Month: December 2016

His First Name Was “Sir”

My Dad did not do house work.  My Dad did not do yard work.

I never saw him wash or dry a single dish, cook or grill anything, pick up a broom, make a bed, mow the grass, plant a bush, paint or fix anything around the house. He didn’t even shine his own shoes. That was my job.  He did absolutely no house or yard work, ever. That was for women and children.

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He was 47 years old when I was born and in his early to mid-50s by the time I was old enough to know him.

John F. Stith Sr.
John F. Stith Sr.

His fighting days were pretty much over by then, although he still had a blackjack and brass knuckles, which I saw on a nightstand beside their bed on a rare occasion when I went into my parents’ bedroom.

He told me once, “Until I was 40 years old, if a week went by when I didn’t get into at least two fights I considered it a lost week.”

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My Dad was my father.  He was not my buddy.

I played 10 seasons of sports. He saw me play one quarter of one football game and watched me run one 880-yard dash.

He was not there to “support” me. He was there to protect me, feed and clothe me, and teach me not to lie, steal, cheat or sass him, not necessarily in that order.

After I graduated from Garinger High School in Charlotte I asked him to drive me to school so I could pay a library fine and pick up my report card. I had to give him directions.  He had never been to my school and didn’t know how to get there.

NOTE: There will be many more stories about John F. Stith Sr.  You should not judge him until you know more about him.

Coming Monday: The Auction – Part 1 of 2

 

Quincy The Terrible – Part 2 of 2

Bob Quincy resigned as sports editor of The Charlotte News in 1962 to take a job as sports information director at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  I got out of the Navy in the fall of ’62, enrolled at UNC, and worked as his student assistant for three years.

The division of labor went like this: He did stuff like deal with head coaches and produce the football and basketball brochures and I did stuff like mimeograph press releases and take the mail to the post office.

Ehringhaus Dorm
Ehringhaus Dorm

During football season, Bob wrote a column every Monday which I mimeographed, stuffed into envelopes and mailed.

One Monday, after I had worked for him a couple of years, Bob said to me, “You’re going to write the column today.”

All right! Finally!  I thought to myself.  Looks like Mr. Bob Quincy is starting to see the light, starting to figure out just how good I am.  And then I came to my senses and I asked him, “Why aren’t you going to write the column?”

“Because I can’t type,” he said.

“Why can’t you type?”

“Because my hands are too sore.”

I was determined to get to the bottom of this mystery if I could, so I pressed on: “Why are your hands sore?”

The football team had played on the road on Saturday and when it returned to Chapel Hill that evening, Bob said he went over to Ehringhaus Dorm, where most of the players lived, to pick up some things he had left there.

He said he got on the elevator and punched four, but it went to the sixth floor.  He punched four again.  The elevator went to five and then to one.

He punched four.  It went back to five.

“And then I beat the hell out of that elevator,” Bob said.

Postscript: Bob Quincy, a five-time winner of the National Sports Writer of the Year for North Carolina, died of cancer in 1984.  He was posthumously inducted into the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame in 2005.

Coming Friday: “His First Name was ‘Sir’”