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Upcoming reunion highlights legacy of local school By CLAUDE VINSON
Staff Writer This
week beginning on Friday, the third of September, the planning which
has been going on for months will culminate in the eighth Grand Reunion
for the St. Mary’s/CADET/ Holy Family School on West Street. The
principal, Clara Isom, has been working with the reunion committee,
headed by Willie Mallory, to make the event classically welcoming to
the former students, teachers, family and friends on the return to
“their school.” In the ’60s there was a very
popular TV show called “The Naked City.” It was about the New York City
police, and probably the real progenitor of the many popular “crime and
cop shows” which we enjoy together. At the end of each episode, a
narrator would say, “There are eight million stories in the Naked City.
This has been one of them.” St. Mary’s was a new
school and each year of its existence, something new was added; that’s
called progress, folks. Anyway, being new, there were no established
athletics or sports programs and students spent their recesses playing
“pick up” intramurals such as baseball, football and basketball. Of
course, “jacks, top spinning, marbles and “Greenie” were also very
popular. With the advent of the ninth grade, some
enterprising students convinced the principal that St. Mary’s had to
field a competitive basketball team. These enterprising students even
recruited the first coach, one Freeman “Fish” Evans, a football player
at M.I. and the Scoutmaster of local Troop 58 of the Boy Scouts of
America. And so, during the school year
’51-’52, the St. Marys’ Indians were born. The uniform selected was a
gold jersey with blue shorts. Players were allowed to pick their own
numbers. One of the Sisters had a stencil set and a team member (who
had never lost a spelling contest at St. Mary’s) imprinted the number,
school name on the front and number and mascot on the back. However,
the “n” was omitted from the name and the first games were played by
the St. Mary’s “Idians!” The members of that
first team were Curtiss Talley, Stanley “Hot Rod” Edgerton, Johhny
Jones, Claude Vinson, Arthur and Lieutenant Harvey, John Freeman,
Linwood Frazier, JohnnyRayford, Jimmy and Johnny Scales and Shelby
Gordon. Curtiss Talley was a seventh grader and started as center. He
wasn’t that good; he was just the tallest kid on the team. I played
small forward because I had to look out for Curtiss. He often forgot
which goal we were using. Fish Evans was an
outstanding coach and the team was successful from its very beginning.
Our first “road game” was in Marion, Ark. The gym had no bleacher seats
and all the spectators were lined against the walls along the court.
They would try to trip our players, even grabbed our jerseys as we
passed. At half time and noticing the climate in the gym, coach Evans
stated, “We are going to win this game. When that last whistle sounds,
don’t worry about changing clothes, shaking hands or anything, head
straight for the cars!” It was a long time before we went on another
road trip. St. Mary’s greatest rivalries were
with Rosenwald/ Sims, Antioch of New Albany (which had students on the
team playing under the Korean War G.I. Bill) and Geeter’s Green Dragons
of Whitehaven, Tenn. A girls’ team was formed a
couple of years later and the first members of that team were Odiemae
Lucas (whose son, Shawn Elliott went on to play pro ball for the
Spurs), Grace Sanderson, Elaine Warren, Holmesetta Wilson (the only
grade school player on the team), Lillian Wilson, Doris Faulkner,
Cornelia Leggs, Velma Ealey, Vivian Brunt, Ezell Young. The Lady Indians also enjoyed a lasting rivalry with Rosenwald/Sims. Their greatest challenge was the team from Brookhaven. The
Indians, who would later become the Braves, never lost more than three
games in a season and had their perfect season in 1963 when they went
21-0 and won both the All Catholic High School Championship and the
Athletic Conference of Mississippi Championship. The members of that
team were Jimmy and Johnny Edgerton, James Walls, James Stephenson,
Percy Caldwell, Cecil Pegues, George Owens, Billie Robinson, Earnest
Lucas, Levi Smith, Gray Mansfield, Oliver Peyton, Leroy Greer, trainer;
Bernard Freeman, trainer; and coach Fish Evans. The
school also did well in other sports such as football, baseball and
track. Coach Evans was drafted into the army in 1954 and sent to Europe
where was an assistant coach on the semi-pro SHAPE team which won the
European championship. He returned to coach again at St. Mary’s. The
other part of the school’s legacy has to do with the number of students
who served their country as members of the armed forces. In reciting this litany, it is a foregone conclusion that someone will be left out. I apologize for that. The
Freeman family probably leads the way for service commitment, having
sent five sons, John, Leroy, Henry, Bernard, and Herbert. From the
Vinsons there were Claude, James, Patrick, Chris and Mark. Others
were Richard Smith, Richard House (veteran), J.T. Harvey, Willie Greer,
Genevieve Clark, Linwood Turner, Antwone McNeil, Charlotte Mitchell,
James M. Faulkner, Christopher Faulkner, Robert Davis, Willie Greer,
Jimmie Pegues, Odiemae Lucas, Otis Russell, and Thelma Wells. Father
Mike Ortiz, the school’s first athletic director, joined the Green
Berets and retired as a colonel a few years back. We are proud of all of these persons and those not named here. So,
while you are participating in this glorious weekend, remember the
words of Oliver Wendell Holmes: “The only things which keep their youth
are trees and truth.” And think of the beautiful legacy which you were a part of. There are hundreds of stories associated with the St. Mary’s/CADET/Holy Family experience. This has been one of them.
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