Before LeConte Lodge was born

The 1923 pioneers: guide Wiley Oakley, Gertrude Schwass, Frank Freels, and Jennie Russ were "like drowned chickens" when they made it back to Gatlinburg. Gertrude's hat had been nibbled by a mouse while she slept, and their hiking boots were ruined by the mud. (Orpheus Schantz photo, Appalachian State University archives)

 

 

 

 

 

 

July 16 marked the 100th birthday of LeConte Lodge. As the co-author of LeConte Lodge / A Centennial History of a Smoky Mountain Landmark, I was invited me to speak at supper July 17 (as I did last August at Myrtle Point to mark the centennial of the 1924 national park commission hike). —Tom Layton

Professor Orpheus Schantz
(Appalachian State University archives)

 On July 11, 1925, the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association authorized Paul Adams to establish a camp on Mount Le Conte. He hired some local boys and erected a tent not far from the Basin Spring.

 Five days later came the first guests, as Professor Orpheus Schantz brought a group of tourists and students from Chicago. Schantz paid $32 for his group to stay two nights. Since then, there's always been a human and commercial presence on Mount LeConte.

 That winter, Adams built a crude cabin, and in 1926 Jack Huff opened the original 32-bed LeConte Lodge cabin. 

 Professor Schantz may have been first at the lodge, but this wasn't his first time atop Mount Le Conte. He climbed the mountain back in 1923, with three friends from Chicago. I recently located a scrapbook that details that adventure—long before the lodge was born.

 Schantz was a professor at the University of Chicago, president of the Illinois Audubon Society and a member of the National Geographic Society. His scrapbook reveals a playful and poetic spirit. He first visited the Smokies in 1918 and was a 49-year-old widower on his fifth trip in June 1923.

 He hired guide Wiley Oakley, "the Roamin' Man of the Smokies, " and enticed his entourage (Gertrude Schwass, Fred Freels, and bank secretary Jennie Russ) to hike up Mount Le Conte. The trail-less mountaintop was owned by Champion Fibre Company, which intended to harvest the balsam forests, churn the timber into pulp, and sell trainloads of newsprint to papers across the country.

 A logger named Andy Huff had opened a boarding house in Gatlinburg, which became the Mountain View Hotel. He sent a few of his loggers up Le Conte Creek (then known as Mill Creek) to "swamp out" a rough trail. When Knoxville newspaper columnist Carson Brewer investigated the history of Le Conte cabins in 1962, Ranger John Morrell, Paul Adams, and Harvey Broome told him  that this lean-to was the first habitable structure on the mountaintop. It became the base camp for the federal national park commission that Adams hosted in 1924. And the year before that, Schantz' soggy hikers spent a Saturday night there. 

 Our book includes a shadowy photo of the lean-to, but it is better illustrated on this poem by Professor Schantz. 

Click to enlarge. (Appalachian State University archives)

 Jennie and Gertrude composed lengthy reports that are enclosed in the Professor's scrapbook. They described the 600-mile journey from Chicago, starting June 16, including 30 miles from Knoxville to Sevierville on a rail-bus called an interurban and 15 miles to Gatlinburg in Andy Huff's Ford. As they waited for a break in the weather, they explored the valleys and delighted in the mountaineers' accent, the fireflies and the luxuriant rhododendron. One day they were amused to find a swimming hole with a sign that said: "When bathing here, you must wear a bathing suit or other clothes, if you have none you must stay out." On one trip to Elkmont, their driver was 19-year-old Jack Huff.

 "The trip up LeConte* was postponed from day to day on account of weather conditions," Jennie wrote, "but one morning we decided that as our time was growing shorter, we had better risk going or we might miss it entirely."

*The Professor spelled "LeConte" without a space. That's also how Huff painted it on the original lodge sign, which explains why LeConte Lodge is spelled differently than Mount Le Conte.

 

 Here's how Gertrude headlined the hike in her journal:

THE NEVER-TO-BE-FORGOTTEN
--June 23rd and 24th, '23.
The Hiking Shoes can tell a story-

 

 "The Jolly Four," as Professor Schantz called them, trudged through the rain up the road to Cherokee Orchard, took shelter in a deserted cabin, and then proceeded up Mill Creek (now the Rainbow Falls route). At the waterfall, they climbed a makeshift ladder to the top of the cliff, and pressed upwards past suppertime. "The twilight was deepening," Jennie wrote, "when we saw the black outline of the lean-to just ahead. The guide soon had a roaring fire made and our supper cooked." The ladies were too tired to eat much.

 "We laid on the sweet-smelling balsam bed with the stars very near and bright," Jennie wrote. 

 Gertrude wrapped herself in a blanket. At one point she reached for her flashlight and was surprised to feel a bristly patch of bear fur that Wiley had put there as a prank. A mouse scurried under the bed frames, and during the night it chewed up Gertrude's hat.

 In the morning, they freshened up at the Basin Spring, ate breakfast, and climbed up to Cliff Top. "The government had put a tablet in a rock at the summit indicating the height as 6,685 feet*," Jennie wrote. They registered their names in a notebook—perhaps the same one that C.L. Baum had placed in a Prince Albert can in 1922. 

* If this elevation had been correct, Cliff Top would have inched ahead of Mount Mitchell, 6,684, as the highest point in the Appalachians. And High Top is even higher than Cliff Top.

 Rainclouds spoiled the sunrise view and then poured torrents as the Jolly Four climbed down the slippery path. When they got down to Cherokee Orchard, they found that someone had sent two horses for the ladies to ride the final miles into town.
 "When we arrived at the hotel, all of the guest were on the porch to greet us," Jennie wrote. "They were mildly astonished as the two girls of our party ate their supper as usual. Their astonishment increased when they appeared the next morning for breakfast. It had taken the last young woman who climbed Le Conte three days to recuperate."

 The ladies' hiking boots were casualties. "Our hiking shoes came to a sorry end, soaked and marred, we were unable to wear them again while in Gatlinburg," Gertrude wrote. 

 "Le Conte shall never be forgotten by the 'Jolly Four,'" the Professor said. "A tale we can be proud to tell our grandchildren."

 Presumably, Wiley told Jennie and Gertrude that women had made this climb before. Back in 1916, he had guided Maisy Graves and Mollie Kimball up the old Bear Pen Hollow Trail. They also got soaked and, lacking a cabin, slept under a ledge.

Wiley Oakley's children at his cabin on the slopes of Mount Le Conte. (Appalachian State University archives)

"Long may you stay, Leconte, unspoiled as now" —Professor Schantz

 

Found! The Holy Grail of LeConte's Centennial

Schantz (fourth from left) with stylish University of Chicago students on a 1927 ecology field trip to the Great Smoky Mountains (University of Chicago archives)

 Orpheus Schantz was one of the original Smoky Mountain tourists and is remembered as the first paying guest at LeConte Lodge. His 1951 obituary in The New York Times described him as "one of the group instrumental in establishing the Old Smoky Mountain National Park."

In 1951, The New York Times editors failed to correct "Old Smoky" as "Great Smoky." The folk song, "On Top of Old Smoky," by The Weavers, was popular that year.

 Schantz' visit to Paul Adams mountaintop tent July 16-17, 1925, marks the birthday of LeConte Lodge. As Mike Hembree and I researched our book, LeConte Lodge, we knew that Schantz's pioneer experiences would be vital to the story. We tried to track down his journals, letters, or photographs, and even considered a wild-goose-chase road trip to the University of Chicago, where he taught.

 We had no luck before the book was published in January. Then recently, I stumbled across one of Schantz's scrapbooks right here where I live in Boone, North Carolina—in the library at Appalachian State University. I'd spent days in the special collections there, dredging up LeConte material and helping Mike research the university's NASCAR collection for his book, Petty vs. Pearson.
 Meanwhile, the Holy Grail of LeConte Lodge (acquired by App State in 2021) was keeping Schantz's secrets in an adjacent room.

Knoxville Journal, Nov. 1, 1925

 Schantz was raised on the Canadian shores of Lake Huron, became became a professor at the University of Chicago, married Carrie Flagler in 1889, raised two children, and was widowed in 1922.

 He made his first pilgrimage to the Smokies in 1918, when Andy Huff's Mountain View Hotel had only four rooms and the trip from Sevierville to Gatlinburg was by horse and buggy.  

 As a leader in the Audubon Society and a contributor to National Geographic magazine, Schantz led the 1932 Smoky Mountain Faunal Survey which identified 37 mammals in the future national park, including a rock vole that is found nowhere else in the world. "This region has been unknown zoologically," said E.V. Komarek of the Chicago Academy of Sciences. 

 Carlos Campbell, author of "Birth of a National Park in the Great Smoky Mountains," praised his influence: "Mr. Schantz has done more to boost the Smoky Mountain National Park project than any other person who is not directly connected with the movement."

 Our book documents a 1924 meeting between Schantz and Adams, who was commissioned in 1925 by the Great Smoky Mountains Conservation Association to establish the first public camp atop Mount Le Conte. They attended a scientific convention in Nashville, where Adams gave a presentation from his August 1924 climb with the Southern Appalachian National Park Commission: "Trips with the National Park Commission and Bird Check Lists Obtained." 

 The fellow bird-watchers had much more in common than we previously knew, since Schantz had camped on Le Conte in 1923. That was when Wiley Oakley guided Schantz, Frank Freels, Gertrude Schwass, and Jennie Russ up Mount Le Conte. Schantz, 49, wrote:

This is the tale of the jolly four
who spent the night on a balsam floor
on top of Leconte in Tennessee
above the clouds 'neath a balsam tree.

Hikers at the lean-to used by the 1924 federal national park commission. It's possible that this is where Schantz camped in 1923. (Dutch Roth archives)

 When I first read Schantz' description of the balsam bedding, it sounded so much like Adams' 1925 tent that I wondered if Schantz might have gotten the year wrong in his scrapbook. But the fact that he doesn't mention Adams indicates that these are two separate trips.

 On July 16, 1925, Schantz brought a larger group up to Adams' brand-new tent camp, paying $36 for 12 guests and two guides (Oakley and Will Ramsey) to spend two nights on the mountaintop.

 Schantz led dozens of excursions to the Smokies and climbed Le Conte at least 10 times. His son set up a travel agency that advertised "Springtime in the Smokies" to nature-loving friends from Chicago, and he often had enough guests to fill a Pullman passenger car for the two-day trip from Chicago to Knoxville.

Photographer Jim Thompson visited Paul Adams' camp on July 17, 1925. It appears that Professor Orpheus Schantz' group is seated in front of the tent. Adams is holding the ax. Uncle Ike Carter (standing at left in front of the tent) was once recognized as Le Conte's oldest climber; Dutch Roth is fourth to the right of Carter; and the men between them may be guides Wiley Oakley and Will Ramsey. The boys in the rear are probably some of Adams' workers (Levater Whaley, Earnest Ogle, and brothers Rellie and Bruce Maples). The structure at top right is a canvas lean-to where Adams lived. (Jim Thompson archives)

Archives at the University of Chicago include this photo of the original LeConte Lodge,

built by Jack Huff in 1926. This was filed as "Cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains," so it was easily overlooked.

 LeConte Lodge's centennial celebration will be low-key. The national park has not announced any plans for ceremonies at the lodge. I am planning to visit on July 17 (which will correspond to the second night of Schantz' 1925 trip), and we'll celebrate with guests and crew. 

Orpheus Moyer Schantz signed the lodge logbook after his 10th climb in 1938.

Notice how many of the early guests were from the Upper Midwest.

My book! And a library of friends

 For years, I said I didn't have a book in me, but along came the centennial of LeConte Lodge, which my colleague Mike Hembree recognized as a fine story-in-waiting. We collected the tales and photos, found a publisher (McFarland Books), and jumped through the editorial and licensing hoops. 

My only previous book

 On Jan. 10, just before my 70th birthday, I received my "author copies"—just in time for the Lodge centennial in this summer. (If you bought a 100th season T-shirt last year, then you should understand how the 100th birthday comes after the 100th season.) Hundreds of our books were aboard the 2025 airlift in March, so that lodge guests can buy a copy. 

 I've been blessed to know dozens of authors in my journalism career. Off the top of Google's head, I came up with close to 200 books written or edited by friends and acquaintances. 

 Following is a catalogue of authors whose paths I have crossed. The bibliography says a lot about me and my circle of friends. My little library has shelves for baseball, biography, the Civil War, Clemson, history, Jesus, mountains, and NASCAR, not necessarily in that order. It includes two books titled Rebel With A Cause, as well as the synonymous Intangiball and The Intangibles; not to mention Chasing Moonlight and Chasing the Smokies Moon.

 If I have overlooked your book, please let me know so I can add it. One good thing about a blog is the ink never dries.
 Here they are, arranged alphabetically by author:

JERRY ALEXANDER (1937-2018): Jerry manned our Oconee-Pickens bureau at the Anderson Independent and knew those storied hills better than anybody else.

• 2004: The Cateechee Story
• 2006: Where Have All Our Moonshiners Gone? 
• 2008: Antebellum: Old Pickens District S.C., 1828-1868
• 2009: Blood Red Runs the Sacred Keowee

DR. FRANK AYCOCK: Frank teaches electronic communications at Appalachian State University. If you wonder why your TV won't function like a wall-sized iPhone, join us on Wednesday morning for bagels, and Doc can explain it to you.

• 2012: 21st Century Television: The Players, the Viewers, the Money 
• 2014: Television in the Cloud 

 
BILLY BAKER: We share a deep appreciation for high school sports in South Carolina. I burned out after a decade of statewide coverage for The Greenville News, but Billy's High School Sports Report is about to turn 30 and still thriving. He wrote the book on the granddaddy of them all:

• 1993: John McKissick: Called to Coach

PETER BARR: I had the honor of welcoming Peter to the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain in Rutherford County, N.C., when he became just the second man to reach the highest point in all 100 counties in North Carolina; and he was on Mount Guyot to welcome me when I became the fourth member of the club:

• 2008: Hiking North Carolina's Lookout Towers
• 2021: Exploring North Carolina's Lookout Towers

Looking homeward through the eyes of Wolfe

 My brother-in-law Greg Gambrell wrote a fine story in the Electric City News that described our hometown of Anderson through the words of Thomas Wolfe, the author of Look Homeward, Angel.

 Wolfe (1900-1938) was raised in Asheville, N.C., and his older sister Effie married Fred Gambrell, a grocer in Anderson, S.C. Effie (1887-1950) and Fred (1884-1952), portrayed as Daisy and Joe in the book, were Greg's grandparents. Anderson is named Henderson in the book, and Asheville is Altamont. 

 Wolfe evidently made several trips to Anderson, at a time when it was becoming known as The Electric City, thanks to the genius of William C. Whitner, an electrical pioneer associated with inventor Nikola Tesla. By the time Wolfe visited, our forefathers had electric streetcars and other conveniences. 

 Yet Wolfe did not see Anderson as a shining city on a hill. In his book, he described "Henderson" as:

"a haven of enervation, red clay, ignorance, slander, and superstition,
in whose effluent rays he (Fred) has been reared."

 I had to look up enervation. I hoped it was a deferential compliment to Mr. Whitner's energy and innovations. Instead, Mr. Webster defines enervate as a verb that means "to reduce mental or moral vigor."

 Ouch! That's my homefolks you're talking about, mister!

 On the other hand, I knew Wolfe didn't mind stepping on toes of those who recognized themselves in his thinly veiled fiction. In Look Homeward, Angel, he also insulted some of his old neighbors in Asheville—to the point that the city library banned his book for several years.

The Electric City (described by Wolfe as enervated) was enlightened through power generated by this hydroelectric plant that William Whitner built at Portman Shoals in 1897. As a boy, I remember visiting this dam and watching as it was inundated by Lake Hartwell.

 After learning that my hometown had caught the harsh gaze of Thomas Wolfe, I started to wonder: What other writers have left us impressions of primordial Anderson?

 The first who came to mind was Hannibal Johnson (1841-1913), who commanded the Union troops who occupied Anderson in 1865 and 1866. In 1905, Lt. Johnson returned to Anderson, which he described warmly in his memoir, The Sword of Honor. I encountered his book while researching my Civil War newspaper, The Stoneman Gazette. 

 With a 40-year perspective, Lt. Johnson described Anderson as "an obscure village ... grown into a thriving city." Johnson solicited the governor of Maine to support an Anderson teacher named Lenora Hubbard, who graciously tended for the graves of three Union soldiers in Anderson. Johnson's book includes letters from Miss Hubbard where she describes the hardships of life in Anderson in the Reconstruction era. 

 I will be on the lookout for other authors' impressions of Anderson. One I need to re-read is Clemson native Ben Robertson (1903-1943), author of Red Hills and Cotton: An Upcountry Memory. Robertson was a contemporary of Wolfe and wrote a sympathy letter to his mother, Julia Wolfe, after Tom died of tuberculosis at age 38. Robertson (a journalism graduate of Missouri like yours truly) died in a plane crash in Portugal while serving as a World War II correspondent. 

 Robertson's family homeplace is the Bowen House on Ireland Road, between Pickens and Easley, 30 miles north of Anderson. In an online search of his book, I found a passage referring to an 1876 parade in Anderson by the Red Shirts (a militant white supremacist group associated with Gov. Wade Hampton): "My father rode in the Red Shirts parade at Anderson in 1876, sitting in the same saddle with my Great-Uncle Alf, and ever since that time we have been very positive about the subject of the white and colored races."

 Atlanta author Lewis Grizzard visited Anderson in 1983 to speak to the Touchdown Club. I can't find any record of his comments, though he might have been in a sour mood, considering that he was going through a divorce from his third wife. Grizzard called Clemson "Auburn with a lake," so it would have been up his alley to describe Anderson as "Clemson without a college."

 If you know of other authors who have written of Anderson's formative years, please leave a comment. 

Riddler on the roof: When did N.C. stand tallest?

When Frenchman Andre Michaux stood here in 1794 and declared Grandfather Mountain "the highest mountain of all North America," he overlooked the obvious: The blue ridge on the distant horizon to the right is Mount Mitchell, which was actually the highest peak in the United States for 56 years.

     Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings writes a blog called Maphead where he posed this question: Before Alaska became a state, where was America's highest mountain?
     It's really more of a riddle than a question. Because for most of our nation's history, no one was sure.
     The answer is California, which owned America's rooftop from the day it became the 31st state in 1850 until 1959 when Alaska became the 49th. Yet Jennings points out that well into the 20th century, atlases mistakenly listed Washington's Mount Ranier as the nation's highest mountain.
     In fact, California was 75 years old before surveyors verified that Mount Whitney was the highest point in the Lower 48. (Even then, there may have been a 10-foot error because the engineer was in such a hurry to get home to his fiancé.) 
     Early topographic maps that used 100-foot contours show a virtual three-state tie among California's Whitney (14,495 feet above sea level in the 1925 survey), Colorado's Mount Elbert (14,431), and Washington's Rainier (14,408). All three have inched up in the latest satellite surveys: Whitney 14,505, Elbert 14,433, and Rainier 14,410.
     Before California, which state stood tallest? Texas had the highest peak in the nation* for five years after it became the 28th state in 1845, though I doubt that anyone knew it. (*I'm not counting the Louisiana Territory, which included Mount Elbert.)
     And before that? The whole country assumed New Hampshire's Mount Washington was highest until this news broke Nov. 3, 1835 in the Raleigh Register and North Carolina Gazette (back in the days before headlines were invented):

     The editor's note (above right) promoted a lengthy front-page article written by Dr. Elisha Mitchell, a professor of geology at the University of North Carolina. (If this link asks you to subscribe to newspapers.com, email me and I will send you a copy.)
     Dr. Mitchell surveyed several mountains in western North Carolina before concluding than an unnamed peak in the Black Mountains was the highest. He measured it at 6,476 feet above sea level, which underestimated Mount Mitchell's actual height of 6,684. Still, that surpassed Mount Washington, which then was believed to be 6,234 feet and is now listed at 6,288. 
     Dr. Mitchell's barometric measurements were generally shorter than the summit elevations we know today. He measured Grandfather Mountain at 5,556 feet (it is now known to be 5,946), the Roan at 6,039 (Roan High Knob is 6,285 and Roan High Bluff 6,267), and Table Rock at 3,421 (rather than 3,920).

Following Dr. Mitchell's footsteps

     He came closer on Yeates Knob (5,895 then, 5,920 now), which is important because Yeates is one of the viewpoints he used to triangulate Mount Mitchell and other peaks in the Black Mountains. (Yeates is now known unfortunately as Big Butt.)
     Dr. Mitchell was aware of other high mountains further west in North Carolina, including the Great Smoky Mountains (where Clingman's Dome rises to 6,643 feet, just 41 less than Mount Mitchell) and the Great Balsams (where Richland Balsam reaches 6,411 and the Blue Ridge Parkway crests at 6,047). His newspaper article said that the Unikee Mountains (the Cherokee name he used for the Smokies) "appear to the eye to be lower than the Black."
     Grandfather, on the other hand, appears to the eye to be even higher than it actually is, because of the way it towers almost a mile above the North Carolina Piedmont. When French botanist Andre Michaux climbed Grandfather on August 30, 1794, he broke into song and wrote exuberantly in his journal, "Reached the summit of the highest mountain of all North America, and, with my companion and guide, sang the Marseillaise and shouted, 'Long live America and the Republic of France! Long live liberty!'"
     From that hyperbole, we can assume the skies were relatively clear and Michaux had a view to the horizon. If so, he overlooked the obvious: Just 36 miles to the southwest, Mount Mitchell stood over 700 feet higher.

Lying here "in the hope of a blessed resurrection,"
Dr. Mitchell has a head start on Heaven.

     Through his 1835 trip and subsequent research, Dr. Mitchell was the first to prove conclusively that North Carolina had the highest ground in the 24 states that existed at the time. This had been the case since we became the 12th state back in 1789. 
     In 1857 (when there were 31 states, including California), Dr. Mitchell returned to the Black Mountains to verify his measurements and settle a dispute with one of his former students, Thomas Clingman, who insisted that his professor had not reached North Carolina's highest peak.
     On June 27, 1857, hiking after dark on the way down the west side of the Blacks, the 63-year-old professor slipped over a small waterfall and fell to his death. The following year, Dr. Mitchell's body was laid to rest on top of North Carolina's highest mountain, and in 1882 the peak that had been known as Black Dome was renamed in his memory as Mount Mitchell.

Fuller, Fullest, and the Fantastic 4

Old football proverb: The name on the front of your jersey is more important than the name on the back. (New York Times photo)

    At the end of the Orange Bowl, Clemson needed to run a six-second play to exhaust the clock and keep from giving the football back to Oklahoma. So instead of taking a knee, Deshaun Watson took a shotgun snap, waited a couple of ticks, cocked his golden right arm, and launched a 60-yard pass into the Clemson fan section on the other end of the stadium.
     The way this perfect-ending season has gone, I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Watson's game-ending pass was caught by none other than Steve Fuller.
     Almost everything Watson has done this season has brought honor to Fuller, who was—listen, children!— the quarterback who put Clemson football on the map.

WON NOT DONE (Miami Herald photo)

     By the time Watson reached the podium on New Year's Eve to accept the award as the most valuable offensive player in the Orange Bowl, he had shed his game jersey, the one with the patch on the right shoulder honoring Fuller. Instead, he was wearing a T-shirt saying WON NOT DONE, immediately changing the focus to the Jan. 11 national championship game against Alabama. 
     I know there are some who thought it cheapened Fuller's memory to unretire his number and use it to entice Watson to come to Clemson. Some of my friends say it would be better to keep Fuller's No. 4 under glass, like Howard's Rock.
     Why not have it both ways? The New York Times had the story this week of how Clemson has balanced its history against its future:

———

A Clemson Juggernaut Is Led by a Star Wearing No. 4. That Figures.

By Tim Rohan

   Inside the Clemson locker room at Memorial Stadium, about 10 feet from quarterback Deshaun Watson’s locker, is a shrine to the jersey number he wears. There, set up neatly in another locker, is a throwback helmet, a pair of uniform pants and a hanging No. 4 jersey. It is all encased in glass, like a museum exhibit recalling the glory days of Clemson football.

   In reality, it is a tribute to Steve Fuller, the quarterback of the famed 1978 Clemson team. His number, 4, was the first one retired by Clemson’s football program.

Fuller made an exception two years ago and allowed Watson to wear the number. That has created an awkward situation: In leading Clemson to a 13-0 record and finishing third in the Heisman Trophy voting. Watson has perhaps surpassed Fuller as the greatest player in Tigers history.

   When Watson was coming out of high school in Gainesville, Ga., Clemson’s ability to offer him No. 4 was another advantage in his recruitment as the university competed with the likes of Alabama and Florida State. When Watson was still a high school junior, Clemson Coach Dabo Swinney slyly mentioned to Fuller, while the two of them were paired at a golf tournament, that some universities honored their past by allowing current players to wear retired numbers.

   The next year, at the same tournament, Swinney got more specific, explaining to Fuller who Watson was — a five-star recruit ranked among the top players in the nation — and what it would mean if Fuller would consent to Watson’s wearing his No. 4.

   “I gave him my blessing with the understanding that this was an unusual kid, and it would be a nice thing for the program,” Fuller said in a phone interview this week as he prepared to travel to the Orange Bowl. “If Coach said it was a good idea, I was going to go along with it.”

   It would have been hard for Swinney to blame Fuller if he had said no. When Fuller arrived at Clemson in 1975, the Tigers had not made a bowl game in the previous 15 seasons. When he took his first snap in his first start as a freshman, his feet were in the end zone in Tuscaloosa, Ala. — a metaphor for the state of the program.

   Fuller never put up the flashy statistics Watson has produced, but his role was different. Even though the Tigers had Dwight Clark and Jerry Butler, a future first-round draft pick, they ran a gritty option offense, and Fuller was its maestro. At one point, he started 27 consecutive games. In his senior year, the Tigers went 11-1, averaged 31 points a game, and beat Ohio State in the Gator Bowl in Buckeyes Coach Woody Hayes' final game.

   At the time, Fuller was the most decorated player in Clemson history. He was twice named the Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year and finished sixth in the Heisman Trophy voting as a senior, becoming the first Tiger to finish in the top 10. Clemson retired his No. 4 before he left campus, during the 1979 spring game.

   “I just happened to be the guy that was the quarterback on a team that, as we look at it, the team that turned the program in the right direction, gave it a little bit of a renaissance,” Fuller said. “We got it to the point where it was not a big national power, but a program that people started recognizing and kids in high school started noticing. It was more that, than me as an individual. I was the guy taking the snaps.”

    Three years after Fuller graduated, Clemson won its only national championship. Now, with Watson, they have their best shot at a second title.

   When Watson first got to campus, Swinney frequently gave Fuller updates on Watson’s progress, on the field and in the classroom, as if Watson were Fuller’s son. But Fuller mostly watched Watson from afar, from the same seats that his father had sat in when he played.

    Injuries, most notably a torn anterior cruciate ligament, cut short Watson’s freshman season, but he impressed his coaches with his maturity, decision-making and athleticism. Fuller noticed his poise under duress.

    In early October, Fuller watched from the stands with his college teammate Jeff Bostic as Watson accounted for all three Clemson touchdowns in a close win over Notre Dame, in what was perhaps Clemson’s most important game of the regular season. Bostic leaned over and asked Fuller if Clemson could retire No. 4 twice. He chuckled to make clear that he was joking.

   But perhaps Bostic had a point. “He would certainly be deserving of it when he’s done,” Fuller said of Watson. “Knock on wood. Hopefully we’ve got a lot of good things left to come.”

———

     Schools differ in how they honor the numbers of their football heroes. Alabama has never retired a number. Florida State retires jerseys but allows the numbers to be reused. 

     Of the schools who recruited Watson, only Clemson had retired No. 4, so once Fuller gave his blessings, it essentially leveled the playing field. Wherever he went, Watson could keep the number he wore for the Gainesville High Red Elephants.
     I don't know if No. 4 was even a factor in Watson's college decision, but it was a nice trump card for Clemson to be able to play. And of all the inducements a hotshot recruit may be offered, a special jersey number is pretty honorable.
     But the question remains: By bringing No. 4 out of retirement, has Clemson taken anything away from Fuller? Not as long as kids see the patch on Watson's shoulder and ask Granddaddy, "Who's Fuller?"

Steve Fuller against Notre Dame in 1977

     Oh, little Tiger, let me tell you about Steve Fuller. His team was the first from Clemson to beat Georgia "between the hedges," which were planted way back in 1929. Beat uppitty Georgia Tech in Atlanta back when they almost never came up to Clemson. Nearly beat Joe Montana and Notre Dame's 1977 national championship team. Beat Woody Hayes in the Gator Bowl. Fuller didn't do it by himself, of course, but he was the face of the program when Clemson decided to double-deck Death Valley and recruited many of the players who won the 1981 national championship.
     Little Tiger, don't you ever forget Steve Fuller.

     Retired numbers can be quickly forgotten. To prove my point, here's a pop quiz: See how many of these players you can name by their retired numbers:

Clemson: 4, 28, 66 (Hint: 66 is not William Perry).
Auburn: 7, 34, 88.
Florida State: 2, 16, 17, 25, 28, 34, 50 (Hint: 28 also had a profound impact on Watson's life).
Georgia: 21, 34, 40, 62.
South Carolina: 2, 37, 38, 56.

     Can you even pick out the seven Heisman Trophy winners on that list? (Answers below)

An Orange Bowl reminder of Fuller's first juggernaut

Before he was No. 4, Steve Fuller wore 11 at Spartanburg High

      I was away at Missouri or busy at the office during Fuller's career at Clemson, and the only time I remember seeing him play in person was in 1974, when he was quarterback of the Spartanburg High School team that regularly put 70 on the scoreboard and set a state record for points in a season. 
     And when I saw Watson and defensive MVP Ben Boulware on the podium after the Orange Bowl, it brought back a special memory. Boulware is a graduate of my high school, T.L. Hanna—the team that stopped Fuller's Spartanburg juggernaut.
     Thanks for the memories, Ben and Deshaun.
     Congratulations, Steve. This one's for you.

T.L. Hanna graduate Ben Boulware (Miami Herald photo)

RETIRED NUMBERS

Clemson: 4-Steve Fuller, 28-C.J. Spiller, 66-Banks McFadden.
Auburn: 7-Pat Sullivan, 34-Bo Jackson, 88-Terry Beasley.
Florida State: 2-Deion Sanders, 16-Chris Weinke, 17-Charlie Ward, 25-Fred Biletnikoff, 28-Warrick Dunn, 34-Ron Sellers, 50-Ron Simmons.
Georgia: 21-Frank Sinkwich, 34-Herschel Walker, 40-Theron Sapp, 62-Charlie Trippi.
South Carolina: 2-Sterling Sharpe, 37-Steve Wadiak, 38-George Rogers, 50-Mike Johnson.

Heisman Trophy winners are underlined. Conspicuously absent from that list are the 2010 and 2014 Heisman winners, Auburn's Cam Newton and FSU's Jameis Winston.

Long live King John of Summerville

ESPN's 2012 portrait of John McKissick
with the ring for his 600th victory

     John McKissick won his first state championship the year I was born.
     And another one the year I graduated from college.
     And another one the year I retired from sportswriting.
     I figured he might win one more the year I died.
     Of course, it was inevitable that he would have to stop someday, but I always figured John had one more season in him—maybe even one more championship. So did he. If you ever asked him about retirement, he always insisted that coaching football kept him young. Even this past winter, at age 88, he sounded optimistic about one more year.
     However, after leading his team through spring practice in the Charleston heat, he confessed, "I think my age is catching up with me." On Tuesday, after 63 years on the job, McKissick announced his retirement as football coach at Summerville High School.
     Think about it—63 years in a profession where one bad year could be terminal. King John has reigned as long as Queen Elizabeth (and he has been crowned more often, too.)
     Public school teachers can retire after thirty years, but McKissick doubled that and still kept on working. His daddy taught him not to pay somebody else for work he was able to do himself, and he never did.
     McKissick became so iconic that Pat Conroy cast him as the standard of excellence in his 1986 novel, The Prince of Tides, where a fictional coach named Tom Wingo lamented:

"Never once did I defeat one of those awesomely disciplined teams of the great John McKissick of Summerville. He was a maker of dynasties."

     Conroy recited that passage when he wrote the foreword for McKissick's 1993 autobiography:

"That was my act of homage to John McKissick, and it expressed my utter admiration with how he has chosen to spend his life. A great coach teaches a boy or girl that the body is the temple of something sublime and wonderful. Coach McKissick has done this surprisingly well. I wish, in my heart, that John McKissick could have coached me in football when I was a boy. Quite possibly, he could not have made me a better athlete, but I think he could have made me a better man."

     Numbers are not the full measure of the man, but let's consider McKissick's accomplishments: 621 victories in 63 seasons, which is far more than any other football coach in history. 
     Now that McKissick has retired, he has established a distant target for John Curtis Jr., who ranks second nationally with 561 victories in 48 years at John Curtis Christian High School, a private school in suburban New Orleans that was founded by the coach's father. The younger Curtis, age 69, had an 11-1 record in 2016. If he averages 10 wins a year, he will be 75 before he catches McKissick.
     The winningest coach in college football history is John Gagliardi, five weeks younger than McKissick, who retired from St. John's of Minnesota in 2012 with 489 victories. Penn State's Joe Paterno, who was three months younger than McKissick, holds the major-college record of 409 after the NCAA restored his victories earlier this year. Dabo Swinney pointed out that McKissick won nearly twice as many games as Bear Bryant.
     The NFL record is 328 by Don Shula, who is four years younger than McKissick and has been retired for 20 years.
     Among all those giants, ESPN The Magazine called McKissick "Coach of the Century" in a 2012 story that I highly recommend.
     He was a child of the Depression and a member of the Greatest Generation. As he told ESPN's David Fleming: 

"During World War II, I was a paratrooper waiting to go to California with orders to ship out to the Pacific to join the 17th Airborne in battle. But then we dropped the bomb, and everything slowed down. The lives that decision saved or changed … I was one of 'em."

     I figure that McKissick has been carried off the field on his players' shoulders at least 14 times—10 state championships, plus his 347th victory in 1987 that broke Pinky Babb's state record, plus the 406th in 1993 that broke Texan Gordon Wood's national record, plus his 500th in 2003 and 600th in 2012.
      His last state championship in 1998 was also the last football game I covered, as Summerville beat Gaffney 31-23 to wrap up a perfect 15-0 season. What I'll remember most about that season was not the state final at Williams-Brice Stadium but a first-round playoff three weeks earlier on John McKissick Field—the only time I ever had an opportunity to see a game in Summerville. Knowing my career change was imminent, I asked John if I could eavesdrop on his pregame speech, and he graciously invited me into the locker room. Sixteen years later, all I can remember is how businesslike it was. John, then 72 and in his 47th season, let an assistant give the pep-talk.
      I dealt with John every week for 13 seasons when he participated in our state coaches' poll, and he was unfailingly pleasant, accommodating, and wise.
     In 1991, when I was working on a centennial history book for Mountain View United Methodist Church in northern Greenville, I asked him if he might be kin to our founding pastor, Eli McKissick. 
     "He was my grandfather," John told me.
     Now, this grandson of a 19th-century circuit-riding preacher has become the grandfather of Summerville's 21st-century coach. On June 25, school administrators honored McKissick's recommendation and promoted his 36-year-old grandson, Joe Call, to be the head coach for 2015.
     If Joe has his grandfather's success and longevity, Summerville won't need another coach until 2067.

John McKissick set a national record with his 406th victory—then won 215 more.

Meet the biggest 'Mouth' in basketball

    Let's have a pickup basketball game.
    I'll take players who went to high school in Mouth of Wilson, Virginia. You can have the whole rest of the country.
    I've got Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, Rajon Rondo, Josh Smith, Ty Lawson, and Brandon Jennings. That's 101 points per game in the NBA this year, plus two of the league's four leaders in assists.
    They all come from that overflowing fountain of hoops at the mouth of Wilson Creek—Oak Hill Academy. 
    Mouth of Wilson is only an hour's drive from Boone, so several of us made the trip Monday night to experience Oak Hill basketball in person. Courtside seats cost just $5, where you can get splashed by the sweat of future millionaires who are still playing for the joy of the game.
    So here we are deep in Appalachia, 12 miles from the nearest traffic light, sitting in a 300-seat gym, listening to a student play the national anthem on a clarinet, and watching the No. 1 high school basketball team in the country. Eight national championship banners adorn the far wall. Behind the basket on the left hang the college jerseys of dozens of Oak Hill graduates, including several who won national championships at Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina, Syracuse, and Maryland.

The jerseys behind the basket represent a Who's Who of college basketball.
The Warriors have lost only once in this gym in the last 18 years.

     In a nice effort to keep things in perspective, the media guide ... What? Your local high school basketball team doesn't have its own media guide? 
     As I was saying, in a nice effort to keep things in perspective, the media guide includes this message from Oak Hill president Dr. Michael Groves: "Basketball is one of the things we do well at Oak Hill, but it is not what we do best." 
     Unlike many of the small private schools and random upstarts that have come to dominate national high school basketball in recent years, Oak Hill's roots are deep and humble. In fact, the academy is actually 13 years older than the game itself. 
     Oak Hill was founded in 1878 by Baptist churches in the New River Valley who were concerned about the lack of educational opportunities following the Civil War. It has become a boarding school serving 150 students and "offering a highly structured curriculum that focuses on accountability and self-discipline." 
     We can all admire the values Oak Hill embraces in its educational philosophy:

1. Deep down inside, all children are good.
2. Regardless of academic ability, every child is capable of success.
3. All children would rather succeed than fail.
4. Once a child gets a taste of success, he or she will want more.

     Those noble standards apply to the basketball team, too—except that we're not talking about children anymore. These are full-grown blue-chip student-athletes who have already been through the meat market of college recruiting. They've come from seven states and two other countries, leaving behind their families, friends, and hometowns to spend their final one to three years of high school here on "The Hill," polishing their college credentials. 

     The team flies to games all over the country. Last weekend, they played in a Nike tournament in San Diego. This coming weekend, they're off to Nebraska. In between, they have three home games scheduled, including the one we're watching against Hamilton Heights Christian Academy, a Chattanooga school that's no older than its seniors. Hamilton Heights has only 75 students but has attracted basketball players from Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean.

     The game is close for most of the first half, but Oak Hill's talent is overwhelming. Dwayne Bacon, a sculpted 6-foot-6 Florida State recruit, is Oak Hill's highest-scoring player since the aforementioned Brandon Jennings, who was a first-round NBA draft pick one year after he graduated from Oak Hill. Daniel Giddens, a 6-10 Ohio State signee from Georgia, rebounds relentlessly and dunks acrobatically. Andrew Fleming, a 6-5 Iowa recruit from Tennessee, drains three-pointers. Jennings' half-brother, 5-11 whirlwind Terrence Phillips, is headed to Missouri. 
     Two juniors, 6-7 Joe Hampton and 6-5 Joshua Reaves, are already committed to Penn State. Looking at Hampton's 280-pound physique, you may think it's a shame Oak Hill doesn't play football.
     Oak Hill's rotation also includes players standing 7-0, 6-9, and 6-7.
     Hamilton Heights has several college-caliber players, too, but they don't have a chance. Nobody does in Turner Gymnasium, where the Warriors have lost just once in the last 18 years. Oak Hill dominates the second half, wins 83-55, and raises its record to 38-0.
     The Warriors can't lose for winning. If you saw them lose on ESPN last month in Memphis, you need to know that their opponent used an ineligible player, so Oak Hill won by forfeit and regained its undefeated record.

     Presiding over this juggernaut is Coach Steve Smith, an Asbury College graduate whose 30-year record is 973-63, surpassing his golf buddy Dean Smith on the list of most victories by coaches named Smith. After Dean died this past weekend, USA Today called Steve for his memories. It's worth reading. 
     The fact that he's accomplished all this at Oak Hill instead of some city school says a lot about how the high school basketball landscape has changed in the 30 years since USA Today launched its Super 25 national rankings and shoe companies got their foot in the door. If you grew up with the notion that you could watch the rise of a basketball star at your local high school, you're dating yourself. Nowadays, it's rare for elite players to finish their careers at the schools where they grew up. Instead, they matriculate to places like Oak Hill.
     Mouth of Wilson is not a town—just a post office a couple of miles from campus. There's not even a crossroads—just a couple of abandoned country stores at the T intersection where Highway 16 from Jefferson, North Carolina, intersects Highway 58 between Galax and Damascus, Virginia. The "mouth of Wilson" denotes the little delta where Wilson Creek feeds into the New River. 
     If you're hungry for a McDonald's, there are none within 20 miles of Oak Hill, except for the 28 McDonald's All-Americans during Coach Smith's tenure. (Want fries with that? Down the river from Mouth of Wilson, there is a little town named Fries, but they don't have a McDonald's either.) 
     If you're thirsty for a draft, you may not be able to buy one in Grayson County, but at halftime you can step out of the stands and shoot at the same hoops as 28 NBA draftees have done.
     If you're serious about basketball, Oak Hill should be on your bucket list. 

EPILOGUE

From the Mouth of Wilson to the Big Apple

     Oak Hill pushed its record to 47-0 before losing to Montverde, Florida, 70-61, in the national championship game April 4 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
     Montverde is a 112-year-old private school west of Orlando that has now won three consecutive national championships. Last year's star player, D'Angelo Russell, made first-team All-America as a freshman at Ohio State. This year's star, Ben Simmons, is headed to LSU. He scored 20 points against Oak Hill and forced Giddens, to foul out.
     It wasn't a total lost weekend for Oak Hill. One of its graduates won a national championship: Quin Cook with Duke. That's one more champion's jersey for the gym wall back in Mouth of Wilson.