Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 4, 1993 TAG: 9311040085
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ANDREA KUHN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: FERRUM LENGTH: Long
It was warm, but pouring rain. A handful of Ferrum College students found some value in it by sliding kamikaze-style down a hill of mud. But Hank Norton probably would have preferred to be inside.
However, Norton had agreed to an interview to discuss his upcoming season with one of the dozen of young "beat" reporters that have been sent his way in his 33 years as Ferrum's head football coach.
The reporter drove through campus and hesitantly pulled into the parking lot adjacent to the fieldhouse named for Norton, affectionately known as "Big Daddy."
He was standing there in his trade-mark Trebark jacket, umbrella in hand, waiting to escort her into the building so she wouldn't get wet.
Just a few days after the meeting, Norton announced that this season - his 34th - would be his last at Ferrum.
A college career that started in 1960 comes to an end Saturday when the Panthers travel to Emory to take on Emory & Henry, the sixth-ranked team in the NCAA's Division III South Region. A victory could put Ferrum in the running for one of the region's four berths in the national playoffs.
Norton's first - and only other - coaching job was at Powhatan High School, where he accumulated a record of 40-16-3 from 1954-59. One of his coaching rivals was Midlothian's Lou Wacker, now the head coach at Emory & Henry.
"It's a great place for me to end it up," Norton said of Saturday's game. "Old Lou and I have fought each other all along."
Where did time go?
Norton said it seemed like yesterday that Dr. C. Ralph Arthur, then president of Ferrum, brought him to the tiny Methodist college in Franklin County.
"I'm tellin' you, it's unbelievable," he said. "Life is so short. I can remember every little detail about all of it. I know all of the players. Well, I'm with them every day. It's a family here. In fact, I think that's where maybe some major programs, people who have lost their kids, fail. They don't have that family closeness."
Things looked bleak for Norton when he arrived at Ferrum. The school had no football practice field; the team practiced in somebody's yard.
"The punter had to punt across Route 40. We had to watch for cars coming," he said. ". . . The jerseys were so bad that I paid for new jerseys because I was ashamed for them to wear the ones that were here. Our equipment was hand-me-downs from the University of Richmond and VMI. We took a truck to VMI and the pads that they threw out, we used.
"Our first football field - and this is the truth - Mr. Bill Adams [the man the current stadium is named for] brought his construction company out here in the winter and graded the field for us back into a mountain. But the field was graded slightly downhill. One goal post was 8 feet higher than the other. A joke with the 1965 team was that we always wanted to defend the mountain top in the last quarter, make them come up the hill. That's a true story."
Recruiting was another story.
"I wrote a bunch of kids and got a list from Ed Merrick, who was the coach at the University of Richmond at the time, of the kids they were not going to keep. I went to the Richmond YMCA and my first recruit was Tom Throckmorton, who later became a coach at Virginia Tech and Wake Forest, East Carolina and VMI. He was my first recruit. And that was 1960."
'68 team most special
With 33 years and thousands of players to consider, Norton has difficulty pinpointing one team he considers the most special.
"I've had so many great teams. I think about the first team. We went unbeaten even though we had two ties [5-0-2]. They mean a lot to me. . . . The 1965 team that won the national [junior college] championship. We only had three touchdowns [19 points] scored on us in 10 games. Just a great year. . ."
But Norton settles on the team of 1968.
"We were the national championship team in 1968 . . . that was a great team," he said. "I had seven boys on that team that were on the Marshall University airplane that were killed [in 1970]. Rick Tolley, my best friend, was the head coach at Marshall."
Norton hired Tolley in 1965, the first year he was allowed to have a paid assistant coach.
"He was my first assistant here. . . I gave him his first coaching job."
Also on the airplane that crashed into the side of a mountain in Norton's hometown of Huntington, W.Va., were seven former Ferrum players.
"That team [1968] has remained closer than any of the other teams I've had simply because they were all so close to each other," Norton said. "They had rings made for the national championship and a lot of them had put on the ring `7, Teammates Forever.' . . I love all the teams, but that one with the boys that were killed, the closeness that they had, there was just something there."
It's all for the team
Norton meets his players each weekday morning for "breakfast check." It's another way for him to instill a sense of family in his players.
"I meet them at 7:15 each morning. I always have. Well, I started that in about 1965," Norton said. "The reason I always felt like they should get up for breakfast is they have to get up and go to work the rest of your life.
"I want to make sure everyone is up and wide awake and going to class. And if they have a problem, I know about it at 7:15 in the morning. If they're sick and can't practice, I know about it at 7:15 in the morning. Any announcements that need to be made, I can do at 7:15. And it builds togetherness. If they don't come, they have to run. That's always been the rule."
Understand, Norton doesn't see football as the only thing in life. He simply uses football as a teaching tool.
"I think [football] is a way to learn a lot of things," he said. "It's so much hard work. You work out for months in the summer. You lift weights all winter. You go out there and you practice and you have to get up early and do all this stuff. And it's all for 10 games, 10 games.
"I think the whole thing is `us' and `we' and `our' and it's not `I' and `me.' Football is a team sport. It's all of us working toward a desired end. I think that people who have been members of a true team are the type of people who are more successful in life because they know how to work together to get something done. . . . They have to grub every day and you develop confidence.
"You find out, `I can do this. I can play. I can make myself better.' I think people who unfortunately don't have the opportunity to be on a team like that lack some of the those things of people who have done all that. It's that little bit of extra something that can get you a little above maybe where you would have been."
Winner but not a mover
If there's one thing Norton hates, it's losing. But there haven't been many losses during his tenure at Ferrum. His record is 244-76-11, which includes four junior college national championships.
"I can't stand to lose," he said. "I'm going to do whatever it takes to win. We're going to work hard enough to try to win. I've always felt like that. It makes me almost ill to lose. I can accept the loss if we play hard and do our very best, and we're mentally into it. I cannot accept losses when we don't do that, when we don't give the effort, when we don't put enough into it. It's hard for me to take that."
Ferrum made the switch from a junior college to a four-year, NCAA Division III school in 1985 and earned a berth in the national playoffs in its first year of eligibility, 1987. In a first-round game played at Victory Stadium in Roanoke, the Panthers were eliminated 49-7 by Emory & Henry.
The next season, Norton led the Panthers to the semifinals, but lost 62-28 to Ithaca, N.Y. The Football News named him the national Division III coach of the year. In the junior college ranks, he was chosen as coach of the year three times.
Norton, who also was athletic director from 1965-85 and again from 1991-93, said he never was tempted to leave Ferrum for a bigger program.
"I look back and I have no regrets," he said. "Who were the coaches at the University of Virginia in 1960 to when George Welsh got there? I could probably go back and think of a bunch of them. Virginia Tech has had a bunch, William and Mary, Richmond. I could think back and probably think about who they were. What happened to all those people? Coaches at North Carolina, Duke, all of those places. What ever became of them?
"I like it here. I'm not a mover. I've had opportunities to go other places and I've never gone. I like it here. It's been a great place for my children to grow up. That part, I would never change. I would spend more time with my children. I think that's a regret a lot of people have, that you never take the time with your own children. But I would like to take some time with my grandchildren, whatever time I have left."
Lucy can't watch
Norton married Lucy Robertson, a native of Lynchburg, soon after he arrived at Ferrum. The Nortons have three children, and Lucy said she had no trouble adjusting to life in rural Virginia.
"None at all. I love it out here," she said.
The coach said he owes a lot to his wife.
"She's been a coaching widow," he said. "I look at myself in the mirror and I don't like what I see. I didn't do by my children right. I didn't spend enough time with them. She raised the children while I was down there watching films or whatever. She put up with a lot."
Lucy said she enjoyed attending Ferrum games at first, but had to stop going in 1965.
"We played McCook, Nebraska," she said. "And my mouth was awful, absolutely horrible. . . . I thought, `This is ridiculous and I'm not going to do this anymore.' "
She isn't even going to make an exception Saturday.
"He'd much rather I stay at home than go up there and say bad words," she said. "I stand it better not going than going. Even his last game, bless his heart. But he understands."
Retirement to outdoors
After the season, the Nortons plan to retire to their home in Deltaville, where the Rappahannock River meets the Chesapeake Bay.
"I'm an environmentalist," the coach said. "I like to hunt and I like to fish. I like to hunt turkeys. I'm too lazy to carry a deer anywhere, so I don't hunt deer."
His true love is fly fishing.
"It's becoming popular now, but I've been fly fishing since I was a boy," he said. "I like the outdoors, and trout live in the prettiest places in the world, beautiful places away from the world."
Angling is just one of the many courses Norton has taught at Ferrum. Originally, he taught history and world civilization, then he turned his attention to physical education, in which he holds a master's degree from the University of Virginia.
"I taught archery, tennis, golf, swimming," he said. "I would say I always taught at least six classes. I retired last spring. I always taught a class in angling. . . . It's the only thing I really know anything about. I really have enjoyed that, because it has great carry-over value, as does golf and tennis and whatever. Football has no carry-over, basketball has no carry-over as far as the rest of your life. You can't be in a fast break at 60.
"I taught the record number of classes here at one time because the basketball coach who was helping me at the time became an assistant at VMI. So, I had to take his classes and my classes. It was 1962 or '63. I think I ended up teaching about 11 classes. Maybe more. I taught all day with no break. I didn't know any better."
`Never had a job'
Norton isn't worried about the fate of Ferrum football after his departure. He says the program is on solid ground.
"We've got good coaches here," he said. "[Defensive coordinator] Dave Davis has done a great job, and he's been here a number of years. . . . I'm probably the worst coach here.
"I think Ferrum's athletic program will always be strong. I feel like we have a good name in athletics, not just in football."
Davis is the leading candidate to become head coach, but Norton says it's too early to speculate. However, Norton could think of worse occupations than head football coach at Ferrum.
"It's been a lot of fun," he said. "I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I've never considered it work. I've never had a job. If you like what you're doing, it's not like going to work."
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