Hung out in Lexington with some old friends today from my “Wonder Years.” That’s the age between around 12 and 20, the teenage years, when life comes at you like a Nolan Ryan fastball. That’s when we are trying to figure it all out, like girls, how to hit a baseball to opposite field and, did I mention, girls? We didn’t have Google in the 1970s. Life was hard.

We had dudes older who, for lack of a better word, were our mentors. Two of them – Kevin Sutton and Tim Wallin – were at our get-together. Looking back on those “Wonder Years,” I wondered why my little band of brothers were allowed to hang with these guys who were three years older.

My brother was their age and that may have been the connection. Kevin hung out with my brother, who was also three years older. But my brother was more interested in music than sports (he had little interest in sports) and Kevin was leaning more into sports. We assumed that’s how we cracked the circle.

They may have just needed a few more players for whatever game they were playing at Stafford’s Field, our two-sport venue. We always had a handful around the neighborhood, so we could at least give them numbers.

Left: (front to back) Keith Daniel, Bill Hornbuckle, Kevin Sutton. Right: Mark Maynard, Tim Wallin, Mike Staten.

Stafford’s was made for tackle football, a long stretch of ground with a huge tree on one end that served as a goal line.

When it came to playing baseball, the dimensions were tougher because of the narrowness of the lot, but the tree remained important. Hit it into the tree and it was a home run (it took most of us years to put one in that giant tree). Perhaps the biggest and most dangerous obstacle for the baseball field was traffic on the road that ran beside the lot. Kevin collided more than once with cars while going after balls. He came away fine from the collision. I couldn’t always say the same for the cars.

Tackling Kevin was like grabbing onto a runaway freight train and Wallin was like trying to catch a jackrabbit.

We had other “arenas” too. East Jepson Street was perfect for Wiffleball as was Greg Estep’s side yard where we played countless two-on-two games with obstacles like pine trees and a straight-line row of bushes to keep hitters honest. When basketball came around, we had courts at Estep’s driveway and Jerry Henderson’s backyard. No matter what the weather was, we were there when it was basketball season.

We played baseball on what we called the Sand Dunes too. The field was exactly what it sounds like. Nothing but sand. We played until the last ball was lost or the last bat broken (we used wooden bats because that’s all they made). Kevin said he still has a Johnny Bench model bat but it’s not for swinging purposes now. A friend got Bench to autograph it for him and made him a bat holder that he could showcase it on a wall at his home.

Our older friends were good teachers and resourceful. They taught us to not hit the ball on the label. Sometimes we didn’t listen. More than once those guys pounded a nail into a cracked bat and wrapped electric tape around the handle. But once the ball was lost – usually after Kevin or Tim sent it into orbit – the game was over.

The mischievousness in them came out at night as the many stories told Saturday would suggest. I’m not going there to protect the innocent, which these guys were not. They told stories that would make the Myth Busters blush.

It could be that their influence on us was not on the athletic fields. My group, which included the unflappable Bill Hornbuckle, could match them story for story. We won’t go there either because most of what was told would not hold up in court and besides, it has been 50 years since most of our mischief was perpetrated on the streets of Ashland. Surely there is a statute of limitations?

One thing that’s not a wonder is that Kevin and Tim enjoyed long and successful careers in law enforcement in Lexington and Ashland, respectively. I mean, talk about criminal minds!

We laughed and laughed as one story after another was delivered by each of us – Kevin and Tim, Bill, Keith Daniel and Mike Staten, whose backyard was another playground for us. We had another five or six of the old gang invited for our “reunion,” but they could not make it for one reason or another.

It was a day that was good for the soul, reminiscing about our “Wonder Years” in a much simpler time, sharing stories that hadn’t been told for maybe decades and picking up right where we left off.

Forgive Greg Jackson if you see him taking victory laps around Putnam Stadium.

When the Ashland school board approved and signed a 10-year partnership with Clark’s Pump-N-Shop on Monday, it was the culmination of a goal that Jackson set for himself when the Putnam Stadium Restoration Foundation was formed in 2007.

Clark’s Pump-N-Shop Putnam Stadium, as it will soon be named, will have its own carpet in time for the 2024 season. It’s only part of the second phase, which Jackson has vowed to finish and includes an LED scoreboard, new lighting, a sound system and a banked end zone on the open end of the stadium. Even if the latter projects don’t materialize by 2024, the playing surface will be laid down making Putnam Stadium an even bigger showplace than it is now, and that’s saying something.

And all that has happened through Jackson’s never-say-no attitude. He has remained positive in the face of many obstacles but never wavered from the objective.

Sixteen years ago, the committee was developed with the idea of giving Putnam Stadium a “facelift.” But it wasn’t long until that “facelift” became a long and expensive project of making the home of the Tomcats a viable and safe place to watch football.

Jackson, who was a co-chairman of the committee with Dan Kelly early on, has been at the helm of the program the entire time. He is former Tomcat football player – starring on the famed 1975 “JAWS” team – and a passion like few others for Putnam Stadium. He has seen it from a lot of views, including being a former Tomcat Band parent when daughters Rebecca and Kathryn were members, including one-time president.

The original restoration committee had 13 members but only three remain – Jackson, Blake Holbrook and Steve Conley.

Jackson, a West Point graduate with the leadership chops it takes to lead, has done just that for the committee and Ashland Tomcat fans should be thankful for his diligence and persistence in making a project this huge happen.

Thirteen people were on the original committee and the school board ordered an engineering study to be done on the stadium that was 74 years old at the time. Kelly retired from the school system and left the area and Jackson said not a lot was happening.

Steve Gilmore became Ashland’s new superintendent and still nothing was happening with the stadium. Jackson then took command, calling Gilmore and setting up a meeting.

“I wanted to take the committee and get his commitment to support us and be part of the committee to get this project going again,” Jackson said. “He said yes so I ran with it and the rest is history.”

Jackson got the committee together again and reenergized, assuring them that it was going to get done. He asked for commitment from each one of them to follow his leadership and they all agreed.

The engineering study revealed bad news, calling for the stadium to be torn down. That heartbreaking decision was made to take it down and a plan put in place to rebuild it in the same shape. The teardown and rebuild came after the 2013 season and prior to 2014. They didn’t miss a game, although the 2014 season opener was delayed because of a torrential rainstorm, and some drainage issues, that caused the field to be flooded.

Jackson developed friendships with Tomcat greats John Koskinen and Dave Alban who have been instrumental. Koskinen was a cornerstone donor of the “new” Putnam Stadium and it was the lift that Jackson needed. A longtime friend and leader in the community, Jackson’s influence was greatly felt during the time he guided the committee. As the human resources manager at Marathon Petroleum in Catlettsburg, Jackson was a friendly face to the community. He has been and still is active on many boards in Ashland. Jackson is a face that people trusted and he has been critical as other smaller steps were made with an eye on bringing artificial turf to Putnam Stadium.

Corporate sponsorship seemed to be the answer and the Ashland area has a great one in Clark’s Pump-N-Shop, owned by brothers Rick and Brent Clark and formed by John Clark. When asked about becoming a partner in the project, there was no hesitation from the Clarks. They understand how much Putnam Stadium means to the community and how artificial turf can make it an even more valuable venue for other community events beyond football.

They have a tradition of serving and giving back to the community where the business was built and remains a powerhouse today.

Jackson called on another great Tomcat and one of the world’s foremost marketing gurus in Jim Host to help put together a contract that was appealing to everyone. Much credit should go to the Clarks for stepping up in such a big way and bringing artificial turf to Ashland to tradition-rich Putnam Stadium. The Clarks do a lot in the community that nobody ever knows about, not wanting any credit for their generosity. They stepped up, no question about it.

But over the past 16 years, nobody spent more time, sweated more blood and been more important to this project than Greg Jackson. He waved the Tomcat flag – by the way it was Greg who got the flags with the years of state championship on them that circle the stadium – better than anyone when it came to restoring Putnam Stadium. He was also instrumental, along with former teammate Rick Sang, at setting up the donor corner with the statue of Herb Conley, the all-time Tomcat, in front of it.

Secretly, I think Jackson wants to run just one more down at Putnam Stadium. A few years ago, he and former teammates Chuck Anderson and Dave Early raced from the 50 to the end zone. Jackson, running like he was 17 again, smoked them.

Mind you, Greg Jackson is not done with what he wants to do with Putnam Stadium improvements, holding a list of items if anyone is willing to help.

But the grass sure looks a lot greener these days.

There were a lot of reasons why Ashland was a football juggernaut from 1925 to 1932.

The Terrible Tomcats, as they were called at the time, went 62-0-4 and laid claim to seven state championships. They “laid claim” because there were no playoffs in Kentucky until 1959. So state champions were mostly mythical, although nobody was arguing with them. The Tomcats pounded all-comers.

Ashland had superior talent (some maybe a little older than the average senior), outstanding coaching and a lucky fedora.

The non-losing streak started in the last two games of the 1925 season and the inception of the old hat became a part of the Ashland High School football equipment in 1926, the beginning of Ashland’s six-year winning streak. It was introduced by Capt. Ernie Chattin, who graduated from the University of Illinois in 1930 following his Tomcat career.

Upon graduating from AHS, Chattin turned the hat over to Capt. Paul “Siki” Wolff (later to play at VPI) in 1927 and coach Paul Jenkins took charge of the hat in 1928, his first season at the helm.

He wore the tattered hat to every game because the players – and maybe Jenkins himself – thought it brought them luck. Not that they needed much luck because the Tomcats pulverized almost anybody in their path.

The old fedora was working its magic but a few days before a Thanksgiving Day game in 1928, Jenkins was in a panic. He could not find the old fedora anywhere and he looked everywhere. Jenkins left for the field without the skypiece, as it was called in an article in The Courier-Journal printed on Christmas Eve, and shared with me by Curt Crye, the researcher supreme. I had never heard the story.

Jenkins and the Tomcats were aghast over the loss of the old hat, taking it as an omen that defeat was imminent. They were wringing their hands and filling their heads with negative thoughts. But Jenkins’ future wife, the then Emma Buckley, found the hat at the last minute and rushed it to the playing field. The players breathed a sigh of relief.

The game went much like losing and finding the hat. For three quarters it was scoreless and then Portsmouth tallied a safety on what the article called without details a bone-headed play. With the game and the winning streak on the line and time running out, Ellis Johnson completed two long passes to Darrell Darby – both future UK players – to give the Tomcats a 7-2 triumph.

Jenkins prized the old hat for the rest of his coaching career at Ashland, never losing sight of it again

Two of the Tomcats greatest teams came in 1930 and 1931, the team that crushed Decatur, Ga., in the Southern Bowl 85-6 at Armco Park. That game came the week after clobbering Owensboro 57-0 on the road in the defacto championship game. The romp over Decatur made Ashland the national high school champions of 1931.

Because all good things come to an end, the winning streak was snapped in heartbreaking style against Erie East, Penn., in 1932. The game was tied at 13 and on the last play of the game, the Tomcats had the ball and attempted a flat pass along the sideline that was intercepted and run back for a touchdown. They could have settled for the tie and extended the non-winning streak but instead went for the win.

As Erie East celebrated, the Tomcats were seen all over the field, pounding the turf in frustration. Many of the Ashland fans, who had not tasted defeat since 1925, were seen crying in the stands as if they had lost someone special. Not even the old hat could keep them from defeat.

Jenkins coached seven seasons with a 62-6-2 record and the Tomcats claimed mythical state titles in six of those seasons. In seven seasons, Ashland had outscored opponents 2,154 to 129. It outscored opponents 596-2 in 1930.

Following the 1932 season, which included a rare two losses, 80 players came out for spring practice in 1933.

Jenkins coached basketball for the Tomcats as well, winning back-to-back state championships in 1933 and 1934. Ashland was the second team in Kentucky history to repeat as state basketball champs.

However, a threepeat wasn’t going to be possible. The athletic association suspended Ashland for the 1934-35 basketball season because the 1934 football team used an ineligible player in the last four games of the season. Jenkins’ tenure at Ashland ended in January 1935 with Ernie Chattin taking over as head basketball coach and Ellis Johnson as an assistant coach. The lucky fedora must have went with him.

Jenkins continued his successful career, coaching at St. Xavier, Portsmouth, Louisville Male (multiple sports) and finished his career in Florida.

David Sullivan was enshrined in the Capital Area Chapter Sports Hall of Fame in Pennsylvania on June 17. It was a well-deserved and long overdue recognition for a tremendous football player who broke receiving records at the University of Virginia before going on to play two seasons in the National Football League with the Cleveland Browns in 1973 and 1974.

His determination and grit gave him the opportunity to succeed at the highest level of football. That same can-do attitude turned him into a dynamic businessman in the death care business, where he worked tirelessly and with integrity and compassion while carving out an incredible career that would be Hall of Fame worthy in that field.

Sullivan was overlooked by colleges when he was a high school senior who put up big numbers at the receiving position despite his inexperience at the position (he played only one year as a receiver in high school) and size. They forgot to measure the heart. And as people later learned in the business world, underestimate this man at your own risk.

He was 6-foot-1 and 186 pounds as a high school senior, but Virginia saw something in him that made his size a non-issue. Sullivan became a superstar for the Cavaliers, making all-conference first team in the ACC and setting receiving records along the way. Sullivan’s drive separated him from the pack. It did then, and it does now.

His generosity was also on display Saturday when he and wife Sara gave a sizable donation to the student scholarship fund of the Capital Area Chapter Hall of Fame. It didn’t surprise any of us who know the Sullivans that they made a donation. They both have huge hearts and understand the burden that students face in paying for college. It’s merely one more example of how this philanthropic couple helps others. Their spirit of giving is often contagious in the companies that he has spearheaded.

To be honest, Sullivan probably should have been in this Hall of Fame years ago. His credentials were impeccable. And maybe it was because nobody nominated him. But when the time did come, there was no bitterness, only thankfulness. Dave Sullivan accepted the invitation to be part of this incredible Hall of Fame with humbleness and class, and they will have no better friend than Dave Sullivan.

He succeeded in football and business through a strong faith, dedication, and a remarkable belief in himself and his teammates that they could accomplish anything.

Sullivan was one of the greatest overachieving athletes in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, high school football history and that was only the start of his story.

In his first season as a prep receiver, Sullivan caught 35 passes for 672 yards and five touchdowns during Steelton’s 1967 season. A star was born and he caught the eye of the University of Virginia, which overlooked his frame and looked into the heart. They signed him to a college scholarship, believing they had found a diamond in the rough.

Indeed, they did. Sullivan’s intellect and determination to succeed would take him all the way to the NFL. He proved himself invaluable on the college level, becoming an AP honorable mention All-American and first-team Atlantic Coast Conference wide receiver his senior year at the University of Virginia. Some have called him one of the greatest players in school history. The first-team All-America wide receiver in Sullivan’s senior year was Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Rodgers and at that time they only named one for the first team. He may have moved further up the All-America ladder had the Cavaliers produced a winning season.

Sullivan led the ACC in catches and receiving yards, becoming the only Virginia all-league player that season. He had 51 catches for 662 yards and seven touchdowns – all top marks for Virginia receivers in a single season – despite a revolving door of quarterbacks. He was often the player that opposing defenses tried to take away but his uncanny route-running and good hands overcame many double-teams.

For his career, Sullivan amassed 120 catches for 1,568 yards and 12 touchdowns, the first two setting Virginia records. He played in the Blue-Gray and Senior All-Star Games and began to draw the attention of professional scouts.

Another characteristic for Sullivan was his leadership abilities. Even though he was one of the best receivers in college football in 1972, teammates saw the same man they knew when he entered college. He was humble and generous – traits that would serve him well later in the business world. Sullivan was a winner who he did it within the team concept. He took that same attitude into his professional life after football was no longer an option.

When Sullivan signed out of high school to Virginia, he was only 16 years old. He worked hard in the classroom too, ranking 22^nd in a class of 152 in 1968.

By the time he was a senior at Virginia, he was 6-foot and 185 pounds – a far cry from the 155-pound receiver that went mostly unwanted by most major colleges. His size and speed – he ran 40 yards in 4.7 seconds – was under the radar by most pro scouts. But few in college ran routes better or had better hands than Sullivan, giving him a chance to become an NFL player.

Sullivan has been defying odds since he was a slender 115-pound sophomore trying to make the varsity at Steel-High. Two years later, college after college passed on him because he was too small. All except for Virginia, which found a playmaking receiver.

Cleveland took Sullivan late in the 1973 NFL Draft, taking him in the 15^th round. That didn’t deter him from believing he could make the team and contribute or even start. He played in seven NFL games, starting three and would have had a much longer career if not for a third knee surgery that proved too much. He caught five passes for 92 yards in his two-year career with the Browns.

In his finest game with the Browns, he caught two passes for 52 yards from Brian Sipe in a 26-16 loss to the Steelers. Sullivan was being defended by Hall of Fame cornerback Mel Blount in that game at Cleveland Stadium in 1974.

His degree from Virginia was in educational psychology, but he quickly learned the business side of the death care business. He liked the competitiveness aspect along with the traits of strong character, integrity and compassion for the customer.

He joined Gibraltar Mausoleum Corp. in Indianapolis in 1977 and rose to become the executive vice president of sales and marketing. He stayed there 18 years. Sullivan has 47 years in the sales and marketing end of the business and formed Saber Management in January 1998.

He was named the 2002 Ernst & Young Heartland, Indiana, Entrepreneur of the Year and led Saber Management to even bigger successes over the next 15 years before selling to Park Lawn Corp. in 2017 for $65 million.

Sullivan is also recognized for his philanthropy. He and his wife have been a consistent and generous donor to the nonprofit Amy For Africa, a Christian organization serving Uganda, since 2014. He has also been involved in many other charities promoting needs for children and others in need through both his business contributions and personal ones.

David Sullivan is an uncommon man who has led a Hall of Fame life from the athletic fields to the business world and beyond.