munger, Alexis Brianna Wright and Taylor Hugh Hubbard.

Pallbearers will be Coach Wright’s grandsons, sons-in-law and grandson-in-law.

Honorary pallbearers are his former student athletes.

    I guess my favorite teacher was Coach Wright.  When we started high school in the ninth grade, it was expected of us to take Algebra I and Coach Wright was the teacher that all of the freshmen were told to fear.  After the first week of class, I started looking forward to that period each day.  Something about the course and his knowledge of algebra was fascinating to me.  I worked hard on my homework and helped others to do theirs

At the end of the first year in high school, Coach Wright told me I was exempted from the final exam but he wanted me to take it to see if it was fair.  I was so proud but scared because I did not want to disappoint him!  I refused.  To this day, I wish I had honored his request. 

For over forty years I have taught mathematics and a year never goes by without me telling my students that my ninth grade algebra teacher is the reason I teach mathematics.

Gayle Steverson Kent, Ph.D.

Coach Wright - A New Trick or an Epiphany

Early fall in Coach Wright’s Algebra Class, the sun was shining outside, Annette Clark was at the blackboard presenting one of the homework problems.  I leaned back and stretched out my legs and gazed at the ceiling.  Out of boredom and tired of daydreaming, I started counting the tiles on the ceiling.

Ah, I didn’t notice Coach circling behind me in the back of the room.  I was engrossed in my own mathematical world.  He knelt down right behind me, leaned over to me ear and whispered:  “It is much faster to count the tiles across the front, then from front to back and multiply the two!” 

I sat bolt upright in the desk.  I don’t think anyone else in the class noticed this encounter.  There were a lot of things he could have done, such as sending me to the principal’s office, or embarrassing me in front of the class, etc.  However he had my full and undivided attention from then on!

   Buck Locke,

Retired Manager of Advanced Technology, Hewlett-Packard

My most vivid memory of an event that occurred in high school is that day in Coach Wright's class when he asked me a question, pointing that famous index finger at me waiting for my answer.  He kept on pointing as I fearfully gave my answer, knowing his next question would be, "Why?"  That finger continued to be aimed at me until he was satisfied that I understood.  Coach Wright is the teacher that had the most influence on me because he stressed the importance of obtaining a thorough understanding of the subject matter in order to apply it to everyday situations.

Lydia Moore Almand

Sheffield coaching icon dies at age 91

Jeff McIntyre/Sports Writer

Walton Wright, one of the Shoals area’s most popular and successful high school football coaches, died Wednesday after an extended illness.

Wright, 91, served as head coach at Sheffield from 1937-64 and turned the program into one of the state’s best. He compiled an overall record of 152-90-12 at Sheffield.

Wright was fondly remembered Wednesday by ex-players as well as by those he coached against.

Former Deshler coach Howard Chappell coached against Wright for many years but said the two of them always had a great relationship.

"We would go to coaching meetings at Birmingham and TVCC meetings all the time together," Chappell said. "We were good friends, real good friends. Never had any disputes of any kind.

"Coach Wright was a little bulldog. He would get after you. He had a lot of spunk, and he worked so hard. He was hard to beat on the football field. I don’t know how we came out, but I think he had a little bit on me."

Wright was a graduate of Russellville High and Birmingham-Southern College. He is a member of the Birmingham- Southern Hall of Fame.

Former Deshler and Coffee head coach Buddy Moore played for Wright at Sheffield from 1947-50 and later coached against him at Deshler.

"I played for him from the eighth grade through my senior year, then coached against him for five years," Moore said. "I beat him some, lost some. He was tough to beat, though, because he was prepared and his teams played hard. He was a great guy.

"As a player, I remember that he was a very tough disciplinarian. But he believed in fairness, and size didn’t matter to him. You could be a player no matter what you weighed, because he had a knack of looking into a person’s heart and seeing what kind of toughness they had."

Wright received numerous honors throughout the years. He was inducted into the Alabama High School Athletic Hall of Fame in 1994, and was part of the inaugural class of the Colbert County Sports Hall of Fame in 2000.

The football stadium at Sheffield is also named in his honor.

"I’ve told people this before - Coach Wright was a Sheffield institution," said Jimmy Box, an all-state player at Sheffield in 1958-59. "As long as there is a Sheffield High School and a Walton R. Wright Stadium, he will be remembered fondly. He was just a special person."

Wright also served as head baseball coach at Sheffield from 1946-57. His teams posted an 80-11 record in 11 years.

In addition to his coaching duties, Wright taught algebra and geometry at Sheffield.

"Coach Wright was not only a great coach, but he was a great classroom teacher too," Box said. "He coached me in both football and baseball when I was in school. He was a disciplinarian in the classroom and on the fields.

"He set goals for us to reach for and tried his best to help us reach them."

Billy Don Anderson played against Wright’s Sheffield teams while playing at Athens. After moving to Sheffield, Anderson became a friend of Wright’s.

 "His death - in my opinion - is just another chapter closed on that type of coach," Anderson said. "You have don’t have too many coaches stay at one school for 27 years anymore.

"The coaching was just half his life. Teaching was just as important to him as the coaching. He was a fine man."

Published in The Times Daily on January 17, 2002