Tag: fiction

Remembering Don McReynolds: A coach, fan and faithful friend of the Ashland Tomcats

Don McReynolds—a former Ashland Tomcats assistant coach, dedicated fan, and longtime sideline photographer—passed away Friday. He spent a decade coaching Tomcat football and more than 30 years afterward capturing the action through a camera lens, becoming a familiar presence at games long after his coaching days ended.

McReynolds also coached girls track and field at Ashland and was known as a well-liked, effective high school history and science teacher. Though his role as a coach placed him in the press box as an offensive coordinator, his later role behind the camera made him just as recognizable to generations of players and fans. He first served as offensive coordinator for his longtime friend and classmate Mike Manley, and later for Vic Marsh.

Though he became synonymous with Ashland athletics, McReynolds wasn’t an Ashland native. He grew up in Mt. Sterling and played receiver on the 1967 state runner-up team that shocked McKell and star athlete Don Gullett, 21-13, in the semifinals before falling to Bardstown in the Class A championship. That title game was played just before Ashland claimed its own Class AA championship with a win over Elizabethtown.

Don McReynolds loved the hobby of photography after his coaching days ended.

That Mt. Sterling team also featured a future Tomcat connection: Manley, who would later coach Ashland for the 1980 season, was the quarterback. His punt return for a touchdown sealed the semifinal win over McKell, and years later he would help bring McReynolds to Ashland.

Thirteen years after their high school run, Manley was hired to revive an Ashland program coming off three straight losing seasons following Herb Conley’s successful 1971–76 run. After one season, Manley left to become offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Morehead State—just 29 years old at the time.

McReynolds had been coaching at Fleming County before Manley persuaded him to join the Tomcat staff in 1980. Marsh, then the defensive coordinator and the only holdover from Mike Holtzapfel’s staff, would eventually take over as head coach after Manley departed.

Manley and McReynolds shared more than a backfield history—they even shared a birthday. Their close friendship played a major role in McReynolds’s move to Ashland. He recalled the phone call in December 1979 when Manley invited him to the Ashland Invitational Tournament to watch the Tomcats face Phelps and high-scoring Ervin Stepp.

Don McReynolds

“I told him, ‘We won’t be able to get tickets,’ and he said, ‘Don’t worry about that,’’’ McReynolds once said. “So I told him I’d go with him. He also told me Ashland had a head coaching opening and he might apply for it. I said, ‘They’ll never hire you.’”

Manley slipped away during the first quarter of the opening AIT game for a meeting and didn’t return until the fourth quarter. “He told me he was going to apply and he was going to get the job,” McReynolds said. “He asked me if he did, would I come with him. That’s what brought me to Ashland.”

He may not have known it then, but that trip set the course for the rest of his life.

In 1980, McReynolds worked from the press box as offensive coordinator, though Manley—an offensive mind himself—was eager to call plays. It took some adjusting.

“I remember the first game against Scott County,” McReynolds said of the 35–0 win. “I was upstairs and didn’t get to call one play. He was calling everything. I came down after the game madder than a hornet. I told him if he was going to call all the plays, what am I supposed to be doing? … We came to an understanding. It got better as the season went along.”

Their offensive spark helped the Tomcats finish 9–4, led by junior quarterback Scott Crank (1,127 passing yards; 516 rushing), halfback Dave Hall (1,353 yards, 11 TDs), receiver and future MLB pitcher Drew Hall, lineman Tony Consiglio, future Tomcat quarterback Greg Conley, and hard-running Paul McPeek (563 yards, 8 TDs). The season ended in the quarterfinals with a 21–6 loss to Henry Clay.

After Manley left, Marsh took over and eventually became Ashland’s all-time wins leader, taking the Tomcats to a state championship in 1990. Ashland wouldn’t win another state title until 2020. Though McReynolds left coaching after the 1989 season, he had coached many of the players who would hoist the trophy the following year.

I got to know Don best through his photography. For two decades or more, he shot assignments for the newspaper, and we knew we could rely on “Donnie Mac” for quality work. He also photographed Kentucky football games for us. His talent behind the camera was matched by his easy humor—something our staff appreciated every bit as much.

He even once helped prevent what could have become a family feud. My daughter and her boyfriend had been using our UK football tickets all season, but when LSU came to town ranked No. 1, my son decided he wanted to go. My daughter was not pleased. Then Don called on Friday afternoon and offered me two extra tickets. I took them, crisis averted—and Kentucky went on to stun No. 1 LSU that night. I thanked Don more than once for keeping the peace in my household.

McReynolds and former Tomcat assistant Mark Renfroe remained close friends for years, bonding over football and traveling together on their own SEC stadium tour. Those who coached with Don could talk football with him for hours.

Students, coaches, players and fellow teachers admired him. He was respected, warm-hearted and deeply appreciated by those who knew him.

Former Tomcat quarterback Greg Conley, a player from that first 1980 team, remembered him fondly:

“He was a great person, coach, and had a creative offensive mind. He loved his players and coached with passion. He brought energy to every practice and game. Everyone loved being around coach. Lifting his family up in prayer. Another Tomcat who will be greatly missed.”

Amen to that.

Dicky Martin Memorial Scholarship being established

Dicky Martin’s voice rang out all over Ashland on the radio for five decades and his death leaves an irreplaceable hole in the Tomcats’ heart.

His family wants that voice to continue in a tangible way through a memorial scholarship. Dicky loved his Tomcats when they were playing and remembered them years later after they had hung up their jersey. He did more for Ashland students than anyone will ever know, putting them on a pedestal long after their playing days.

The Dicky Martin Memorial Scholarship will be a way to say thank you to him for the memorable moments and thrilling calls he gave Ashland fans for 50 years, not to mention the ways he gave back to the program without anyone ever knowing it.

Dicky Martin provided plenty of chills and thrills with his radio broadcasts of Tomcat sports for 50 years.

Donna Suttle is helping the Martin family establish the fund which they hope could be effective by the end of the school year. It would be extended to an Ashland athlete (a particular sport has not been decided).

Suttle manages the Joe Franklin Memorial Scholarship that goes to Tomcat basketball players, the Doug Childers Memorial Scholarship for Tomcat football players and has started the Johnny Mullins Memorial Scholarship that tentatively is going to an Ashland baseball player. The Bill Gammon Scholarship for Tomcat football players is managed through a trust fund established upon his death in 1973.

The Martins are on the ground floor for the latest scholarship opportunity for an Ashland athlete. Guidelines have not been established until some funding has been secured to make sure it has a solid foundation.

What they are asking is for Ashland fans to remember Dicky Martin with a donation to get the scholarship off to a strong start. It is a simple way to say thank you to Dicky for all he did for Tomcat sports. Not only was in the “Voice of the Tomcats” but he essentially was the Tomcat Boosters Club. He did everything he could to make sure Ashland athletes had the very best while representing the Tomcats.

Now his family is asking for help so Dicky’s memory will carry on for decades to come through this scholarship. If you are willing to give, please send a check to Donna Suttles at 1520 Lexington Avenue, Ashland, Ky. 41101. Make the check to: Dicky Martin Memorial Scholarship Fund. You can also Venmo your donation to Whitney Martin.

The family is grateful for the love and compassion shown during his recent passing.

Let’s keep Dicky Martin’s voice alive through this scholarship program.

Dicky Martin’s passing leaves an irreplaceable void in Tomcat sports

The sound coming from the radio was more static than voice — unrecognizable, unfamiliar. It wasn’t what it should have been.

Driving home to northern Kentucky after watching the first quarter of Ashland’s game with Rowan County two weeks ago — on the night the famous JAWS team was being honored — I searched the dial for the Tomcats’ broadcast and finally landed on it.

Or did I?

The announcers were doing a fine job, especially considering Ashland was up 48-0 by halftime. But it wasn’t the same. Because it wasn’t Dicky Martin — the unmistakable voice of the Tomcats — calling the game from the Putnam Stadium press box that bears his and his father’s name.

Dicky Martin provided Ashland with 50 years of radio broadcasting. He passed away Oct. 15.

Dicky wasn’t there because he was in the hospital, locked in the fight of his life — a fight he sadly lost to cancer Wednesday night. Even knowing he wouldn’t be on the air, instinctively turning the dial to find him felt like something that should still work. For half a century, it always had. Entering his 50th season as Ashland’s play-by-play man, he had missed only two games.

I tried to listen. My mind wouldn’t let me. I turned it off.

Ashland is a place steeped in tradition, and Dicky Martin was part of that tradition’s fabric. The Martin family — Dicky and his father, Dick — gave Ashland 73 years of Tomcat broadcasts between them. People like to say no one is irreplaceable. But when it comes to Ashland Tomcat sports, Dicky Martin proved that saying wrong.

Born with a silver microphone

Some people are born with a silver spoon. Dicky was born with a silver microphone.

His father, Dick Martin, moved the family from Huntington to Ashland in 1952 and started broadcasting Tomcat games on WCMI the next year. He was a sharp businessman who understood that community radio needed sports — and that Ashland needed its voice.

Both Martins had a similar style: blunt, passionate, fiercely loyal. They never hesitated to call out poor play or questionable officiating — all through maroon-tinted glasses. Dicky often said, “There’s an on-and-off switch on your radio if you don’t like what you hear.”

He could be hard on the Tomcats, but no one else better be. Criticize his team, and you were taking on family.

Dick Martin became as much an icon as his son would later be. He even served as Ashland’s mayor, but it was his radio work — and his love for the Tomcats — that defined him.

Dicky once laughed recalling a moment from his childhood when his dad waved a handkerchief at a referee. “The ref came over and said, ‘You got something to say?’ Dad said, ‘Here, talk right into the microphone.’”

The referee rolled his eyes and went back to the game. Soon enough, the calls evened out.

That was Dick Martin — unfiltered, bold, and impossible to ignore.

Learning the craft

Dicky learned early that preparation mattered. His parents made him listen to recordings of his voice and work on his diction. “I had that Ashland twang,” he told me once. “They made me pronounce and enunciate until I got it right.”

Few were ever more prepared behind a mic than Dicky Martin. He could deliver a sharp one-liner at just the right moment — often unrehearsed, sometimes regretted, but always memorable.

“It’s humbling,” he said, “that people bring radios to the games just to listen.”

In his early days, his passion sometimes got him in trouble. He was banned once from the Boyd County Middle School gym. Some Tomcat fans didn’t always agree with his takes, but they still listened — often through headsets in the stands, wanting his voice to accompany what they were seeing.

His first broadcast came in 1973 when his father pretended to lose his voice and handed the mic to Dicky during a Raceland–Holy Family game. Dicky had just graduated from Ashland the year before. By 1975, he was the full-time voice of the Tomcats.

The rest, as they say, was history.

A voice shaped by legends

Dicky Martin became emotional when he learned the press box would carry the name of his father and him.

Dicky often said he learned from three of the best: his father, UK legend Cawood Ledford, and Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Brennaman. “My dad was the best,” he said. “I learned from him, from Cawood, and I love to listen to Marty. He’s the best one living.”

Patterned after greats, yes — but Dicky was one of a kind.

“I’ve mellowed a lot,” he told me a few years ago. “I’m kind of like a fan in a way. When a guy misses a call, the fans go, ‘Oooooooh!’ I just get to do it over the air.”

The “Three D’s” and lasting friendships

This story isn’t complete without mentioning his longtime sidekick, David “Dirk” Payne, who passed away a few years ago. Dicky loved him deeply. “There aren’t many men I love more than him,” he said. “When my dad died, Dirk thought it was me. He had a stroke that day. One day I lost my father and damn near lost Dirk, too.”

Dirk and Dicky on the air were Ashland’s equivalent to Marty and Joe with the Reds. You never wanted to miss a second.

Dicky Martin with some friends from left: Mark Maynard, Greg Jackson, Dicky, Donna Suttle and Steve Conley.

Longtime fan Donna Suttle was another dear friend. She called them the “Three D’s” — Dicky, Dirk and Donna. Her heart is broken now that trio is down to one.

He had many more friends in Ashland. Everybody knew of Dicky Martin and his love for the Tomcats.

Beyond the Tomcats

Dicky’s voice wasn’t confined to Ashland. His career took him to Soldier Field, the Gator Bowl, Ohio State’s “Shoe,” and RFK Stadium while calling games for the semipro West Virginia Rockets. He worked Morehead State basketball games during Wayne Martin’s coaching era, which took him to Madison Square Garden and two NCAA tournaments.

But his heart was always at home.

“My two favorite places are Putnam Stadium and Anderson Gym,” he said. “I love those places.”

He had been to every state basketball tournament since 1976 — and his father took him to his first in 1961, when Ashland won it all. He was just seven years old then, but he never forgot.

Football was his true passion. “I never dreamed I’d be doing this as long as I have,” he said. “But I loved every second of it.”

So did we, Dicky.

So did we.

Dicky Martin often said his favorite place to be was Putnam Stadium where he broadcasted Ashland Tomcat football for 50 years.

Mason Branham: The Everywhere Man who will be missed by everybody

Mason Branham was the constant in the landscape of Greenup County sports.  He was the Everywhere Man, showing up seemingly at several places at the same time with camera and notepad in hand and a pen or pencil behind the ear.

Yet he was also unassuming, wishing to remain far from the spotlight and he blended in like the orange in Raceland uniforms. He reserved the spotlight for Greenup County’s young athletes, the one man they could all rally around and appreciate. It mattered not who won or lost, if you were boy or girl, if your team was good or bad. Mason was there, snapping photos, taking notes, making memories.

Anybody who ever played anything in Greenup County knew Mason, the Everywhere Man. There may have been a game-winning touchdown in Raceland and a game-saving tackle in Russell at the same time yet, somehow, someway, Mason had a photograph of both plays. He was uncanny that way.

Mason Branham, a longtime weekly newspaperman in Greenup County, died last week at 76.

It was with much sadness that I read of his recent passing. It closed another chapter on weekly newspapers. If there was ever a Hall of Fame devoted to weekly newspapermen, Mason would have surely been a charter member. I’m not sure how many years he crafted his trade while working first in Carter County and much of his career in Greenup County at weekly newspapers, but he was around when I started at The Daily Independent and when I left the ADI in 2018 and the area in 2022, doing his thing better than anybody ever did. He is irreplaceable.

We had a great relationship, with a lot in common. Both of us loved what we did (and I still do). But I’m not sure anybody anywhere loved what he did more than Mason Branham. It was never for personal praise though. He did not put bylines on his stories or credit lines on his photographs. He was just there. Reporting at meetings, keeping statistics at games and providing thousands upon thousands of photographs of those events over the years.

Mason marched to his own drumbeat, that’s for sure, but he had a love for Greenup County like few others and the schools in that area should put him in their hall of fames posthumously. He deserves that much.

I had many conversations with Mason and he was always enlightening and extremely smart. I did not realize until reading his obituary that he was the valedictorian at Olive Hill High School in 1966 and knew so much history about Carter County and Greenup County. Mason could have done a lot of things in life but he chose journalism, or maybe it chose him. Either way, it was a love affair for a lifetime.

He did not get rich or famous working for weekly newspapers but that was never a goal for him. Mason was there for the pure joy of it, for the chase of getting that key photograph or for writing about that game-winning play. He was a welcome sight at any gymnasium, football field, baseball field, soccer pitch, Little League game or anything else when he arrived with camera, notepad and a pen behind his ear.

Mason was also a man of strong faith and he regularly delivered meals for Greenup County Meals on Wheels. He did that job without fanfare too because he was not doing it for recognition but to be a servant. His life was full of servant-like activities. Members of Beech Street Christian Church are serving as pallbearers. That says a lot about the man as well.

Mason will be laid to rest this week but his kindness and good deeds throughout an illustrious career will not be forgotten by the lives he touched from behind the lens. Whether it was the photographs from the County Fair or the countless Little League games, or the meals that he carried to households of senior citizens, Mason was there.

He was the Everywhere Man if there ever was one.