Death of a mentor

If you’re one of the lucky ones, you had at least one teacher who inspired you to be all you could be, a person who pushed you further than you thought you could go. For a lot of boys, that person was a coach rather than a classroom teacher.

For a lot of boys in the South, to be even more specific, that person was a football coach. For me, that person was Coach Willie Tate of Arkadelphia, who died last week at age 69 after a lengthy battle with Alzheimer’s disease. It’s hard to believe he was only 17 years older than me. He was a giant of my youth, a man a whole town could look up to.

Raised in a large family at Gum Springs in Clark County, Tate attended college at what’s now the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff and became a star football and baseball player. He began his coaching career at Hope, moving later to Arkadelphia. He would spend the rest of his career there, working first at Goza Junior High School, later at Arkadelphia High School and finally at Henderson State University.

He was my coach for four of my final five years of football. He was the head coach in the eighth and ninth grades. In the 11th grade, after I had earned the job of starting center, he moved up to the high school level as our offensive-line coach. I’m constantly quoting Tate more than 35 years later. He had that kind of effect on me. There are, no doubt, a lot of men across Arkansas who could tell similar stories about the football coaches who helped mold them.

He would warn us about “season women,” those girls who would date you during the fall if you were a football player and then drop you for a basketball player in the winter. He would preach self-esteem and then tell us, “If you ever read that Willie Tate committed suicide, you better call the police. Somebody has murdered me and made it appear to be a suicide. I would never do that because I love Willie Tate.”

He would say “let me show you how to block,” and we would all back up. Yes, we were in full pads. Yes, he was in shorts and a T-shirt. But no one wanted to be on the business end of Tate’s forearm. He was a gifted athlete who had earned All-southwestern Athletic Conference honors in both football and baseball in college.

We loved the man off the field as much as we feared him when we were on the field. Arkadelphia had experienced severe racial tensions in the spring of 1972. By the fall of 1973, I was playing for Tate. He was black, I am white, but color mattered to none of us when we were under his guidance.

As a junior starter on a team filled with seniors, I was determined not to disappoint my offensive-line coach. If you missed an assignment or happened to be called for holding, you would go 20 yards out of your way when coming off the field to avoid running directly by Tate. He wouldn’t scream at you. Instead, he would put his hands on his hips while giving you a stare that burned all the way to your soul.

He would spend weekends watching the film of Friday’s game while grading each of his linemen. A positive word on that grade sheet was enough to put an extra bounce in your step during the Monday afternoon practice. The humidity always seemed to hang heavier than other parts of town at our practice field. As the sweat poured out of us, the coach would laugh and sing about it being a “blue Monday.”

In the state semifinal game of 1976, our undefeated Badgers took on a talented Cabot team at Little Rock’s War Memorial Stadium. The Cabot defense had shut out the majority of its opponents and was touted as one of the best high school defenses ever in Arkansas. I had upper-body strength in those days and didn’t mind blocking large defensive linemen. The small, quick ones were the ones who bothered me. Cabot had the quickest noseguard I had ever come up against. At halftime, as I sat in our dressing room, the coach walked over to me and said, “If you will block your man, we will be in the state championship game.” We recovered a fumbled punt late, drove the ball into the end zone and won 7-6 to advance to the state title game.

The next week, we were upset by Mena. The game ended with the ball just inches from what would have been the winning touchdown. The conditions on the muddy field were the worst I had ever experienced. I had made a bad snap on a punt and was blaming myself for the loss. More than anything, I believed I had let Tate down.

I had my face buried in my hands when I felt a strong arm reach around me and give me a hug. It was Tate. He whispered that it would be okay and told me to take my muddy uniform off and shower. With the tears still coming down my cheeks, I said, “Yes sir.” I still have my muddy mouthpiece from that game.

We lost a large number of seniors to graduation. Our quarterback was hurt early in the 1977 campaign, and my senior season was a disappointment. What kept me going was the chance to have another practice under Tate’s guidance. After that season, I was chosen by a Hope radio station for something called the KXAR Dream Team. It was meant to honor the top high school football players in southwest Arkansas.

Tate said he would take me to Hope for the banquet. We rode in his Ford, just the two of us cruising down Interstate 30. With my football career at an end, he discussed things with me not as he would with a player but instead as a friend.

As we drove back to Arkadelphia that night, it hit me somewhere around Prescott. I was no longer being treated as a boy. Under Willie Tate’s tutelage, I had become a man.