Grimes brings home Bacon in Tomcat football memories of early 1960s

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.

Bill Grimes during his senior year at Ashland in 1962

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.

From Alabama to Ashland

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’s 1962 football team that had an 8-1-1 record and included several well-known Tomcats.

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.”

Once a Tomcat

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!”

Former JAWS assistant coach John Tuttle has stadium in Florida named in his memory

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.

John Tuttle is behind Coach Herb Conley who is giving the play to fullback Jim Johnson in 1975.

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.

The family of John Tuttle celebrated the renaming of Heritage Stadium to Tuttle Stadium earlier this month in Florida.

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.

Ashand’s 1975 coaching staff: Bill Tom Ross, Mike Holtzapfel, Herb Conley, John Tuttle.

‘The Boys They Called JAWS’ on sale now

By MATT SPARKS, The Daily Independent

Writers write about what they know.

One of the area’s best storytellers has penned another informative tale about 11 players who have stood the test of time, and one of the most cherished rosters in the rich Ashland football history.

Mark Maynard, former editor and longtime sportswriter for The Daily Independent and current managing editor of Kentucky Today, releases a new book next month titled “The Boys They Called JAWS.”

It’s a deeper, more detailed story about a beloved Tomcats team, a fierce defense and an unforgettable season.

Maynard believes a book can offer more than a well-crafted article or feature. The pages offer a rousing chance to reminisce and relive memories still talked about today.

“It’s not news, it’s reacting to something that’s happened,” Maynard said. “I think it’s important to give some of the background that people don’t know. I’ve only written one fiction book. Everything else has been about things people may already know, and generally they know that Ashland’s 1975 team was called JAWS. Why were they called JAWS? Not everybody knows that, and it has some other neat things that happened during that time.”

Maynard graduated from Ashland in 1975 and became great friends with many on the vaunted Ashland defense that dominated the gridiron the following fall. The Tomcats would win 14 games that season, tied for the most with the 1990 state champions.

The 1975 Cats earned the at-large state championship. Due to unfortunate timing, a thrilling road playoff win at Paducah did not come with a Class 3A title. In February of that year, the Board of Control for the Kentucky High School Athletic Association met and implemented a four-class system for football. The champion from the Louisville area would meet the at-large champion in a winner-take-all scenario.

It was the first season in which any Louisville school played a team from outside Jefferson County for a state title.

St. Xavier, a private school, wore down the Tomcats in the second half on its home field, using a massive roster and constant substitutions on both offense and defense. Ashland gave the Tigers their toughest test of the season. The Tomcats only trailed 6-0 at halftime before falling for the only time that year, 20-0.

“I grew up with those guys,” Maynard said. “I knew many of them very well. I have written a ton about them throughout my time at The Daily Independent. I interviewed (former coach) Herb Conley in podcasts, and I have a lot of fresh quotes from him that people have never heard. I went back and got more information from the newspapers and writers who covered them at the time.

“They know what happened, but people may not know everything about them,” he added. “I hope that they will pick this book up and go through it and see what an amazing season that was and how good they were.”

The JAWS nickname originated after Conley and family attended the famous JAWS movie over a summer vacation. Ashland was enjoying one of its most successful stretches during Conley’s tenure, and a defining description of his defense could add extra motivation and reignite the physicality of a team that didn’t make the playoffs the previous year.

“Herb knew they could be really good,” Maynard recalled. “The other coaches were into it. They talked to the team and told them they were thinking about it. The team wanted to do it. Of course, 18-year-olds would want that nickname. Herb told them that they need to live up to it. If you do this, you need to live up to it. They proved it early in the season. They didn’t give them the name until they upset No. 1 Bryan Station in the second week of the season. They did it with defense. After that, it took off. They just annihilated people. The offense was good too. It wasn’t solely built on defense.”

Maynard said the personal connection to the team was the main reason he wrote the book. He also knew the team’s connection to the community. The players bleed maroon. They grew up on their streets. They were friends with their kids. They called Ashland home.

“The team holds special memories for me,” Maynard said. “They were a bunch of fun guys. They weren’t prima donnas or anything like that at all. They were respected. They were all Ashland kids. There were no recruits or transfers that came in to help them. They were Ashland kids, and that made it more special. It’s why the community wrapped their arms around them. They loved them. They had the band play the JAWS theme when the defense came on the field. The place was packed every Friday night.”

The postseason included a long cross-state trip to Paducah for the at-large state championship. It would be a six-hour bus ride, but the town had other plans. The community raised money for a Southern Airways flight so they could arrive for the biggest game of the season in just 60 minutes.

Maynard has many of these stories inside the new book. It speaks highly of a group and a team that people are still talking about them a half century later.

“This team did a lot of firsts,” Maynard said. “It was a fun book to write, and it was fun to revisit those games again. I had been planning to write this book for 10 years. The team was adored in Ashland.

“I have thought so much about this book for so many years that the words just came out,” he added. “ I knew the games, and I knew what had happened. We have stats in the back of the book. The cover has the iconic picture of that team. I really enjoyed writing it. I have written so many stories, but books have a different excitement. You try to make it as perfect as can be.”

“The Boys They Call JAWS” will be released in late September. Readers can preorder a softback or hardback edition of the book.

Preorder your copy at the following link: https://www.paypal.com/ncp/payment/TU53F77YFGW5Y

Humble Gary Wright’s impact was far-reaching to the end

Gary Wright was an accomplished man, although his humble nature kept many people from fully realizing just how much he had achieved.

He was a tremendous businessman and entrepreneur who, after obtaining his master’s degree from Xavier University in Cincinnati, established the Southwestern College of Business in the Cincinnati area. By the time he retired to St. Pete Beach, Florida, in 2004, the college had grown to five locations.

Gary was successful in family life, too. He was married to Jean for 54 years and cared deeply for his daughters, Christine and Holly. Family was of utmost importance to him.

He was also a two-sport star at Ashland High School, starting at second base as a freshman in 1957 through the 1960 spring season. He would walk from Coles Junior High to practice during an era when it was unheard of for freshman to even make the varsity team. Most sophomores never saw a spot on a varsity roster. Gary was invited to try out because he was that good.

Gary Wright, a former Ashland Tomcat baseball and basketball star, started the CP-1 movement with a donation to renovate the big diamond at Central Park in 2008. Through his generosity, hundreds were able to relive their baseball memories.

And then there was basketball. He played two years and helped coach Bob Wright’s first team at Ashland in 1960 win the 16th Region title and earn a berth in the Sweet Sixteen, where a first-round loss to Maysville ended the campaign. His teammates included Larry Conley, Harold Sargent, Gene Smith and the other stars from the 1961 state championship team.

He was instrumental in getting them to the Sweet Sixteen in 1960, scoring double figures in four of his final seven games and making the All-District team.

The two-sport athlete was good enough to earn a scholarship to Centre College, where he played both sports for four years while earning his undergraduate degree. Gary’s love of sports was paying off handsomely.

Among Gary’s many attributes was his love of family, friends and teammates. He also loved growing up in Ashland with his brothers, Robert and Tony, and with a mother (Geneva) and father (T.R.) who did what they could to help their boys succeed. All three brothers were good athletes, and that upbringing helped set Gary on a path that would serve him well.

He cherished his days in Ashland during the 1950s. Like many boys of that time, Central Park was his playground, a place where all worries went away, where skills were learned and then showcased on the big diamond they called CP-1. His father knew how important it was to get boys started young, putting together Pony League teams, taking them all over to play. He had a hand in bringing Babe Ruth baseball and American Legion baseball to town.

T.R. Wright coached his son — and many other boys — during the 1950s and helped lay the groundwork for a tremendous youth baseball program that brought state and even national acclaim to Ashland. He did it on the fields at Central Park, and the cathedral of them all was CP-1. It was called that because of the newspaper. When they ran the list of schedules for the week, they listed the fields as CP-1 and CP-2, which was later mostly used for softball and now soccer.

With Gary’s career established and retirement just beginning, he returned to Ashland in 2008 and visited that big diamond again. He ran onto the field, breathed in the air, ran his fingers through the sand, and the memories of those good days flooded his mind. He could picture scooping up the grounder – and a handful of sand – or delivering the game-winning hit with the crack of bat – not the ping we hear now. He could see how pleased his father was with all the boys as they practiced what he had preached.

Gary was overwhelmed by the emotions that came from his visit, and in true Gary Wright fashion, he did something about it. The field was badly in need of renovation, but talk wasn’t going to make that happen. He put $125,000 behind a renovation project that included a new press box named in his father’s honor.

That same day, when Gary visited his old playing grounds, he ran into his friend David Carter, who had similar experiences at CP-1. Together, they began what was coined the “CP-1 Movement,” and boy, did it ever move.

There were annual reunions for former players, coaches, umpires and fans who remembered playing on that diamond.

Carter, an entrepreneur himself, had the vision for a documentary. He put together “Ashland’s Field of Dreams,” and it aired on KET. It was so well done that it continues to air every year. Interviews with people who played at the park brought out raw emotion, and Carter, who passed away a couple of years ago, captured it brilliantly.

The reunions eventually evolved into the CP-1 Hall of Fame. That is when I became intimately involved, spearheading the event from 2015 through 2024, when 101 former players, coaches, umpires and one sportswriter were recognized each August.

It became a summer event that everybody looked forward to — a time for the reunion of teams and the reliving of days gone by. Treasured memories spilled out around that field again. There were tales of long home runs, bad hops in the sandy infield and the short right-field fence that gave us some cheap home runs.

You could almost see the kid come out in these men who may have played there decades earlier.

It never would have happened without Gary Wright’s compassion for what he had experienced there and his wildly generous donation that helped turn what had become a rundown baseball field into a showcase. When the old players came home, they could not believe their eyes.

This wasn’t the first time Gary’s generosity brought joy through baseball. His name adorns the baseball field at Centre College to this day.

But Gary was much more than a generous and kind man. He gave of himself — not just his money — to projects he cared deeply about helping. When I told him about a Christian ministry called Amy for Africa that was educating children in Uganda, he sent a large donation. Nobody asked him for it.

He simply wanted to make an impact wherever he could, and he had a soft spot for children.

You only get so many chances in life to make a difference, and it’s not always about finances. If you counted Gary Wright as a friend — and anybody who ever met him did — consider yourself fortunate.

His life had the kind of meaning everybody chases. He modeled a compassionate life in every way. How could he make his hometown — and, for that matter, the world — better? He did it with action, with thought and with confidence.

What he did by starting the CP-1 Movement brought joy to countless people. He stirred an abundance of memories and gave those who often thought they had been forgotten one more chance to be in the spotlight.

But not once did he want that spotlight on himself.

It was never about him.

It was always about others.

I loved calling him and talking about how the latest class of the CP-1 Hall of Fame reacted to the celebration — how some were overcome with emotion, choking back tears while giving their induction speeches.

“Chills!” he would say to me.

Gary died on August 20 at the age of 84 after a courageous battle with Parkinson’s. There will be no memorial service, per his wishes.

Gary Wright stayed humble to the end, but his impact will not be forgotten.