Tag: Garinger High School

“Why?” she asked.

I was hitch hiking home, to Charlotte from Chapel Hill, and I was a little down.

It was Thanksgiving of my freshman year at the University of North Carolina and my grades were not as good as I had hope they would be: Two or three “A’s” and  “B’s,” a “C” or two and a “D” in Spanish. School was harder than I had expected, especially Spanish.

When Charles Bernard, the man who gave me a ride, introduced himself, I knew who exactly who he was. He was UNC’s director of admissions. Earlier that year, when I applied for admission, I had written to him a couple of times.

When I told him my name he repeated it, “Stith. You just got out of the Navy, didn’t you?”

“Yes sir,” I said.

“Went to Charlotte Garinger.”

“Yes sir.”

“Didn’t study very hard in high school, did you.”

“No sir, I didn’t,” I said.

My high school Plain Geometry report card
My high school Plain Geometry report card.

I had failed four subjects in high school: Latin, Biology, Plane Geometry and College Algebra. But, just before I got out of the Navy, I had tested OK on the SAT. And, in high school, I had been a National Merit Scholarship semi-finalist. I skipped the test to try to qualify as a finalist after my high school adviser told me that no college in America would give me a scholarship.

Mr. Bernard said his office had written my high school advisor asking whether she thought I ought to be admitted to UNC, and she said, “No.”

But because I had tested OK he figured I could do the work and because I had been in the service he figured that, maybe, I had grown up.  So UNC decided to admit me anyway.

Mr. Bernard said that after his office notified my high school adviser that I had been admitted my advisor wrote back with a question of her own: “Why?”

If I had any doubts about getting my degree, and about graduating in four years, they disappeared right then.

Coming Friday: Black Belt

Making Boys Into Men

When I started playing football my helmet didn’t have a face mask. I was 13 years old and I played for the Optimist Club, a club run by policemen to try to keep boys from North Charlotte off the streets and out of trouble.  Didn’t have one the next year either, when I played for Hawthorne Junior High School.

Sort of dates me, doesn’t it.

Garinger Wildcat
Garinger Wildcat

By the time I got to Central High School we had face masks but there were other differences between then and now. [I played my sophomore and junior years at Central and, when it closed, my senior year at Garinger.] When a star player was injured my senior year he was given a pain killer by the team doctor, one shot before the game and one shot at halftime, to tamp down the pain so he could play. That same thing had happened at Central, too.

I was a mediocre player, a halfback on offense, a linebacker on defense, on a really good team. Charlotte Garinger won the North Carolina high school AAAA state football championship in 1959, my senior year.

Not allowed.
Not allowed.

Back then coaches thought they could make their players tougher, make boys into men, by not letting us have water during practice no matter how hot it was or how long we’d been on the field.

In high school, two-a-day practices started on Aug. 15, a couple of weeks or so before school opened. Most days, it was so hot, especially the afternoon practice.  

Every once in a while coach would ease up a little.  He would tell the team manager to soak a towel in water and give to the players on the first team, to the starters. When they had sucked it damp and used it to wipe their faces the towel was passed down to the rest of us.

Maybe coach did it to motivate us bench warmers, to make us try harder to move up to the first team, to earn the right to a mouthful of water.

If that was his goal, he succeeded — everybody on that team wanted to be a starter.

Coming Friday: [A surprise!]