Wiregrass Hall of Fame Class of 2008 inducted

By Jon Johnson

Published: June 7, 2008

Gene Dews used to be a bat boy for the semi-pro baseball team Tom Vickers played on.

“It was the Abbeville River Rats,” Dews said. “I was 5 or 6 years old. You could say that was the start of my athletic career.”

Saturday night, Dews joined Vickers and seven others at the Dothan Civic Center for induction into the Wiregrass Sports Hall of Fame.

“I treasure this as much as any collegiate hall of fame because these are my friends and the Wiregrass is home,” said Dews, a longtime coach of softball and baseball at Wallace College. “This is beyond my wildest expectations.”

Joining Dews and Vickers in the 16th class of inductees is Richmond Flowers Jr., Alex Howell, Larry Blakeney, Don Maestri, Leon Davis, Yolanda Terry and Randy Butler.

Proceeds from the banquet go to the Hawk-Houston Boys and Girls Club of Dothan, as does money raised from the first Wiregrass Sports Hall of Fame golf tournament held on Friday, expected to be an annual event.

The golf tournament gave many of the inductees a chance to share memories with each other before coming together Saturday night for the banquet.
Vickers, who has coached football and baseball for many high schools in the Wiregrass, said he has been thinking of his father often this week. His parents were big supporters of his athletic endeavors.

“He died in 1962 and I still think about him all of the time,” Vickers said of his father. “About everything I did in athletics until I was 19, he was there. He didn’t just drop you off and leave, he stayed until it was over.”

Vickers realized at a young age he wanted to be a coach. He continues to do so, now at Chipley.

“Since I was in the sixth grade, all I wanted to do was coach,” Vickers said. “I just loved it (athletics). To put your whole life into something and then have your peers recognizing it is unreal — the greatest thing in the world,” he added of being inducted.

Alex Howell of Blakely, Ga., a standout basketball player at Auburn in the 1960s, remembers playing one-on-one games in Dothan against another hall of fame member, Dothan’s Johnny Oppert.

“I met Johnny through Lowell Rountree (former Dothan recreation director) and when I would come home from Auburn, I would call Johnny and meet him over here at a gym to play,” Howell said.

“I guess all of the hours in the gym paid off,” he said of the recognition.

Howell is now a dentist in Blakely and also speaks on a Christian radio show which airs in Dothan each Sunday morning on 94.3 FM.

Besides being recognized for past athletic achievements, Howell believes the Wiregrass Sports Hall of Fame is a good way to recognize the contributions of players and coaches following their athletic days.

“It opens peoples eyes to all of the inductees as people in what kind of life they have led.”

Davis, an Elba native who began the basketball program at the University of Montevallo as athletics director and served as president of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), said he his honored to join the newest and past inductees in the hall.

“I looked over the roster of past inductees and there is so many of them I grew up knowing and admiring over the years,” said Davis, who was a standout basketball player during his prep and junior college days. “I played against Russell Taylor’s teams at Dothan, I admired what Jack Powell did at Eufaula, and Bryant Steele was coaching at Kinston when I was in high school.

“These people are unsung heroes in athletics. These coaches did it for a labor of love.”

Yolanda Terry is the lone female selection this year. She was a standout basketball player at Daleville from 1977-82, scoring more than 2,000 career points in helping the Warhawks to a 88-10 record during her years on the team. She played two years at Clarendon State Junior College in Texas and finished her eligibility at Troy.

“I never expected to be thought of, much less inducted into the hall of fame,” Terry said. “When I got the call, all I could think of was all those days at Daleville High, and what a special part of my life it was.”

Terry once scored 52 points in a game.

“I was just playing, having fun, and someone else was keeping score,” she said.

Richmond Flowers Jr. was born in Dothan and moved to Montgomery during his high school years, where he was a record-setting track performer and standout receiver in football. In the 1964 state track meet, Flowers set five state records, and set a national record for the high hurdles at 13.5 seconds during his prep days. He later was a star receiver at the University of Tennessee, was drafted by the Dallas Cowboys and was a member of the 1970 Super Bowl team.

He talked about another hall of fame inductee, Warren Jones, who coached Flowers at Girard Junior High.

“Warren Jones taught me to never quit,” Flowers said. “He coached us to an undefeated season, and he told us to never forget it because it doesn’t happen very often. He was right, it never did again for me.”

Flowers says he has fond memories of growing up in Dothan.

“Dothan has such a great spot in my heart,” Flowers said. “I remember the very first touchdown I made in the sixth grade, and I asked my dad if he thought I could go to the NFL then,” he laughed. “My dad was always there when I struck out, when I failed to make the Olympic Games, when I won the NCAAs and when I was in the Super Bowl.

“My mother took on the role of a guardian angel. She was there when I fell down and was there when I got back up.”

Current Troy University coaches Blakeney (head football), Maestri (head basketball) and Butler (football assistant) round up the Class of 2008.
Blakeney and Maestri are both the all-time winningest coaches at the school in their respective sports and have led their programs from the Division II ranks to the current Division I-A status.

Butler is a Hartford native who is starting his first year as an assistant coach at Troy following a long stint as an assistant at his alma mater of Southern Mississippi.