I Love Small Towns

Here is what I love about small towns. This is the gymnasium of the old Dallas High School where I taught. Today, it is a community gym and it carries the name of the biggest little man I ever knew. His name is Dennis Franklin, and he is still alive, though he has liver cancer that will probably take his life in the not too distant future. I would not bet on it though, he is the toughest guy that I may have ever known.

Dennis came to Dallas in 1947. He was from Franklin, NC where his family owned a farm and a general store. He came to teach, coach, and play semi-pro baseball as a shortstop. He was about 5' tall and had more spunk than a mountain lion. For many years he coached both the baseball team and the basketball team at the high school.

Dennis quit coaching the baseball team about 1965. During the 18 years that he did coach it, in the toughest county in the state, he never came worse than second in his conference, which his teams won most of his years.

In basketball, he matched that record for 28 years. His teams never came in worse than second place until his last year of coaching, and won the conference consistently. In order to build his teams, he ran a Optimist Club program for town youth in the gym during summers most of the years that he coached.

The Gaston County Sports Hall of Fame inducted Dennis into its ranks about 7 years ago. This is no small time thing. It includes several major league baseball players and pro basketball players, plus other coaching legends of the storied history of Gaston County sports.

Dennis is my buddy and I will see him this coming Saturday at a reunion of us old teachers at Dallas High School and North Gaston High School. He was a great typing and bookkeeping teacher for forty years just as he was a great coach. We called him "Stumpy" as a term of love and respect, but we never doubted for a minute what he brought to the table in all his capacities.

Small towns have these kinds of characters and that is the reason that excellence and even exceptionalism are so often found in the people that they in turn produce. It is the reason that however much we keep spreading out in suburbs, our soul will always be in those small towns that dot our landscape.