After sending via email to a friend an obituary about Webb McCracken, son of the developer of the residential neighborhood, McCracken Heights, at the time just outside of Sanford, NC, in which I grew up (the first 18 years of my life), a short and to the point reply appeared in my Gmail in-box. The friend was raised in the same community, across the street from our family. “Time marches on. Wish it would slow down,” he wrote. It was the second of two obits of Sanfordians provided to him in recent days. “Sorry to be so profound,” he concluded his email. At our ages near 70, time is probably not on our side, though hopefully many years await if we stay healthy.
Today’s story is not about Webb McCracken—who also lived in McCracken Heights and for a much longer time—though he led a full and wholesome life, contributing in special ways to society: Read his obit. Today’s post—Remembering Two Friends—is about two other recent passings: Paul Gay and Bill Hensley, each in their own way of significance to me.
Coach Paul Gay and his wife, Jean, with their three sons, Joe, PJ and Doug, in the fall of 2019 when a bust of Coach Gay was unveiled at a Lee County High School football game to honor Coach Gay.
Paul Gay (February 20, 1932 - March 16, 2022)
In his 24 years as football coach at Sanford Central High School, later named Lee County High, his well-coached teams won 177 games, a season average of over seven games. His football squads won conference and state titles. The football stadium was named to honor Paul Gay for his coaching achievements, the least of which was his ability to get the home side stands constructed, sometimes asking football players, managers and trainers to carry wooden boards for seating up concrete steps and place them where soon to be attached. (NOTE: The stadium is Paul Gay Stadium and the football field is McCracken Field, named for Webb’s father.) There’s a bust of Coach Gay at the stadium, placed there in the fall of 2019 as a lasting tribute to Coach Gay’s career and accomplishments.
It would be too easy just to reprint his obituary—Read Coach Gay’s obit—in its entirety to give you a quick glimpse at Coach Gay’s life, but this is more about a personal relationship, the sub-story that everyone who played for him on the football field or with him on the golf course has and had. Before his memorial service—two hours in Sanford’s St. Luke Methodist Church sanctuary of story-telling from several who played football for him and later became very close friends but still called him coach, from one of three sons and four of 16 grandchildren and great grandchildren, and from a preacher who listened very well when he visited the Gay family after Coach Gay’s passing—there was a two-hour visitation from his other children: players and others who considered Coach Gay as a father figure. Self included.
Football at the high school level was not for me but I wanted to be a part of the team, so I volunteered for three seasons (1968-69-70) to be a manager and student trainer, both with little training at all. Coach Gay knew my family and the correct pronunciation of my last name but instead of saying POM-er-anz, he called me POOM-er-anz and did so as late as the last time I saw him in the fall of 2019 at a reunion of the 1968 Yellow Jackets undefeated and state championship football team. I gave him a ride home from a teammates-only lunch cookout. It was a short drive to his home to which he proved to be an excellent navigator.
That drive brought back memories of Coach Gay as my driver’s education instructor, in the classroom and on the road. It was in the summer of 1967, prior to my sophomore year in high school. I was 15-years old. The football team was in two-a-days practices, and I was learning to be a manager, making sure there was plenty of water on the practice fields, the footballs were readily available, and practice uniforms were laundered daily. I was low man on the manager totem pole, so to speak.
Coach Gay, the driver’s education teacher, scheduled us to conquer my driving training after the morning practice. In his car equipped with a foot brake on the floor of the front passenger’s seat, we left the high school and drove down North Carolina Highway 87 toward Fayetteville. Our destination was a parking lot at Fort Bragg’s Stryker Golf Course on Bragg Boulevard which was NC 87. We made it that far and started back to Sanford, talking very little as Coach Gay wanted me to concentrate on the car and the road. Just as we crossed into Lee County, the early morning practice which started before seven o’clock (managers had to be there much earlier) and ended about 9:30 a.m. along with the warm air ( I don’t remember the car having air conditioning) and the minimal conversation got to me and caused me to doze off for a split second, just enough time for Coach Gay to use the foot brake and grab the steering wheel to guide us back onto the highway from which we had slightly departed on the right hand side of the two lane highway. “Maybe we won’t take such a long drive next time,” or something like that, he said to me after he had steered us back to safety and as I regained control of the car and drove us trouble free back to the high school.
For two years (1967-68 and 1969-70) of my three at Sanford Central, Coach Gay was my golf coach. He was a good golfer but not really a golf instructor. He was a level-headed golfer who didn’t let a bad shot rattle him, and he encouraged his players, our team, to take a similar approach, remembering that bad shots lead to bad scores so be positive after a bad shot and figure out how to make up for the bad shot with a sensible and well-played shot. In golf, he led by example. He was sneaky good and seemed to never get rattled on the golf course. In his lifetime he made 13 holes-in-one and had a joy for the game, sometimes just to be on the course especially with his three sons. In his later years, riding a golf cart was a necessity. I recall during a round he played at Pinehurst No. 2, the course provided him a cart to ride and a young lady to drive it, to take him places on the golf course otherwise off limits. After the round, Coach Gay said that may have been the most inspired round of golf he had ever played. He was also a very good gin rummy player, usually taking on all challengers after a round at the Sanford Golf Course.
Of course, coaching football was and probably will remain his claim to fame. Coach Gay studied film constantly and knew as much or more about the opposing team’s offense and defense as the other team’s coach did. He knew how to relate that to his players and to get the best out of his players. He was that father figure who knew when to praise and when to scold but always to love. Coach Gay was a gentleman to everyone, at least publicly, and if he had differences, well, those were aired behind closed doors. He was a coach to his three sons when he needed to be their coach and he was a dad and father when appropriate.
Coach Gay was a humble man, never seeming to brag. He never doubted or interfered with the head football coaches who followed him at Sanford Central/Lee County High School, always showing support and encouraging the community to support them as well. He was modest. The visitation and memorial service for Coach Gay lasted about four hours, a wonderful tribute to him, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Coach Gay would have looked at the gathering of family, friends, players, managers, and fellow golfers and poo-pooed the entire ceremony, asking, “What’s the big deal?”
Bill Hensley (January 23, 1926 - March 11, 2022)
Many years ago, sometime in the early 2000s, I was fortunate to be asked to join the North Carolina Golf Panel, a group of North Carolina men and women of a wide range of ages and golf handicaps and of different professions, including retirees, who must take time to play golf courses all over the state and then submit a list of their top 100 courses in the state. Example: Pinehurst No. 2 has been the top-ranked course in the state since the NC Golf Panel was organized by Bill Hensley in 1995. Thank you, Bill Hensley, for creating the Golf Panel, and thank you, Bill Hensley, for me being allowed to take part in it, a labor of love.
I met Bill before the Golf Panel days but can’t remember the first meeting. I am an alumnus of N.C. State University and worked in the NCSU Athletics Department’s Sports Information Office as did Bill, but we weren’t there at the same time. From 1955 to 1960, Bill was the Wolfpack’s Sports Information Director. I worked in department as Publications Editor, 1977 to 1987. That was our initial connection. Whenever we ran into each other, whenever we took a few minutes to talk, Bill asked about Frank Weedon, the person who followed Bill as the Sports Information Director. After Franks’ passing in 2013, Bill and I would exchange stories about Frank.
Bill Hensley was serious about promoting travel and tourism in North Carolina; there’s a lot more about his efforts in his obituary which we are told that Bill wrote for himself: Read his Obit. When he formed the Golf Panel, it was also to promote golf in North Carolina, especially golf course developments such as one of his favorites, Old North State Club in New London NC and another, Hound Ears Club just south of Boone NC. It was fun to pick Bill’s brain about golf courses, those he liked and those he admittedly said didn’t fit his game, so he didn’t rank those courses very high on his own list. I’ll refrain from listing those. However, he had high regard for all golf courses that made the effort to offer something special to all golfers. Paul Gay was also a member of the NC Golf Panel.
Several years ago, I dabbled with establishing a public relations firm to promote golf courses in North Carolina and leaned on Bill for advice. He was forthcoming and encouraged me to move ahead which I decided against for various reasons. It would have been fun, but I think it was bad timing, a time when instead of new courses and connected residential developments being added in North Carolina, it was when golf was suffering, no new courses were being planned, and many were going out of business. Thank goodness in a way for COVID-19 from which golf has benefited through increased play, an outside exercise and just what was needed at the time when we were all told to stay at home.
My relationship with Bill Hensley was nothing like that with Paul Gay, but it was just as rewarding, on a different scale. At Golf Panel outings after Golf Panel outings, I hoped he would be there so I could see his infectious smile and take a few moments to discuss golf courses and Frank Weedon. When I first joined the Golf Panel, Bill was at all of the gatherings, playing 18 holes, comparing notes with other Panelists, including me, after we played. He wanted to know what we thought of the course, the club, the hospitality offered, and he refrained from offering his opinion so much.
As the years have passed, Bill was at fewer and fewer Panel meetings, the last, I believe, near Charlotte last fall. Many of the Panel members who played that day got to say hello to Bill. So did I but it was more than just a polite, “Hello. Good to see you.” He asked me how I liked the golf course we were to play that day, and we exchanged another story about Frank Weedon. There will be no more of that. I’ll miss the banter.
Again, thank you Bill Hensley for creating the North Carolina Golf Panel, and thank you Bill Hensley for me being allowed to take part in it and for your friendship and advice.