"coach"

[romegajacket]

Coach Paul Kennedy passed away this past week in Dalton, GA.

"Coach", as he was known by for many years here in Rome, came from Tennessee where he played Center on the UT team late 40 early 50 era. He was preceeded in death a year or two by his wife Eula who suffered from Alzheimers disease.

He was the first head coach of West Rome High School in 1958 where he led his football teams to prominence early on. He introduced his nephew to the coaching business right out of Carson Newman college. Nephew's name; Nick Hyder, who later went on to bigger and greater challenges at Valdosta HS.
Coach Kennedy was a coach from the old school where integrity and character were a must. I can remember how he insisted we wear our Sunday dress clothes to school on Friday when we had an out of town game that night.

Coach was a dynamic Christian man who worked and supported the Fellowship of Christian Athletes for many years.

This town will greatly miss the Coach's as well as the work and energy that he devoted to his community. All of the sports area will miss the coach, but he now has a better reward.

 

[77GTFan]

I am sorry for the loss of a great coach who contributed much to the Rome community. West Rome teams were very strong under his leadership.

Do you know if he was also kin to Crawford Kennedy who coached at Avondale?

 

[DeepSnap]

Sorry to hear of his death.

From the Dalton perspective - we played WR 7 times in my HS seasons from 64-67 going 4-2-1 some of the epic Dickie Sapp/Roger Weaver/Benny Padgett/Lane Brewer games when y'all ran the sidesaddle-T before loading up in the original power-I with Padgett the FB & Weaver at TB - we played against Coach Kennedy's teams & we hated, absolutely hated WRHS and the man in the brown suit (Hyder, too). Y'all probably felt that way about us & Bill Chappell, truth be told.

Some classic games, before WR started pulling away in the series, classifications & regions exploded, and the WRHS went away.

How ironic that he would die in Dalton.

RIP, Paul Kennedy.

EDIT: Okay, it was Padgett, not Parrott, but it's only been close to 40 years since Benny was at South Carolina & I was at Tech on opposite sides of the field!

 

[romegajacket]

Sorry to hear of his death.

From the Dalton perspective - we played WR 7 times in my HS seasons from 64-67 going 4-2-1 some of the epic Dickie Sapp/Roger Weaver/Benny Parrott/Lane Brewer games when y'all ran the sidesaddle-T before loading up in the original power-I with Parrott the FB & Weaver at TB - we played against Coach Kennedy's teams & we hated, absolutely hated WRHS and the man in the brown suit (Hyder, too). Y'all probably felt that way about us & Bill Chappell, truth be told.

Some classic games, before WR started pulling away in the series, classifications & regions exploded, and the WRHS went away.

How ironic that he would die in Dalton.

RIP, Paul Kennedy.

HATE ???? nahhhhhh.....fear/respect ??? more like it. That Dalton bunch would kick your butt in a NY second.

I remember hating East Rome HS, but Dalton and some others were more like a type of respect that if one didn't do his job better than was expected, he would be the other team's dog food.

Your neighbor up there, Murray Co., had some of the meanest players I ran up on. They'd bite and take cheap shots more than anyone I remember.

 

[romegajacket]

I am sorry for the loss of a great coach who contributed much to the Rome community. West Rome teams were very strong under his leadership.

Do you know if he was also kin to Crawford Kennedy who coached at Avondale?

I don't know if they were related. I've never heard Coach Kennedy say anything about Crawford Kennedy so my guess would be that they weren't. Saying all that, they were probably brothers.

 

[refrigeratormover]

Your neighbor up there, Murray Co., had some of the meanest players I ran up on. They'd bite and take cheap shots more than anyone I remember.

I'll second the comment about Murray! Sorry for the loss Rome.