 |
| I discovered this viewpoint on my 11th climb on Mount Le Conte, Aug. 10, 2024. Daredevils sometimes pose on the ledge me. |
In my 70th year, I'm dwelling on the 90th Psalm, a prayer of Moses, where the 10th verse declares, "The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away."
Moses finished strong, and at age 120 he climbed Mount Pisgah, where the Lord showed him the Promised Land and then laid him to rest.
At 70, I haven't had much toil or trouble—never a headache nor a heartache, even my heart attacks were painless—but the years are rolling up on my odometer. After 25 years in the newspaper business and 26 years at Samaritan's Purse, I'm contemplating retirement at the end of 2025.
Lest all my tales, adventures, and lessons pass away with me, I've jotted down these memories, on the chance that someone someday might wish they had asked me.
Before we get into the chronology, I should deal with eternity and share my Christian testimony. When I was growing up, I wasn't sure where I stood with God. I knew that some of my friends had been baptized as babies, and I didn't know if that applied to me, and I was too terribly shy to ask.
When I was about 11 years old, my Sunday School class made a field trip to the Anderson County jail. While we were there, in a crude chapel with wooden benches, a preacher gave a scared-straight sermon, and I remember being terrified by the prospect of hell. I remember that someone led me in the sinner's prayer, and told me to tell my parents when I got home. I assume my Sunday School teacher told them, but shy Tommy never did.
Our family regularly attended Sunday School, though we didn't often stay for "big church." One night in November 1972, we went to a revival service at Concord Baptist Church, where the evangelist warned us that this might be our last chance. He used the illustration of a mountain climber who had reached an overhanging ledge, only to see his rope swing away from him. As it swung back, he knew he would have to make the leap, because the lifeline would never get any closer. (Of course it took a mountain-climbing example to move my heart.)
I didn't have a load of sins to confess, but on the last stanza of Just As I Am (No. 240 in the Baptist Hymnal) I walked the aisle to "join the church," as we described it back then. Nov. 15, 1972, was my born-again birthday. My little sister Martha Ann also came forward at that revival, and we were baptized on the same day.
1958: With my brother David on the way, we needed a bigger house, and Mama and Daddy found it at 519 Smithmore Street, a quiet working-class neighborhood off Concord Road on the north side of Anderson. The house was still under construction the first time we visited, The front porch was still a deep chasm because the concrete floor had not been poured, and we had to walk a gang-plank to get in the front door. (There were three Smith families in the neighborhood, hence the name Smithmore. Not to be confused with Smithmore Castle, a resort in the North Carolina mountains not far from Boone.)
Daddy liked trains, too, but airplanes were his passion. He was an Army Air Corps veteran and would have been a pilot if his eyesight had been better. He was a natural in the cockpit—when he and John visited the Airbus factory in France, he sat down in the A320 simulator and nailed a landing. He became a master builder of radio-controlled model planes. Daddy treated me to my first flight, a sightseeing trip over Anderson in a Cessna.
We even chased crashes. In 1960, we walked through the debris field of a C-119 Flying Boxcar that crashed in Liberty (the crew safely bailed out), and in 1965 we explored a freight train that had derailed at the Seneca River trestle, which I had safely crossed as a passenger five years earlier. (Bystanders helped themselves to rolls of paper towels that had tumbled out of a boxcar.)
I began kindergarten at First Baptist Church in Anderson, where my parents were married in 1952. South Carolina public schools did not have kindergarten at this time. I'm sure I learned a lot, but what I remember are the hard steel monkey-bars and building things with wooden blocks.
1961: This was my first-grade year at Concord Elementary School. My first and third teachers were named MacLean and McClain—homophonically foreshadowing the Antwan index that I developed in my sportswriting years (see 1990). Decades later, I learned that Mrs. MacLean was the daughter of John Linley (1881-1957), a developer responsible for Anderson's first suburbs and streetcars. My sister Mary Lou lives in the first house he built in 1913.
Reading came easy to me, though I remember stumbling over the phonics of "said" and "nowhere" in the Dick and Jane readers. To me, nowhere looked like now here.
"freedom of choice," and I had my first black classmate. Sorry I don't remember his name, but I do remember rubbing his fuzzy head. Few African-Americans felt free enough to exercise their legal choice, and "separate-but-equal" schools continued in Anderson until I reached 10th grade.
When I was a boy, Mama and Daddy signed me up for swimming lessons at the Anderson Recreation Center. I was a dud. Instructors made me jump off the diving board and I bottomed out in the deep end, until a lifeguard came to my rescue. I've learned to dog-paddle enough to get myself out of trouble, but I've never considered myself a swimmer (see 1977). I am thankful that all my children are swim-safe. A few years later, Anderson closed the Rec Center pool and filled it with dirt rather than face the prospect of blacks and whites swimming together.
The Rec Center was a big gym on Murray Avenue where Daddy's employer, Owens-Corning Fiberglas, held annual Christmas parties, and we kids were ushered through lines to get gifts. A few years later I attended a celebrity basketball game at "the Rec," where a team of Atlanta Braves (including Ron Reed, who also played professional basketball) played a local all-stars (including Earl Wooten, a Textile basketball legend who played one season of big-league baseball). Earl was in his 40s but was still a star, making long-range two-hand set shots.
My second-grade teacher, Ms. Shanklin, was impressed after I declared, "If you can read, you can learn anything." This was two years before the debut of JEOPARDY!, and I was read-y for some trivia! We had the Golden Book encyclopedia, later replaced by World Books and the amazing World Book Cyclo-Teacher.
Ms. Shanklin was the sister of Walking Joe, a smart but troubled man who bummed the streets of Anderson. I don't remember her ever mentioning him, but we learned to treat outcasts with decency.
1964: Concord School was only four blocks from home, so we usually walked or biked to school. This involved crossing Concord Road, which was not as dangerously busy as it has become today. The school posted a crossing guard at the Pine Lane/Millgate Road intersection, and I coveted that appointment. Yet Mrs. Shirley thought I was "too immature," words which scarred me. (Speaking of scars, that crossing was where Johnny Wells rammed me with his bicycle fender. If anyone ever needs to identify my corpse, look for the scar on my right buttock. I also have a scar on my right shin, where Johnny Gibson shot me with a BB gun—point blank.)
When I was about 11 years old, my Sunday School class made a field trip to the Anderson County jail. While we were there, in a crude chapel with wooden benches, a preacher gave a scared-straight sermon, and I remember being terrified by the prospect of hell. I remember that someone led me in the sinner's prayer, and told me to tell my parents when I got home. I assume my Sunday School teacher told them, but shy Tommy never did.
Our family regularly attended Sunday School, though we didn't often stay for "big church." One night in November 1972, we went to a revival service at Concord Baptist Church, where the evangelist warned us that this might be our last chance. He used the illustration of a mountain climber who had reached an overhanging ledge, only to see his rope swing away from him. As it swung back, he knew he would have to make the leap, because the lifeline would never get any closer. (Of course it took a mountain-climbing example to move my heart.)
I didn't have a load of sins to confess, but on the last stanza of Just As I Am (No. 240 in the Baptist Hymnal) I walked the aisle to "join the church," as we described it back then. Nov. 15, 1972, was my born-again birthday. My little sister Martha Ann also came forward at that revival, and we were baptized on the same day.
If you are like I was, and not sure where you stand with God, I want you to know how dearly He loves you (John 3:16), and how you can know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Here is how Billy Graham explained it.
 |
| How about that Olde English typewriter font? |
1955: I was expected in 1954 but tarried until Jan. 18—costing my parents a tax deduction. I was 20 inches long, although Grandmama Essie (who worked at the hospital) proudly told everyone I measured 20 feet. We Layton kids were among 10,509 babies delivered by Dr. Anne Young, who was one of the first female doctors in South Carolina. Mama's baby book says I was adventurous: "Walked out the back door at 9½ months, received bad bump, skinned place, and a scare!" At age four, I fell and knocked out my two front teeth. I'm told my first words were "Mama" at 7½ months, followed by "Da-Da," "Bye-bye," and "Patty-cake."
 |
| Homecoming with Daddy and Mama (apologies for the splotched image) |
 |
| 4 months old |
 |
| Showing off my first footsteps for Grandmama Essie |
1956: Our family lived on Chapman Road in Anderson, across from a pine grove that became the site of Calhoun Elementary School, now Calhoun Academy. My mom's mom, "Gamama," led my first hikes through those woods, where we put picked up fallen pine cones and hung them them back onto the branches. On May 15, I gained a sister, Mary Lou, whom we still call "Poopie." She would spend years on Chapman Road, teaching at Calhoun Academy. My earliest memory at Chapman Road is eating pancakes.
 |
| Our home on Chapman Road |
1957: I evidently spent my toddling years modeling for photos.
 |
| This retaining wall still stands and helped me locate our first house on Chapman Road. |
 |
| Grandson of a postman |
 |
| Daddy and Uncle Claude had Clemson dreams for me. In a roundabout way, I made my name there. |
1958: With my brother David on the way, we needed a bigger house, and Mama and Daddy found it at 519 Smithmore Street, a quiet working-class neighborhood off Concord Road on the north side of Anderson. The house was still under construction the first time we visited, The front porch was still a deep chasm because the concrete floor had not been poured, and we had to walk a gang-plank to get in the front door. (There were three Smith families in the neighborhood, hence the name Smithmore. Not to be confused with Smithmore Castle, a resort in the North Carolina mountains not far from Boone.)
Mama won a beach trip to Florida in a 25-words-or-less contest: "I'd rather go to Miami than go to the moon." This was in the Sputnik era, the dawn of the space race. No one could have imagined mankind would actually reach the moon by my 15th year, or that Mama's pet line would win another contest in Neil Armstrong's day (see 1969). Mama wrote that I was especially impressed by the boats and drawbridges of Miami.
1959: I never liked dressing up. To go trick-or-treating on Halloween, Mama insisted that I be in character, so I roamed the streets as Daniel Boone, wearing a coonskin hat and carrying a plastic flintlock rifle. Mama went out of her way to accommodate my quirky dietary tastes. I didn't like chicken, so she made hamburger patties for me. Years later, I articulated my idiosyncrasies in this way—I don't like to eat anything that looks like the animal it came from. Nor raisins, which are just dead grapes.
 |
| Make a face like the Easter bunny, they told me. |
In those days, we didn't have pizza or Mexican food in Anderson. In 1962 we got the first McDonald's in South Carolina, but it was just walk-up service—the first drive-thru in Anderson was a local restaurant at Main and Vine, now Osaka Express. With all due respect to Skin's, the first hot dogs I remember were from a Main Street grill called the Greasy Spoon. We didn't frequent restaurants, not even on vacations.
 |
| My first Christmas at Smithmore featured Tonka Trucks and an Lionel train. |
1960: On my fifth birthday, I got to ride the Southern Crescent passenger train from Seneca to Clemson. I was always fascinated by trains and remember riding the miniature railroads at Greenville's McPherson Park, the Jacksonville zoo, and Ghost Town.
 |
| Ghost Town in the Sky, Maggie Valley, N.C. |
Daddy liked trains, too, but airplanes were his passion. He was an Army Air Corps veteran and would have been a pilot if his eyesight had been better. He was a natural in the cockpit—when he and John visited the Airbus factory in France, he sat down in the A320 simulator and nailed a landing. He became a master builder of radio-controlled model planes. Daddy treated me to my first flight, a sightseeing trip over Anderson in a Cessna.
We even chased crashes. In 1960, we walked through the debris field of a C-119 Flying Boxcar that crashed in Liberty (the crew safely bailed out), and in 1965 we explored a freight train that had derailed at the Seneca River trestle, which I had safely crossed as a passenger five years earlier. (Bystanders helped themselves to rolls of paper towels that had tumbled out of a boxcar.)
I began kindergarten at First Baptist Church in Anderson, where my parents were married in 1952. South Carolina public schools did not have kindergarten at this time. I'm sure I learned a lot, but what I remember are the hard steel monkey-bars and building things with wooden blocks.
 |
| Concord School: Cafeteria on the left, Principal's office and library center, 3rd-6th grade wing to the right. 1st-2nd grade classrooms were in the rear, marked by the boiler chimney. |
1961: This was my first-grade year at Concord Elementary School. My first and third teachers were named MacLean and McClain—homophonically foreshadowing the Antwan index that I developed in my sportswriting years (see 1990). Decades later, I learned that Mrs. MacLean was the daughter of John Linley (1881-1957), a developer responsible for Anderson's first suburbs and streetcars. My sister Mary Lou lives in the first house he built in 1913.
Reading came easy to me, though I remember stumbling over the phonics of "said" and "nowhere" in the Dick and Jane readers. To me, nowhere looked like now here.
1962: Anderson schools opened to
 |
| Golden Books were my internet |
When I was a boy, Mama and Daddy signed me up for swimming lessons at the Anderson Recreation Center. I was a dud. Instructors made me jump off the diving board and I bottomed out in the deep end, until a lifeguard came to my rescue. I've learned to dog-paddle enough to get myself out of trouble, but I've never considered myself a swimmer (see 1977). I am thankful that all my children are swim-safe. A few years later, Anderson closed the Rec Center pool and filled it with dirt rather than face the prospect of blacks and whites swimming together.
The Rec Center was a big gym on Murray Avenue where Daddy's employer, Owens-Corning Fiberglas, held annual Christmas parties, and we kids were ushered through lines to get gifts. A few years later I attended a celebrity basketball game at "the Rec," where a team of Atlanta Braves (including Ron Reed, who also played professional basketball) played a local all-stars (including Earl Wooten, a Textile basketball legend who played one season of big-league baseball). Earl was in his 40s but was still a star, making long-range two-hand set shots.
My second-grade teacher, Ms. Shanklin, was impressed after I declared, "If you can read, you can learn anything." This was two years before the debut of JEOPARDY!, and I was read-y for some trivia! We had the Golden Book encyclopedia, later replaced by World Books and the amazing World Book Cyclo-Teacher.
Ms. Shanklin was the sister of Walking Joe, a smart but troubled man who bummed the streets of Anderson. I don't remember her ever mentioning him, but we learned to treat outcasts with decency.
1963: It was my brother David's fifth birthday when President John Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22. I was in the third grade and remember teachers crying, though I was too young to understand the gravity of the moment. I do remember that in the aftermath of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, our classes held civil-defense drills, and McCants Junior High had a basement bomb shelter.
I was about eight years old when I got lost with my litttle sister Martha Ann in the Great Smoky Mountains. Our family often camped at Deep Creek, near Bryson City. Hiking trails encircled the campground and led to nearby waterfalls. Mama trusted me to explore on my own, and I took Martha Ann for a walk that eventually crossed a bridge and led us down the opposite side of Deep Creek. We walked past our campsite, but nobody was there. Worried that I was gone too long, Mama and Daddy went to the ranger's station to start a search. I found them first.
I joined the Cub Scouts. Our pack met at the home of a friend, Jimmy Campbell. I wasn't yet a hiker, and never was much of a camper. I competed in the Pinewood Rocket Derby, where Daddy and I built a balsa rocket driven by a rubber-band propeller that raced down a string, winning a ribbon.
I was about eight years old when I got lost with my litttle sister Martha Ann in the Great Smoky Mountains. Our family often camped at Deep Creek, near Bryson City. Hiking trails encircled the campground and led to nearby waterfalls. Mama trusted me to explore on my own, and I took Martha Ann for a walk that eventually crossed a bridge and led us down the opposite side of Deep Creek. We walked past our campsite, but nobody was there. Worried that I was gone too long, Mama and Daddy went to the ranger's station to start a search. I found them first.
I joined the Cub Scouts. Our pack met at the home of a friend, Jimmy Campbell. I wasn't yet a hiker, and never was much of a camper. I competed in the Pinewood Rocket Derby, where Daddy and I built a balsa rocket driven by a rubber-band propeller that raced down a string, winning a ribbon.
My daddy's parents, Pop and Essie, liked to fish and took me once. I felt so sorry as I watched my catch struggling to breathe, and I never cast another hook.
 |
| Mrs. Shirley had her eyes on me: C stands for Conduct! |
1964: Concord School was only four blocks from home, so we usually walked or biked to school. This involved crossing Concord Road, which was not as dangerously busy as it has become today. The school posted a crossing guard at the Pine Lane/Millgate Road intersection, and I coveted that appointment. Yet Mrs. Shirley thought I was "too immature," words which scarred me. (Speaking of scars, that crossing was where Johnny Wells rammed me with his bicycle fender. If anyone ever needs to identify my corpse, look for the scar on my right buttock. I also have a scar on my right shin, where Johnny Gibson shot me with a BB gun—point blank.)
Mrs. Shirley gave me a C in conduct, which was the worst grade I ever got. The music teacher auditioned me and said "maybe we can do something with you," but I was never invited back. (My music career has been a series of false starts, from saxophone to banjo. In the eighth grade, I auditioned for the McCants Junior High band by playing, "I Love You Truly." In Greenville, I had an exceptional banjo teacher, Al Osteen, whose students included future national champion pickers Kristin Scott Benson and Charles Owen.)
This was about the year that I began raking trails through the woods below our house. I imagined that if the Viet Cong ever invaded Anderson, I would be able to guide Army troops to hunt them down. We wound up with a fine trail network that was probably more than a mile and included several bridges, two of them crossing the creeks on gnarled old roots. I hacked a trail through a kudzu-covered gully and found a junked car that had been buried there.
Once, our neighbor Sherry Edmonds and I were exploring the creek, and I slipped and fell against the bank. My arm plunged shoulder-deep into a burrowed-out nest of yellow jackets. We had to run about a half mile to get home. Dr. Sims said I was stung more than a hundred times—they were still pulling bees out of my shirt in his office. Thankfully, I am not allergic to yellow jacket stings, like Sherry was. My eyes were swollen shut for a few days, but I survived. I bravely returned to the scene to retrieve a hatchet I had dropped.
Speaking of bees and "eyes," I was eliminated from the class spelling bee on a sloppy mistake when I spelled ORIGIN ORIGN. You never forget your mistakes.
I survived another dicey lesson on a family camping trip to Black Mountain State Park near Clayton, Georgia. Exploring the woods, I crept out onto a lichen-covered boulder, only to realize that I had no traction. I could hold my ground, but if I tried to back up, the lichen rolled under my Keds. I had no choice but to plunge over the precipice, where I landed softly on a pile of leaves. It could have been worse. Wherever you go, make sure you have an exit strategy. I think this was the year we got bicycles for Christmas. Mine was a red Murray with built-in headlights. Years later, I rode it in a 25-mile race, finished second to a rich kid on a 10-speed, and won a plastic trophy.
1969: Daddy occasionally treated us to Braves games in Atlanta, a two-hour drive from Anderson. We looked forward to hot dogs at The Varsity, avoided Lum's where the dogs were steamed in beer, and wondered about the hotel at the Druid Hills Road exit that advertised carpeted walls. The Braves held promotions such as "Anderson Day," when they hoped to sell tickets to folks like us in the hinterlands.
For Anderson Day in 1969, our newspaper ran a contest that asked, "Tell us in 25 words or less why you'd like to throw out the first pitch." At 14, I was too old to enter, but my brother David was 11, and he and Mama reworked the slogan that had won a Florida vacation 11 years earlier: "I'd rather do that than go to the moon."
On June 21, 1969, the day after Armstrong's giant step onto the moon, David got to throw out the first ball for the Braves-Giants game, and he got an autographed baseball from the recently retired Mickey Mantle, who was broadcasting the game on NBC-TV. In hindsight, he should have also gotten it signed by Henry Aaron and Willie Mays, which would have been quite an investment in the souvenir market. In that era, only Babe Ruth had more home runs than Mays, Mantle, and Aaron. Mays hit his 596th home run that day, off Phil Niekro. There were 11 future Hall of Famers on the field in the stadium that day, including Niekro, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, umpire Al Barlick, pitchers-in-waiting Juan Marichal, Gaylord Perry, and Hoyt Wilhelm, and Braves broadcaster Bob Uecker. The night before, Gaylord hit an all-time moonshot.
On a family vacation to Texas, we drove through the devastation of Hurricane Camille and then enjoyed a weatherproof game in the Houston Astrodome, "The Eighth Wonder of the World." The winning pitcher was Hall of Famer Ferguson Jenkins for the Cubs. The losing pitcher for the Astros had the same name as my grandfather, Tom Griffin.
1970: My byline debuted in our local newspaper, after I submitted a report on a junior high school track meet. My mom's cousin, Lawrence "Slim" Hembree, was editor of the Anderson newspaper, so I had inside connections; and the sports editor, Johnny Martin, welcomed any local copy he didn't have to track down.
The newspaper offices were on both sides of West Market Street, behind the City Hall. I didn't spend much time in the old office, but I did get to see the old-fashioned "hot type" operation, with linotype machines casting type in molten lead. By the time I took a job in the newsroom, the offices were moved to Williamston Road and we were using "cold-type."
In the ninth grade, Anderson schools were preparing for desegregation, and I experienced school busing. McCants Junior High on Fant Street was overcrowded, so ninth-graders were bused twice daily between McCants and the nearby Jefferson Avenue School, which had previously been a "separate but equal" elementary school. The school was later bulldozed and replaced by Jim Ed Rice Park.
 |
| Camp Greenville |
1965: I attended Camp Greenville, where I got some sort of hiking-mileage award and climbed my first mountain, Standingstone Mountain (elevation 3,229 feet), where I stood in two states at once. "Be a Great Boy" was Camp Greenville's motto. In 1980, the Camp Greenville chapel, "Pretty Place," was a great stage for our wedding.
Being a great boy, I built tree-houses. I remember sketching out a precise plan and praying that God would build my tree-house overnight. Alas, my faith was not quite strong enough. Our first tree-houses were platforms in "the old oak tree" behind our house. We salvaged scraps of lumber from "the gully" for construction materials. Later we built a double-decker tree-house that spanned three trees and had a trap door, made out of an old refrigerator door salvaged from an old camper. David broke his arm trying to climb down the ladder head-first.
Mrs. Hazel Coleman was my fifth-grade teacher, and she brought a TV into the classroom to let us watch the World Series, when the Dodgers beat the Twins. That was my introduction to baseball, as the Braves did not come south until 1966.
I joined the Boy Scouts, Troop 96, who met in a building on Pine Lane, which was later replaced by Western Sizzlin' Steak House (site of my first job—as a dishwasher). The troop took me on my first serious hike, to Standing Indian Mountain (elevation 5,499) on the Appalachian Trail. As a tenderfoot, I remember being hazed by the older boys, who ordered me to eat chocolate-covered ants or else "what I have behind my back"—which turned out to be a live moth. I never made it past second class.
In 1966, our troop camped at Fort Jackson, where we saw the Boys High School Yellow Jackets play Columbia High on Friday night and the South Carolina Gamecocks vs. Florida State on Saturday. I think this was my first college football game.
1966: Johnny Edmonds was an older neighbor who impressed me with his flawless foul-shooting (see 1975), his sky-blue 1965 Mustang, and his baseball card collection (which he gave to me in the era before collections became investments). I'm dating this memory to 1966, because that's the year that Atlanta Stadium opened, and Johnny built an elegant sand-castle model of the stadium in our backyard sandbox. Johnny also built miniature golf courses in our backyard, including one with a loop-de-loop through an old tire. When I got my 1968 Mustang in 1973, we discovered that our keys were interchangeable.
The creek below our house was an unnamed tributary of Six and Twenty Creek, an arm of Lake Hartwell. Flowing from a swampy spring in the Smith's horse pasture, the creek tumbled over a rock outcropping that formed a tiny pond around a jagged rock we called Little Matterhorn. I built a popsicle-stick bridge across the gorge below the falls and blew it up with firecrackers. We occasionally stopped the creek with mud dams that didn't last long. We even tried to stock our "reservoirs" with fish we trapped on May's Lake. (Alas, the woods and creek are now gone—bulldozed for suburbs.)
Daddy thought I should know how to handle a gun, so he took me down into the woods once to shoot across the creek at rusted tin cans, which I never hit. Daddy later gave his .22 rifle to Hall, who knows how to handle it.
May's Lake is a private pond in Hammett Acres, on a fork of our creek. At some point in my childhood, the earthen dam washed out and had to be rebuilt further upstream. I remember exploring the red-clay ruins. If you crossed the new dam behind Greg Saylors' house, hopped the spillway, and climbed the steep hill beyond, you would top out behind Belvedere Plaza, a shopping center that was notched into the side of the hill.
Belvedere means "beautiful view." Climbing onto the roof, I could see Rabun Bald and the Blue Ridge Mountains. (Management eventually strung barbed wire to keep us off the roof.) The shopping center was the site of fireworks shows that we could watch through the trees in our backyard. In addition to the mountain view, Belvedere overlooked the future site of the Anderson Mall, which opened in 1972, though I didn't "go to the malll" for several years.
The Belvedere parking lot was also the site of a July 4 "Ping Pong Ball Drop," in the 1970s, where kids scrambled across the parking lot to catch ping-pong balls thrown out of a Cessna. Some of the balls were marked with prizes that you could redeem in the Belvedere stores, which included J.M. Fields, S.S. Kresge, and Grady's Sports Shop, and a roller rink.
 |
| Easter 1967: Mary Lou, Martha Ann, John, Tommy, and David with one of the Siamese twins (SuSu or MeToo) |
1967: This was the year I gave my heart to the Atlanta Braves. I've been faithful to them for more than half a century, especially through their needy years, not to mention the giddy World Series runs in 1995 and 2021. I never played organized baseball, but I had a Felipe Alou glove and a Rico Carty bat.
There was a vacant lot behind our house. I wore out Daddy's lawn mower bushwhacking the weeds to create a ballfield. Because of the arrangement of pine trees, we only had left field. Anything hit to the right was a foul ball. That was okay because most of us swung right-handed. But Billy Wright was left-handed and a good athlete, and when he played, we lost baseballs way down in the right-field woods. Between the ballfield and Billy's house, there was a ridge of dirt. We dug foxholes in there and connected them by tunnels. I also mowed a minibike track through the brush.
This was also the year that I began collecting baseball cards. I financed this habit by collecting glass soda bottles, which could be redeemed for nickel deposits at the K-P Mart on Concord Road (now the site of Whataburger). I remember summer days when we'd hunt bottles near the Twin Lakes campground on Lake Hartwell. Daddy would slowly drive down the dirt road with several of us kids riding on the station-wagon tailgate. If we saw a bottle in the ditch, we'd hop off and pick it up. Even though gas was cheap, I can't imagine that this was a money-making exercise, but it taught us the value of earning our own cash.
 |
| These are the all-time home run leaders, the stars of my baseball card collection. The older cards (Aaron, Ruth, Killebrew, Mantle, McCovey, Williams) came from Johnny Edmonds (see 1966). Those from the steroid generation were collected by my son Hall. The rest I bought in bubble-gum packs with money earned by recycling glass bottles. |
1968: My mom's brother, Claude Griffin, often took me and my cousin Marc Hembree to Clemson games, and on Pearl Harbor Day in 1968, we went to Littlejohn Coliseum (the purple plastic seats smelled brand-new) to see Pistol Pete Maravich play for LSU. This night was Pete's homecoming to the college where his dad previously coached. Against an Anderson-born defender named Ronnie Yates, Pete missed 22 of his 32 shots. Yet Yates fouled out, and Pete made 18 of 22 free throws, totaling 38 points—a coliseum record that still stands.
In 1969, Pete would be featured in a cover story in Sports Illustrated, where he gave a first-person account of his basketball roots in Clemson. Pete became a vibrant Christian and was playing a pickup game with Dr. James Dobson in 1988 when he suffered a fatal heart attack, at age 40. His last words: "I feel great."
Our yard lacked a level place for a basketball goal. Daddy said he would put up a goal if I could level the embankment. I "borrowed" a shovel and a maddock from the Edmonds' basement and tore into the hillside, taking it past the point of no return. Daddy built a retaining wall, got it paved, and ordered a basket from Foundry and Steel, a cantilever design so that the post was four feet behind the backboard.
1969: Daddy occasionally treated us to Braves games in Atlanta, a two-hour drive from Anderson. We looked forward to hot dogs at The Varsity, avoided Lum's where the dogs were steamed in beer, and wondered about the hotel at the Druid Hills Road exit that advertised carpeted walls. The Braves held promotions such as "Anderson Day," when they hoped to sell tickets to folks like us in the hinterlands.
For Anderson Day in 1969, our newspaper ran a contest that asked, "Tell us in 25 words or less why you'd like to throw out the first pitch." At 14, I was too old to enter, but my brother David was 11, and he and Mama reworked the slogan that had won a Florida vacation 11 years earlier: "I'd rather do that than go to the moon."
On June 21, 1969, the day after Armstrong's giant step onto the moon, David got to throw out the first ball for the Braves-Giants game, and he got an autographed baseball from the recently retired Mickey Mantle, who was broadcasting the game on NBC-TV. In hindsight, he should have also gotten it signed by Henry Aaron and Willie Mays, which would have been quite an investment in the souvenir market. In that era, only Babe Ruth had more home runs than Mays, Mantle, and Aaron. Mays hit his 596th home run that day, off Phil Niekro. There were 11 future Hall of Famers on the field in the stadium that day, including Niekro, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda, umpire Al Barlick, pitchers-in-waiting Juan Marichal, Gaylord Perry, and Hoyt Wilhelm, and Braves broadcaster Bob Uecker. The night before, Gaylord hit an all-time moonshot.
 |
| The stars of "Anderson Day" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution clipping) |
 |
| Houston, 1969 |
 |
| The newspaper offices where my career began. |
The newspaper offices were on both sides of West Market Street, behind the City Hall. I didn't spend much time in the old office, but I did get to see the old-fashioned "hot type" operation, with linotype machines casting type in molten lead. By the time I took a job in the newsroom, the offices were moved to Williamston Road and we were using "cold-type."
In the ninth grade, Anderson schools were preparing for desegregation, and I experienced school busing. McCants Junior High on Fant Street was overcrowded, so ninth-graders were bused twice daily between McCants and the nearby Jefferson Avenue School, which had previously been a "separate but equal" elementary school. The school was later bulldozed and replaced by Jim Ed Rice Park.
The Braves had hooked me on radio sportscasts, and I enjoyed Clemson's play-by-play announcer, Bill Goodrich ("Whooo, Mercy!"), Leonard's Losers, and the Sousa marches that were backdrops to the scoreboard shows.
The first Clemson football games I remember seeing were in November 1970, vs. North Carolina (with Don McCauley) and South Carolina. Getting into the Clemson games was a cinch, as my uncle Beaty Hembree drove the Coca-Cola truck that supplied the concession stands. Clemson rarely had sellouts in those days, and for the standing-room-only USC game, I made myself a seat by climbing a tree in the southeast corner of the stadium. (The upper decks were added in 1978 and 1984).
In 1975, Rice and Fred Lynn were the leading contenders for rookie of the year when I interviewed Rice at a post-season event in Greenville about his expectations for the award. I can't find a clip of that story, but it offended him, and in hindsight it's likely that I misquoted him. (Reporters didn't carry tape recorders back then.) Ed didn't trust reporters, and my interview certainly didn't help. I tried for years to mend fences but never was able to reconnect with him.
The Red Sox eventually paid him over $14 million for a career that produced 382 home runs and the 1978 award for American League Most Valuable Player.
In 1995, when Rice appeared on the ballot for baseball's Hall of Fame, I provided background narratives for Josh Peter's profile of Rice, which burnished his image from the perspective of Andersonians who knew him as Ed. (I also worked with Josh on his story about Radio, which was later picked up by Sports Illustrated and inspired the movie, "Radio." I wish I had written Radio's story, but Josh did it well.)
It took 15 years for Rice to overcame the sour media relations, and since sportswriters voted for the Hall of Fame, he was not elected to Cooperstown until his last year on the ballot. In his acceptance speech in 2009, Rice acknowledged his Anderson roots (particulary coach John Moore) and discussed his legacy: "I am a husband, called Rice. I am a father, called Dad. I am a brother, called Ed. I am an uncle, called Uncle Ed. I am a grandfather, called Papa. I am a friend that doesn’t call—some of my friends know that—and sometimes best not call at all. Finally, I do mean finally, I am Jim Rice, called a Baseball Hall of Famer.”
1972: Daddy promised us a car if we finished high school without drinking or smoking. I was in no hurry to get my driver's license, as I was content to explore my world on 10-speed bicycles. In 1971 I bought a dark green Schwinn Varsity (about $100 at Ellis Bicycle Shop) and then upgraded in 1972 to a British racer, a $200 Raleigh Super Course. I frequently rode back roads from Anderson to Clemson and even ventured as far as the Keowee-Toxaway Nuclear Plant and the Dairy Queen in Hartwell, Georgia. One weekend, caught in a rain shower, I took shelter in an abandoned house and found an 1948 newspaper that reported Babe Ruth was dying of cancer. Mama saved it, of course.
One night after work, I was cruising in my Mustang and decided to see how fast it would go around a corner on Canterbury Road. I spun out into a front yard and hit a tree that caved in the passenger door. I wasn't hurt, and the car was still driveable, but when Daddy saw it the next morning, I had some explaining to do. Shirley Huitt's body shop fixed it for about $400. (As of 2024, the scared tree was still standing.)
I took a summer job at Owens-Corning Fiberglas, where I worked swing shifts and doffed rolls of glass cloth that were used to reinforce pipes for the Alaska pipeline. Every teenager ought to work swing shifts once in their formative years.
My sportswriting peers lined up to cover Missouri football, so Roger Shuler and I took the basketball beat. I spent the winter touring the Big Eight, carpooling with Kirk Wessler of the Tribune.
1979: May 27, 1979, was a turning point in my life. Willie Nelson was playing a concert at Carowinds, but I doubted that we could get tickets. This was before Ticketmaster, and Willie (in his prime at 46) was a hot ticket. Mary, bless her heart, got up in the morning, drove to Charlotte, scored tickets, came all the way back to Anderson (no cell phones then, either) and Willie became our first date.
1984: In the same year Hall was born, so was our statewide high school football coverage. The Greenville News launched this project with an ambitious special section that included preview stories on every high school football team in the state. Nobody had ever seen anything like it.
At the time, Greenville's circulation rivaled that of The State, Columbia's daily newspaper. If we could surpass them, we could become South Carolina's "paper of record" and in turn capture the financially lucrative legal ads. We even succeeded in selling an ad in Myrtle Beach, where boosters of a state champion team boasted that they were ready to play: "Anybody. Anywhere. Anytime." Our newspaper felt the same way. Editor John Pittman and publisher Steve Brandt invested big-time, budgeting $1,200 a week to get the scores called in ($10 per game) and holding the first-edition deadlines past midnight. For several years, we succeeded in getting every score in the state in our first edition. Decades later, some football fans still remember The Greenville News for our ground-breaking high school sports coverage.
When Notre Dame was selected to play for the national championship, The Greenville News sent me to Phoenix for the Fiesta Bowl. Mary and Katie came along for the trip. Our flight to Phoenix took us through Las Vegas, where I strolled over to an airport casino, only to be refused entrance because I was carrying baby Kate.
1991: My Christmas gift from Mama was an autographed copy of "I Had a Hammer," Hank Aaron's autobiography by Lonnie Wheeler, my friend and Missouri mentor back in Anderson. In 2024, I saw an autographed copy on sale for $400.
 |
| Phil Niekro's autograph, 1969 |
My first autographs were from Coach Frank Howard (Mama thought I was too shy to ask) and Phil Niekro, whose biography was written by Willie Binette, the sports editor of Anderson's afternoon newspaper. A 1996 obituary clipping on Coach Howard helped me get my job with Samaritan's Purse. I didn't have many clips where I wrote about faith, but crusty old Coach Howard had a compelling salvation testimony, and my new bosses seemed to like this lead: "On a hill not far away from Death Valley, Clemson laid to rest its old rugged coach."
I had a brush with the law in my ninth-grade year, after a basketball game between Hanna and Parker at the old McCants Gym. Parker won with a last-minute comeback, and I was indignant about an uncalled foul against our best player, Terrell Suit. Leaving the gym, I crossed paths with a perceived villain, Donald Davis, and I punched him in the chest. I wasn't big enough to hurt him, but Parker coach Larry Wall shouted, "He hit my player!" A policemen grabbed me, took me into the coaches' office for a lecture, but mercifully didn't press charges. I never told Mama and Daddy, though I'm sure they heard about it, since that was the gym where she taught physical education.
 |
| Fluor Field, Greenville, 2016 |
1971: This was my Jackie Robinson year. As I entered the 10th grade, Anderson desegregated our schools, and I witnessed color lines being broken: The emergence of future Hall of Fame Jim Rice and the Cooperstown induction of Satchel Paige. This was also the year I became acquainted with James Robert "Radio" Kennedy, the inspiration for Cuba Gooding's 2003 movie, Radio.
Ed Rice was already a legendary athlete at the all-black Westside High School, and when Anderson desegregated our schools, officials gerrymandered the dividing line to include Rice's home on Reed Street in the T.L. Hanna district, making him among the first black athletes to break the color barrier at Hanna. (Segregation was second nature in Anderson. When my parents were in school, Anderson had separate Girls' High and Boys' High.)
Ed Rice made the Shrine Bowl as a game-breaking wide receiver and drew professional baseball scouts to Nardin Field (a dilapidated minor-league park where my dad once watched a bespectacled phenom named Ryne Duren). I kept the scorebook as Rice hit four home runs in 15 games, banging a couple of them off the tin roof of the house just beyond the left-field fence. The Boston Red Sox made Ed a first-round pick in the 1971 draft and signed him for $45,000.
While Ed was apprenticing in the minor leagues in Williamsport, Pennsylvania (where fans began calling him "Jim" Rice), we took a family vacation to New York, timed perfectly for me be at the Hall of fame the day Paige became the first black man inducted into the Hall of Fame. “I am the proudest man on the earth today,” he said, though I had no sense of how historic this was. (On this vacation, we also visited Niagara Falls and Montreal, my first time outside the United States. We begged Daddy to let us ride the Maid of the Mist below the falls, but in that would have required him to dip too deeply into our gas money for getting home. There were no credit cards back then, so my parents had to budget carefully. When we took Marta to Syracuse to visit grad schools in 2006, I splurged on a credit card and we finally made the ride, which was awesome!)
 |
| Marta, Mary, and the Maid of the Mist in 2006. I'll never forget the immense power of those falls. In 2024, I used it as context for the floods we got from Hurricane Helene, which was calculated as 40 trillion gallons of rain. Niagara runs 2.6 billion gallons per day. How many hours of Niagara did we endure? Be careful with your decimal points. |
In 1975, Rice and Fred Lynn were the leading contenders for rookie of the year when I interviewed Rice at a post-season event in Greenville about his expectations for the award. I can't find a clip of that story, but it offended him, and in hindsight it's likely that I misquoted him. (Reporters didn't carry tape recorders back then.) Ed didn't trust reporters, and my interview certainly didn't help. I tried for years to mend fences but never was able to reconnect with him.
The Red Sox eventually paid him over $14 million for a career that produced 382 home runs and the 1978 award for American League Most Valuable Player.
In 1995, when Rice appeared on the ballot for baseball's Hall of Fame, I provided background narratives for Josh Peter's profile of Rice, which burnished his image from the perspective of Andersonians who knew him as Ed. (I also worked with Josh on his story about Radio, which was later picked up by Sports Illustrated and inspired the movie, "Radio." I wish I had written Radio's story, but Josh did it well.)
It took 15 years for Rice to overcame the sour media relations, and since sportswriters voted for the Hall of Fame, he was not elected to Cooperstown until his last year on the ballot. In his acceptance speech in 2009, Rice acknowledged his Anderson roots (particulary coach John Moore) and discussed his legacy: "I am a husband, called Rice. I am a father, called Dad. I am a brother, called Ed. I am an uncle, called Uncle Ed. I am a grandfather, called Papa. I am a friend that doesn’t call—some of my friends know that—and sometimes best not call at all. Finally, I do mean finally, I am Jim Rice, called a Baseball Hall of Famer.”
Ed was two years older than me, so we didn't share any classes. We both were students of Jim Fraser, the football coach, who taught U.S. History and unofficially taught bargaining. Fraser didn't like to grade tests, so he would offer students a grade: "Layton, I'll give you an 88." No thanks, Coach, I think I aced it. Invariably, he gave in.
I was blessed with lots of great teachers, including Mrs. Shanklin, Mrs. Coleman, and Mrs. Farmer in elementary school, but in hindsight my best teacher was in ninth grade at Hanna, when I was in "Ma" Ashley's typing class. She had high expectations, and I had to stay after school to practice. I didn't have the dexterity of classmates who had played piano, but eventually I mastered a fundamental skill that served me well in my career. (Mrs. Ashley would be annoyed with my slouching posture as I type this.) |
| 'Ma' Ashley |
 |
| The only photo I have of my Mustang was on Graduation Day at Mizzou, with my roommate, Steve Crowdus. Thirty-six years later, Samaritan's Purse hired Steve's son, Andrew, who works in a cubicle next to mine. The image below is a twin of my Mustang. Doesn't the grill remind you of my CX-30. |
 |
I finally got my driver's license shortly before I graduated in 1973. Daddy took me to a used-car lot called White Motors on South Main Street, where two gold hot-rods caught my eye, a Camaro with black racing stripes and a Mustang with a white-vinyl roof. I liked the Mustang. At $1,650, it was a hundred dollars more than the Camaro. Daddy made the $500 down payment, and I took on my first loan.
1973: I did well on my SAT exams, 680 math and 530 verbal, even though I was bleeding from a cut on the chrome trim of the car door as I arrived for the tests. I thought I had a perfect score on the math, but I must have gotten off-track on the answer sheet. If I had indeed aced math, where might my career have led?
T.L. Hanna nominated me as a "Carolina Scholar." I wore a patronizing Gamecock necktie for an interview in the Calhoun Hotel downtown. (The 2008 George Clooney film, Leatherheads, filmed there). I didn't win the scholarship, but I was a semifinalist, so I beat Westside's nominee, Corey Knox Crain.
Though I was headed for a newspaper career, I had no interest in going to the University of South Carolina, which had the only journalism school in the state. Without a sense of urgency nor direction, I enrolled at Anderson College, a two-year school that my mom had attended. I became the scorekeeper for the basketball teams and watched Coach Annie Tribble building a dynasty that would win four national championships.One night after work, I was cruising in my Mustang and decided to see how fast it would go around a corner on Canterbury Road. I spun out into a front yard and hit a tree that caved in the passenger door. I wasn't hurt, and the car was still driveable, but when Daddy saw it the next morning, I had some explaining to do. Shirley Huitt's body shop fixed it for about $400. (As of 2024, the scared tree was still standing.)
I took a summer job at Owens-Corning Fiberglas, where I worked swing shifts and doffed rolls of glass cloth that were used to reinforce pipes for the Alaska pipeline. Every teenager ought to work swing shifts once in their formative years.
1974: At the start of my sophomore year, I was appointed editor of the student newspaper at Anderson College, a title that came with a scholarship. I blew it. Infatuated with the Watergate investigations, I tried to publish an unsubstantiated rumor that the college president was playing tennis on the college courts on a Sunday morning, which would be taboo at a Southern Baptist institution. Advisors rightly killed the story. I'm thankful to Don Kirkland for dealing with me in Christian love and forgiveness. I resigned my editorship and paid the balance of my tuition.
1975: For someone whose career was built on glorifying athletic achievements, I was no athlete. Once when I was interviewing Clemson baseball coach Bill Wilhelm, the Kaiser put me in my place by saying, "Tom, you never played this game, did you?"
I played church league basketball and intramurals at Mizzou, and my highest moment was a violation—I was whistled for offensive goal-tending, when I got a running start and barely tipped a ball teetering on the rim. I sometimes tried to dunk, but it was all I could do to get a tennis ball over the rim. In middle age, I jogged a couple of half-marathons. Most of my hiking achievements are triumphs of persistence and logistics, rather than athleticism.
The one athletic skill I mastered was shooting basketball free throws. I've always been amazed that trained athletes struggle to make these elementary 15-footers. A high school basketball coach I knew, Skip Goley, made a career of consulting college teams to improve their foul shooting. A Florida man made the Guinness Book of World Records by sinking 5,221 in a row. Pete Maravich made 77.5 percent of his foul shots at LSU and 82.0 in the NBA. On my backyard goal, I watched Johnny Edmonds make 41 in a row, matching John Roche's record at USC. Twenty in a row was my ceiling. As I hit 70, I cling to the delusion that I could still shoot my age, 70 out of 100.
On Jan. 28, 1975, ten days after my 20th birthday, Furman University held a media foul-shooting contest at halftime of a Jan. 28, 1975, game against Davidson at Greenville's old Memorial Auditorium, "the big brown box." I drained nine out of 10. The Paladins were in their heyday, with Clyde Mayes and Fessor Leonard, and though they won 99-76, they stunk at the foul line, missing 12 of their 41 foul shots.
I got fired again, this time as the official scorer of an American Legion Southeastern Regional playoff in Anderson. Each night, I was supposed to call in the results to the national office, along with the runs, hits, errors, and strikeouts. Strikeouts are not part of the standard baseball linescore, so I argued, and got replaced. As Legion players recite in their pregame creed: "Keep a stout heart in defeat, keep my pride under in victory."
Meanwhile, I worked part-time for the Anderson Independent, and my opportunities increased on "Black Friday," when three sportswriters were laid off. I made the cut, partly because I was working for minimum wage, and also because the executive editor, Slim Hembree, was my mom's cousin. Slim invested in me by sending me to cover the 1975 College World Series, where the University of South Carolina team assembled by Coach Bobby Richardson nearly won it all. Atlanta to Omaha was my first flight, and I wore a leisure suit. On the way back, we landed in Columbia, Missouri, and I took a whirlwind tour of my alma mater-to-be.
I got fired again, this time as the official scorer of an American Legion Southeastern Regional playoff in Anderson. Each night, I was supposed to call in the results to the national office, along with the runs, hits, errors, and strikeouts. Strikeouts are not part of the standard baseball linescore, so I argued, and got replaced. As Legion players recite in their pregame creed: "Keep a stout heart in defeat, keep my pride under in victory."
Meanwhile, I worked part-time for the Anderson Independent, and my opportunities increased on "Black Friday," when three sportswriters were laid off. I made the cut, partly because I was working for minimum wage, and also because the executive editor, Slim Hembree, was my mom's cousin. Slim invested in me by sending me to cover the 1975 College World Series, where the University of South Carolina team assembled by Coach Bobby Richardson nearly won it all. Atlanta to Omaha was my first flight, and I wore a leisure suit. On the way back, we landed in Columbia, Missouri, and I took a whirlwind tour of my alma mater-to-be.
1976: I didn't graduate on time from Anderson College, because I had dropped a literature class. I needed additional transfer credits anyway, so I enrolled at Clemson in the spring of 1976 to meet Mizzou's pre-requisites. I took Economics, Spanish, and English lit, which I transferred back to Anderson so that I could get my junior-college diploma. That's backwards—transferring credit from a senior college to a junior college. (In Spanish, I remember writing about the view of the Clemson clock tower from Rabun Bald, the second highest point in Georgia, 4,696 feet, a fun 50-mile drive from class.)
I became intrigued with computers and thought about pursuing that as a career. At Anderson College, I had taken a computer class (Fortran IV with Watfor and Watfiv) and wrote simple programs on punch cards. The cards were shipped to Clemson to be scanned and run, so it took two days to get results. I might have gotten in on the ground floor of the computer revolution and been Bill Gates or Steve Jobs. But Phil Batson, my mentor at the Anderson paper, talked me into staying in journalism.
The death of locally owned newspapers is one of my great laments, but back in the 1970s it worked out well for me. Wilton Hall sold the Anderson newspapers to a Texas company named Harte-Hanks, which brought in a new publisher named John Ginn. John was a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, and he brought in "the Missouri mafia," including such talents as Lonnie Wheeler and Mickey Spagnola. They encouraged me to finish my education at Mizzou and its premier J-school—the world's first school of journalism. I also applied at Chapel Hill but was wait-listed there, while Mizzou accepted me for the 1976 fall semester.
The out-of-state tuition was about $3,000 per year. That was a lot to ask of Mama and Daddy, so I took on extra jobs. While working nights at the newspaper. I spent my summer days helping to build the Michelin tire plant near Pendleton, lugging brickbats and mortar up scaffolding to the masons. And in the winter I took a newspaper route, which nearly bankrupted me. My route was in a bad part of town, and I had to go door-to-door to collect payments. The fellow who had the route before me was also out collecting at the same time. In three months, I lost hundreds of dollars. Mr. Ginn generously gave me $1,000 to go to Mizzou in the fall of 1977.
I drove my 1968 Mustang to Columbia, Missouri, via an adventurous route that took me through Chicago (to see Jim Ed Rice play for the Red Sox against the White Sox) and St. Louis (where I remember seeing the debut of Garry Templeton, a hotshot who was later traded for Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith).
My roommate in Gardner-Hyde Hall was Joseph Jackson, an exchange student from Liberia who claimed some sort of royal lineage. (When I visited Liberia in 2007, I saw no sign of royalty). My classes went well, except for a basic newswriting course where I arrogantly clashed with the professor, whose credentials were that she was the former secretary to the publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I had to drop that class but got the dean's permission to repeat it the next semester so I could get back on schedule.
Columbia had two daily newspapers, The Missourian (produced by the J-school) and the privately owned Daily Tribune. The Trib hired me as a clerk and assigned me to cover the Heart of America Marathon on Labor Day, which got me off to a nice start.
Columbia had two daily newspapers, The Missourian (produced by the J-school) and the privately owned Daily Tribune. The Trib hired me as a clerk and assigned me to cover the Heart of America Marathon on Labor Day, which got me off to a nice start.
 |
| Love that Sports logo. The Tribune, published by Hank Waters, was one of the best small-town papers in the nation. |
1977: I nearly drowned on the Chattooga River. At least that's the way my newspaper colleague Randy Smith reported it. Based on my recollections, Cap'n Smith overdramatized the story. It's true that I could not swim, but I was wearing a life jacket. It wasn't a 20-foot waterfall, but a gorge known as The Narrows. After we capsized, I remember bobbing to the surface and realizing that Steve was missing. He had surfaced underneath the overturned raft. This was six years after the filming of "Deliverance" on the Chattooga.
I returned to Mizzou for my senior year. "The Missouri method" required sportswriters to spend a semester reporting on the city desk, and the editors liked a lead I wrote about a piddling flood on the Missouri River: "Boone County's bottomlands got their toes wet, but all is well." We also had to take a class in advertising, which I disdained, but the professor liked my puns—"Omaha: Their Reputation is at Steak"—and thought I had a future writing ad copy.
My sportswriting peers lined up to cover Missouri football, so Roger Shuler and I took the basketball beat. I spent the winter touring the Big Eight, carpooling with Kirk Wessler of the Tribune.
The Missourian was frugal, so we were taught how to scam the phone company to avoid long-distance phone charges. Make a collect call to newsroom for Walter Williams, the long-dead founder of the journalism school. "Mr. Williams is not in," our operator would answer. "May I have a number where he can return the call?" The Missourian would call me back on the university's WATS line (a toll-free outbound line). We were so clever, or so we thought. None of us could have imagined that within 30 years, our careers would be undone by our readers using their phones to get the news for free.
The basketball team finished seventh in the Big Eight but improbably won the post-season tournament, made the NCAA tournament despite a losing record, and nearly beat Utah in the first round.
My dorm was McReynolds Hall, Stone House, and our penthouse was known as Third Floor Stone. We were a creative crowd who dammed up the shower stalls to create a pool. When the plexiglass wall failed, we created Missouri's highest waterfall, to the despair of those in the basement. The year after I graduated, these guys created the "Birthday Party" and elected Garth Bare as student body president. Roger Knipp and Fred Walters nicknamed me "Roomie." My roommate was Steve Crowdus, a name I largely forgot until 2024 when Samaritan's Purse hired his son Andrew.
The basketball team finished seventh in the Big Eight but improbably won the post-season tournament, made the NCAA tournament despite a losing record, and nearly beat Utah in the first round.
My dorm was McReynolds Hall, Stone House, and our penthouse was known as Third Floor Stone. We were a creative crowd who dammed up the shower stalls to create a pool. When the plexiglass wall failed, we created Missouri's highest waterfall, to the despair of those in the basement. The year after I graduated, these guys created the "Birthday Party" and elected Garth Bare as student body president. Roger Knipp and Fred Walters nicknamed me "Roomie." My roommate was Steve Crowdus, a name I largely forgot until 2024 when Samaritan's Purse hired his son Andrew.
 |
| A Mizzou reunion with Roger Knipp at LeConte Lodge |
1978: It was a cold winter in Missouri. "How cold was it?" Mary would ask. It was cold enough that the water pump failed on my Mustang, and I learned do-it-yourself automotive mechanics. The repair held for the rest of the semester, but the Mustang broke down in Newport, Tenn., as I was driving home after graduation. That was a classic car, but my uncle Claude was selling a newer Mustang, a white 1973 coupe, so I handed down my sweet '68 to my brother David.
Graduating from Mizzou with honors, I might have had lots of job opportunities, but I never looked beyond Anderson, where we had an unwritten agreement that I would return as sports editor. I rented a "lake house" where the shower was on the back porch. This was way out in the country west of Anderson, near a crossroads called Fair Play. One night after work, the Mustang had a flat tire on the way home, and I couldn't change the tire because my uncle had put locks on the lug nuts. All I could do was walk home, several miles, in the dark. A deputy found the car abandoned and called my parents, since that's where the car was registered. Mama was scared that something terrible had happened to me, until she called my home phone and I answered.
Life was good. Terry Dickson introduced me to the Blue Ridge Parkway, Rabun Bald, and Skin's Hot Dogs. Phil Batson invited me to the Shoal Creek Bluegrass Music Festival over in Lavonia, Ga., where I enjoyed performances by Lester Flatt, Marty Stewart, Sonny and Bobby Osborne, the Lewis Family, and Ricky Skaggs. Our copy desk hired a bright and charming USC graduate, Mary Holcombe. We had grown up on opposite sides of Anderson, and our paths never crossed as we attended rival schools. But the Lord had plans for us.
Graduating from Mizzou with honors, I might have had lots of job opportunities, but I never looked beyond Anderson, where we had an unwritten agreement that I would return as sports editor. I rented a "lake house" where the shower was on the back porch. This was way out in the country west of Anderson, near a crossroads called Fair Play. One night after work, the Mustang had a flat tire on the way home, and I couldn't change the tire because my uncle had put locks on the lug nuts. All I could do was walk home, several miles, in the dark. A deputy found the car abandoned and called my parents, since that's where the car was registered. Mama was scared that something terrible had happened to me, until she called my home phone and I answered.
Life was good. Terry Dickson introduced me to the Blue Ridge Parkway, Rabun Bald, and Skin's Hot Dogs. Phil Batson invited me to the Shoal Creek Bluegrass Music Festival over in Lavonia, Ga., where I enjoyed performances by Lester Flatt, Marty Stewart, Sonny and Bobby Osborne, the Lewis Family, and Ricky Skaggs. Our copy desk hired a bright and charming USC graduate, Mary Holcombe. We had grown up on opposite sides of Anderson, and our paths never crossed as we attended rival schools. But the Lord had plans for us.
 |
| Katie found this ad for our first date. |
We enjoyed mountain trips and bluegrass festivals, including one blisteringly hot event that was either in Wise County, Va.; or Slagle's Pasture near Elizabethton, Tenn.—not far from Ralph Stanley's Virginia homestead. I preferred the new-grass sound, but I gained respect for Dr. Ralph ("Man of Constant Sorrow") after the MC tried to cut his set short. "Son," Ralph declared, "I'll play as long as I want." One of Ralph's old friends, Benny Steele, buck-danced on the stage. When Mary and I met Benny, he offered to record a cassette of old songs for us, or as Benny said on the tape, "For you and yer girlfriend, Tom."
Mary taught me to drive stick-shift in her Bobcat (Mercury's glorified version of the Pinto), and on Aug. 6, I bought my dream car, a dark-green Triumph Spitfire convertible, for $8,000 from Burgin Motors in Greenville. I took Mary on a midnight drive to an overlook at Whitewater Falls, where I proposed in front of God and everybody.
As Mary invested in me, so did The Anderson Independent, sending me to the American Press Institute Sports Editors seminar in Reston, Va. Yet I almost train-wrecked my career when joined a newsroom rebellion against managing editor Dick Gorrell. Mr. Ginn, the publisher, stood by his editor, and we insurrectionists realized it would be best for us to find jobs elsewhere.
I interviewed for sportswriting jobs in Jackson, Miss., and Cincinnati, where the opportunity to work alongside Lonnie Wheeler had big-league appeal. Then Mary and I visited during a snowstorm that was too much for my Spitfire. The Cincinnati Enquirer wanted me to start immediately, but that wouldn't work while we were planning a wedding.
Then a door opened for me when The Greenville News reassigned its assistant sports editor. The editors liked the football edition I had produced in Anderson in 1978. "Can you lead a team of five," executive editor John Pittman asked me. "Of course," I said, bluffing a bit. I settled for such a low wage (less than $7 per hour) that when my staff writers were due for their annual raises, I got one, too—just to stay ahead of them. But leadership was not my gift, and after a year I was glad to return to reporting, covering high school sports as a replacement for Tom Robinson, who was called away to become a Presbyterian pastor.
I rented a cabin overlooking a waterfall near Dacusville, in the mountains above Easley. Before I got my Spitfire, one day I was driving the '73 Mustang to Anderson do my laundry when I tried to pass a car that had slowed down for an unsignaled left turn. We're all fortunate that it was just a glancing blow.
1980: Mary's home church, St. Joseph's, now has a beautiful sanctuary, but back in 1980 they met in a plain block building. Her oldest sister Ann Hayes had been married there, but Linda and Karen had their weddings elsewhere, and we decided to have our day at "Pretty Place," a clifftop chapel at Camp Greenville, where I became a great boy (see 1965). Officially, the name is the Fred W. Symmes Chapel, Mr. Symmes being a Greenville benefactor of the camp. We needed a South Carolina wedding license, although we were in North Carolina at the reception (a rental house in Sherwood Forest) when we signed it. (In 2024, Pretty Place and our home in Boone both suffered roof damage during Hurricane Helene.)
Mary's pastor, Father David Deegan, led our vows. "I will be true to you, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life!" As part of our counseling, I went through instruction to become a Catholic, but couldn't get past my hardened Baptist instincts. In the years following, the United Methodist Church became our church home (Lee Road, Mountain View, and Northside in Greenville).
The wedding scene was spectacular, except that I forgot to get a haircut, and my hair was tousled by the clifftop winds. Because we were so far from home, our caterer was late to deliver the wedding cake, and Mary's mom was so concerned that she called the Winn-Dixie in Brevard to see what they had available.
As I settled into my job in Greenville, the Easley Football Jamboree asked me to present our all-state football team at their annual banquet. Back then, this event was a big deal, and I was nervous about public speaking. Speaking of big deals, the all-staters I introduced included a couple of Perrys, Aiken's William Perry (already broad as a refrigerator, though he did not yet have that nickname until he matriculated to Clemson) and Summerville's Perry Cuda, who won a date with Brooke Shields after she liked his smiling mug on the Parade All-America Team.
1981: On Aug. 14 (Valentine's half-Day), Mary quit smoking—a wonderful gift to me. I was working in Greenville and Mary was still in Anderson, so we rented a poorly heated house in the Cheddar community (pronounced Shed-duh) between Belton and Williamston.
This was also the year of our first hike to LeConte Lodge, which was 56 years old on its way to a centennial. Wish I had taken notes or bought a T-shirt! You never know where a book might come from.
This was also the year of our first hike to LeConte Lodge, which was 56 years old on its way to a centennial. Wish I had taken notes or bought a T-shirt! You never know where a book might come from.
1982: We bought our first house in a neighborhood called Paris View Drive, a Taylors address north of Greenville. The price was $42,000, and it was a stretch for us to get a loan at the high interests that prevailed after the Jimmy Carter years. But then another farmer came through for us—the Farmers' Home Administration, which subsidized loans on houses if there was a farm between the property and the county courthouse. Most of the farmland had been developed as Pebble Creek Country Club, but we qualified nevertheless. The house was a split level with with dog-eared gables and an unfinished basement. The bedrooms were tiny, and the AC was a troublesome wall unit. With the help of Mary's father, we finished a master bedroom in the basement. No bath on that level, but we had the convenience of the laundry. I built a laundry chute from the original master bedroom. (Yes, I cut a hole in the floor of my new house—what could go wrong?) I also built an HO-scale model-railroad track on a chair rail in Hall's room, and I started on a layout in the back side of the basement.
1983: Newspapers in the 1980s were striving to be more personal, so we introduced photo bylines for writers, not just columnists. We called these Norelcos, because they had floating heads.
 |
| 1984 |
 |
| 1987 |
 |
| 1991 |
1984: In the same year Hall was born, so was our statewide high school football coverage. The Greenville News launched this project with an ambitious special section that included preview stories on every high school football team in the state. Nobody had ever seen anything like it.
 |
| Our slogan in the gravy days of newspapering. |
 |
| Three generations of Robert Laytons. My dad and my son Hall. Before us were Robert Herman Layton and Robert Dewey Layton. |
1985: For my 30th birthday, my family put me in a wheelchair and took me to the McDonald's on Anderson Road. My birthdays have often been wrapped up in work: I turned 40 at a Clemson-Florida State basketball game (Bob Sura hit the game-winning shot); 47 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, en route to Afghanistan, three months after 9/11 (I was advised to black out the white cross logo on my Samaritan's Purse shirt); 50 in Sri Lanka reporting on tsunami relief; and 65 in Niger reporting on missionaries at Galmi Hospital. I missed my 60th birthday because of an allergic reaction to Lisinipril that caused my lower lip to swell.
 |
| "To Tom Layton. Best prep sports editor in S.C. Thanks for what you've done to make high school sports great!" |
1986: I received a game ball from Byrnes High School and coach Bo Corne for my coverage of their state-champion football team and the pioneering statewide coverage by The Greenville News. Byrnes became a hot-rod team at the same time BMW was building its first American plant nearby, pumping millions of tax dollars and wealth into what had been a mill-hill school district.
 |
| Our dream house on Packs Mountain (designed by Bill McCuen) |
1987: We bought a homesite on Packs Mountain, and architect Bill McCuen drew up plans, but it was not going to be practical for our family, so we sold the land. We joined Mountain View United Methodist Church, a sweet congregation with a heart for children. Odell and Genelle Wrenn helped Hall on his reading. Mountain View introduced us to the Walk to Emmaus. I was on Foothills Walk #2, Table of Mark, held at the Wesleyan Camp at Table Rock. As Mountain View celebrated its centennial, I researched and wrote the church's centennial history, published by the Methodist Conference in 1992.
I later served on Emmaus teams in Kingsport, Tenn., Sonrise Walk #56 in 2005 (led by Bobby Sharpe) and #80 in 2009 (Andy Harkins). In 2008, we organized a Emmaus reunion group in Boone that continues to meet on Wednesday mornings at Stickboy Kitchen. Frank Aycock, Donnie Miller, and I are charter members, and we've welcomed Andy Harkins to the fellowship. Other founders were Doug Uzelac, Terry Gentry, and Dan Hill.
One day I was cruising in the mountains when I heard on the radio that the supersonic Concorde was on her way to Asheville. So I scooted over to the Asheville airport to see. Back in the 1980s, spectators could get inside airport fences. With her nose folded down, the Concorde made an dramatic fly-by.
 |
| Winston-Salem Journal (April 3, 1987) misspelled the jet's name. |
1988: I had covered Tony Rice since he was a a ninth-grade prodigy at Woodruff High School, so The Greenville News sent me to cover him on the big stage, the Miami at Notre Dame football showdown. This was the game that later became infamous as "Catholics vs. Convicts," though we didn't know that developing angle up in the press box.
 |
| Christmas 1988 at Paris View Drive: Mama and Daddy gave us a "Fiesta Bowl" filled with cash for our trip to Phoenix. Notice the old newspaper rack behind me. Not sure why it was in the living room. |
I had met Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz in 1986, when he was the guest speaker for our newspaper's annual luncheon at the South Carolina Athletic Coaches Association Convention. He did some of his signature magic tricks, including ripping up a USA TODAY sports section only to restore it. Sitting next to him on the podium, I couldn't see how he did it.
Our sports editor, Dan Foster, arranged some big-name coaches for those conventions. I remember Jim Whacker from Texas Christian in 1985, Tom Osborne from Nebraska in 1986, Bobby Bowden from Florida State in 1988, and Don Nehlen in 1989, the year after his West Virginia team was vanquished by Tony Rice.
1989: Our family moved to a four-bedroom house on Forest Hills Drive, in the Edwards Forest neighborhood where our kids competed on the EDF swim team in Greenville's SAIL swimming program.
1990: Over the years, I recruited an all-star team of clerks to work Friday nights to take calls from high school football games across the state. I took spelling seriously (see 1964, and please excuse any sloppy typing on this page) and I wanted my clerks to make sure we spelled names correctly. What a shame if Durrell scored a game-winning touchdown, but the clipping said Darrell or Derrell or their sister Deryl. As an illustration, I developed the "Antwan Index," where I documented dozens of homonyms, including Olympic medalist Anthwan Maybank and tailback turned preacher Ontiwaun Carter, not to mention Marie Antoinette. Never assume a spelling.
I wanted clerks who weren't shy about asking questions, spelling or otherwise. When I interviewed them, I didn't mention pay until they asked—that was their entrance exam, they had to be inquisitive. We fed them dozens of Krispy Kreme donuts and compensated them pretty well for giving us four hours on Friday nights, mostly awaiting the onslaught of phone calls and then chasing stray scores that had not been reported.
 |
| Lonnie Wheeler's book, autographed by the author and the Hammer |
This 1991 column was one of my favorites and was in the portfolio I brought to my interview in Boone: 
1992: The pace of covering high school football took its toll—not just Friday nights, but the winter weekends obligated to recruiting. After National Signing Day in February, I always took a ceremonial shower to cleanse myself. In 1992, I asked my Greenville editors for a fresh assignment. They entrusted me with our prime beat, covering Clemson sports. This was a new level of reporting for me, and my routine included weekly trips to City Hall to see if any athletes had made the police blotter.
1996: I won the Indy 500. This was an informal competition between newspapermen who covered a Clemson basketball game on Friday night in Indianapolis and then raced home to cover the Clemson-N.C. State football game the next day at noon. It's roughly 500 miles from the RCA Dome to Death Valley. Most of my competitors took the morning flight from Indy to Atlanta, but I knew that Delta had a dawn non-stop from Cincinnati to Greenville, so after I filed my game I story, I drove 120 miles to the airport in Covington, Ky., made the quick hop down to Greenville, and arrived well before kickoff.
At the basketball game, I got reacquainted with Lonnie Wheeler, who was instrumental in getting me to Mizzou. Lonnie was working on a book: Blue Yonder / Kentucky: The United State of Basketball.
2008: We emptied our nest as Katy left for college. She dreamed of being an architect and competed successfully for an invitation to UNC-Charlotte. Then she discovered the unglamorous life of an architecture student, and switched to business. She"got marketed."
For Daddy's 80th birthday, we visited the old Vim Herb store and recorded him singing the jingle for the Anderson's famous tonic. "Vim Herb will make you right!"
2009: Mike Hembree invited me to visit Yellowstone National Park. We watched carnivorous wildlife around the Lamar Buffalo Camp, climbed Mount Washburn, gawked at Lower Yellowstone Falls from Artist's Point and Uncle Tom's Trail, and saw Old Faithful and other geysers. We also visited Grand Teton National Park.
Bob Dunnigan invited Hall and I to join him on a motorhome trip to attend the ACC Football championship game in Tampa. C.J. Spiller played heroically, but Georgia Tech prevailed.
Facebook reminds me that 2009 was the year I signed up for social media.
Clemson football had a name-making opportunity with a game at Auburn, which was on its way to a national championship with Cam Newton at quarterback. Clemson blew a 17-0 lead and missed a chance for a game-winning field goal because of a "snap infraction." At the invitation of Samaritan's Purse vice president Jim Dailey, an Auburn grad, Hall and I attended the game. Lewis Grizzard called Auburn "Clemson without a lake," and it was a fun destination.
2013: Mama and Daddy celebrated their 60th anniversary with a cruise from Boston to Newfoundland, Canada. In Boston, Mary and I toured Fenway Park, sat atop the Green Monster, and visited the press box, where I dropped Jim Rice's name.
This was the year I became infatuated with Monarch butterflies.
2016: The Mustang of steam locomotives was the Norfolk & Western J611, built in 1950 as the pinnacle of American steam technology. Restored in 1982 and 2015, the 611 occasionally runs excursions. When she is at at the North Carolina Transportation Museum near Salisbury, you can get a turn at the throttle for $611.
Mary and I saw her on April 10, 2016, at Old Fort, N.C., just before she and a diesel helper pulled passengers up the mountain, past Andrews Geyser, and through the Swannanoa Tunnel into Asheville.
When Clemson basketball program was under NCAA investigation in 1992, Tim Luke and I went to the Oconee County Airport late one night to interview the Clemson officials who were flying home from an NCAA hearing in Kansas City. (This was before you could track flights on the internet, and county airstrips were unmanned at midnight.) While we waited, Tim mischievously hopped over a fence to check out a plane parked nearby. Security cameras caught him, and deputies with blue lights arrived at almost the same time as the Clemson flight landed. Suddenly, we were dealing with investigations on two fronts. Tim talked his way out of trouble, and we got our story without being hand-cuffed.
Tim was the most resourceful reporter I ever worked with—so gifted that The Greenville News sent him to the big leagues. In an era when newspapers were ambitious and competitive, we opened an Atlanta bureau to cover the Braves baseball dynasty. Tim's first book was on the Braves' 1995 World Series championship. A couple of years later when resources dwindled, the newspaper called Tim back to the office. But he wanted to raise his family in Georgia, his home state. So he took a job with In Touch Ministries, an outreach of Pastor Charles Stanley, where his boss was an Auburn graduate named Jim Dailey. In 1998, Jim became director of communications at Samaritan's Purse, and he invited Tim to come with him. Again, Tim was reluctant to uproot his family. So Jim asked for a recommendation from Tim, who dropped my name. That's how I landed in Boone in 1999.
1993: Easter weekend was my third opportunity to cover the Masters (there would be one more trip in 1995 for Ben Crenshaw's second triumph). This one, won by German Bernhard Langer, was memorable because one of our headline writers foolishly wrote an early-edition headline that declared: "Langer's Master's Race." I'm thankful that newspapers.com has no record of that. Now is a good time to remind readers that headlines are written by editors, not the writer on the scene. Not that writers are foolproof: Note that I described a 7 on a par-3 as a triple bogey.
1994: April 25 was a big day in Greenville sports history. Arnold Palmer played in the Thornblade Classic, and Michael Jordan came to town as a minor-league baseball player. I was assigned to cover Michael's appearance. He answered a few questions at a press conference and charmed the sold-out crowd at Municipal Stadium. But hitting curveballs was more of a challenge than he bargained for, and he quit baseball in 1995, rather than to become a scab during the big-leaguers strike. Returning to the NBA, Michael wore his baseball number (45) for 23 games as a tribute to his late father. He then returned to 23 and won three more championships 1996-98.
 |
| The Greenville News (April 26, 1994) |
1995: Clemson's "Slab Five" broke down Duke at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Afterwards, Coach Mike Krzyzewski took a leave of absence to deal with an ailing back, but he came back to coach another 27 seasons, including three of his five national championships.
I never got to know Coach K. He could be intimidating to out-of-town reporters. After one game, my Columbia colleagues asked him about using a zone defense, and Coach K tore him apart and insulted his basketball knowledge. No wonder Coach K had the hometown press so well-tamed.
 |
| Nice lead, for a Methodist! |
1996: I won the Indy 500. This was an informal competition between newspapermen who covered a Clemson basketball game on Friday night in Indianapolis and then raced home to cover the Clemson-N.C. State football game the next day at noon. It's roughly 500 miles from the RCA Dome to Death Valley. Most of my competitors took the morning flight from Indy to Atlanta, but I knew that Delta had a dawn non-stop from Cincinnati to Greenville, so after I filed my game I story, I drove 120 miles to the airport in Covington, Ky., made the quick hop down to Greenville, and arrived well before kickoff.
At the basketball game, I got reacquainted with Lonnie Wheeler, who was instrumental in getting me to Mizzou. Lonnie was working on a book: Blue Yonder / Kentucky: The United State of Basketball.
 |
| Kentucky, the defending national champion, was dethroned by Clemson. |
On June 25, 1996, we took our children to downtown Greenville to see the Olympic torch relay on the way to Atlanta. Because the Greenville County council had approved an anti-gay resolution, the Olympic organizers refused to allow the relay through the suburbs, and the torch was carried in a motor home from the Spartanburg County line to the Greenville city limits.
1997: For several years, I was an elector for the Heisman Trophy and a panelist for the Associated Press football rankings. Dan Foster, my sports editor in Greenville, was the Heisman coordinator for South Carolina. I don't have a record of my votes, but I'm certain I voted for Charlie Ward, the only Heisman in decades who never played pro football. His 1993 game at Clemson established Florida State's dominion over Atlantic Coast Conference football during my era.
1998: This was a watershed year in my career, when I realized that sportswriting (more precisely, competitive reporting) was warping my life. It culminated on Easter Sunday, when Rick Barnes was in the process of leaving Clemson to become the basketball coach at the University of Texas. Rumors were flying, and my job at The Greenville News was to get the story first. Rick wasn't returning phone calls, so on Easter morning I knocked on his door. Rick was on the phone with Texas, and he invited me into his foyer and stepped away to complete the call. When he came back, he was cordial enough, but obviously he didn't appreciate my invasion of his privacy. "It’s Easter Sunday, for goodness’ sake," he said. "What kind of Christian are you?"
What could I say? It was a good question, even if he didn't mean it that way. I mulled that for a while and eventually decided I would no longer be the kind of Christian who chased coaches and recruits for a living. Through a series of events marked by the fingerprints of God (see 1992 with Tim Luke), by the next Easter I had found my calling in Boone and was safely out of the newspaper business.
What could I say? It was a good question, even if he didn't mean it that way. I mulled that for a while and eventually decided I would no longer be the kind of Christian who chased coaches and recruits for a living. Through a series of events marked by the fingerprints of God (see 1992 with Tim Luke), by the next Easter I had found my calling in Boone and was safely out of the newspaper business.
1999: On my first day of work at Samaritan's Purse, they asked me to go to Kosovo, where our teams were setting up a tent camp for war refugees. "Sorry," I confessed, "but I don't have a passport." Instead, Samaritan's Purse hired Van Kornegay from the University of South Carolina as a stringer to cover the work in Kosovo. My opportunity to go there came in December, after Franklin Graham decided to give Operation Christmas Child shoebox gifts to every child in Kosovo (an audacious goal that we achieved over the course of two years). Kosovo (formerly part of Yugoslavia) was cold and largely in ruins after the Balkan war, and I remember one location where we saw bones exposed in a shallow grave. The trip was eye-opening, yet rewarding. In addition to the stories I brought back, I also came home with a pocket calculator. A grateful boy gave it to me out of his shoebox. He wanted to be able to give something, too. I still have that calculator, which reminds me of the generosity of children. Snowy weather delayed our departure from Macedonia, and at one point our team went to a local market and bought gifts for each other, in case we didn't make it home for Christmas.
Mary and I rented a summer cabin on Sumpter Cabin Creek Road between Blowing Rock and Boone, until we could find a house to buy. We found our home on Highland Avenue, which had two bedrooms upstairs for Marta and Katie and an empty basement that became Hall's mancave. On the closing date, I had to come home to Boone from a Hurricane Floyd relief assignment in Goldsboro, N.C.
 |
| The Jabba Trophy. Jabba the Hutt's scowl reminded us of our editor. |
2000: We sent Marta off to college at Western Carolina, and Samaritan's Purse sent me to Holland to cover Amsterdam 2000, a worldwide evangelism summit organized by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. I visited Anne Frank's house, which was the first time I was confronted with the negative connotations of "nationalism." On a whim, Jim Dailey and I rode a train to The Hague and saw the North Sea.
In September, I watched my colleges play a football game at Death Valley, where Clemson (under Tommy Bowden and Woody Dantzler) humbled Mizzou (under Larry Smith) 62-9.
After I left Greenville in 1999, friends organized the Tom Layton Memorial Golf Tournament, dedicated to this motto: "We aspire to mediocrity, and occasionally achieve it." The Jabba Trophy was awarded to the golfer with the most mediocre score. I was not much of a golfer (never broke 100 and made just two lifetime birdies), but it was always a fun reunion, and I was honored to receive "the coveted Jabba trophy" after the tournament was retired.
The winners:
1999: Tom Hutchison (Southern Oaks)
2000: Steve Thompson (Summersett)
2001: Dennis Martin (The Rock at Jocassee)
2002: Monte Dutton (Carolina Springs)
2003: Harvey Dailey (Red Fox, Tryon)
2004: Greg Dailey (Greer Country Club)
2005: Mike Hembree (Mount Mitchell Golf Club)
2001: On the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 11, I was in a meeting at Samaritan's Purse to plan the first global conference on the Christian response to HIV/AIDS when we heard that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. For the first time in my life, our nation was under attack. In the coming months, there would be no way to hold a global conference, so we postponed it until February 2002.
As our world stopped and hearts nationwide turned toward God, I had the opportunity to take a step of faith five days after 9/11. A group of men at Boone United Methodist Church had been planning to launch a Bible study, and the Saturday after 9/11, we met at 7 a.m. for a fellowship that continued for 17 years. Thank you, Dan Hill; and Donnie Miller, who restarted the group in 2024.
Two weeks after 9/11, I rode in a caravan to New York City to report on a project called the Billy Graham Prayer Center, and our team attended Oprah Winfrey's memorial service at the old Yankee Stadium. Headlined as "A Prayer for America," the event featured James Earl Jones, Lee Greenwood, Bette Midler, and Rudy Giulianai, but it felt like Jesus was not invited. A Muslim imam declared, "We Muslims, Americans, stand today with a heavy weight on our shoulder that those who would dare do such dastardly acts claim our faith. They are no believers in God at all.''
A Christian perspective on the attacks had been given Sept. 14 by Billy Graham at the National Cathedral in Washington. I was not at that event.
I've been in the room with Dr. Graham on several occasions, and once when he was available for photographs, I declined the opportunity. I also kept a personal distance from Franklin Graham, though I often worked on his publications. We didn't agree politically, but that didn't seem to bother him, as he attended some of my service awards and once bought supper for Mary and me at Woodland's BBQ.
2002: Three months after 9/11, I was deployed to Afghanistan, where Samaritan's Purse set up a medical clinic and reopened some schools. We were working in an area controlled by the "Northern Alliance," which was nominally pro-American after they were invaded by the Soviet Union, 1979-89. I was assigned to interview a warlord named Mohammad Atta (same name as one of the lead 9/11 terrorists). We needed his favor, so I asked lots of flattering questions, like "What is your hope for your people?"). My translator was Aziz Aslami, an Afghan native who was a city manager in California. Aziz is a passionate Christian and delighted in opportunities to witness to Afghans. He said that if they really understood the Quran, it would point them toward the divinity of Jesus Christ, whom they call Isa ibn Maryam, which means "Jesus, son of Mary." The name Isa means "salvation of God". The Quran often mentions Jesus by name and refers to him by the title "al-masīḥ", which means "Messiah" or "anointed one."
We were based in the town of Kholm, just outside the city of Mazar-i-Sharif. Kholm is the site of a 19th-century palace, and Mazar is the site of the 11th-century Blue Mosque, which we saw but did not enter.
We entered Afghanistan from Islamabad, Pakistan, on a United Nations flight aboard a Soviet-made jet (maybe a Yak-40) that smelled like it was burning kerosene. The UN flights were infrequent, so we stayed longer than we planned. This was before cellphones, so we depended on a satellite phone (with a portable dish) to communicate with Boone. Uploading a photo took three hours.
Kholm was still recovering from its Soviet wounds, and we saw burned-out tanks and artillery pieces along the roadsides. The people were cordial, though the women were in burkas and we were warned to avoid eye contact with them. Many people were armed, and one day we were walking in a crowd and a nurse on our team asked me, "What's that poking me in the back?" It was a rocket-powered grenade launcher that a man was carrying like a briefcase. Walk a little faster!
I also traveled to Bangkok, Thailand, and Kampala, Uganda, for Operation Christmas Child. I interviewed the first lady of Uganda, Janet Museveni, who helped us hand out shoebox gifts. The trans-Atlantic flights from Atlanta to Johannesburg, South Africa were at that time the world's longest passenger flight. Flying over Botswana, I was reminded of its colonial name, Bechuanaland, "bet-you-wanna-land."
We entered Afghanistan from Islamabad, Pakistan, on a United Nations flight aboard a Soviet-made jet (maybe a Yak-40) that smelled like it was burning kerosene. The UN flights were infrequent, so we stayed longer than we planned. This was before cellphones, so we depended on a satellite phone (with a portable dish) to communicate with Boone. Uploading a photo took three hours.
Kholm was still recovering from its Soviet wounds, and we saw burned-out tanks and artillery pieces along the roadsides. The people were cordial, though the women were in burkas and we were warned to avoid eye contact with them. Many people were armed, and one day we were walking in a crowd and a nurse on our team asked me, "What's that poking me in the back?" It was a rocket-powered grenade launcher that a man was carrying like a briefcase. Walk a little faster!
I also traveled to Bangkok, Thailand, and Kampala, Uganda, for Operation Christmas Child. I interviewed the first lady of Uganda, Janet Museveni, who helped us hand out shoebox gifts. The trans-Atlantic flights from Atlanta to Johannesburg, South Africa were at that time the world's longest passenger flight. Flying over Botswana, I was reminded of its colonial name, Bechuanaland, "bet-you-wanna-land."
2003: On June 22, a foggy morning in Boone, I was at my desk in a basement office at Samaritan's Purse when I felt what seemed to be a sore throat. I usually avoided doctors, but I called Mary and drove us to see Dr. Marshall Murrey. His stethescope told him I might be having a heart attack, and he sent me immediately to the emergency room at Watauga Medical Center. Specialists there gave a clot-busting drug and summoned a helicopter to fly me to Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte. Patients who receive that drug are supposed to be at a Level 1 care center within two hours. Boone was socked in, so an ambulance carried me to the Hickory airport, where I was loaded onto my first helicopter ride. I was in no pain nor distress, and the paramedics gave me a headset so I could listen to the air-traffic conversations. We landed on the rooftop in Charlotte, and I was soon in surgery to have a stent inserted into a blocked artery on the bottom of my heart. I was conscious during the procedure and watched on monitors as the surgeons worked their miracles.
Subsequent tests showed that years of fast-food had ruined my blood, and I would need a lifetime of treatment for blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes.
I recovered quickly and made a December trip to Khartoum, Sudan, where I was in a delegation that shook hands with President Omar Al-Bashir, who would be indicted in 2008 for war crimes.
Marta was selected in 2003 to be an exchange student from UNC-Greensboro to spend a semester in England studying at Keele University in Newcastle-upon-Tyme, a location that once served me well in a game of Jeopardy.
 |
| Catherine Erasmus. The green sticker indicated that she had been through our shoebox line, presumably to get gifts for an absent child. |
I went to Capetown, South Africa, to cover Operation Christmas Child distributions. I met a lady named Catherine Erasmus, who said she wanted to marry me. Showing her my wedding band, I kindly explained that I was already spoken for, but she insisted on following me around. I'm not one to boldly share my faith, but at some point God prevailed on me to share the Gospel. When she said she wasn't sure of her salvation, I led her in prayer as she received Jesus Christ as her Savior. I hope to see her in Heaven.
In 2003 we returned to Greenville for the Gaithers' Homecoming concert at the Bilo Arena. Mary and I occasionally return for nostalgic comedy shows at Cafe And Then Some, which used a ballerina logo to mock the Bilo Arena name. The CATS players lampooned Greenville with skits like "How do you solve a problem like Berea?" and the Oconee Nuclear Plant with "I've got friends that glow places." Hopefully we're return for one more show before the cast retires and the club closes in 2025.  |
| Kauda, Sudan, 2004. Now part of South Sudan. That's a T.L. Hanna souvenir football turned the wrong way for the photo. |
2004: For the third straight year, I traveled to Sudan to help deliver shoebox gifts from Operation Christmas Child, this time carrying a special boxed packed in Anderson by "Radio" Kennedy.
 |
| Anderson Independent-Mail, Jan. 7, 2004 |
For several years,
I wrote stories for Decision magazine, published by the Billy Graham
Evangelistic Association. In August they sent me to Somerset, Pa., to
report on the rescue of nine coal miners from the Que Creek #1 mine.
I think there was a great story here, if I could have gotten the miners to talk about how they dealt with their mortality in such utter darkness. Unfortunately, by the time I got to them, the miners
had signed an exclusive contract for a TV movie that required them to
decline all other interviews. Instead, all I had to work with was
interviews with family members and a couple of pastors. One miner told me, "I wish I could tell you."
2005: I turned 50 during a round-the-world trip to cover the tsunami relief work of Samaritan's Purse. I was in Sri Lanka on my birthday, awaiting a flight to Indonesia. Anticipating our 25th anniversary, I used the down time to research the 25th verses of each Bible chapter. That's where I discovered Numbers 8:25: "And from the age of fifty years they shall withdraw from the duty of the service and serve no more." The verse refers to the Levites, who were helpers in the Jewish temple, and the last line of my job description is quite levitical: "Other duties as assigned." So when people quote Billy Graham as saying retirement is not in the Bible, I have a retort. It will be another 21 years before I "withdraw from the duty of the service."
The tsunami trip flew east via London via Maldives on the way to Sri Lanka. Once we arrived in Indonesia (working in Medan and Melaboh) the most direct route home was to continue eastbound via Myanmar (Kuala Lumpur), Taiwan (Tapei), and Los Angeles.
2006: In March, I went to New Orleans with a Boone United Methodist Church team that volunteered with Samaritan's Purse to clean up flooded homes. Eighteen years later, a similar team would serve at our home after Hurricane Helene.
After Marta graduated UNC-Greensboro, we took her on a tour of graduate schools, Cleveland State and Syracuse, visiting Niagara Falls along the way.
2007: Our mission at Samaritan's Purse is to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth, and there's no end quite like Timbuktu. When our Operation Christmas Child team in the nation of Mali was invited to hand out shoebox gifts in Timbuktu, I eagerly volunteered to go. This was part of a trip to report on our projects in Liberia, on Africa's western coast. At the time, Delta was flying from Atlanta to Dakar, Senegal. Local flights hop-scotched down the coast via Banjul, Gambia; and Freetown, Sierra Leone; to Monrovia, Liberia. After a week there, photographer Matt Powell and I returned to Dakar for a flight to Bamako, the capital of Mali. Christians there had chartered a gold-prospector's plane to fly us to Timbuktu, on the edge of the Sahara Desert.
The tsunami trip flew east via London via Maldives on the way to Sri Lanka. Once we arrived in Indonesia (working in Medan and Melaboh) the most direct route home was to continue eastbound via Myanmar (Kuala Lumpur), Taiwan (Tapei), and Los Angeles.
2006: In March, I went to New Orleans with a Boone United Methodist Church team that volunteered with Samaritan's Purse to clean up flooded homes. Eighteen years later, a similar team would serve at our home after Hurricane Helene.
After Marta graduated UNC-Greensboro, we took her on a tour of graduate schools, Cleveland State and Syracuse, visiting Niagara Falls along the way.
2007: Our mission at Samaritan's Purse is to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth, and there's no end quite like Timbuktu. When our Operation Christmas Child team in the nation of Mali was invited to hand out shoebox gifts in Timbuktu, I eagerly volunteered to go. This was part of a trip to report on our projects in Liberia, on Africa's western coast. At the time, Delta was flying from Atlanta to Dakar, Senegal. Local flights hop-scotched down the coast via Banjul, Gambia; and Freetown, Sierra Leone; to Monrovia, Liberia. After a week there, photographer Matt Powell and I returned to Dakar for a flight to Bamako, the capital of Mali. Christians there had chartered a gold-prospector's plane to fly us to Timbuktu, on the edge of the Sahara Desert.
For four days, Matt and I stayed in a "hotel" owned by Libyan strongman Moammar Gaddafi, who had dreams of an empire in western Africa until he was assassinated in 2011. We ate "barbeque" cooked in a Dempsey dumpster. Gaddafi was developing a canal that would have irrigated Timbuktu with the muddy waters of the Niger River. As parched as the landscape appears, Timbuktu actually sits on an aquifier that is tapped by several wells. "Tim" means well, and Bucktu was the name of a woman credited with digging the original well. Timbuktu is a Muslim town but had a small Baptist Church as well as a missionary base outside town that tapped into the aquifier and developed a green oasis with gardens and fruit trees. We felt welcome there.
Unfortunately, our representative from Operation Christmas Child had to cancel his trip, so the distribution of shoebox gifts was left in the hands of Mali church leaders who had never managed such a project. When you bring gifts to an impoverished community, you have to secure the site, which is why our typical distributions have no more than 100 children. You have to be on guard against looters. Once in the Dominican Republic, I was asked to guard the back door of a church.
The Mali team wanted to hand out gifts at a local school with 3,000 children. If you can imagine how much that excited each child, multiply it by thousands and you have the makings of a riot. The students wouldn't stay in line, and youths from the streets climbed over the school walls to try to grab the loot. Policemen with rubber hoses tried to whip the crowd into submission. Matt and I were safe in a pickup truck, and he videoed the scene, though we never showed the evidence to anyone.
I knew of a secure orphanage with eight children, so the next day we took them gifts and celebrated Christmas with them, as Matt got the photos we eventually published.
And I got to see the Sahara, riding a "ship of the desert":
Unfortunately, our representative from Operation Christmas Child had to cancel his trip, so the distribution of shoebox gifts was left in the hands of Mali church leaders who had never managed such a project. When you bring gifts to an impoverished community, you have to secure the site, which is why our typical distributions have no more than 100 children. You have to be on guard against looters. Once in the Dominican Republic, I was asked to guard the back door of a church.
The Mali team wanted to hand out gifts at a local school with 3,000 children. If you can imagine how much that excited each child, multiply it by thousands and you have the makings of a riot. The students wouldn't stay in line, and youths from the streets climbed over the school walls to try to grab the loot. Policemen with rubber hoses tried to whip the crowd into submission. Matt and I were safe in a pickup truck, and he videoed the scene, though we never showed the evidence to anyone.
I knew of a secure orphanage with eight children, so the next day we took them gifts and celebrated Christmas with them, as Matt got the photos we eventually published.
And I got to see the Sahara, riding a "ship of the desert":
 |
| I had never ridden a horse before I load-tested this camel. Note how he lightened his load. The young man with the rein is Ibrahim, who told me to put my feet on the camel's neck, sold me some jewelry, and emailed me for years, begging for money. I'm an easy touch for beggars. When I went to Burundi in 2020 to cover a surgical team, one of the patients I interviewed asked for my help paying school fees for his sons. Against the advice of my bankers, I wired some cash to him. |
For Daddy's 80th birthday, we visited the old Vim Herb store and recorded him singing the jingle for the Anderson's famous tonic. "Vim Herb will make you right!"
 |
| Yellowstone's Mount Washburn (10,209 feet) was the highest I've ever hiked, but I did drive up Colorado's Pikes Peak (14,109) in 2018. |
Bob Dunnigan invited Hall and I to join him on a motorhome trip to attend the ACC Football championship game in Tampa. C.J. Spiller played heroically, but Georgia Tech prevailed.
Facebook reminds me that 2009 was the year I signed up for social media.
 |
| Run a half-marathon? "When pigs fly!" |
2010: Appalachian State football coach Mark Spier challenged me to run a half-marathon with him. When pigs fly, right? Well, he had his eyes on the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati. With my family and friends donating $5,125.91 for our cause—medical equipment for a hospital in Bangladesh—there was no backing out, so I trained seriously and finished 13.1 miles in just over three hours. In 2018, I had the opportunity to visit Memorial Christian Hospital, while reporting on Samaritan's Purse relief projects among the Rohingya refugees.
 |
| With Hall at Auburn, 2010. |
In 2011, I reciprocated and took Jim to Death Valley. George Bennett got us good tickets in the lower deck, and Clemson got revenge, 38-24. This was the third time Clemson had dethroned the reigning national champion, following Georgia Tech in 1991 and Georgia in 1981.
 |
| I had the honor of dumping the last load of gravel on the Elk Knob summit trail. |
2011: On Sept. 4, we completed six years of construction on the summit trail at Elk Knob. We had a great team of volunteers who came Saturday after Saturday. We built it mostly with hand tools, except for the motorized wheelbarrow that carried the gravel. During the construction process, I counted 24 ascents of Elk Knob. By the end of 2024, I was up to 268. It takes 500 repeats to qualify for the Baggers Without Borders Hall of Fame.
 |
| Dawn of the Layton Marathon on the Antelope Island causeway in the Great Salt Lake. From the start, I was bringing up the rear. |
2012: My brother David is a marathon runner, and when he heard that there is a "Layton Marathon" in Utah, our family leaped in. The races started on Antelope Island, in the Great Salt Lake, and finished in the town of Layton, named for Christopher Layton, a Mormon who had 10 wives and 65 children, none of them related to our family, as far as we know. David ran the full marathon and passed me late in the half-marathon. I finished in 3:27, seventh of eight in my age division. Awesome to be cheered to the finish line by my family.
2013: Mama and Daddy celebrated their 60th anniversary with a cruise from Boston to Newfoundland, Canada. In Boston, Mary and I toured Fenway Park, sat atop the Green Monster, and visited the press box, where I dropped Jim Rice's name.
This was the year I became infatuated with Monarch butterflies.
 |
| This Monarch hatched on my porch in 2014. |
2014: I launched LeConteLog.blogspot.com, which became LeContest.com in 2020. After a 2012 hike to LeConte Lodge with Mike Hembree, I was fascinated with tales of folks who had made the climb hundreds or even thousands of times, and I decided to research them. I compiled my findings on a Peakbagger.com page, until I launched the blogspot page. Ash Walsh helped me turn it into a real web page, using Ninja and Wix platforms.
I may have had a heart attack during a hike with the Swannanoa Valley Museum. We hiked from the Blue Ridge Parkway down the Seven Sisters Ridge to the town of Black Mountain. I was severely short of breath and barely made it down the trail. Cardiologists who've studied my heart suspect that in addition to my heart attacks in 2003 and 2023, there was at least one other episode, and this may have been it.
2015: I became fascinated by the abundant historic markers for Stoneman's Raid. This was a Civil War action—mostly after Robert E. Lee's 1865 surrender—that encompassed my world from Boone to Greenville to Anderson. As I explored the history, I launched The Stoneman Gazette, an anachronistic newspaper to cover the 150th anniversary of Stoneman's Raid. I should have known a daily newspaper is way too much for one writer to produce, but after I was written up in the Salisbury newspaper, I had to see it through to its completion. What a cast of characters, from the Siamese twins to Tom Dooley! We even took up a cause and proposed a way to redeem the Civil War memorial in Anderson. Some readers suggested I make it into a book, but I'd hate to lose all the hyperlinks.
 |
| The 56-year-old J611 preparing to climb the 147-year-old Old Fort grade. |
2016: The Mustang of steam locomotives was the Norfolk & Western J611, built in 1950 as the pinnacle of American steam technology. Restored in 1982 and 2015, the 611 occasionally runs excursions. When she is at at the North Carolina Transportation Museum near Salisbury, you can get a turn at the throttle for $611.
Mary and I saw her on April 10, 2016, at Old Fort, N.C., just before she and a diesel helper pulled passengers up the mountain, past Andrews Geyser, and through the Swannanoa Tunnel into Asheville.
 |
| The Greenville News reunion, 2017. This was just before the office was torn down and replaced by a billion-dollar condominium development. I can't ID everyone, but I recognize Reese Fant, Marion Elliott, Gary Boley, Mike Hembree, Ann Green, Tom Priddy, Rudy Jones, Ron Munnerlyn, Karl Hill, and Jim Hammond. |
 |
| Here to Stay? I lasted longer than they did. |
2017: Daddy died Jan. 7, at age 88, two days before his beloved Clemson Tigers beat Alabama for the national championship of college football. He was blind in his later years, so he listened to games on radio rather than watching on TV. I arranged for the Clemson announcer, Don Munson, to give him a shout-out during the semifinal game against Ohio State.
The Anderson County Museum developed a special exhibit called "Andersonians at War" and collected the stories of local men who served our nation. Daddy enlisted during World War II, so he is considered a veteran, even though he never fought overseas.
The Anderson County Museum developed a special exhibit called "Andersonians at War" and collected the stories of local men who served our nation. Daddy enlisted during World War II, so he is considered a veteran, even though he never fought overseas.
Here is what I wrote for the library:
When Dwight Layton graduated from Boys’ High School in 1945, the war in Europe had been over for three weeks, but there were troubling signs from the Pacific front that World War II would not end soon.The Anderson Daily Mail headlines on May 29, 1945, reported massive Allied air raids in Japan, with hundreds of B-29s darkening the sky over Yokohama and dropping 3,200 tons of incendiary bombs on military targets around Tokyo Bay. Meanwhile, desperate Japanese pilots retaliated with kamikaze attacks on the U.S. fleet at Okinawa, sinking an American destroyer and damaging a dozen more ships. On graduation day, the local editorial page speculated that because of Japan’s refusal to surrender, it might require “12 to 15 months to lick them.”As the Boys’ High graduates received their diplomas from retiring superintendent Dr. E.C. McCants, the clouds of war hung over their future. They knew that an invasion of Japan could cost the lives of many Americans, maybe even their classmates or themselves. Of course, the Class of ’45 had no idea that the U.S. was developing top-secret atomic weapons and would soon use them to force the surrender of the Japanese empire.Even as World War II played out and the Cold War began, Dwight was willing and proud to serve his nation, and he liked to point out that his serial number started with a “1,” meaning that he was a volunteer.He enlisted in the Army Air Corps (which became the U.S. Air Force during his tenure) and hoped to become a pilot. He trained on the T-6 Texan and B-24 Liberator bombers. He served 1946-1949 at Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C.; Keesler Field in Biloxi, Miss.; Scott Field in Belleville, Ill.; Randolph Field in San Antonio, Tex.; and Goodfellow Field in San Angelo, Tex.; earning the rank of sergeant.He went to Clemson on the GI Bill, preparing for a career in textiles, but he was concerned about a bleak future for the cotton mills. When Owens-Corning Fiberglas announced plans to open a plant in Anderson, Dwight left Clemson and became the fifth employee in the new plant. His metallurgy shop helped produce the fabric that was used to make fireproof spacesuits for the Apollo astronauts and build the Alaska pipeline.At age 25, he fell in love with Martha Griffin of Anderson, and they were married the day after Christmas in 1953 at First Baptist Church. They raised their family on Smithmore Street in Anderson: Tommy was born in 1955, Mary Lou in 1956, David in 1958, Martha Ann in 1961, and John in 1965.Dwight retired from Fiberglas at age 52 and indulged in his family and his lifelong love of aviation. He became a master builder of radio-controlled model planes and celebrated his 80th birthday with an aerobatic flight in a vintage T-6 warbird. He died at age 88 in 2017, and his wife Martha Layton, a beloved teacher in Anderson, died at 96 in 2022.
 |
| Mary Lou, Mama, and I basked in the 2017 eclipse, as it passed over Anderson. I also saw a partial solar eclipse in 2023 in Boone and 1984 in Taylors, and I've seen several lunar eclipses, including as a boy at Sanibel Island and in 2018 in Bangladesh. |
2018: After Appalachian State beat Michigan game in 2007 (Mary and I held hands as we listened to the dramatic ending on the radio), I resolved to follow App State football on some of their big-dream road trips. In 2018, at the invitation of Dave Rowe, I followed Yosef to Penn State. Alas, the 2020 Wisconsin game was cancelled by COVID, and I didn't have enough faith to go to Texas A&M in 2022 (Mary and I were at the Highway 55 restaurant in Lenoir when the App buses passed, and I commented that they were on their way to a slaughter.) If I'm steadfast in my eighth decade, maybe I'll go to Boise State (Smurf Turf!) in 2025 and Oregon State in 2032.
As a 17-point underdog, App nearly beat Penn State. The same betting line let me down in 2024, when I took Hall, Katy, and Eric to Clemson to endure a 66-20 slaughter.
Dave Rowe was the first NFL draft pick from Joe Paterno's regime and played for the Oakland Raiders when they won Super Bowl XI in 1976. He was a giant in the NFL (6-foot-7 and 280 pounds), so his Super Bowl ring was king-sized. Dave retired to Boone and joined our Saturday morning Bible study. One night when we were coming home from an Emmaus meeting in Kingsport, Dave got stopped in the Elk Park speed trap, but he escaped with just a warning after he let the officer try on his Super Bowl ring. At halftime, Dave invited me into the lettermen's lounge, where I met 1973 Heisman winner John Cappelletti.
As a 17-point underdog, App nearly beat Penn State. The same betting line let me down in 2024, when I took Hall, Katy, and Eric to Clemson to endure a 66-20 slaughter.
Dave Rowe was the first NFL draft pick from Joe Paterno's regime and played for the Oakland Raiders when they won Super Bowl XI in 1976. He was a giant in the NFL (6-foot-7 and 280 pounds), so his Super Bowl ring was king-sized. Dave retired to Boone and joined our Saturday morning Bible study. One night when we were coming home from an Emmaus meeting in Kingsport, Dave got stopped in the Elk Park speed trap, but he escaped with just a warning after he let the officer try on his Super Bowl ring. At halftime, Dave invited me into the lettermen's lounge, where I met 1973 Heisman winner John Cappelletti.
 |
| With Rick Shortt, John Hamann, and Charlie Zerphey on the summit of Virginia's Beartown Mountain in 2014, with snow from Hurricane Sandy still on the ground. This hike enabled Charlie to complete the 134 county highpoints of Virginia as well as all the 88 counties along the Appalachian Trail. |
 |
| With Peter Barr atop Mount Guyot in 2019 |
The 50 states have 3,142 counties, parishes, boroughs, and independent cities. I have stood atop almost 10 percent of the nation's counties. In some sea-level jurisdictions, the location of the highest ground can be uncertain. Sometimes you're visiting a bump in someone's back yard. In the Great Dismal Swamp, Charlie and I trudged eight miles to an island that's barely 15 feet above sea level.
County high-pointers are loosely organized under the Highpointers Club. In 2023, I was appointed as the record-keeper for county high-pointers. The Carolinas are the only states I intend to complete.
The highest point in South Carolina is Sassafras Mountain. When the state built a lookout tower on the summit in 2019, I donated a paving block in honor of our family. Mary and were married under that Psalm, which is on a crossbeam at Pretty Place: "I will lift up my eyes to the hills."
 |
| COVID put a damper on Elsie's 98th birthday, but Anderson held a parade past her door. |
2020: COVID mostly spared us. I may have been one of the early carriers, after I came back sick from a January trip to Niger. My plane was full of coughing and sneezing passengers. Once I got home, I was miserably sick for a couple of weeks. This was more than a month before the pandemic erupted in America. Subsequent tests never confirmed that I had been exposed to the virus. In December 2024, Mary tested positive and I'm sure I had it too.
 |
| The Laytons celebrate Elsie's centennial |
2021: I achieved a goal of a net worth of $1 million. With an eye on retirement, I started drawing my Social Security and cut back my work schedule to four days a week. The same month I cut back, I suffered a minor stroke, which doctors suspected was due to atrial fibrillation. In October, doctors in Hickory implanted a monitor in my chest, but it never found any a-fib before its battery expired in 2024.
2022: Elsie turned 100, which her mom Dede had done in 2002. In all my genealogical research, I don't know of anyone else in our family who has lived so long. My mom's mom, Macie Sherard, lived to 86; and her grandmother, a Confederate widow named Asanath Sherard, reached age 90. The oldest ancestor I personally knew was "Mama Clark," my dad's grandmother, Minnie Barnett Clark, who made it to 87. The longest-lived Layton was Stephen Layton, my fifth great-grandfather, 91. His father Abraham emigrated from England in 1744. My genealogical research is posted on Ancestry.com.
 |
| View of Elk Knob from our home. |
2023: I resolved to make 70 climbs in my 70th year in 2024, and I was well on my way with 59 by the end of September, before Helene wrecked North Carolina and shut down the state park. I had also tried to "hike my age" in 2022, and I climbed Elk Knob 32 times before being sidelined by a heart attack in August. After getting stents in Charlotte Sept. 14, I was back on the trail by Sept. 18, taking my time but making it to the top. By bouncing back so quickly, I kept my streak of consecutive months, which spanned 53 months between the state park shutdowns for COVID in 2020 and Hurricane Helene in 2024. I also had 48 consecutive months prior to the shutdown. I finished 2023 with 39 ascents (seven after surgery) and 64 in 2024.
2024: In September, Samaritan's Purse sent me to Kentucky to report on the completion of two rebuilding projects: 50 homes in Mayfield following the 2021 Christmas tornado and 14 homes in Breathitt County for families flooded in 2022. During the drive from Breathitt to Mayfield, my vice president Jim Dailey called me and said I could cut short the trip, since Hurricane Helene was looming and might make my return trip dangerous. But nobody expected the storm to hit Boone, where Mary and Spencer were home alone. I covered the Mayfield dedication, filed my story, and decided to head home the next day. It looked like Helene would bog down in Tennessee, so I mapped a route south of the storm to return home via Atlanta. About the same time I departed Kentucky on Friday, Sept. 27, the storm hit Boone and snapped a red maple, dropping it onto our roof, blocking the front door and the garage door. A couple of hours later, the power failed. The only way Mary could get out of the house was through the back doors. I was still a two-day drive from home. I overnighted in Huntsville, Alabama, and then made haste toward home. I made great time until I crossed South Carolina to find no gas stations open. I made it into North Carolina and pulled off I-85 with four miles left in the tank. I called Katy, who came to the rescue with a 5-gallon jug.
I got home after dark and had to wait until morning to assess our damage. The tree had punched two holes over the front porch, damaged some shingles, and cracked the barge rafters on the front of the house, but we didn't see any leakage inside. That Sunday morning, I lopped off enough branches so that we could get out of the front door or garage, if necessary; and emailed folks with clout at Samaritan's Purse. On Monday morning, we received one of the first volunteer teams, who expertly removed the tree, hauled it off, and presented us with a signed Bible.They also had a Bible for our neighbors, which I was asked to present. I cringe at public speaking, and afterwards I thought through my "elevator speech" about Samaritan's Purse. Here's what I wish I'd been prepared to say:
Samaritan's Purse is based on the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). We call him "Good," because Samaritan was a bad name. It's like calling him the Good Nazi, or the Good Taliban, or the Good Republican or Good Democrat, depending on which way you vote. Or the Good Halfbreed—which is precisely how Jews perceived the genetically impure Samaritans. Jesus was known to associate with Samaritans, but the Good Lawyer listening to the parable would never have expected a Samaritan to be the hero of the story. You don't have to vote with Franklin Graham to appreciate the good-neighbor charity manifested through Samaritan's Purse.The parable turns on three vital questions.1. "Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?”The lawyer is talking inheritances, essentially asking about wills and estates. (Jesus didn't mention this in his reply, but when you think about inheritance, consider that before you inherit anything, somebody has to die first.)2. "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?”Jesus, the ultimate rabbi (or teacher), answers the question with a question, and redirects the lawyer back to the Law. The lawyer gives an elegant and possibly smug response, showing that he speaks Jesus' language by paraphrasing Moses in Deuteronomy: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”3. "And who is my neighbor?"Now the lawyer cross-examines Jesus with a trick question. Jesus cites the example of two pious religious leaders who were too busy to help the half-dead robbery victim by the side of the road. Then the Samaritan comes along and shows compassion. Jesus asks, “Which of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?” He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”
“Go and do likewise” is our motto at Samaritan's Purse. I've proudly devoted the last 26 years of my career to this work, attempting to follow the example of the Samaritan, and Jesus himself. And while I don't vote with Franklin, that has never been an issue with my employment. Franklin's compassion is wrapped up in a genuine concern for eternal souls (see my preamble and Question 1 above). I'm proud to be associated with Samaritan's Purse, and it's evident that the Lord has blessed this ministry.
 |
| On a trip to visit Mama's cousin in Americus, Georgia, we stopped at the "Center of the World" monument near Harwell. |
2025: To celebrate Mama's 100th birthday, we planned a family vacation to the Isle of Palms, where her children intend to redistribute Mama's shell collections for beachcombers to find. Shell collecting was one of my hobbies, too, and we even took a vacation to Florida's Sanibel Island to hunt shells. Once at the Sand Dollar Campground on Isle of Palms, I found a live lightning whelk in a tidal pool. Mama boiled it in a pan of water, and Daddy extracted the carcass so I could keep the shell.
Mama celebrated her birthday on Sept. 8, 1925, but the IRS records included dates in July 1925. She had three birthdays! We tried unsuccessfully to reconcile the dates with Social Security and the state health department. When I filed her taxes, I had to use the July date.
Mama celebrated her birthday on Sept. 8, 1925, but the IRS records included dates in July 1925. She had three birthdays! We tried unsuccessfully to reconcile the dates with Social Security and the state health department. When I filed her taxes, I had to use the July date.
&C
&c is an abbreviation for etc. used by Emmala Reed in her diaries published in The Stoneman Gazette.
Our Patriotic Heritage: Mama instilled in me an appreciation for our family tree, and I wish that we had been able to get her officially recognized as a Daughter of the Revolution and the Confederacy. (Alas, we didn't have the family-Bible documentation they required.)
My third great-grandfather, Benjamin Franklin Griffin (1790-1842) served in Army in the War of 1812.
Mama's grandfather, Pierce Butler Griffin (1847-1925) served in the Confederacy at the end of the Civil War, and his father Jackson Griffin (1819-1861) was a Confederate soldier who died of disease in the Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond.
Daddy was technically a World War II veteran, as he enlisted in 1945, though he was never deployed once Japan surrendered. Mary's dad built Navy ships in Norfolk.
Mary's brother Buddy and brother-in-law Harold Williams served in Vietnam.
 |
| Ancestry.com says my DNA is 54% Scottish, 8% Irish, 31% English and northern European, and 7% Germanic Europe. |
Places I've Lived: Anderson: 1614 Chapman Road, 519 Smithmore Street (803-224-3790); 1005 Williamston Road (apartment with Robert L. Bradley), Twin Cove Circle (lake house near Fair Play); Marshall Avenue (Mary's apartment, across the street from Mama's childhood home); 1913 East Calhoun Street; 13016 Belton Highway in the Cheddar Community between Belton and Williamston (brick house has been renovated and expanded).
Missouri: Gardner-Hyde Hall and McReynolds Hall (Stone House).
Taylors/Greenville: 197 Deer Creek Road, Dacusville (waterfall house, torn down and replaced); 42 Paris View Drive (now numbered 18); 105 Forest Hills Drive (864-268-1405).
Boone/Blowing Rock: 117 Sumpter Cabin Creek Road, Blowing Rock; 301 Highland Avenue, Boone (828-268-1479); 159 Oak Leaf Trail, Boone.
Places I Worked: Western Sizzling Steakhouse, 1972-73 (torn down 2025); Anderson Independent-Mail 1973-79, Owens-Corning Fiberglas 1973, Daniel Construction (Michelin Sandy Springs plant) 1975, Columbia Daily Tribune 1976-78, The Greenville News 1980-1999, USA TODAY ("Around the U.S." correspondent) 1982-1992, Samaritan's Purse 1999-2025.
How I Voted: My first presidential vote in 1976 was for a fellow Southerner, Jimmy Carter. (One of my favorite headlines asked: "True Grit: Can Carter Bring True Hominy to the Nation?") I also voted for Jimmy in 1980, when I was convinced Reagan was an actor being orchestrated by Republican elites. I don't remember all my votes, thought I generally leaned conservative. In 1992, I think I cast a protest vote for Ross Perot. I voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004, McCain in 2008, and Obama in 2012. In 2016, Mary and I abstained from the presidential vote, because we were so uncomfortable with the choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. We also voted against Trump in 2020 and 2024.
My Cars: Twice we've bought rookie cars: the Hyundai and Saturn were the original models. New cars are boldfaced: 1968 Ford Mustang, 1970 Mustang, 1978 Triumph Spitfire, 1985 Hyundai Excel, 1986 Saturn SL1, 1991 Chevrolet Lumina, 1995 Ford Windstar, 1998 Honda Accord (bought in 2006 for Katy, later became my car, and was donated to Dede Shealy in 2022), 2004 Mazda Tribute (donated to Watauga High School auto class, 2018 Mazda CX-5, 2022 Mazda CX-30.
 |
| Beach trip with cousins: Martha Ann, me, David, Claudia, Mary Lou, and Carole Ann. |
Vacations: Our family made annual camping trips to the Sand Dollar campground on Isle of Palms, S.C., and Deep Creek Campground (see 1963) in the Great Smoky Mountains. We rarely stayed in motels nor dined at restaurants. Occasionally we rented a beach house, usually taking along our maid or grandmother.
We had a variety of tent campers, including one called the RIGHT camper. There is a brand of camper called Layton, but I don't think we ever had one of those; nor the model that was called RELIART, which is trailer spelled backwards. Driving down the highway, we would occasionally pass someone hauling an Airstream trailer. "They must be rich," we'd say. "They used to be," Daddy would respond.
 |
| Mama with the Right camper at Isle of Palms |
I also remember childhood trips to the Okeefenokee Swamp, Florida's Silver Springs, St. Augustine, the Amish Country of Pennsylvania, and the Houston Astrodome.
On the way to Montreal, Daddy drove through New York City pulling a camping trailer, so I could see Yankee Stadium. We got into some parts of the Bronx that are not on the tourist maps. "Roll the windows up and lock the doors," Daddy warned.
Isle of Palms: On one of our trips, we saw sea turtles nesting on the beach. Mama and Daddy looked up the gestation period for turtle eggs (not an easy task in pre-Internet days) and scheduled another trip so we could see the baby turtles hatch. According to their biological clocks, turtles on the east coast are supposed to be born the night a full moon is rising over the ocean. They are genetically programmed to head for the moonlight. At the Sand Dollar Campground, hundreds of newborn turtles were distracted by lanterns in the campground. We scooped them up with buckets and carried them to the surf. Katie cares dearly for the turtles, and she'll be delighted to read that her Dad once saved dozens of turtles, and perhaps some of them are still spawning.
Maine: We camped with the McCarron family, whom we'd met at Isle of Palms. Near the town of Bath, we camped near a tidal basin known as the Bath Tub.
Outer Banks: We once visited North Carolina's outer banks during a Nor'easter. This involved a ferry trip between islands, and I'll never forget how challenging it was for our crew to dock. They were using ropes thick as arms to lash the ferry, but as the boat pitched and turned, the rope was wrenched out of their hands and it ripped across the chest of one of the sailors. His dirty white T-shirt was cut open, and he had a awful-looking rope burn across his chest, but as far as I know he survived.
Mammoth Cave: Some tourist asked whether we should worry about rocks falling from the ceiling. The guide assured him, "You can't be buried any deeper, any cheaper."
Yellowstone: In 2011, Mike Hembree invited me on a trip to Yellowstone National Park, where stayed at the Lamar Buffalo Camp and spent our days looking for exotic and carniverous wildlife. Nothing was more exotic than waking up at midnight to go to the bathroom, and finding that our cabin was surrounded by buffalo. We also took a boat ride on Jenny Lake, at the foot of Grand Teton; climbed Mount Washburn, and descended Old Tom's Trail to the foot of Yellowstone Falls. I took Mary to Yellowstone after the Layton marathon in 2012.
World's Fairs: I've visited two: Montreal and Knoxville. We visited the Montreal site of Expo '67 in 1969 during our trip to Cooperstown, N.Y., to see the National Baseball Hall of Fame. In Montreal, Daddy stopped at a campground and asked, "Do you have any spots?" "No, no spots." "But do you have any vacancies?" "Oh, yes, we have vacancies." Knoxville staged a World's Fair in 1982 and promoted it with this jingle: "The 1982 World's Fair—You've got to be there!" Mary and I visited shortly after Marta's birth. We visited on the day of a show featuring Carl Story, "the father of bluegrass Gospel," who was a popular radio personality in Greer, or as he said it, "G-R-double-E-R ... Grrrr."On the way to Montreal, Daddy drove through New York City pulling a camping trailer, so I could see Yankee Stadium. We got into some parts of the Bronx that are not on the tourist maps. "Roll the windows up and lock the doors," Daddy warned.
National Parks: In addition to frequent visits to the Great Smoky Mountains, I've been to Yellowstone National Park twice (with Mike Hembree and with Mary), Shenandoah, Rocky Mountains, Mammoth Cave, the Everglades, plus Lake Clark and Katmai on Samaritan's Purse trips to Alaska. I've seen the Grand Canyon only from an airplane.
Destinations: I've visited 22 nations (including stopovers) on five continents, plus 46 states (lacking the Dakotas, Oregon, and Hawaii).
My most unforgettable trips were to Timbuktu in 2007 and Afghanistan three months after 9/11. In 2005, while covering our tsunami relief work in Sri Lanka and Indonesia, I circumnavigated the globe, flying eastbound via London, the Maldives, Columbo, Medan, Taiwan, and Los Angeles. I've made four trips to Sudan (including two to places that are now part of South Sudan) and three long hauls to South Africa.
The first time I left U.S. soil was a family vacation to Montreal in 1969. I went to Puerto Rico in 1996 to cover Clemson basketball. Those were open borders, so I didn't have a passport in 1999 when Samaritan's Purse hired me—an oversight we realized when they wanted to send me to report on refugee projects in Kosovo.
 |
| Mayan sun god temple at Altun Ha, Belize. |
Samaritan's Purse relief projects took me to Afghanistan in 2002 (via Saudi Arabia and Pakistan), Sri Lanka and Indonesia in 2005 (after the tsunami), Sudan in 2005 (church reconstruction) and 2008 (we were at President al-Bashir's palace hours before he was indicted for war crimes), Liberia 2007, China 2008 (earthquake relief), Kenya 2008, Sudan 2009, Burundi 2019 (surgical team), and Niger 2020 (Galmi Hospital). My swan song was supposed to be the dedication of a new cardiac hospital in Kenya, but Hurricane Helene forced me to change plans.
In 2000, I went to the Netherlands to report on Amsterdam 2000, a Billy Graham event.
In 2000, I went to the Netherlands to report on Amsterdam 2000, a Billy Graham event.
I have coins from my Samaritan's Purse international trips, plus a bundle of 100 bills from Afghanistan called a "lak" that was worth about $12. Rather than try to exchange it for dollars, I kept it as a $12 souvenir.
AFGHAN MONEY
 |
| The Greenville News, July 21, 1991 |
My aunt Viola Griffin has a place in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. She played in All-America Girls Professional Baseball League, and she and uncle Claude Griffin appear in the closing scenes of the movie, "A League of their Own."
On a 1969 trip to Cooperstown, I saw the Hall of Fame induction of Satchell Paige and Ernie Banks in an exhibition game at Doubleday Field). Daddy and I saw John Smoltz vs. Tom Glavine April 7, 2007, at Turner Field. Other baseball Hall of Famers I've seen include Willie Mays (1968, Atlanta Stadium), Hank Aaron (1960s, Atlanta Stadium), Ernie Banks, Ferguson Jenkins, and Billy Williams (Astrodome 1969), Roberto Clemente (1960s, Atlanta), Jim Rice (Comiskey Park 1978, plus Nardin Field and Anderson Memorial Stadium 1973), Joe Morgan (1960s, Atlanta), John Smoltz, Tom Glavine, and Carlos Beltran (2007, Turner Field).
My church-league basketball coach, Ed Brown, is in the T.L. Hanna High School Hall of Fame.
Wages: Social Security keeps voluminous records, and I was intrigued to look back at my earnings. As a newspaper rookie, I earned $2,291 part-time in 1973 and $7,306 working mostly full-time in 1975. The year I moved from Anderson to Greenville, I earned $14,510, which is almost $7 per hour.
I got a nice boost in 1982, when some fellow employees complained about unpaid overtime. I was called in and asked if I had ever done this, and after I confessed, my editors asked me to estimate how many unpaid hours I'd worked. Not only did they give me a lecture, but they wrote a check for the overtime, which gave them legal cover and gave us the down payment for our first home on Paris View Drive! Providence!
Once I became an exempt employee, instead of overtime, I received cash bonuses for our annual football editions. When I was negotiating wages with Samaritan's Purse, I forgot about those bonuses, so my annual wages dipped over $8,000 and it took me four years to catch up. No complaints—this job was not about getting rich.
Mary came to work for Samaritan's Purse in 2000 and retired in 2015. The Greenville News paid me $687,000 for 19-plus years, and SP paid us $3.6 million for 26 years.
Pets: I had cats most of my life, only to find that I was allergic to them. I vowed to outlive our last cat, Skat, and she lasted to age 19. (I Googled the world's oldest cat and found a story about a 30-something cat whose ninth life ended on a railroad track.)
Our dogs tended to be free-range. In Taylors, King was a German Shepherd who broke my front teeth while leaping over a backyard gate. In Boone, Buddy escaped the fence on Highland Avenue and roamed downtown, even making himself at home at the Rams Rack charity store. Before we had a fence on Oak Leaf Trail, Bear roamed the neighborhood until he was hit by a car one night in January 2012. Blind and crippled, he survived until August, when we made the decision to let him go. Spencer was a good boy.
Once I became an exempt employee, instead of overtime, I received cash bonuses for our annual football editions. When I was negotiating wages with Samaritan's Purse, I forgot about those bonuses, so my annual wages dipped over $8,000 and it took me four years to catch up. No complaints—this job was not about getting rich.
Mary came to work for Samaritan's Purse in 2000 and retired in 2015. The Greenville News paid me $687,000 for 19-plus years, and SP paid us $3.6 million for 26 years.
 |
| With Bear at the pet hospital. |
Pets: I had cats most of my life, only to find that I was allergic to them. I vowed to outlive our last cat, Skat, and she lasted to age 19. (I Googled the world's oldest cat and found a story about a 30-something cat whose ninth life ended on a railroad track.)
Our dogs tended to be free-range. In Taylors, King was a German Shepherd who broke my front teeth while leaping over a backyard gate. In Boone, Buddy escaped the fence on Highland Avenue and roamed downtown, even making himself at home at the Rams Rack charity store. Before we had a fence on Oak Leaf Trail, Bear roamed the neighborhood until he was hit by a car one night in January 2012. Blind and crippled, he survived until August, when we made the decision to let him go. Spencer was a good boy.
Favorite Books: "The Overstory," by Richard Powers, is my gold standard. I also enjoyed his "Bewilderment," which is set partly in the Great Smoky Mountains, where Powers lives. (I tried in vain to contact him to see if he might write a foreword for our LeConte Lodge history.)
"The Bona Fide Legend of Cool Papa Bell" is an opus by Lonnie Wheeler, who was my co-worker in the 1970s and later my mentor. (Lonnie called me while he was pursuing an obscure Anderson angle on Cool Papa.) Lonnie also wrote Henry Aaron's biography, "I Had a Hammer," and gave me a copy signed by Hank. (Lonnie chronicled the racism that Hank faced, which I had been oblivious to.)
The Barn, by Wright Thompson, was a milestone in my enlightenment.
"The Diary of Miles Thomas" wasn't a book but was a fun serial, produced by ESPN as "an experiment in storytelling" that mythologized the 1927 Yankees. The same goes for "The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window and Disappeared"—like Forrest Gump running through 20th-century world history.
Jan Karon's Mitford books were close to my heart, as her characters were based on neighbors in Blowing Rock. Her Episcopal pastor, Father Tim, taught me the prayer that is always answered: "Thy will be done."
Tim Alberta's The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory was an enlightening take on Christian nationalism. I can hear the Lord pleading: "Tommy, Tommy: Why are y'all politicizing me?" God, forgive us.
I'm fond of "Refuge," by Dot Jackson (Mary helped Dot prepare the manuscript) and "Red Hills & Cotton," by Clemson grad Ben Robertson. Plus anything by Mark Twain, who dropped this pearl at his 70th birthday: "You can't reach old age by another man's road. My habits protect my life, but they would assassinate you."
The Hardy Boys whetted my appetite for books.
My second centennial history, LeConte Lodge, with Mike Hembree, is a much better read than my first, Mountain View United Methodist Church, 1892-1992.
Here is a list of books by authors I have known.
Toys: I enjoyed Kenner Building Sets, Revell models, and HO trains (my first one had F-unit Baltimore and Ohio locomotives, Some of the trains and the Kenner sets are still in our attic. We didn't have Legos.
Compulsions: Once I've found a game I can master, I tend to let it master me: I played Tetris so religiously that I memorized the oncoming patterns and could keep a game going for hours; Spider Solitaire, again, I could play non-stop (using the back-track function if necessary); Jigidi jigsaw puzzles (I had the world's fastest times on a few tessellations), and Wordle (through Election Day 2024, I solved 480 games in a row, after losing a 100-game streak when I had _ADDY and guessed PADDY instead of DADDY. My seed words were ABIDE and LOUSY, which covered all the vowels. I started with ABIDE, my favorite Bible verb*, until it won. Since then I've started with LOUSY.) *See John 15:4. Of all the active verbs, abide is the least active. The Bible lesson here is that Jesus did it all.
I'm fascinated and motivated by streaks. In my 60s, I decided to climb Elk Knob at least once a month. I had streaks of 48 and 53 consecutive months, interrupted by COVID in April 2020 and Hurricane Helene in October 2024. Back in Greenville we went for years of Friday nights without missing a high school football score in any corner of South Carolina—probably something like 8,000 games in a row. The Stoneman Gazette ran for 54 consecutive days. As a boy I collected seashells as well as baseball cards, and since 1999 I've collected the state quarters. I have a collection of pennies that Daddy started that span all the years of my life.
 |
| Mary atop the Green Monster on a 2013 visit to Fenway Park. |
Arenas I've Visited: I've stepped inside 10 big-league ballparks, including all three in Atlanta: Daddy took me to several games in the original Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, I took him to Turner Field in 2007 to see Tom Glavine pitch against John Smoltz, and Hall and Amber treated me to a Father's Day game in 2023 at Truist Park (Michael Harris hit the longest home run I've ever seen.) I've also seen games at the Houston Astrodome, the old Comiskey Park in Chicago, Busch Stadium II in St. Louis, Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Camden Yards in Baltimore, and Carpenter Field in St. Petersburg. Mary and I toured Fenway Park on a non game day, and I was at the old Yankee Stadium for a 9/11 memorial service in 2001. I also saw an exhibition in 1969 at Cooperstown's Doubleday Field, and three College World Series at old Rosenblatt Stadium.
In Greenville, I saw baseball games at burned-out Meadowbrook Park, Greenville Muncipal Stadium, and Fluor Field; plus Duncan Park in Spartanburg, Stevens Park in Greer, Glenwood Park in Easley, Gignilliat Field in Seneca, and Legion Stadium in Greenwood.
Back home in Anderson, I saw Hanna football games at McCants Field, District Five Stadium, and the new T.L. Hanna Field. During my years covering college football, I went out of my way to see games in Winnersville I and II, Valdosta and Summerville (the last high school game I covered, where John McKissick invited me into the locker room). I liked high school stadiums with history, including Camden's Zemp Stadium (1929), Ware Shoals' Riegel Field (1931), Greenville's Sirrine Stadium (1936), and Gaffney's Brumbach Stadium (1937). Wish I could have seen a game in Elberton's Granite Bowl (1950). The biggest stadiums I've ever attended are the Bristol Speedway (146,000, I may return there for the Braves-Reds game in 2025) and Penn State's Beaver Stadium (106,000).
No stage compares to a college football stadium, and I've seen games at Penn State in 2018, Notre Dame in 1988 ("Convicts vs. Catholics"), Georgia, Georgia Tech, the Georgia Dome for several Peach Bowls, and various ACC outposts, including the 2009 ACC championship game at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa.
In basketball, I played at Gluck Mills and Orr Mills, shot free throws in Greenville's Memorial Auditorium, attended ACC tournaments in the Greensboro Coliseum and the 1990s Charlotte Coliseum; and NCAA tournament games at the Checkerdome in St. Louis (my only Final Four, where Jack Givens and Kentucky tore up Duke), the Roundhouse at Wichita State, the Pit in Albuquerque, Kemper Arena in Kansas City, and the Alamodome in San Antonio.
Basketball arena architecture fascinates me, so I enjoyed games under the barrel vaults at Maryland (Cole Field House), Minnesota (with its elevated floor), and Kansas (Allen Field House), plus the spaceship dome at Georgia Tech. I admired Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium, critiqued N.C. State's Reynolds Coliseum as an absurdly elongated rip-off of Cameron (with vulgur rather than clever fans), and didn't mind sitting on the baseline in the Dean Dome.
Four times, I had the opportunity to cover the Masters Golf Tournament and stroll through the cathedral of pines. Augusta National held a lottery for sportswriters to play the course on the Monday after the tournament, but I wasn't enough of a golfer to take the dare. I also walked Pinehurst No. 2 during a national sportswriters' convention.
Marta and I saw Allison Krause at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. I remember seeing Emmylou Harris in Atlanta, Randy Newman and Cole Tuckey at Mizzou, Chicago in the Chicago Stadium (with Mickey Spagnola), the Seldom Scene at the Washington's Cellar Door (1978) and the Lincoln Theater in Marion, Va. (2025), the Normaltown Flyers in Athens, Carl Story at the Knoxville World's Fair (1982), Bill Monroe at the old Blue Ridge High School, Sierra Hull in Lenoir, Balsam Range and Audie Blaylock in Valdese, the Krueger Brothers in Blowing Rock, Kyle Petty in Salisbury and Marion Va., the Osborne Brothers in Lavonia, Doyle Lawson in Asheville, the Cockman Family on Beech Mountain, Little Roy and Lizzie in Marion, Va., and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in rehearsal (2012).
On an Operation Christmas Child trip to South Africa in 2003, I had the opportunity to interview Bill Gaither, whose work you know from the Baptist Hymnal: "Because He Lives," "He Touched Me," "The King Is Coming," "I Believe in a Hill Called Mount Calvary," and "There's Something About That Name." Bill and Gloria gifted OCC with this song: "Give It Away."
Palmetto's Finest: In 1992, Sports Illustrated ranked the 50 greatest athletes from each state, headlined in South Carolina by boxing champion Joe Frazier. I was fascinated by how many of the South Carolinians I had encountered. No. 2 was Shoeless Joe Jackson, who died before I was born, so I wrote columns contending that his "lifetime ban" from baseball was no longer valid. No. 3 Pete Maravich I saw play in 1968 at Clemson. No. 7 David Pearson and No. 14 Cale Yarborough drove in the first NASCAR race I ever saw, at Darlington. At T.L. Hanna, I was the scorekeeper for No. 9 Jim Rice's senior season, and saw No. 8 Alex English play for Dreher and No. 25 Stanley Morgan for Easley. As a sportswriter for the Anderson Independent, I covered the emergence of No. 18 Larry Nance at McDuffie High School and No. 43 Willie Mays Aikens at Seneca, plus No. 33 Steve Fuller in the demise of his Spartanburg High School juggernaut. On my first road trip for the paper, I met No. 19 Bobby Richardson when I covered the 1975 College World Series. (Our paths crossed again in Boone, when Richardson shared his testimony at Deerfield United Methodist Church, and I won an autographed baseball by answering the trivia question of who replaced him at second base for the Yankees Answer: Horace Clarke). At The Greenville News, I crossed paths with No. 15 Kevin Garnett during the 1999 NBA lockout and No. 24 Xavier McDaniel. I presented No. 31 William Perry with his all-state plaque at the Easley Football Jamboree, and followed the career of No. 41 Tony Rice from Woodruff High School to Notre Dame to the Fiesta Bowl. Before No. 47 Anthuan Maybank was an Olympic Gold Medalist, I saw him run for Georgetown High School, and his name inspired the Antwan Index (see 1961). I'm sorry I never met No. 48 George Webster—the story of his underground-railroad recruitment from Anderson to Michigan State would have been an enlightening window into segregation.
If SI had asked me, I would have told them they overlooked two Baseball Hall of Famers: Larry Doby of Camden (the Jackie Robinson of the American League) and Ben Taylor of Anderson. Others that deserved consideration: Stephen Davis of Spartanburg (who had three times more NFL yardage than his Auburn predecessor, Bo Jackson); Preston Wilson of Bamberg-Ehrhardt (a top 10 draft pick along with Derek Jeter in 1992); Clyde Mayes of Greenville (another barrier-breaker from Jim Rice's generation); golfers Lucas Glover of Greenville and Chris Patton of Fountain Inn; and Textile Leaguer Earl Wooten of Pelzer.
May I Leave Your With A Song? These kept my toes tapping: This Old House, by the Cathedrals; Passing Fancy, by Cole Tuckey (my college crush); The Legend of Jack Huff, by Jimbo Whaley; Stand By Me, by Ernie Haase and Signature Sound (I was at the taping in Johannesburg, South Africa); Al Osteen (my banjo teacher); Hello, Mary Lou by the Statler Brothers (Marta's dance tune). If you have a Southern heart, listen to Waylon Jennings' soliloquy on They Laid Waste to Our Land on the White Mansions album: "Lord, they made everybody suffer.")
I always enjoyed train songs, including the Canadian Railroad Trilogy by Gordon Lightfoot; "Paradise," by John Prine; and "City of New Orleans" by Steve Goodman. (Most of the cover versions miss Steve's subtle change-up in the last stanza: Instead of "Gone 500 miles ..." he switches to "Gone a long long time when day is done" because this train has gone the way of newspapers.)
May I Leave You with a Laugh? A Coon Huntin' Story, by Jerry Clower; How the States Got Their Abbreviations, by ne'r-do-well Gary Gulman; and Garrison Keillor's semi-annual Joke Show. Or if your taste runs more for Dad jokes, try these from tomlayton.blogspot.com: Pardon These Puns, Columbia's Unforgettable Brick Mimes, or What ESPN Missed in Boone.
No comments:
Post a Comment