Book No. 12 is about another great Ashland Tomcat season – “The Boys They Called JAWS.” It chronicles the 1975 season when Ashland won its first 14 games before losing to St. Xavier in the first Class AAAA championship game. It pitted the Class AAAA state at-large champions against the Jefferson County champion. The book is available in softback ($25) or hardback ($35). Follow the link to order today! https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/TU53F77YFGW5Y
Kenner Ellis Johnson’s family ties made him basketball royalty in Ashland. He and his father, Ellis Johnson, played on two of the Tomcats’ most famous teams — the undefeated 1928 state and national champions and the 1961 state champions that many still consider the best there ever was in Kentucky.
Known as Kenn, he passed away Saturday morning in Mount Sterling after an extended battle with Parkinson’s. He was 81. His father died in 1990.
Johnson grew up under the long shadow of his father in Ashland, although he didn’t seem to mind, taking great care of the legacy. Ellis Johnson would be in any conversation about the greatest athlete ever produced at Ashland High School.
“I knew my father as a rotund, slick-bald fellow with a slight limp from an old football injury. I’d give anything to see those flickering newsreel images of him as a slim, muscled youth with a lock of curly hair flopping on his forehead as he dribbled the seconds away,” Kenn wrote in Kentucky Living magazine.
Ellis Johnson was known for his elite dribbling skills, often putting games on ice with that talent, in a much different style of game than is played today. He went on to the University of Kentucky, where he played football and basketball and became the first All-American under Adolph Rupp. Ellis later coached at both Marshall and Morehead, where the basketball arena is named in his memory.
“My father was, by all accounts, a noted athlete who, as a college freshman, was a member of the committee that hired a young Adolph Rupp to coach at the University of Kentucky and who later was named an All-American on the 1933 Wildcats basketball team,” Kenn wrote in the magazine story.
Of the national championship tournament in Chicago, Kenn wrote that his father was named captain of the tournament’s All-American team due to being the only unanimous choice of the selection committee.
“Back in Ashland, the city had virtually shut down, with most of its citizens gathered around telegraph outlets for play-by-play accounts of the games. When the news came that the Tomcats were the national champs, the citizens “went stark, raving crazy” and car horns and shotgun blasts were heard well past midnight, according to reports from the Ashland Daily Independent,” Kenn wrote in the magazine article. “When the Tomcats arrived home Sunday afternoon, 10,000 wild fans met them at the train station on 11th Street, and fire trucks inched the heroes through the throng down Winchester Avenue to 17th Street in a jubilant celebration that lasted for hours, actually weeks, as the Tomcats traveled the state for dinners and ceremonies well into the summer.”
Two days after the Tomcats returned home, the Grand Theater showed newsreel footage of the tournament, including Carr Creek against the New Mexico team and Ashland against Canton, he wrote.
The good genes were passed on to his son. Kenn Johnson was a sophomore on the 1961 state championship team led by Larry Conley and Harold Sargent and coached by Bob Wright. He didn’t play much on that talented team, but he started the next two seasons.
In 1962, Ashland returned to the state championship game and nearly pulled off an upset of top-ranked St. Xavier, falling 62-58 to a team led by the great Mike Silliman.
Johnson’s 20 points in the semifinals against Caneyville helped advance Ashland to the finals at Freedom Hall in Louisville. He scored 13 in the championship game, one of three double-figure scorers for Ashland who fell just shy of the repeat.
During his senior season, Johnson averaged 11.5 points per game for a 19-11 team. Olive Hill shocked Ashland 59-57 in the first round of the 16th Region Tournament at Morehead’s Wetherby Gymnasium, ending the Tomcats’ three-year streak of regional championships.
Johnson scored 813 points during his Ashland career. His play was good enough to attract the attention of Georgia, which offered him a scholarship. He played on the Bulldogs’ freshman team in 1964-65, but that would be the end of his basketball career.
A graduate of Morehead State University, Johnson earned degrees in history, journalism and English. He taught English and journalism at Montgomery County High School from 1986-2006 and was faculty sponsor of the award-winning high school newspaper, The Tribal Tribune. He founded the Broadcast Journalism program at MCHS and was also the sponsor of Co-Ed-Y.
Kenn also dabbled in coaching, serving for a short time as an assistant to Marvin Meredith at Russell High School and Bart Rison at Montgomery County High School.
In addition to teaching, Johnson was a reporter and cartoonist for the Lexington Herald-Leader and served as a photographer, sportswriter and sports editor for the Mt. Sterling Advocate from 1988 to 1992. Johnson also penned a popular human-interest column called Sidelines.
Johnson’s interests extended well beyond teaching and journalism. He was a visual artist, songwriter, music and film buff and voracious reader. In 2014, he had a solo exhibit, “Paintings from a Man Cave,” at the Gateway Regional Art Center.
He and his wife traveled extensively throughout Europe and the United States, returning many times to Martha’s Vineyard, a place that held special meaning for them.
Johnson is survived by his wife of 35 years, Janet (Hays) Johnson; his daughters, Lindsay (Troy) Porcelli and Rory (Aaron) Gruler; and his grandsons, Henry Kenner Porcelli, Ellis Joseph Porcelli and Jack Emerson Gruler. He was preceded in death by his parents and his sister, Barbara Kennedy.
A funeral service honoring Kenner Johnson’s life will be Saturday, Sept. 12, at Taul Funeral Home, 109 East Main Street, Mount Sterling, with Pastor Paul David Prather officiating. Visitation will be from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., followed by the funeral service at 1 p.m. A memorial stone will be erected at Haysville Cemetery in Lebanon, Kentucky, at a later date.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research or the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
ASHLAND, Ky. (KT) – Bill Grimes doesn’t remember everything about his Ashland Tomcat football career in 1961 and 1962.
But there is one collision he will never forget.
Grimes was a junior in 1961, and things weren’t going well on the second Friday in October when Ironton came to town. Ashland was 1-5 and hadn’t scored since the second week of the season, a 12-6 loss to Point Pleasant, W.Va. The Tomcats had opened the year with a 7-0 victory over Catlettsburg.
On the opening kickoff at Putnam Stadium, the stocky, 181-pound Grimes sprinted toward Ironton’s Coy Bacon.
They didn’t collide. They crashed.
Grimes went flying backward through the air and landed hard on the turf. He collected himself and walked off the field.
Sixty-five years later, he can still feel it.
Bacon did all right for himself, too. He was selected to three Pro Bowls during a 14-year NFL career and recorded 130.5 sacks before sacks became an official statistic.
That was the stone wall Grimes ran into – and wished he hadn’t.
“I wasn’t afraid of anything, even Coy Bacon,” Grimes said. “He hit me and I’m flying in the air going backwards. It was on the film. The coaches said, ‘Grimes goes in the air and then gets back up ready to play.’ They were trying to make me feel better. Coy was a class guy, I really liked him. I kept thinking this guy is 23, 24 years old. He knocked the crap out of me. I sure do remember that.”
Grimes, now 81 and living in Mt. Pleasant, S.C., won’t soon forget it.
Ashland lost that night, 13-0, for its fourth consecutive shutout. The Tomcats lost to Fort Thomas Highlands the following week, 34-12, falling to 1-6 before winning their final three games to finish 4-6.
It was a sign of things to come.
“We started meshing and it carried over,” Grimes said.
It certainly did.
The 1962 Tomcats went 8-1-1, with the only blemish a 28-0 loss to Highlands. That loss kept them out of the state playoffs, which had begun in 1959.
Ashland’s first postseason appearance came in 1966, when Highlands again ended the Tomcats’ season with a 27-12 victory. A year later, Ashland returned to the playoffs and won the Class AA state championship.
The 1962 season deserves more attention than it gets.
Grimes was a versatile player who ran the ball, kicked and played linebacker. He averaged 7 yards a carry but had only 30 attempts for 212 yards. Chip Miller led the ground game with 566 yards and 10 touchdowns.
And talented sophomore Tom Ferguson started at quarterback during an era when sophomores seldom dressed. Only five did that season.
Ferguson started all three seasons before signing with the University of Kentucky. He played quarterback on the freshman team before moving to linebacker, where he started three years for the Wildcats.
Grimes moved to Ashland from Alabama before his sophomore year. His father was a career Army man, and the family was supposed to move to Berlin. But the Berlin crisis changed those plans, and his father decided to retire.
His mother, an Ashland native, insisted they return to her hometown.
Grimes loved football, and his mother gave him some simple advice.
If you want to play football, go to Ashland and become a Tomcat.
He moved in with his aunt and started school. His parents arrived two months later and bought a home on Woodlawn Avenue.
He attended the old high school on Lexington Avenue, but the construction of Paul G. Blazer High School was already changing the landscape. Grimes called the new campus a showplace and believes it helped bring the team together.
His cousin, Bob Patterson, played in the band and introduced Grimes to the Cincinnati Reds. Patterson also taught him a lesson Grimes still lives by:
Once you’re a Tomcat, you’re always a Tomcat.
Basketball was another story.
“I had no idea why these guys were running around in shorts,” Grimes said. “Bear (Bryant) wouldn’t let me go anywhere in shorts. It was a real awakening.”
During Grimes’ junior year, the 1961 Tomcats basketball team produced one of the greatest seasons in Sweet Sixteen history, going 36-1 behind Harold Sargent, Gene Smith and Larry Conley.
The next year, Ashland nearly repeated as state champion, losing to St. Xavier, 62-58, in the finals.
But Grimes’ game was football.
He had thick thighs and ran with authority, even though he didn’t get a lot of carries. He attempted six passes – all incompletions – and was an accurate placekicker, making 21 extra points. “I did whatever I could to get on the field,” he said.
The Tomcats opened the 1962 season with four straight victories, including a 7-6 win over Huntington High.
That one mattered.
It matched coaching brothers Rex Miller of Ashland and Claude Miller of Huntington. Grimes put the Tomcats ahead 7-0 before the Pony Express scored. Huntington’s chance to tie was denied when Eddie Radjunas broke through the line and blocked the kick.
John Stafford, Tim Brown, Fred Cooper, Vic McGuire and Radjunas were honorable mention All-State selections. Nick Jordan, a junior who joined the team late that season, would become a first-team All-State defensive tackle in 1963.
Grimes still remembers the teammates who became lifelong friends: David Alban, J.B. Conley, Bob Yancey, George Branham, Bob Reynolds, Charlie Jordan, Radjunas and Larry Fairchild.
“I loved that team,” he said. “Those guys took me in as a sophomore and we grew to like each other. All of them grew up in Ashland. They knew their people. But they took care of me. We had confidence in our coaching staff. They called me The Bull believe it or not. The funny thing, Bob Yancey once told me, ‘Coach should have put you in more.’”
Ashland tied Hazard 20-20, and Grimes played a role in preserving the tie. He missed the extra point after the second touchdown but made the kick after the third score to keep the Tomcats undefeated.
He remembered playing at Hazard the previous season, too. The field was uneven, he said, and coal miners watched from the sidelines covered in coal dust.
“All you could see were their white teeth and eyes,” he said.
After beating Ironton 25-6 in his ssenior season, Ashland took its 5-0-1 record to Highlands with little hope of winning, Grimes said.
“A lot of the guys were just trying to get the game over with,” he said. “We knew we were going to get beat; just don’t get beat too bad. On the way home the coaches said you guys are too happy. The idea was, we got through it, we didn’t get killed (28-0). We still had three at the end (of the season).”
The Tomcats regrouped.
They won their final three games by a combined 102-25 to finish 8-1-1, their best record since the 10-0-1 team of 1958.
Grimes’ best game came in a 34-6 rout of Russell. He rushed for 67 yards.
“They turned me loose,” he said, chuckling. “I carried a guy about 30 yards on my back before somebody hit me and knocked me down. That’s where the name Bull came from.”
Grimes moved to South Carolina in 2014, where he eventually ran into a player from Stonewall Jackson, which Ashland had defeated 27-20 in 1962.
The man talked about how Stonewall Jackson had won the game.
Grimes didn’t correct him.
Instead, the conversation led Grimes and his wife to a church where they remain members.
Grimes’ life after Ashland was as remarkable as his football career.
He joined the Army out of high school and served in Vietnam from 1966 to 1969, eventually rising to captain. He retired from the military after 32 years.
At one point, he served a midnight shift guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, an honored reserved for the elite soldier.
He later earned a law degree and spent 32 years as a prosecutor in Indiana.
He said 50 men he sent to prison are now Facebook friends with him.
Grimes and his wife Valorie will celebrate 39 years of marriage in December. He has three adult sons from a previous marriage, all of whom played high school football. His middle son, Matthew, played at Centre College.
And there is one more thing worth knowing about Bill Grimes.
He coached youth league football for 20 years.
A Tomcat football player. A Vietnam veteran. A prosecutor who put bad guys away. A youth football coach.
Not a bad legacy.
And perhaps not a bad legacy for a Tomcat team that deserves a little more love than it has received over the years.
Grimes certainly hasn’t forgotten it.
“Once a Tomcat, always a Tomcat,” he said. “I loved it!”
INDIATLANTIC, Fla. – John Tuttle, who started a 40-year career in education in Ashland schools and was an assistant football coach for the Tomcats from 1975 to 1979, had a stadium in Florida named in his memory earlier this month.
Tuttle, who died at the age of 76 in July, had the Heritage High School football stadium renamed Tuttle Stadium at a ceremony earlier this month. His education career spanned more than four decades in Kentucky and Florida.
As a young man in his early 20s, Tuttle’s 40-year education journey started in the Ashland Independent School System. He coached football for seven years in the Ashland system, starting at Putnam Jr. High and advancing to the high school level in 1975 when the Tomcats beloved JAWS team went 14-1. He also was on the staff in 1976 during a 9-3 season and stayed on when Mike Holtzapfel took over the head coaching reins at Ashland from 1977-79.
He was also a highly respected high school basketball referee in Kentucky, many times partnering with Bill Burch.
Tuttle was one of three assistant coaches during Herb Conley’s last two seasons at Ashland in 1975 and 1976. The other assistants were Bill Tom Ross and Holtzapfel.
Tuttle helped design and build Heritage High School in Florida, where he was principal when the first graduating class went through. He served in that role from 2009 to 2012.
Tuttle’s legacy is tied to Heritage Stadium, which serves as a symbol of his impact on education and athletics. His career was marked by dedication to student success, leadership in school administration and a passion for sports, making the stadium a fitting tribute to his contributions to the community.
If you are visiting Heritage Stadium, you can see it as a lasting monument to John Wayne Tuttle’s work in building and leading schools, as well as his role in shaping the athletic and academic environment for generations of students.
Before leading Heritage High School, he coached football, baseball and golf at Palm Bay High School, leading his 1985 baseball team to the state championship. He later served as Assistant Principal at Cocoa Beach High, Principal at Mila Elementary, Southwest Middle School and Bayside High.
Brevard Public Schools officially dedicated the Heritage High School football stadium as Tuttle Stadium to honor his foundational leadership and impact.
Tuttle kept officiating basketball and appeared in several Florida state championship games as referee. Also, an avid golfer, he could shoot his age and shared a hole-in-one plaque with his son, Lance, and grandson, Cole, at Spessard Holland Golf Course.
He was from Winchester, Ky., and was married to his high school sweetheart, Karlene, for 55 years. Tuttle is survived by his wife and son and 10 grandchildren.
Tuttle was lured to Florida by friend John Thomas, a former star baseball player at Ashland, in 1980. Thomas was coaching in Florida and Tuttle followed him there to coach football and baseball at Palm Bay High.
He was also an assistant principal at Cocoa Beach High School and was a principal at Mila Elementary, Southwest Middle School and Bayside High. He was instrumental in designing Heritage High School before retiring after four decades in education.
Tuttle kept officiating basketball and appeared in several Florida state championship games as referee. Also, an avid golfer, he could shoot his age and share a hole-in-one plaque with his son, Lance, and grandson, Cole, at Spessard Holland Golf Course.
He was from Winchester, Ky., and was married to his high school sweetheart, Karlene, for 55 years. Tuttle is survived by his wife and son and 10 grandchildren.
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