Greg Jackson looked around Clark’s Pump-N-Shop Putnam Stadium on Friday morning like a proud father.
Seventeen years of labor pains will do that.
Jackson’s vision to make Putnam Stadium the grandest of them all even, when everyone else was telling him that it will never happen, is happening.
Let us count the ways:
–A stadium rebuilt with the same look and feel of the original stadium.
–Bucket seat for the new seating.
–A donor corner with a statue of Coach Herb Conley.
–Artificial turf (A big hurdle crossed only with corporate help from Clark’s Pump-N-Shop).
So, shouldn’t that have been enough? Well, no. The VISION was bigger. Read on:
–A banked end zone in the open end of the field with ASHLAND centered in the middle.
–Mesh maroon screens to cover the already weathered concrete along the bottom of the bleachers.
–A granite four-foot Tomcat statue at the top of the stairs on the closed end if the stadium that became another tradition as players touch it before heading onto the fields on Friday nights.
–New lights to replace the aging 30-year-old poles that were showing their age.
–Three new flagpoles to replace the rusted ones and new USA flags, Commonwealth flags and Tomcat flag to hang from them.
And the last piece of this enormous vision? A monster scoreboard with a Jumbotron inside of it and a state-of-the-art sound system that will send Chuck Rist’s voice out for miles and miles.
Jackson went to work on that one in May and in only 10 days had secured six anchor advertising sponsors to pay for it. And not only did he have enough for Putnam Stadium but also will be hanging one in Anderson gymnasium. How did he do it all? With determination and relentlessness and a can-do spirit like I have never seen.
If you are looking for a Most Valuable Player for this project, it is obvious who gets all the votes.
Full disclosure: I’ve known Greg a long time and consider him a close friend. What stands out to me is this man’s integrity. He’s a man of his word, a West Point graduate and “Beat Navy” are his two favorite words put together. He is a longtime trusted friend of the community and loves being part of the Tomcat family.
The overwhelming amount of work he has put in on this project says a lot about the man who would not consider anything but the vision that he began putting together 17 years ago and it is about to come to fruition next Friday.
The obstacles and detractors he faced would have scared away a lesser man. He never blinked. As he kept dreaming of more for the stadium, I learned they weren’t dreams in his mind. It was all part of the vision, a vision that he was going to finish.
Superman has X-ray vision. Jackson has Tomcat Vision.
And when you come to Clark’s Pump-N-Shop Putnam Stadium this season, seeing will be believing.
MARK MY WORDS 2 