Columnist.
During the 2005 college football season, there was no doubt in my mind that Southern Cal running back Reggie Bush was its best player. For that he was awarded the Heisman Trophy, the biggest and best award that can be bestowed. But earlier this week he achieved an even higher plane when he gave it back. Tuesday Reggie Bush did the right thing.
When Tim Burchett became the Mayor of Knox County, Tenn., on September 1, he immediately instructed the county's purchasing department to put a "stop-payment order" on three handsome severance packages that had just been doled out by his predecessor. In a story that shouldn't be ignored by any city in this angry nation of ours right now, the new county mayor also said he would soon sell a nice Chevrolet Tahoe that accompanies his office and, instead, will drive his "old Jeep that has about 175,000 miles on it."
Once long ago there was a wonderful and very funny guy who worked alongside me named Sam Venable. He was a marvelous storyteller and a great pal but soon he left the Chattanooga newspaper and returned home to Knoxville, where today he is the lead columnist for the News-Sentinel.
There is a dangerous man in Gainesville, Fla., who is now enflaming both the Christian and Muslim worlds alike. I believe the devil himself has somehow wormed his wretched way into the brain of the same man, Terry Jones, and I can prove it because a convoy of “my” American soldiers was pelted by a rock-throwing mob in Kabul, Afghanistan yesterday. That is absolutely inexcusable.
I have long held the notion that nothing good comes from messing with ghosts. I'd like to say I don't believe in them, but then there is the "Holy Ghost." I was taught in Sunday school about the Father, Son and Holy Ghost and I can go along with that. But the paranormal, and séances where you conjure up dead people so you can talk to them, makes me awfully nervous.
Every year about this time I still get a bunch of e-mails and telephone calls asking if the old stories about the SEC Skywriter's famous trips are really true. Just last week a guy in Florida called to ask if I actually flew the old lumbering Convair 440 charter airplane that used to take the top sports writers around the South every fall.
Glen Coffee, a 23-year-old kid who had a $2.5 million contract and a promising career in pro football, walked away from the San Francisco 49ers on Friday and none of the cynical national media knew quite what to do or say. That's because Glen, a back-up running back for the 49ers, calmly said he'd rather walk with Jesus instead of playing games anymore.
Each day, as I go about my "morning reading" before dawn breaks, I have lapsed into the custom of categorizing different stories that catch my eye as either a "gee" or a "haw." The practice comes from being raised at a tender age around farm animals you know as mules.
In June of last year Herb Adcox got the worst news of his life when a despicable letter from a company he has loved for 51 years told him his Chevrolet dealership had fallen prey to "Dealer-gate," the government-mandated restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler. After he read it, he wept.
When a grieving Welsh family, unable to bear what promised to be a dismal Christmas at home, was in Barbados they hit upon an warm idea. They chartered a small boat and, in an effort to put closure on their heartbreak, they asked the captain to go far out to sea and then still the engines. Once there, a tearful ceremony commenced on what was the first Tuesday of the New Year and even the boat captain cried.
A pair of US Air Force C-130 cargo planes landed at Russia's Vnukovo International Airport last Saturday, followed by a charter flight from California. The cargo planes carried $4.5 million in emergency aid to help avert what could become a monumental disaster, far greater than our Gulf oil spill where it has been reported we turned away about 15 nations that wanted to help us.
When Sgt. Chris Duke arrived at a remote outpost in Afghanistan, it didn’t seem like much time at all before he took up with a stray dog he promptly named Rufus. There is something about a dog that is comforting, especially to a Southern boy in a hostile environment, and when Chris would stand watch ole Rufus would hunker down beside him through the night.
For several years one of my biggest heroes has been ‘Sheriff Joe,” the colorful Joe Arpaio of Arizona’s Maricopa County. If ever there was a face for Arizona’s fearless fight against illegal immigrants it is the Massachusetts-born lawman whose no-nonsense approach towards crime in Phoenix has enthralled millions just like me.
It has long been said that a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth ever catches up to it. But the Holy Bible serves as age-old proof that the truth will eventually come out. The latest example of mankind’s embarrassing blunders has just been put on glaring display by our government.
As I get older, perhaps my sentiment grows. Maybe it is because the flowers smell sweeter, or perhaps ice water tastes better, but at a time I once suspected my senses might become dulled, I am now aware the ones that matter most to me are wonderfully better refined. So step with me to a sweltering parade ground in Washington D.C., where one of the greatest warriors our country has ever known finally ended a spectacular career of service to America. I speak of U.S. Army General Stanley McCrystal, who was fallen not by an enemy's bullet but by an unguarded, after-hours conversation in a Paris hotel.
On August 5 the people of Tennessee will exercise one of our nation's most important freedoms -- the right to vote -- and it is ironic that same day is when those who remember will celebrate the birthday of Roy Benavidez. The son of a Mexican sharecropper and a Yaqui Indian, Roy's parents died before he was seven years old and his early years in south Texas were both brutal and filled with anguish.
