• Format
  • Transcripts
  • Interviews
• Type
  • Text
• Extent
  • Duration: 16 pages (transcript)
• Source institution
  • Western Carolina University
• Identifier
  • HL_MPML_Parris_White_2018-05-30_transcript

White 1 Steve White Interview Interviewer: Natalie Parris Interviewee: Steve White Interview Attendee: Elizabeth McRae Interview Date: 05/30/2018 Location: Cullowhee, NC Length: 1:05:58 Steve White: …to Florida. My daddy died in March and they moved in June of that year, after my sophomore year of high school. Well my high school coach wanted me to stay and play football at Glen Alpine High School. He tried to become my legal guardian so I could be eligible to stay there. Well, because I had an older brother and sister that I was living with they were technically my legal guardians so the state of North…the high school athletic association would not permit that so I could not live with him and stay and play high school football so I had to move. Broke my heart. I mean just crushed me because I had all my brothers. Everybody went to school at Glen Alpine. I was a pretty good football player. So I wanted to stay there. He wanted… he was very… my dad had hired him. My dad was the chairman of the school and had hired him in 1949 to be the head football coach so our families were very close. I looked up to him a lot and especially my older brothers. I really did. Natalie Parris: Who would like…your older brother and sister. Like how old were they? How much older? SW: The oldest one is 20 years older than me. NP: What’s his name or her name? SW: That would be Mable…. Mable. And she lives… still alive. She’s ninety, she just turned ninety-six. She’s actually 21 years older now than I am because I’m seventy-five. She lives in Akron, Ohio and spends the winters in Florida. Still drives, crazy. Elizabeth McRae: Ninety-six? NP: When’s your birthday. SW: Mine? April the 17th. But another person that I really had a…really looked up to was Senator Sam Ervin. Senator Sam was my first boy scout leader. EM: Oh my god. (laughter) SW: Yes. Yes. Yeah. And he was my scout leader my first year and then he turned it over to his son, Judge Sam Jr., well Sam the third, actually he took over for him as our scout leader but he started our scout troop and that was before he became famous. Before Watergate. He was our senator from North Carolina but he lived in our little town. Started our boy scout troop. I really thought a lot of him. I guess maybe because he was famous. But he was a neat guy. He really was. NP: What high school did you go to that was like here and then in Florida? SW: Well I went to Glen Alpine first and then my last two years I went to Lake Weir High School in Marion County, Florida. Very similar, in fact, the graduating classes were exactly, there were sixty. Our graduating class had sixty. That class had sixty in it so very similar size. We went up… I got over… we won White 2 the state high school football, track and field, and baseball championship when I was in high school there and I played on all those teams. NP: When you were in Florida? SW: Yeah. In Florida. So that sort of took some of the disappointment of leaving. EM: Is Glen Alpine still a school? SW: No. No. It’s Freedom High School in Morganton. EM: Oh it’s Freedom. Ok. SW: Morganton, Glen Alpine, Oak Hill, Salem all consolidated to become Glen Alpine…become Freedom. NP: Do you still like talk to the people that you went to high school with? SW: Oh yeah. We have, it’s amazing that the class that I graduated with in Florida we have a website. In fact, I got two emails today. One of our old high school football coaches has a birthday, his eighty-fourth birthday, coming up this week and he’s telling everybody. One of my buddies who’s a lawyer in Orlando, telling everybody to send him a birthday card, an email. And then we had, in Glen Alpine, the class that I was in there, they meet every Wednesday - the last Wednesday of every month down in Morganton and I go down once in a while for their luncheons. And you’re sitting there talking about twenty of us that still stayed together. They all come to my family reunion too. (laughter) A lot of them do. It’s an interesting group too. Yeah. NP: What did you do after high school? SW: Well I came here. I was offered a contract out of high school with the Houston Colt 45s which is now the Houston Astros. The guy that I had caught in high school, Loren Abshier, was the second pitcher that they signed. Now this was before the baseball draft. This was still, the baseball draft didn’t start till ’67. This would have been in ’61. The Houston Astros were stocking their entire minor league system. They did not start playing until ’62. But they had filled the minor-league teams in ’61 and ’62 and so forth. They had ten minor league teams and they were signing thirty players for each of those teams. So, they signed three hundred players in the spring of 1961. Well Loren was the second pitcher that they signed. He got a huge bonus to sign. Well, he talked the scout into signing me. NP: That same year? SW: Yeah. Think about it. I asked him, I said, “Well how many catchers you going to sign?” He said, “Probably six, five or six.” And I said, “How many guys? So I would probably be catching once a week or something like that?” And he said, “Yeah, probably because we’re trying to find talent you know. Diamonds in the rough.” And I said, “Where would you be sending me to play?” He said, “Well, you’d probably be in the Georgia/Alabama league. Moultrie, Georgie. So nickname of the team was the Moultrie Mosquitos (laughter), and that was for a good reason. Well my brother and I, younger brother, we go up and we look around, my step brother. So we go up and look around. Don’t think I want to do that. (laughter) He said, “I’ll give you $500 to sign and I’ll give, you’ll get, you’ll make $500 a month but you’ve got to pay your own lodging out of there and your meals other than what the team provides.” So, I said, “Hmmm….” So, I started at the University of Florida and I got an academic scholarship and they were going to let me walk on to play baseball. The guy in front of me ended up as an All-American. White 3 Haywood Sullivan. He went on to become an American League All Star. Played for the Boston Red Sox. After my first semester there I transferred to Western Carolina because a guy I’d caught in high school at Glen Alpine was pitching here and I was his catcher in high school. And he says, “We’ve lost both of our catchers. We have no one to catch and you could come and play immediately.” So, I came here in December of 1961 and then that’s where I played quite a bit my first year up here. Then the next year was when the coach told me I had a future, but it wasn’t in baseball. (laughter) NP: How was Western like, the community. Like the people. Just how it looked. How is it different from today? SW: Oh it’s quite different. This was the football stadium right here. The press box was right up here. You’re sitting on about the 30 yard line (laughter). Library ended, this building ended, back up maybe 30 yards, 40 yards up here, edge of the library. This side didn’t exist then. There was no such thing as a science building… Stillwell was here, Stillwell building. And Niggli Theater and so forth. I think my first year, my freshman year were 1282 students here. That was everything, living on campus. Probably about 600 lived on campus and probably 600 plus that were living in the community and commuting and so forth. Everything was up on the hill. The only thing behind McKee Building was Reid Gymnasium and the baseball field. (laughter) That was it. That was the only thing behind from McKee Building and here. It was…You had to be very creative for entertainment. The only place to eat was the cafeteria, Brown Cafeteria, which has been rebuilt. The Townhouse existed then and that was the only place you could…that and the student union building which still exists up there now. The building right up the hill from Brown Cafeteria. It closed at eight o’ clock at night. You could maybe get a hamburger in there or you’d get a hotdog at the Townhouse but that was the only place outside the cafeteria. No vending machines in the dormitories then. Nothing. That tells you. You had dorm moms then, dorm mothers. They were segregated. Female dorms and male dorms. The young ladies on campus could…you had to wear dresses. If you wore anything - if you wore pants - young ladies, you had to wear a rain coat over top of it or if you wore shorts. Your legs could not be exposed on campus. Serious. This was right. Now that changed in the late ’60s. When I came here that’s the way it was. Your movie theaters, they would have movies here in the Hunter Library down here twice a week. Hoey Auditorium would have movies on Friday night. Other than that you had to go to the Ritz in Sylva, downtown Sylva. You had to be very creative in your entertainment. But very close knit. The professors at that time, all your instructors really took a lot of interests in the students. They really did. It was just like a big community. Most all of your professors, administrators, everybody lived probably within five miles of campus. Sylva maybe is the furthest you would go where they lived. Forest Hills, just their community. Buzzard’s Roost, there were several. Maybe ten or twelve that lived on the hill right behind us where I live now. And what they call Gudger Hill. Forest Hills. So that was, it was a very close knit campus. People would … the opposing athletic teams hated to come up here because first of all it was such a trip…a long trip. And there was nothing to do here on campus when they got here. It was an advantage for us. NP: So was traveling more fun for you guys? SW: Oh yeah, we enjoyed it. We loved to go…any place we were going was the big city. Even Boone was a metropolis compared to Cullowhee. Hickory, Lenoir Rhyne, Elon, Burlington, East Carolina, that’s the places, Catawba, Salisbury. We loved to go there and spend the night. NP: That’s awesome. I know you said you came here for baseball and stuff and then that person talked to you about going into like journalism and like things like that. White 4 SW: Yeah I became, kept all the statistics. Wrote all the game stories. Did all the, at that time, which was very sketchy media guides, media graphs, pieces of paper. That was basically what it was. Sometimes I’d have a little money to do a publication, a media guide type thing. Didn’t have a whole lot of media coverage of games. NP: Did you come here for like any specific major or was it for baseball? SW: No I came really to play baseball because a guy… And then I thought when I first came here I would be a Health and PE major and then I changed my mind and became a History major, History/Political Science. That’s right. And actually I got into law school. Applied at the University of, University of Tennessee and University of Georgia and was going to law school at the University of Georgia and then I made a great discovery. You know I don’t have enough money to do this so I’m going to work a year and then I’ll make enough money and come back. Never made it back. I enjoyed making that money. Went to work with Sears advertising. Probably what threw it off more than anything, got called up to active duty, the service in the Air Force. That threw a big monkey wrench into my plans where that was concerned. Then went back to graduate school at the University of Florida and was offered the job here. Finished my work in the end of May 1970 and I was offered the job two weeks before then to create the first sports information job, a full time position. What I was doing as a student they created a full time position and I became the first sports information director. NP: Was there anything similar to that that people had done before or were you just the first? SW: Well Yeah. Different students had done the job. Some interesting cast of characters. I know most all those guys. So you pretty much had your own job description. You pretty much did it. But there was a national organization and the NCAA had certain guidelines and the NAIA. They just gave you background. But I knew most of the media guys in the area at that time and knew just about everybody on campus too so that helped a lot. It wasn’t like coming in from the outside world and starting, which would have been tough. NP: Did you serve any time in the Vietnam War? SW: Yeah. I was called up to active duty in ’68 and spent six months of active duty. I was trained in the Air Force as an air traffic controller. They took us like, retrained us to do other things. I actually became a navigator on a C-130 which was a transport, cargo plane. We flew from Travis Air Force Base in California to Tan Son Nhut in Saigon hauling supplies back and forth. We made eighteen trips across the Pacific Ocean, the South Pacific. Refuel in Hawaii. Refuel in the Philippines or Guam and then on into Vietnam. Spent a couple nights in Vietnam if you had engine problems or something, doing something, or they had a different type of mode to bring back supplies. We would also haul back bodies. Dead troops which was pretty gruesome. I stayed in the reserves for actually eight years. After I got… I had a total of eight years and I tried to do it, tried to stay in while I was working here. It became very difficult because the reserve meetings were on the weekend and that’s when athletic activities are. They tried to be flexible with me and finally I just, they said you’ve got to come to these meetings or you can’t be in the reserves. Or you can quit your job and come full time. I said, “Nah, I’m not going to do that.” (laughter) NP: So with information director. What does that consist of? Like covering games? White 5 SW: Yeah. You did everything. Attended the games. You made sure all the statistics, you usually had somebody, other students, working for you compiling statistics. There were no electronics then, nothing. Nothing to keep. Now it’s a piece of cake. Everything is done electronically and instantly you’ve got your statistics. I would have three people say, in basketball, one keeping missed field goals, another one keeping turnovers, another one keeping steals and another keeping assists. And then after the game you’d sit down and tabulate it and put on a sheet, spirit master. And you’d fill it out and then run it off and hand it out to everybody after the game. I was responsible for writing a game story and dictating it. At that time, you had no electronic dictation type thing. No telerams, nothing like that. You sit there and dictated it over the telephone to the Asheville Citizen, Associated Press and Charlotte United Press in Raleigh, Greensboro Daily News, Winston Salem Journal, Raleigh News and Observer. You’d call the to give them a game capsule. Who the leading scorers were. It was interesting. How many times I almost got left in a telephone booth outside a gymnasium in Hickory or Salisbury or Boone or wherever… “We’re leaving in one minute.” “Coach, hang on, hang on, last paragraph” (laughter) NP: So you did that from 1970 to 1998? SW: Yeah. I did this through the 1998 season. NP: Did you see like any changes? Did it change from having to manually do everything? SW: Technology is just amazing. Probably the most excited I’ve ever been in my life was when we got a machine called the teleram which you could take a type written page like this. Put it in the machine. Clamp it down. Put a phone receiver in the other end. It had little pockets here you’d put it in. And you push a button and it would spin and it would take it four minutes to print on the other side. It would come out at the Asheville Citizen or the Associated Press Offices. They would have exactly the same thing that you had written. I was so excited. (laughter) NP: I bet. That makes it a lot easier SW: After having to dictate all that time. And then when we got computers. We got computers, game computer operations, here about ’94 and we put in every play and it automatically tabulates all the statistics. I could tell you stories forever about some of the things that happened with that. The early years when the system would lock down on you and you’d have to go back to do manually. It was something else. It was interesting but the technology changed dramatically during this time. I worked for twenty, probably the first twenty years, without any full time help at all. I just had student workers, work study. I think about my twentieth year I got a full time assistant to help out because we had fourteen/fifteen sports. You were having students to cover it for you. I probably averaged, my wife could probably verify, from mid-August to baseball season being over in usually late May, I would probably average fifteen hours a day at the office. I would work and then go home and eat and then go back out to get it all done. I missed seeing my children grow up. Now the summer times were great. We did a lot of stuff together. We took a lot of trips. My kids loved it too. They actually became a part of my work crew. Later part of the years. Yeah. I put them to work. NP: How many kids do you have? SW: Three. NP: What are their names? White 6 SW: Sarah, Sarah is a banker in Richmond, Virginia right now. She’s with First Citizens. She is thirty-six, thirty seven. She was born in ’79. Whatever that would be. She’s thirty-eight I guess. Whatever it is. (laughter). She has one of our grand daughters and then Dan is three years younger. He is an IT engineer with the Waters Corporation outside of Boston in Milford, Massachusetts and he’s married to a physical therapist. And they have their first child due in a month. And then David is three years younger than Dan and he lives in Greenville and they have two children. He’s a real estate developer. Went to school at Wofford. Dan went to school at East Carolina. He got as far away from us as he could and still be in the state. (laughter) And Sarah went to school at Western. NP: Did they play sports? SW: Well they had in high school. Sarah did and she was a cheerleader. I guess that’s a sport. (laughter) Dan was soccer and baseball…Played a little football and gave up on that. David was a very good baseball and soccer player. He was All Conference, All Region in sports so he was very good. NP: So do you get to see Dan and his family the most since they’re closer? SW: We haven’t seen them since Christmas. We’ll be going out when the baby’s born though. EM: Wait, they’re in Massachusetts. SW: In Massachusetts. Yeah. EM: OK. NP: We’ll be going out to see them then and that’s going to be an interesting time. They are remodeling their house for the baby. Got the baby’s room done. We were able to see David and Sarah, those grandchildren, we see them quite often. It’s a two hour trip. And we go up to Richmond probably five or six times and year and they come down here a couple times a year. NP: How did you meet your wife? SW: Actually, here in graduate school. She was in graduate school here at Western. She got her Master’s in guidance and counseling here. I met her when she was a graduate student and it was one of those things, sort of love at first sight. (laughter) I wrote her name down. She wrote my name down. (laughter) She became the… she was the guidance counselor at Cherokee High School and worked there for several years before she retired and she decided she wanted to take care of the children. NP: What’s her name? SW: Her name is Elaine. She’s from Hamlet, North Carolina which is one of those eastern North Carolina towns that’s dying. EM: An old railroad town. SW: A railroad town. Everything revolved around the railroad. NP: How many years have you been married? SW: We’ve been married forty-seven, no. no. no. Forty-five. We had our forty-fifth anniversary, don’t tell her I said that. (laughter) We’ve known each other forty-seven years. May the 19th was our forty-White 7 fifth anniversary. And we lived on Buzzard’s Roost forty-three years. In the same house for forty-three years. EM: Oh I didn’t know you lived on Buzzards Roost. SW: The tallest tree you can see up there that’s our house. (laughter) You’re right next to the guest house. EM: Ok. SW: Next door. It’s the one on the right before you get to the guest house. NP: What made you want to retire from informational director? Was it just time? SW: Yeah. It just burns you out. There were a lot of things going on at that time. I might have worked another five years in the right situation, but some thing just got under my skin. I wanted to spend more time with the kids. I became the pitching coach at Smoky Mountain. EM: Oh I didn’t know that. SW: For the baseball team. I was the PA announcer for the soccer team. (laughter) I just wanted to do some things different. I worked a long time and it was time to make a change. But I continued to work part time jobs. I became the Director of the Letterman’s Club. And I also had the rights for the radio network for several years after I retired. Up until about 2008 I guess, I did the Letterman’s Club and ran the radio network. So, that kept me very close to athletics. Travel, still traveled with the teams doing the games with Gary Ayers. I would do the color. He would do the play by play and we’d sell the advertising. Finally, I just sold it over to the athletic department and they brought everything in house. I think it was ’08. That was about when Ann Brett was here. I can’t remember exactly the years. EM: I was just trying to think when she came. SW: Her sister. I worked with her. She was great. (laughter) EM: She’s a little more aggressive than I am. SW: She’s a character. She was very good at what she did. EM: She must have come about that time. It wasn’t much, it wouldn’t have been before that I don’t think. SW: I was working with her at that time. I gave... EM: She got fired. SW: Before she left. NP: Who took over when you left or after you retired? SW: Where did I go? NP: Or who took over for you? White 8 SW: Oh. Craig Wells took over for me and he… some of the same issues. He was offered the head job at East Carolina two years after I left and went to East Carolina and then from there became the director of media director for tourism and travel for the state of New Mexico. EM: Oh wow. SW: So he’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And then Jody Jones who is now back at East Carolina followed him. Mike Cawood and now Daniel Hooker who was one of my student workers. I was sort of his mentor when he was a student. He’s now the media relations director. He’s sort of a clone of me. (laughter). We’re very connected. He calls me a lot and I call him a lot. (laughter) NP: Is there any of people that you still talk to other than him? SW: Oh yeah. Just about everybody at the athletic department, I know everybody there. Now of course they go through coaches so quickly sometimes it takes me a while to find out who they are. I’m still the official athletic historian so they call upon me for a lot of things and I’m still on the board of directors of the Catamount Club and help with a lot of fundraising projects and the golf tournaments. Even the Chancellors search committee. I was on the community committee for that. And several other internal things with the University. The foundation, I help with some projects. Scholarship, fundraising things for that. Just a lot of things but I’m still very much involved. I can’t get away from it and I never want to and I never will. And I never have any plans of ever leaving Cullowhee. When I get to the point when I can’t function take me down, because they’ll still be working on the bridge. (laughter) Just pull up and just open the door and roll me out into the Tuckaseegee (laughter). EM: I’m glad it’s not today. NP: So I heard you’re working on a book? SW: Yeah. It’s called…It’s the sort of the definitive history of Western Carolina Athletics. It’s called What is a Catamount. And the subtitle is Where the Heck is Cullowhee (laughter). That’s the subtitle. But I keep changing stuff. I keep doing. I keep revising it and I don’t want to do it until its right and I’m still finding things I didn’t know existed. And finding some pictures that Kellen Carpenter up in archives is helping me find some more pictures from the ‘30s, even the ‘20s. It’s a work in progress. I’m doing it all on my own. And what I might do every… And when I sell it, $19.95, and every penny is going to an endowed scholarship for athletics. For the Catamount Club. NP: What made you want to start writing a book? SW: Just, it had never been done before as far as athletics. There’s been a couple books about the history of Western Carolina University. Dr. Byrd and Maurice Morrill, these people have written books, but no one’s ever done anything just dedicated to athletics, the history. So many stories and it’s a very intriguing thing. Just how we survived all these years. It’s amazing. The things that happened to keep athletics afloat. The community, it’s just amazing. I just… I‘ve got unbelievable stories about how they used to fund the football program during the season. A lot of it, it would be illegal right now but they got it done. (laughter) It’s very interesting. And I hope, I hope that within the year, I hope I can have it ready to go. NP: I hope so too. You’re going to have to make sure. White 9 SW: It is…It keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger and I keep changing the formats and I keep changing chapters and putting more stuff into it and other stuff out that I feel is really not that necessary. I don’t want it to get out of hand but it’s out of hand right now. (laughter) NP: So you go to Cullowhee Methodist? SW: Yeah. Cullowhee United Methodist Church. NP: Where did your faith originate from? Was it always a part of your life or? SW: Well I started out. It was really interesting. My dad was an Episcopalian and my mother was a Baptist. And that’s an interesting combination. NP: What’s the first one? SW: They went to different churches. Episcopal church. They did not go to the same church and so the family was sort of split up. Most of us went with our mom during that time. And then my older brother and sister… I got to going to the Presbyterian Church with them. That’s what they did. And then when I came, first week I was on this campus I went down to the Methodist Church because the Wesley Foundation just started…just getting underway. And I went down there and I remember my first project was every Thursday night the Wesley Foundation sold hot dogs for a quarter a piece. They got permission to sell them in all the residence halls on campus. That was our big fundraiser. Every Thursday night. And I did it because I, one of the things, I said I’ll do it if I get to go up to Madison or Moore Hall which were female dorms. (laughter) Because you just couldn’t go, you had to be announced. You couldn’t go up after 8:00. You couldn’t be in the lobby of the dorm. So, I got to go on all the floors to sell hotdogs. And see the young ladies. (laughter) But that’s how I got started and when Elaine and I were actually dating, we started going to Cullowhee United Methodist Church in 1971-72 along that time. And we became members in ’73 when we got married so we’ve been faithful members since then. NP: What made you… was it just because you were at Western that you wanted to go to a Methodist church since your parents? SW: Well just because the Wesley Foundation was the big thing and because you come out of Brown cafeteria and there was Cullowhee Methodist. EM: And the Wesley Foundation now it might not… it’s a college youth group right? SW: Yeah. And I had a couple friends, couple of buddies, that were going down there and they said, “Well, come on with us you’ll like this.” And of course there was some nice attractive young ladies down there. (laughter) You know you use everything you can to meet somebody (laughter) NP: How’s the experiences you’ve gone through in your life changed your view of God and how he works in your life? SW: Well I guess. One of the biggest things… I really… when my mother... I was in the seventh grade and they were, my dad had turned the business over to my older brothers, two of my older brothers. And he got into real estate in Florida. Well right before Christmas time, when I was in the seventh grade, they had just bought a brand new car and they were going to Florida for a month/six weeks and he was buying some real estate and getting in the real estate business in the Orlando, Florida area. And all the way down she was driving the car and I don’t think was very familiar with it and actually a truck ran White 10 them into a bridge on Highway 17 at the Georgia/Florida line on Highway 17, the St. Mary’s River Bridge, ran them into and she was killed in the automobile accident. And he, when he was in the hospital recovering from that, they found out he had prostate cancer and as a result of that he eventually died from prostate cancer but I sort of lost my faith a little bit at that time and I said, you know, “Why?” You know, “Why?” All these children everybody, such good people and they were looking after so many people. My dad was just like… I mean I don’t know how many people he looked after in our little town, our little community. The things that he did for people and the groceries that he gave away to people in need. I really did. I lost, I absolutely lost my religion and then I sort of got it back through people like Sam Ervin. And I tell you another guy that was our minister at the Presbyterian Church, Bill Hayes. I guess I was in the eighth grade. We went to camp up to Old Fort to Camp Grier which was a Presbyterian Church camp and he took us up a mountain. He said we’re going to go up and see Billy Graham’s new house. He grew up in Charlotte with Billy Graham. So I said, I knew Billy, I knew the name but I didn’t know a whole lot about him. They had just built a new home in Montreat where they lived. There were six of us and they took us up there and his wife made us lemonade and we sat out on the deck and overlooked that entire Black Mountain Valley and he talked to us and just I mean he really inspired me. I said, and he, Bill wanted our… Reverend Hayes wanted me… him to talk with me about my mom and dad and he says, you know, “What happens…You don’t blame people for what happened to your parents or your brothers or your sisters or your loved ones.” And it sort of really turned me around. EM: Wait. Billy Graham is telling you this? SW: Billy Graham. He actually talked to me. He really did. He came to our church I guess the next year. He came to our church and actually preached in our church one Sunday and I just thought that was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I did not realize the impact and what this all meant for years later. He became famous. But sitting up there on that deck overlooking the Black Mountain Valley and drinking lemonade his wife had made. And Elaine was telling me about his son Franklin. When she went to junior college at Montreat, Presbyterian Church School there in Montreat which is now a four-year school, he used to ride his bike on campus through the parking lot and he would come and they would talk to him. (laughter) But yeah and I don’t know. Just, my family, most all of my family was pretty strong. Had strong religious values and very active in the church and it was one of those things that I didn’t have a choice. I’ve always been involved. I really have from day one. NP: Do you have any responsibilities like deacon or after church? SW: I have a lot of responsibilities. (laughter) I’m the minister of coffee. (laughter) I make the coffee every Sunday morning for the Sunday school class, our 9:00 service. I mow the church lawn, the grass. I take care of the cemetery. Which right now we have a huge pine tree right in the cemetery that fell and it’s laying on three tomb stones. We’ve got to figure out how to get that thing out. And a lot of the Nail Benders, I’ll work with them some. We’ll go out and work with people’s homes. I’m not much of a carpenter or deck builder or anything but I do a lot of the other stuff. The wood project, the firewood project, I’m always hauling wood and chain sawing. My wife and I are both very active in the church. Feel good about it. It’s a unique church. It really is. It’s pretty neat and of course David Reeves has a lot to do with it. EM: I’ve only been there since David Reeves has so… White 11 SW: He is a unique minister to tell you the truth. Fortunately, we’ve been able to keep him on these years. EM: You’re chief greeter too I think. You’re always meeting people. Yeah, I go there too. SW: Yeah. When David need to knows something about someone he sends me to talk with them (laughter). I’ll talk to anybody, anyplace, anytime. (laughter). NP: That’s a good thing. SW: Yeah. Yeah. NP: I know this is a pretty broad question. Was there anything else that you would like to talk about that I haven’t already asked? SW: I just love this university and I love Cullowhee. It’s one and the same. For example, I’ll give you. We had one of the chancellors candidates here a couple weeks ago. I get to go to all the receptions and talk to the candidates and their wives. And one of the wives who grew up in a highly populated area on the west coast comes up to me and she says, “Now, where’s the town?” And I said, “The town?” She said, “Yeah. Cullowhee?” And I explained to her that Western Carolina University and Cullowhee were one and the same and we were the only public university college/university in the nation that is located in a non-municipality, unincorporated municipality. And she said, “What does that mean?” And I said, “Well, it means that what you see is what you get here.” And she says, “You still haven’t answered me. Where is the town?” I said, “You were at the guest house right? And you cane down the hill. You came by where Noble Hall is?” And she said, “Oh yeah. That’s really nice what they’ve done there.” I said, “That is basically Cullowhee.” The old Cullowhee where the bridge is. She said, “Well I haven’t been there.” And I said… and she said, “We went out to where the post office is” and she went out to the Health Sciences Building out there. I said, “That’s it.” She said, “Now where is the town?” I said, “This is it. Cullowhee and Western Carolina University that is one and the same.” She said, “Oh.” (laughter) I said, “Scratch.” (laughter) She doesn’t understand. But I have a real passion for the place and it’s probably… I go too far sometimes. I’m bad about emailing the editor of the Asheville Citizen, WLOS TV, the general manager about things that are not said or said or not said by the news broadcaster or not printed in the paper about Western Carolina, because it’s just changed dramatically the newspaper has. Their daily newspaper really just doesn’t exist anymore. That’s another story for another time. And I get carried away sometimes with my passion about Western Carolina and about the university but that’s. Really my life revolves around, number one, my grandchildren, my children and Western Carolina and Cullowhee. I want to see it and it just broke my heart, Dr. Belcher, what happened to him. And I would go up every week and see him. Sunday I was up there, Elaine made some cookies and pies, and I took up there and that’s the best I’ve… EM: Seen him look. SW: In weeks. And he was able to really communicate and he made me come in and listen to an opera one time when I was up there. I had no idea what was going on. (laughter) He laughed. He thought that was funny. “You know what the name of this is?” “I don’t have a clue.” (laughter) I said, “Italian,” you know. “Well you got part of it.” He goes on and on and on. He says, “I know you love ‘60s music, but this is me.” (laughter) It just seems like every time we get something good going something happens. White 12 Especially when related to athletics. Something happens. We’re just star struck and him coming out with brain cancer. It just hurts me. But I have two of these guys are really think are going to be good. EM: Ok. I’m hoping. I’m hoping. SW: One of them I really like. (laughter) EM: Well you were talking about the Henry Logan case before. So, you were a student here when they brought Henry Logan. SW: And I was the student sports information director at the time. And I was privy to all the behind the scenes things that were going on. Jim Gudger talking with the board of trustees with Dr. Reid, Paul Reid. Getting the people in the community, talking to the people in Asheville. Trying to make this happen and there were some people in Asheville, Bob Terrell, the sports editor at the paper was pushing it. He thought it would be a student athlete to break the color line and how this all came about was interesting because how would the campus, the student leaders at that time talking to, student body president, some of the student leaders. How they, student-athletes, how they were going to accept an African-American on this campus. Now there had already been, there was a lady that went here but she wasn’t a student-athlete. We didn’t have a student-athlete. We never, until I guess 1963 when we went to the national tournament in Kansas City, was the first time we’d ever played against a black player, African-American. That was Miles College out of Alabama. We played them in the national tournament. It was such a unique thing and it had to be treated with kid gloves. And like I said you had to have somebody that was very thick skinned and with the personality and that could handle this thing and plus he had to be really good and he was really good. He was. I’ve never seen anything like him. He was Michael Jordan before there was a Michael Jordan. He could do more things than Michael Jordan. He and Pete Maravich came along a couple years apart and they played against each other in a summer league game…summer camp game at Waynesville High School. EM: Oh my goodness. SW: Camp Rockmont was where…Pete was getting ready to go at LSU. He was at Brougton High School in Raleigh and he was going there because his dad was the head coach at LSU at the time… Press Maravich. So, he was going to go play for his dad. Henry had an all-star team, guys from Asheville and a lot of them were camp workers. Let’s play a benefit scrimmage practice game over at Waynesville at the old middle school, which was Waynesville High School at the time. At 4:00, and the game was at 6:00, at 4:00 you could not get near the building much less get in to watch these two play because they were already legendary you know how good they were. I think Pete scored 61 in that game and Henry had 54. And it was just back and forth and both of them probably had 15-20 assists a piece making passes. It was just something else but just… We would go on the road that first year and a lot of places you would go in the Carolinas Conference maybe the gyms would be, they weren’t very large gyms, maybe they would be half full. When Henry Logan was playing for Western Carolina it was standing room only and tickets were a premium and usually they would televise it. Local television stations would televise a game like that, Greensboro, Burlington places like that. They would televise the game because you couldn’t get in. If you were coming to a game in Reid Gymnasium, if you weren’t down here at 6:00 you couldn’t get into the game. The fire marshal wouldn’t let you into the game. In fact, after his freshmen year they went in and took all the old bleachers out and put in new ones and increased the capacity by about 1200 people. You could cram in maybe 4,000 people into the Reid gymnasium at that time and that was White 13 pushing the fire laws. They would be in there counting to make sure you didn’t violate the fire laws. But when we would go on the road it was amazing. The publicity that Henry generated for us, it was just unbelievable. It really was. And I was right in the middle. I got to work with all of that type of stuff. It was exciting. It was fun. I had people calling me, “Oh man, I know who he is.” (laughter) “I saw him on tv. He writes a column in the newspaper.” To arrange an interview…it was exciting. It really was. Oh this is off, completely off the wall. Watching the golf tournament Sunday, Fort Worth Invitational, J.T. Poston, who played at Western at that time, excuse me, it was Saturday. He was in the hunt. He was like in fourth place. He was coming on to number eighteen and he hits his ball up to eighteen and he’s getting ready to putt. And Jim Nantz who is the voice of CBS Sports. He does the Masters. He’s Mr. NCAA basketball tournament. He’s Mr. Golf. So he’s on there and JT’s getting ready to putt and he says, “And here’s the Catamount from Western Carolina, J.T. Poston, and he’s from Cullowhee, NC and I have been there.” That’s what he said, Jim Nantz said, “I’ve been there.” His first project for CBS Sports in 1988 was Bob Waters when CBS came here to do the story on Coach Waters who was dying from ALS at that time. I was his connection. I took him all over campus and introduced him and he would call me every week for a year there just to check on Coach Waters and his condition. And we got to be pretty good friends. And now he is the man for (laughter) CBS sports. That’s all part of being in sports information. The contacts you make and the people you get to meet. They last for a lifetime. The people now that I can call if I want to go to a baseball game in New York or I want to go to a basketball game in Atlanta. I just think about the people I can call. (laughter) Because of these connections that you make and that all started as the student sports information director. EM: So two of the other people we’re interviewing in this round are Anquell McCollum who I guess you were working when he played. SW: Oh yeah. EM: And then Cindy Simmons who also played here. SW: Cindy was a great basketball… I always tell her son. I always tell him, I says, “Boy I’m sure glad you got your athletic talent and genes from your mother instead of your dad.” (laughter) No, he was pretty good. Si was pretty good basketball player too. She was really. She was a great shooter. She really was. Beautiful young lady. She was sort of around campus. EM: Oh really? SW: Yeah. How she ever ended up with Si. We can’t figure that out. (laughter) EM: She wanted to marry somebody tall. (laughter) She married for basketball genes. SW: But Anquell, I bet you that’s like, that’s like talking to an evangelist (laughter) EM: We haven’t done it yet so, Shea Sutton, who Natalie plays basketball with, is going to do Anquell and Cindy. SW: That will be fun. He is really an ambassador for Western Carolina and I wish that they could keep him. EM: Why don’t they? White 14 SW: He just… People love him. He’s such a great guy. Yeah. Cindy was sort of a pioneer. She came along when women’s basketball, women’s sports, was just evolving. And you started getting scholarship at about that time. From downtown Hayesville. EM: Did you cover women’s sports? SW: I had to cover everything. EM: You had to cover it all. (laughter) SW: I usually had a student that would be doing a lot of the work but I had to go to every game. Well, at home. I didn’t…I’d very rarely go on the road. But it was just a shoestring operation then. It really was. Minimal funding. They had to buy their own shoes. EM: It’s like being in high school. (laughter) NP: Did you have a favorite sport to cover? SW: That would be hard to say. It was according to who was really playing well that year. (laughter) Football was, because of the animal that it is, the publicity that it generates. But then when you’d have those great basketball teams that was fun and baseball I just still always have a special place in my heart for baseball. And baseball was really good when I was working there. All through the 70s, 80s and the 90s baseball was really outstanding. I mean on a national level. We really were… But I’ll never forget in ‘96 when we were in Albuquerque. They were not going to let Anquell touch the ball coming down the floor. EM: This was when Western made it to the NCAA SW: We were playing Purdue, the number one seed and we were the number sixteen seed. We’re coming down the floor, down by one point. Five seconds to go and the clock is ticking and our point guard takes the shot from, a three pointer. Joel Fleming misses and they’ve got Anquell blocked out and he can’t get to the board. Joe Stafford was the best three-point shooter in the nation gets the rebound but he gets it inside the three point line probably about a 15 footer. He shoots and misses. We missed two shots in the last five seconds to win the game and advance in the NCAA tournament. And we always said if it had been a three point, if he had just stepped back and shot the ball it would have been good. EM: He would have made it. SW: Yeah. But they were not going to let Anquell touch it. EM: He was the best player. SW: He was the player of the year in the conference. Most Valuable Player in the conference tournament. He was the man. He was the heart and soul of that team. But it would be hard to say. I always loved baseball, football when Coach Waters was coaching here was just so much fun to cover and work. We had so many kids go on, it was amazing. We had seven guys playing in the NFL. Seven players from Western Carolina playing in the NFL in the late 80s. NP: So I assume you still come and watch the games here? SW: Oh yeah. I never miss a game. White 15 EM: Never miss a football game. SW: Never miss a football… I tell you I miss, I’ll occasionally miss a basketball game for visiting the grandchildren. I still see probably 95% of the baseball games. I’ll miss one for traveling. I go to track and field meets. I even go down and watch tennis because of Jacob and so forth. Women’s basketball. Sit up there me and two or three hundred other people. (laughter) EM: It needs to turn around here for sure. SW: I get to a lot of volleyball. I just, well when you retire they give you season tickets for everything so you don’t have to pay to get in. NP: Do you get to come to Smoky games? Smoky Mountain games? SW: You know when my kids were in school I used to come a lot but I still occasionally come to the games. I get out to a couple football games a year and I even go, when Dolphus was coaching I’d go to soccer games. EM: We had a good baseball season. NP: Yeah. I’ve been down there a couple… Jeremy Ellenburg, the coach, pitched for us and was a really special kid. He was, came one year, I thought we were going to miss the tournament. We were dead last in the conference. This was 2004, no 2003. And we had to win at Appalachian State and he went up there and won the ball game for us. Got us into the tournament. We were the 8th seed. That was when they only took the top eight teams. And he goes down there in the semifinals and throws a shut out at The Citadel, the number one team. So I like…(laughter) EM: I didn’t know he played here. SW: His senior year, he had a great year his senior year of pitching. EM: So that’s Natalie went to Fairview he was her PE teacher. SW: I just really… Of course when Cal Raleigh was catching, had a great connection because his dad and I are close friends. I’ve known Cal since he was one year old, since he was born. But I don’t go as much as I used to but I still like to drop by and see them They were really good this year. I tell you, women’s soccer team. EM: I know. This is our year. Been kind of…should have gone further than they did. You all didn’t mess it up. But should have gone further than they did. I mean some injuries hurt us. SW: Well Katy didn’t get to play at the end of the season. EM: She got hurt in the last conference game, knocked out cold. SW: They didn’t have that when I was playing. I played a couple times, I’m not sure I even knew which end of the field I was on. EM: I know. I know. I know. SW: My wife still thinks that that’s what [is wrong with me]. I missed concussion protocol. (laughter) White 16 EM: Yes. I know. SW: One of the funniest stories and this doesn’t have to do with anything… We’re talking about athletics. I got my bell rung real bad my senior year. Our rival in Florida was Wildwood High School and we hadn’t beaten them since the twentieth century started (laughter) But we were really good that year. We went on to win our class. They were in a different classification. So, we got a chance. It’s probably twenty seconds to go in the ball game and we’re down on the two yard line. Well I was the blocking back on the football team. We ran what they call the short punt formation. Sort of a variation of the single wing, and I maybe touched the ball twice during a game. Well coach… we had a timeout. He says, “OK. This is what they’re going to be expecting Gary…,” my buddy who is the lawyer now. He was telling, “They’re going to expect him to sweep right or left so we’re going to fake it. We’re going to stick it in Whitey’s belly and nobody’s going to be expecting him to carry.” Sure enough, I get the ball at me to you at the goal line. I get it and I see the goal line. Just as I get to the goal line this linebacker, probably, puts his hand right here. The ball goes up in the air, lands in the end zone and they recover it and the games over. Well a guy from Wildwood, I was down getting a mower worked on and I told him where I was from and he said, “You know. We just beat ya’ll… I remember a year, gosh it was back in the early 60s and ya’ll had us beat and ya’ll fumbled on the goal line.” And I said, “I know who that was.” (laughter) It took me a long time to hear the end of that. Here’s your golden opportunity and you maybe carry the ball twice a game. (laughter) Trick plays. (laughter) Now who are your parents? NP: My parents are Amy and Robert Parris. SW: Ok. I don’t know them. I know a lot of Parris’ around here. EM: Parris, Robert grew up and went to... NP: He went to Tuscola. His dad was Troy Parris and then there’s Gayle Parris. But my dad’s from California so they’re not really… but my mom’s side is Gibsons. EM: Like Gibson furniture, Gibsons? You don’t know? (laughter) NP: I don’t know. EM: Well thank you.

Steve White is interviewed by a Smoky Mountain High School student as a part of Mountain People, Mountain Lives: A Student Led Oral History Project. White moved to western North Carolina in 1961 and has been a fixture in the area ever since. Catching for the Western Carolina University’s baseball team brought him here and after a brief stint of active duty during Vietnam he became WCU's athletic information director. White talks about the changes that have taken place in the industry and shares sports stories he has witnessed over the years.

• Creator
  • White, Steve, 1943-
• Contributor
  • Parris, Natalie
  • McRae, Elizabeth Gillespie
• Format
  • Sound recordings
  • Transcripts
  • Interviews
• Type
  • Sound
  • Text
• Date
  • Date interview: 2018-05-30
  • Date: 1950s; 1960s; 1970s; 1980s; 1990s; 2000s (Decade); 2010s;
  • Date digitized: 2019-08-15
• Extent
  • Duration: 1:05:58 (sound recording)
  • Duration: 16 pages (transcript)
• Subject - Topic
  • Appalachians (People) -- Religious life
  • Autobiography
  • Baseball players
  • College athletes
  • Sports personnel -- North Carolina, Western
  • Veterans
  • Western Carolina University
  • Western Carolina University -- Alumni and alumnae
  • Western Carolina University -- Employees
  • Western Carolina University -- Sports
  • White, Steve, 1943- -- Interviews
• Location
  • Jackson County (N.C.)
  • Burke County (N.C.)
  • Cullowhee (N.C.)
• Source institution
  • Western Carolina University
• Source Collection
  • WCU Oral History Collection - Mountain People, Mountain Lives
• Identifier
  • HL_MPML_Parris_White_2018-05-30
• Repository
  • Western Carolina University Hunter Library