Bowles always will remain a Howard hero
As he was wrapping up his touching tribute to longtime Howard High School basketball coach Henry Bowles on Saturday afternoon at the First Baptist Church on East Eighth Street, Dank Hawkins asked everyone who’d ever been taught or coached by the late Bowles to stand up.
At least 75 percent of the crowd of 500 or more gathered for the coach’s funeral rose to their feet.
Then Hawkins began to recite the words that Bowles so often used to inspire his team at tough moments, the words all who knew him knew him by:
“Go lay down. Bleed awhile. Get up. Fight some more. All for one and one for all. All for the Tigers. All for the Tigers. All for the Tigers.”
Except that Hawkins barely had begun that chant when the whole sanctuary rose to join him, nearly lifting the roof off the grand church as Howard’s fans so often shook the gym that bears Bowles’ name.
It was chilling and thrilling, and anyone who doesn’t believe a teacher or coach can make a profound difference in the life of a young person should be forced to relive that moment, to soak in all the passion those former Howard students still feel for one of the most passionate and committed coaches, teachers and people ever to call Chattanooga home.
“He put the ‘Hustlin’ in Hustlin’ Tigers,” 64-year-old Edward Golson, who was Mr. Howard High in 1971, said during a Friday night visitation at the church. “My father died when I was 11 years old. Coach Bowles came to take the place of my father. He prepared me for life. Everything he did was for a reason. I still live by what he instilled in me.”
Golson paused, momentarily overcome with emotion.
“I always thought he wanted to see me cry. I never cried until he died. He was such an awesome man. I just hope he appreciates what I’ve made of my life.”
Cornel Williams played for Bowles in the 1970s before going off to become a lawyer and settle in Houston, Texas.
“He’d always tell us, ‘I can win with you or win without you,’” recalled Williams, a key
reason for at least a few of those 616 games Bowles won at his alma mater over the 29 years he was the Hustlin’ Tigers’ head coach. “I’m not sure everyone understood his passion for winning the right way.”
Frank Jones, the all-time Riverside High great, coached with Bowles at Howard and against him as the Kirkman coach.
He remembered a certain Tiger whom Bowles kicked off the team for mouthing off to the coach.
“The next home game, the kid showed up drunk,” Jones said. “He was devastated. When Henry heard about it after the game, he summoned the young man to his office the next day and put him back on the team with one condition: He had to run 10 suicides after every practice for the next two weeks. The kid ran every one of them and was never a problem again.”
Perhaps that’s why the Rev. Edward Ellis III made a simple request of those at the funeral: “If Henry touched your life as so many of you have said, then you should turn around and touch the lives of those young men (and women) still living in the ‘hood. And if you do that, that love (that Bowles gave you) will never die.”
It was, at least where his players were concerned, most often tough love, its goal to prepare them for a cold, cruel world once the basketball ended.
“He was my eighth-grade home room teacher and history teacher,” recalled Larry Bray, who also delivered a wonderful solo on “If I Can Help Somebody.” “Baptism by fire is what he taught me. He had a way of striking fear into the hearts of men, both players and students.”
But Bray also will never forget or lose appreciation for what Bowles told him as he headed off to college.
“He said, ‘When you get there, don’t forget why you’re there,’” Bray said. “He had a huge impact on me.”
If any man in Chattanooga has impacted young black men more than Bowles, it is surely retired judge Walter Williams, whose creativity from the bench should be a textbook for how to discipline without dismantling a young person’s life.
“Since my stroke in 2014, I’ve declined all requests for public speaking,” Williams said during the service. “But when the Bowles family called me, I could not say no.”
Bowles taught Williams history and physical education. The coach also bailed him out of an embarrassing situation when a college-age Williams was asked to host a table at a dinner.
“I didn’t have any money,” Williams said before drawing laughter by adding, “I don’t have any money now.”
But as a host he was expected to purchase refreshments, cups and plates for each table.
“They (Henry and wife Joyce) didn’t want my table to look any different from the other tables, so they helped me out.”
Henry and Joyce helped out kids all over the city for years with money here and there for college. Praising her role in his life, Williams looked at Joyce and said, “You sacrificed so that he could give to us.”
So it was more than fitting that Joyce Bowles — widow of 80-year-old Henry, mother to their children Etoil Bowles Brown and Henry Jr., grandmother to Caleb and Austin Brown — had the last word among those offering special reflections.
“He was not very tactful and I tried to work on that, but his DNA overruled me,” she said as chuckles filled the air, especially from so many wearing maroon blazers and suits in her husband’s honor, since that’s what he always wore to Howard games.
“He’d give you the shirt off his back, then tell you how to put it on.”
Then, after reading a long poem, she closed with words full of grace and love and sweet sorrow: “The Master is in the locker room. And the Tigers have won the game.”
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfree press.com.