TESTIMONIALS AND
OTHER
CORRESPONDENCE
Send us your favorite Tom Raby story or Testimonial.
enough to let me read, but there were so many of them and so many that were so
very personal to
the people who wrote them, I simply could not make the decisions. If you don't look at
anything else
on this website, read the
letter from Walt Scruggs that's included below; somewhere in there you will
find
who Walt was and
who Tom was and what both were made of.
COACH,
... FIRST LET ME
TELL YOU HOW MUCH YOU HAVE MEANT TO ME THROUGHOUT MY
LIFE. …
DURING MY BASKETBALL PLAYING YEARS, THE THINGS I REMEMBER MOST
ARE YOUR FAIRNESS, STRICTNESS AND HONESTY. ALSO I REMEMBER ALL THE
FUN
WE HAD PLAYING BASKETBALL FOR YOU. WHAT A PERSON TO MODEL YOUR
LIFE AFTER.
YOU MAY NOT KNOW IT, BUT YOU ARE THE MAIN REASON I WENT
INTO EDUCATION AND
WANTED TO BE A COACH. IT MEANT SO MUCH TO ME PLAYING
BASKETBALL FOR YOU THAT
I WANTED TO BE LIKE YOU. I WANTED TO GIVE BACK TO
THE COMMUNITY WHAT
I HAD
LEARNED FROM YOU. I WANTED THE KIDS I COACHED
TO HAVE A LOVE OF THE GAME WHICH I HAD
LEARNED FROM YOU. WHEN I WAS IN HIGH
SCHOOL I ONLY KNEW I WAS
HAVING FUN. IT WAS ONLY AS I GREW OLDER THAT I
REALIZED THE THINGS I
HAD LEARNED FROM YOU AS A
COACH. I CAN ONLY HOPE AND
PRAY THAT I REACHED ONE KID AS YOU
REACHED ME. THE THINGS YOU DID AS A
COACH MEANS SO MUCH, ESPECIALLY TO
YOUR
PLAYERS. …
THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH FOR ALL THE THINGS YOU HAVE DONE FOR ME DURING
MY LIFE.
I CANNOT EVER REPAY YOU FOR THE THINGS YOU HAVE DONE FOR ME AND
HOW MUCH YOU
HAVE MEANT TO ME DURING MY LIFE.
I LOVE YOU COACH
ALTON SUTTON
Page 1.
Walt Scruggs form Piedmont College, Demorest, GA.
Page 2.
Walt Scruggs form
Piedmont College, Demorest, GA.
Page 3.
Walt Scruggs form Piedmont College, Demorest, GA.
Page 4.
(The source is from a Peidmont College publication, the name
of which is unknown as
of this inclusion.)
Walter Scruggs
As the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of
Piedmont College in northeast
Georgia gathered for its regular monthly meeting in May 1965, I noticed that a
black youth
was sitting on a davenport in the lobby of Daniel Hall, our classroom and
administration building.
Remembering that Coach O’Neal Cave had mentioned several weeks earlier that he
was
recommending our first black athlete for admission to the college, I walked over
to introduce
myself. He saw me coming, stood, and greeted me with a contagiously friendly
smile, as he
said, “I’m Willie Scruggs.” Since three of the trustees were only a few
steps away, we walked
over, and I introduced our first black student applicant...
... Walter Scruggs was not only the first black
athlete, but also the first black student
enrolled in our college, even though our charter of 1897 was interracial. (In
fact, Madame
Chiang Kai-shek was an eighth-grade student at Piedmont Academy, and various
students
came from Cuba.) … Walter Scruggs was the first black
athlete in his Franklin, North
Carolina high school, and he was the first black athlete on a collegiate or
university varsity
team in the State of Georgia.
We learned that Walter was one of ten children. He
needed and qualified for our most
complete financial assistance, our modest basketball scholarship, work-aid, and
a National
Defense Student Loan. Moreover, he could use and accepted shoes and clothing
from our
College Thrift Shop, stocked with gifts from our supporting friends in the
Congregational
churches.
… He played in every basketball game as one of our five
varsity starters. Coach had asked
all of the teams in the Georgia Collegiate Athletic Association if they were
willing to play
Piedmont College if we had a black in our lineup. None of them had a black
player in 1964.
Not a single team objected. Moreover, they all seemed eager for us to be the
first college in
Georgia to play a black in varsity competition. Every coach and team in our
schedule was
cooperative and personally interested in making our venture successful. (Times
change.
In 1979, four of our five varsity starters were black.) And successful it
was from this point
of view, even though we lost four games and won one. Not a single unpleasant
incident
occurred between players, and not a single verbal clash with fans in the stands
marred
the fall quarter.
His natural friendliness, his boundless and courageous
good will, and his boundless faith in
God and his fellow-man, all made him a most unforgettable character. On
the night before the
team traveled to Augusta, Georgia, for the pre-Christmas invitational
tournament, Mrs. Walter
and I entertained the basketball team with a big steak dinner in our new home.
Walter was
among the most optimistic about our chances of winning at Augusta. His
conversation that
evening also included concern for “the boys in the jungles of Vietnam. … How I
wish they all
could be home for Christmas, like we’ll be.”
…Along with Walter’s seriousness and his religious
attitude of faith in fellow-men, unflagging
faith in his God, he was also a clown. I remember the evening he dribbled for a
basket with a clear
open field. There was no one between him and the goal. Instead of shooting the
ball in the normal
way, he entertained us with a shot in back of himself and over his head, and he
made the basket
to the enjoyment and applause of the crowd.
…. Then, on Christmas Eve, 1965, came the tragic
telephone call from the sheriff with news of
Walter’s death in a bead-on automobile crash in Franklin, North Carolina, on a
curve in the road
less than a mile from their little mountain home. The tragedy was compounded by
the fact that the
driver of the other auto mobile was his own elder brother.
Christmas 1965 for me was a day of calling on Willie’s
many friends in his hometown and
visiting with his family. Funeral arrangements in the beautiful Baptist Church
of Franklin for the
following Monday were accepted by the family. The preacher, congregation,
townsfolk of both
races in Franklin, and the young people from Piedmont College were all eager to
express their
appreciation to an eighteen-year-old black athlete for his contagious friendship
and his
unforgettable contributions to better racial relations among all people in
Appalachia.
All of us who attended the funeral services at the
beautiful First Baptist Church in Franklin will
remember forever the sense of fellowship and deep grief which united all of us
into one
community. “The hand cannot say to the foot, I have no need of you, nor can the
eye say to the
ear, I have no need of you . . . for the body is one.”
The brotherly compassion of the young man cost him his
life. “The rain falls on the just and
the unjust. . . .“ He was on an errand of mercy and concern searching in the
dark for his elder
brother, when the Grim Reaper gathered Walter Scruggs to the company of eternal
spirits.
We thank God for his friendliness, tolerance, and
courage. We thank God for the opportunities
he gave us to to be a friend to a young contemporary who sincerely wanted to be
a friend to
all mankind.
God bless his soul. God bless us all.
continued
From Ben Grant,
former player
continued
Sutton on Sports, Franklin Press, 6/14/97
"... I learned a lot at the knee of the master, some about the X’s arid Os of
sports, but
mostly about integrity, honesty, sportsmanship, and honor. To Coach Raby, these
were "
more than just abstract lessons that coaches are supposed to teach their
athletes. Coach
Raby has lived his life dedicated to these ideals, trying to pass them on to the
youngsters
of Franklin and Macon County...
From Michael
McSwain, former Macon County teacher and coach.
In 1977, I was working as a research biologist at the Coweeta Hydrologic
Laboratory in
Franklin. Prior to that, I had taught for two years at FHS,
coached youth league sports,
and coached a JV football team at Franklin High. When a science teaching
position opened
at FHS, I decided to apply. The condition to that position was that it was
tied to the need for a
girls' volleyball coach and a girls' basketball coach. I needed a
reference for the coaching
position and the first person I thought of was Tom Raby. I asked Tom for a
reference and I
must have gotten a good one because I got the job. Several weeks later,
Dr. Wesley Hill, then
the Superintendent of Macon County Schools, asked me why I chose Tom Raby as my
reference since Tom, himself, had approached Dr. Hill and had his heart set on
coaching those
teams! Let's get this straight -- Tom Raby gave me a glowing
reference for a position he much
wanted himself. If I had not known Tom, I would not have understood,
either -- but, of course,
you and I do.
