Anybody who has read this blog should know that my highly paid advertising manager, is quite famous in Southern Ohio. He makes zero just as I do. But he gave the SamKat blog a big boost in its infancy back in 2008 by referring others to it. If you motor down Rt. 23 towards Portsmouth, as Jeanie and I did yesterday, you come to a sign saying predominantly "CLAY". Of course you are entering Clay Township territory.
Not to be funny, but Sam Kegley is so lucky in good friendships. Clay Vice was a basketball and baseball star in Clay High School in the early fifties. He practiced basketball in front of three outstanding high school coaches of the time at Clay- Don Monk, Arch Justus, and Homer Pellegrinon. He played baseball for Dale Bandy and Kenny Long, legends from Clay High School and later for Dick Hopkins, Jr. for a state runners-up Legion team.
Clay and his wife Carol also coached various ages of girls' softball teams to an enviable record of 93% wins over thirteen years: 1975-1988. There is something that outstanding teachers and coaches share with their protege's and it is sometimes intangible. It just stands out as IT, which we Kentucky fans proclaim about our University of Kentucky basketball program. Coach Bill Rohr of Portsmouth cut me from his varsity, but was an outstanding Civics teacher for a lot of us at Portsmouth High School. He had wisdom, had played for Coach Paul Brown (in basketball) at Massilon High School), and genuinely liked young students and coaching and teaching. He said one bit I have passed on in my teaching or seminar experiences. "I don't care if you are merely digging holes. Dig yours rounder and better and somebody will notice."
Clay and wife, Carol have produced outstanding results, which Dr. Dan Ross, Ohio High School Athletic Association' Commisioner, is also justly proud of because he himself is a Portsmouth native, and has been a teacher and a coach..
In our eighties, Jeanie and I have a social life of mostly viewings and funerals. Sadly, our trip was precipitated by a viewing for our good friend, Don Thomas, in Wheelersburg last evening. Friendships are a lasting thing and we hope to carry them over into the hereafter.
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