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The Kings Mountain Herald
March 29, 2001 Section A,
age
~The Sports Man
~ Herald Editor Gary Stewart to be inducted into KM
“There is a need to feel our bodies have a
skill and energy of their own, apart from the
man-made machines they may drive. There is
the desire to find in sport a companionship with
kindred people. I have found all these.” —
Roger Gilbert Bannister
By DWIGHT FRADY
Special To The Herald
While just a youngster growing up in Kings
Mountain, Gary Dean Stewart can remember
throwing a rubber ball against the back of his
house and shooting hoops in a goal nailed to the
barn.
“I won a lot of World Series games with that
rubber ball and some NCAA titles with that bas-
ketball,” he said. “Growing up, I loved all
sports.” ry
In Little League, Stewart was the best bunter on
., the team. He'd lay down a bunt and easily beat it
out for a hit. “If they had had designated bunters
back then, I'd have made the major leagues,” he
said during a recent interview.
Then came Pony League and the bases became
30 feet longer. His legs couldn’t handle that extra
distance. He played JV basketball in the ninth
. grade at Grover; then consolidation came along
his sophomore year at Kings Mountain High
School. :
“They had some great athletes and I knew if I
wasn't good enough to play at Grover there was
no use trying to play there” he said. As it turned
out, he did the next best thing. He started writing
about athletes.
It turned into a distinguished career. Today, he
is a walking history book on Kings Mountain ath-
letics, was the first recipient of the KMHS Booster
Club’s Lifetime Membership Award, is one of the
founders of the Kings Mountain Sports Hall of
Fame, and is its current president.
On Tuesday, April 17, he will become a mem-
ber of his hometown Sports Hall of Fame, along
with Judy Medlin Champion and Delbert Dixon.
“I appreciate the committee and the people
who nominated me,” Stewart said. “In a way, I
Most of the games weren't even close,” Stewart
said. “We went to the WNCHSAA playoffs that
year and I just knew we would win. We lost to
Hickory 6-0 and that was the saddest time of my
young life.”
Murphy and Gold are both members of the KM
Sports Hall of Fame. Murphy later quarterbacked
at Appalachian while Gold became a baseball star
at Florida State. “If Pat had been taller than 5-10,
he would have made the pros,” Stewart said. “He
had a great arm.” :
Stewart loves all sports and enjoys writing
about all the young athletes, but come football
season he is in his realm. He slings his camera
around his neck, gets a reporter’s notebook and
roams the sidelines.
He'll take a picture, and while the referee is
placing the ball will jot down what happened on
the play. Sometimes he’d like to have three hands.
His family are also strong Mountaineer sup-
porters. He met his wife, the former Mary Jo
Rogers, at a football game. “She has always been
a football fan and loves college football,” Stewart
said. His daughter, Leigh Anne, misses very few
games and Dee attends games when he can work
it into his schedule. Gary and Mary Jo, a nurse
with Cleveland Home Health, were married on
Aug. 6, 1971.
Stewart said it will be a little strange being on
the other end of the Hall of Fame plaque presen-
tation. He's inducted former major leaguer Jake
Early, Gold, and a fishing buddy, Eugene Goforth.
Through sports, he’s been able to meet many
athletes and coaches he’s admired. One of his
biggest thrills was getting to interview the late
Mickey Mantle, one of his boyhood heroes with
the Yankees.
The coaches at Kings Mountain when he first
started his sports writing career were Bill Bates,
Don Parker, Bill Cashion and Bobby Hussey, all in
the Sports Hall of Fame. Another, Fred Withers,
had retired the year before.
“Bates meant a lot to me as a young sportswrit-
er,” Stewart said. “When you're 18 and you've
got a title with a newspaper, you think you're it.
Bill had patience with me, as did those who fol-
feel like I shouldn/tbe. one of the inductees whileriilowed, Bob Jones, Dan Brooks, Denny Hicks, Ron
still serving on the committee, but after it was an-
nounced and people started congratulating me, I
felt more comfortable about it. It’s not about the
plaque I'll receive, but about people saying ‘you
deserve it.” It’s a great compliment.”
After he received his high school diploma,
Stewart had planned to attend Gaston College.
One day while at McGinnis Department Store, he
ran into Herald Editor Martin Harmon, who was
soliciting ads...
“Harmon asked me what I planned to do for a
career and I said, just kidding, ‘I might come to
work for you.” Gary's sister, Lib, was working
with the paper at that time.
“Later, Harmon called and asked if I would be
interested in writing sports for the paper,”
Stewart said. “I told him I might want to try it.
That's been 36 years ago and I've been writing
ever singe.”
While growing up, Stewart hadn’t seen many
football games. Baseball was his first love, watch-
ing his beloyed Yankees play on television when
Dizzy Dean and Pee Wee Reese were the an-
nouncers. SH
“I loved the Yankees and hated Carolina,” he
said. All that changed when one of his children,
‘son Dee, attended Carolina and got his degree. “I
started sending money down there and decided I
might as well pull for them,” he said. “I've invest-
ed a lot of money in those Tar Heels.”
When Stewart first started as sports editor of
The Herald in August of 1964, the Mountaineer
football. team;was destined to have a perfect 10-0
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“Pat Murphy and Richard Gold were senicrs.
Former Oakland R
aiders star Mickey Marvin, left, and Gary Stewart at the 1993 Kings
Massey and the current coach, Dave Farquharson.
Massey, now coaching in Kannapolis, was here
five years and is one of the best coaches and
nicest people I've ever met.”
Stewart said one of the most enjoyable times
he’s had with The Herald came a few years ago
when he put out a special edition called “75 Years
of Mountaineer Football.”
“That took a lot of work,” he said. “but very
enjoyable. In those 60 pages, I had interviews
with some people who played in the 20s, 30s, 40s
and 50s I hadn't met.
“One of them, Shu Carlton, I got to know when
I worked in sports at The Gastonia Gazette from
1967-71. He's a coach I truly admire. When he
coached at Kings Mountain, I was a kid living in
the country whose dad worked the second shift.
I didn’t get to see football games. He and his
lovely wife always come to our banquets.”
Stewart said that three of the most enjoyable
years he had covering Kings Mountain football
came when Anthony Hillman was a star running
back under Coach Massey. Hillman broke all of
the rushing records at the school.
The most unforgettable coach Stewart ever met
was the Baron of Barlow Bend, Frank Howard,
the football coach at Clemson. “He could take any
situation, no matter how serious, and make it
comical,” he said.
Two athletes who made the pros from Kings
Mountain were Kevin Mack (Clemson and the
Cleveland Browns) in football and George Adams
in basketball.
“None of the baseball players I've written
about have made the major leagues,” he said,
Mountain Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
“but I can still see all those home runs Paul
Brannon used to hit. He still holds the state prep
record for career home runs.”
Gary, the son of the late George and Letha
Stewart, said the saddest time in his life came
when they lost granddaughter Kayla Newton
(1993-96). Kayla, the daughter of Leigh Anne and
Steve Newton, was born with three rare diseases,
the worst called Ondine’s Curse.
Kayla was on life support from the day she was
born till the day she died. “That was the toughest
thing I ever went through,” he said. “But now,
looking back; it was one of the most rewarding
times of my life because of what people did for us
and for their encouragement.
“I'm a firm believer that the Lord works for
good in every situation. That happened very ear-
ly in our daughter’s marriage. It took four years
out of her life where she couldn’t do anything but
look after Kayla. After Kayla died, she was
prompted to go back to school and now she’s a
nurse at a women's clinic in Gastonia.
“One morning, she and others delivered a baby
before the doctors got to work. They delivered a
healthy baby. So good things do come out of bad
situations.”
While working for a daily, one of Gary’s most
memorable assignments came in the Atlantic
Coast Basketball Tournament when North
Carolina State froze the ball against Duke. Norm
Sloan had first come to Raleigh to begin an illus-
trious career. He figured the only way to beat the
Vic Bubas-coached Blue Devils was to freeze the
ball.
“It worked,” Stewart remembers. “State beat
Duke 12-10 and the next day we ran a play-by-
play in the paper. But Carolina and Charlie Scott
took State to the cleaners the next night when
Sloan didn’t slow things down.”
Although he has enthusiasm for all sports,
Stewart will tell you flat out that “I wish they
could play football 52 weeks a year.”
Although the Mountaineers have developed
strong rivalries with several teams over the years,
he feels that Shelby is still the Mountaineers’
biggest rival.
“Kings Motintain had rather beat Shelby than _ :
anybody,” he said; “becatise of Shelby’s tremen-
dous tradition. We'll be in a new conference next
year, but my personal preference would have
been for them to be able to play the same teams
they've played virtually forever. It will take some
getting used to.”
After leaving the daily newspaper field,
Stewart was sports editor of the Herald from
September of ‘71 to January of ‘79. He became the
newspaper's editor in 1979.
He has won numerous awards in sports writ-
ing, sports coverage and feature writing from the
NC Press Association, along with writing awards
in sports, personal columns, editorials, general
news, people features and photography from
Republic Newspapers Inc.
He has been named Media Person of the Year
Region C Law Enforcement Association, Media
Person of the Year North Carolina High School
Athletic Association, and many other awards
from local organizations such as civic clubs, fire
departments, schools, etc. for coverage of their ac-
tivities.
But he is happiest when he is living in that tin-
seled, rose-colored world of sport where yester-
day’s tragedies fade like the ripples on a lake, be-
cause there is always a new “game” and a new
“challenge” tomorrow.
A lifelong member of Dixon Presbyterian
Church, he has another sister, Linda Stewart
O’Shields and brothers, Ralph E. Stewart and the
late Herman O. Stewart. Son Dee is married to the
former Lori Derby.
Someone has said, “We are a part of all whom
we've met,” and that fits Stewart. Coach Massey
has high praise for Stewart. He is looking forward
to April 17 when he will be a part of the program.
Hall of Fame
“What's impressive about Gary is his de-
meanor,” Massey said to this writer. “He has a
true love for Kings Mountain athletics and the
community as a whole.
“I've always appreciated his professionalism.
He finds positives to dwell on in prep athletics.
Seldom do you find a lot of space given to high
school athletics in a lot of newspapers, but he
gives great coverage.
“I truly feel like our friendship evolved over
the fact that anytime we needed something in the
paper, he was more than willing to give us that
space, and the fact that he is just one fine person
in addition to being a top writer.
“People don't realize the legwork he does on
the Hall of Fame Committee. In the five years I
served, he did a tremendous amount of legwork.
“That man can tell you every statistic of every
athlete who's been through school, all of the
records of the coaches, and can virtually give you
a Play:by-play account of every game he’s cov-
ere id 342 10D OF1Y HIIVATU NAN BT
Carl Champion, calling from his Champion
Landscaping office in Florida and a Hall of Fame
member and chairman of that group for 13 years,
said of Stewart: “He covered every softball tour-
nament we ever had and about every sport you'd
care to mention. He was there even when he
didn’t need to be there. He was loyal to the home-
town boys — and still is.
“There was nothing I ever asked of Gary that
he didn’t do or go out of his way to do. One of
the biggest things is that Gary has never looked
for praise about the articles he’s written regarding
people and the kids who've come out of the high
school athletic program. And it’s not just sports.
He's loyal to the entire city. It would be a world
of a mess if we didn’t have him doing his job.
“It got to the point where I was traveling back
and forth from Kings Mountain to Florida. I went
to Gary and asked him if he’d do a lot of things
I'd been doing on the Hall of Fame Committee.
He didn’t hesitate to say that he would take on
that responsibility. He took the ball and ran with
it. They could not have a Sports Hall of Fame
without Gary’s help and support.
“Ilook forward to being back in Kings
Mountain to see him get his just rewards.
Nobody is more deserving.”
Until the day he writes “30” to his professional
writing career, you can rest assured that Gary
Stewart will keep on making people feel good
about themselves.
He lives under the motto that success without
honor is an unseasoned dish. He has always felt
much for others and little for himself.
And that, after all, constitutes the perfection of
human nature.
KMHS Booster Club co-presidents Scott Ellis, left, and Tommy Barrett, right, present Gary
Stewart the club’s Lifetime Membership Award in 1998.