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Holly Grove Memories website -> Holly Grove Memories Message Board -> Life in Holly Grove -> Notable HG citizens
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Jane Dearing Dennis


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RE: Notable HG citizens
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I ran across this feature story I did in 1978 on Coach Gordon and thought visitors here might enjoy it:

"Holly Grove Can Boast Dean of Arkansas Coaches"
The Sentinel newspaper,
Clarendon, Ark.
January 4, 1978
By Jane Dearing
Who is the only person to receive the Arkansas Coach of the Year award twice? Who has been coaching high school athletics for 41 years and is the oldest coach in the state? Answer: C.R. (Sonny) Gordon. For these and many other reasons, Sonny Gordon is known throughout Arkansas as the dean of high school coaches. Sports have been a way of life for Coach Gordon since he played on the first football team at Holly Grove in 1931, when he was in the eleventh grade. Following four years of college at Arkansas A&M at Monticello and four years of coaching at Imboden and Walnut Ridge, he returned to Holly Grove to take the head coaching position and he has been there ever since. Coach Gordon recalls when he was playing the teams were “nothing like they are today. For one thing, the equipment was so different. You wouldn’t believe that the headgear could be rolled up and put in your back pocket,” he laughed. “And everybody had to get his own shoes. Most of them were high-topped brogans. We would go down to the shoe cobbler and he would nail a sort of oblong cleat on them. That would be our shoes.” “And the shoulder pads were almost just a piece of leather with a hole cut in it for the head,” he remembered. “I don’t see how we kept from breaking bones every time there was a collision.” Another difference in football was the size of the kids. Coach Gordon weighed 135 pounds when he played and he was about average. There were never any of the “muscular-looking kids” like there are today, he said. Coach Gordon continued, “When I first started coaching in Holly Grove, I was coaching a bunch of kids. None of them had cars — maybe one or two of them had a bicycle. The only entertainment they got was local, like going to the movie on Saturday afternoon. “And anytime I would holler I could get them to practice. This was because it (sports) was an out — something we could all do and there was nothing else that competed against it,” Coach Gordon stated. He believes that coaching today is “so much better” because everyone is so thoroughly prepared. “You can’t spring anything new on anybody,” he commented. “It used to be me coaching against him, but now schools have entire staffs of coaches instead of one person. “The preparation that these young men have when they get out of college is way superior to what it used to be,” he remarked approvingly. Coach Gordon recalled that the traditional Thanksgiving Day football games with Clarendon would rank as some of the greatest moments as a coach. Other goals, victories and achievements such as leading the district in football for several years, winning the state championship in basketball and close games with rivals have been great highlights for him. Looking back on the teams he has coached, Coach Gordon recalled the year Richard Coleman, Dewey Crow and Harry Sylar all played in the same backfield. They went on to the All-Star game and they each received scholarships to play for the University of Arkansas Razorbacks. He ranked this team as one of his greatest. But with the greatest moments come “lots of disappointments,” he said. “Any young man who would decide to be a coach has got to know that he is going to get a lot of ‘low moments.’ There are disappointments if someone lets you down — someone you really depend on. “Mainly, I think the thing that makes for the good and bad,” he said, thoughtfully, “is the character of the young people that you are working with at the moment.” Coach Gordon remarked that one of the worst parts of coaching is individual discipline. He tries to teach team discipline, but every now and then “someone will jump out of line and then you have to lay the law down to him.” He said this is always unpleasant. Coach Gordon stated emphatically that, “no question about it, the rewards for coaching come when you work with a young man for a long time and he finishes school and years later he comes back and says, ‘Coach, if it hadn’t been for you …’ “Rewards come not just from winning, but from having worked with young people and feeling like you have contributed something along the way.” He added that he did not want to leave the misconception that he helped everyone he has coached, but “I have tried. It’s like catching a disease — it goes around and some catch it and some don’t.” Although he has received offers to coach at colleges, universities and leading high schools throughout Arkansas, Coach Gordon has remained in Holly Grove. He maintains the reason is his “grassroots” are in Holly Grove. Aside from being raised and schooled in Holly Grove, he said, “I felt like every year I would have a good team. I would look at the kids I had coming back and realize how attached I was to them.” He also had to consider taking his family to a new place. He concluded by saying, “I don’t guess there was any one thing, except that I always loved Holly Grove.” Coach Gordon’s career has encompassed all areas of athletics. He has taken an active part in coaching football, basketball and track, and his consistently good records prove his excellence in each. It was only a few years ago that he gave up track coaching and this year was the first for him not to coach basketball. The reason he curtailed his basketball activity was the lengthy season and the stress when the team sometimes plays up to 30 games. Although he does not look it, at 63, Coach Gordon says he is slowing down. Speaking on inspiring teams, Coach Gordon says there is “no simple formula.” “A good coach can find out what makes each individual tick,” he commented. Sometimes sternness or criticism works and sometimes heaping practice works better on someone else. “No one responds exactly the same to the same stimulus,” he said. “It’s a real job for a coach to know each one (player) and know how to apply this inspiration without causing dissention at the same time. It’s a tough job to do right.” Holly Grove is extremely fortunate to be able to take credit for as great a man as Coach Sonny Gordon. Almost everyone who has ever played under Coach Gordon or even seen him at work on the playing field or court, has to realize that he has taken a tough job and he has done it right.

-- Edited by Danyelle McNeill Fletcher at 19:54, 2006-02-25

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Jane Dearing Dennis janedennis@comcast.net
Danyelle McNeill Fletcher


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Myrtle Smith Livingston    African-American playwright


wrote the play, For Unborn Children in 1926.  Livingstone was born and raised in Holly Grove.



-- Edited by Danyelle McNeill Fletcher at 19:53, 2006-02-25

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Danyelle McNeill Fletcher
Danyelle McNeill Fletcher


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My mother and grandmother collected several wonderful paintings done by talented Holly Grove residents like Ruth Green, Miriam Lambert and Maxine Newby. I'd love to hear from folks who have stories to tell about these great people.
-Jane Dearing Dennis



-- Edited by Danyelle McNeill Fletcher at 19:52, 2006-02-25

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Danyelle McNeill Fletcher
Danyelle McNeill Fletcher


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Jane Dearing Dennis


In addition to being a wonderful coach and sportsman who impacted many, many people, Coach Gordon was well known for leading an annual fishing expedition for the men of HG. I'd love to hear about this long-time tradition from someone who took one of these expeditions.



-- Edited by Danyelle McNeill Fletcher at 19:52, 2006-02-25

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Danyelle McNeill Fletcher
Danyelle McNeill Fletcher


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Jane Dennis had a wonderful idea - a place for postings about Holly Grove natives who have had a lot of success in life. She mentioned Coach Sonny Gordon (my father has such fond memories of Coach Gordon), "who was inducted in 1996 into Arkansas High School Coaches
Association/Arkansas Officials Association Hall of Fame. The Hall of Fame was founded to honor the outstanding achievements of Arkansas high school coaches and officials, to perpetuate their memory and to honor their dedication and service to high school athletics" and Dr. Suzanne Wong Yee, one of the leading plastic surgeons in the state of Arkansas.

-- Edited by Danyelle McNeill Fletcher at 19:51, 2006-02-25

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Danyelle McNeill Fletcher
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