By DOUG IRELAND, Journal Sports

In the past decade, Many High School’s football program has been one of Louisiana’s very best, guided by dynamic head coach and alumnus Jess Curtis.

That partnership came to an end today.

Curtis, who has led Many High School to three small school state championships in the last nine seasons and three more state runner-up finishes, is taking over as the Natchitoches Central football coach.

His hiring by NCHS was confirmed by the school in a mid-afternoon social media announcement today following a Many High football team meeting.

Very few prep football coaches in the state have a resume’ as impressive as Curtis does.

He has built one of the state’s powerhouse programs at any level. His unbeaten Division III Non-Select state champions this fall dominated one of NCHS’s District 1-5A colleagues, Haughton, 35-3, in September, and in recent years the program has thrashed bigger schools such as North DeSoto and DeRidder.

The Tigers have won 10 straight district championships and are unbeaten in district play during that time, reaching the state playoffs every year and advancing at least to the state semifinals in all but one season.

Since taking over at his alma mater in 2010, after serving as defensive coordinator there, Curtis posted a 163-24 (.871) record in 13 years and made the playoffs every season.

While Many was modestly successful when Curtis was named head coach, the Tigers hadn’t begun to approach the remarkable level of achievement they have since. Case in point: Curtis’ 2010 Many team was the No. 32 seed in a 32-team playoff bracket. That status skyrocketed in subsequent years.

Many reached the Class 2A state finals for the first time under Curtis in 2013, then won its first state championship the following season. The Tigers reached the playoff semifinals in 2016, 2017 and 2018, then lost in the 2019 state finals. They came back to win the 2020 2A championship, fell in the 2021 finals and beat Class 3A Union Parish last month to capture the Division III Non-Select state crown.

The Tigers are known for their physical style of play, aggressive defense and powerful running game. Curtis is a proponent of an immersive offseason strength and conditioning program, and has a large roster approaching 100 players, highly unusual at a Class 2A school. The Many powerlifting program has produced state champion lifters.

Also regarded as an exceptional history teacher, Curtis is the son of retired Sabine Parish businessman John T. Curtis. The coach’s nephew, Tackett Curtis, has been one of the nation’s top recruits in the Class of 2023 and recently signed with USC.

Tackett Curtis, the state Gatorade Player of the Year and the Class 2A Defensive MVP for a second straight season, is the latest in a string of Many players who have earned college scholarships.

The new NCHS coach is a Many native and played for the Tigers’ 1988 state finalist team.

He was offered an assistant coaching post when Brad Laird took over the Northwestern State program in 2018. A year later Curtis reportedly could not reach agreement with the prior NCHS administration and then-school board leaders to take the NCHS job. Natchitoches Parish superintendent of schools Eloi and NCHS principal Micah Coleman were not in place then.

The school has just finished building a new athletic fieldhouse adjacent to the current football practice field, and has erected a grandstand and press box. There are plans to develop the facility into a home field, in lieu of playing home games at NSU’s Turpin Stadium, as has been done for decades.

Curtis takes over a program previously steered by former Byrd High School assistant James Wilkerson, who was released last month following a 3-7 season. Wilkerson guided the Chiefs to their best year this century in 2021, a 7-4 playoff run, including a 7-0 start until quarterback Brian Young was injured. Young was hurt again and missed the first half of the 2022 season.

That 2021 season produced the Chiefs’ first winning record since 2012. NCHS has not had sustained success in football since the mid-1990s. Now the Chiefs are hiring a proven winner to transform their program.

The foundation of the Many program is rock-solid, and the Tigers return a talented squad to defend their latest state championship. Now the question is who will step in as head coach and athletic director to lead the charge.

Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com

The swearing in ceremony of the Town of Zwolle’s Mayor, Council members, and Chief of Police was held on Dec. 30.

Photo Credit: Erica Hickman @one shot photography

Got a box of Moon Pies for Christmas. Nothing says peace on earth or goodwill to your colon quite like a pair of graham crackers divided by corn syrup and vegetable shortening disguised as marshmallows and dipped in chocolate. 

Hand me an RC Cola and sing me back home. 

Can’t eat an original big-boy-sized Moon Pie anymore, but I do love the occasional Mini-Moon pie, mainly for nostalgic reasons. Well, solely for nostalgic reasons. Definitely not for dietary ones. 

It hurts me to type this but … I have to. Others might be in the same culinary boat, feeling guilty like me.  

Sad to report that, through no fault of its own, Moon Pies have moved into a Food Group I invented in my maturing years. It’s not one that makes me happy. 

It’s “Boy Food That Didn’t Grow Up While I Did.” I wish these foods had aged along with me, but instead, they remained young while I started getting mail from AARP and going to the bathroom three times a night. 

I want to like them. Want to look forward to them like I did when I was a kid and my taste buds and digestive tract didn’t know what was good for it. 

But in these more mature years, nostalgia and boyhood memory is easily trumped by things like handlebar fat and our old unwanted, rarely mentioned friend, constipation, or its bastard cousin, the-opposite-of-constipation. 

In our Boy Food That Didn’t Grow Up While I Did list, Moon Pies don’t bat leadoff, but they’re in the lineup. 

So is Vienna Sausage. A can or two and a sleeve of Saltines while on break from your summer job digging sewerage ditches was a welcome banquet. Shade. Water. Vienna Sausage. Welcoming and easy and filling but not too filling. Good times. 

I couldn’t even look at a Vienna Sausage now. 

They are in the same phylum as potted meat. The wrapper was white and the labeling was “Deviled Ham,” and a red devil with a pitchfork was the brand and packaging. Might still be; I haven’t looked for it since I signed on with a job that offered group insurance. 

Keep in mind that its street name was/is “potted meat.” Well … it’s potted. Does not have the same marketing vibe as the playful “melts in your mouth, not in your hands.”  

The most recent addition to the list is the youthful Sloppy Joe. There was a time when I could eat four and want more. That time died in the early 1980s. About once every five years I will try to eat one, get all excited, and then take the first bite. That first bite always reminds me that life is a struggle and that if we don’t learn from our mistakes, we are bound to repeat them. 

Do you know what was really good in the 1970s? A frozen chicken pot pie cooked for an hour on the stove. Always eat them with a peanut butter foldover. Did that two years ago and started crying when I had a moment of clarity and realized that my dietary life had come to that. Sordid.  

You make a homemade chicken pot pie and I’m the first in line, but my days with the little aluminum bake-at-450-for-60-minutes pie tin are over.  

Spoiled? or wiser? Or maybe less hungry. Who knows?  

All we know is that we’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’, you know that lovin’ feelin’ … It’s gone, gone, gone, baby, it’s gone. 

One food remains on the fence: SPAM. Once every fall, during an NFL game on television, I fry SPAM and eat it on white bread. It’s once a year, has to be during an NFL game, has to be white bread, and that’s it. I must have seen a tremendous Cowboys-Redskins game on a perfect Sunday afternoon in 1972 while eating SPAM, and my subconscious won’t let me forget it. No other explanation. 

Besides, SPAM helped win World War II for us; Eisenhower said so himself. Maybe that’s why my stomach tips a cap to it once a year. 

Contact Teddy at teddy@latech.edu or Twitter @MamaLuvsManning 

By Brad Dison

Millions of meteors and other space debris enter the Earth’s atmosphere daily.  Most of them are small and burn up before reaching the ground.  The ones that enter the atmosphere in the daylight hours usually go unnoticed.  Meteors which enter the atmosphere at night are more visible and are commonly called falling stars.  An average of 17 meteors per day reach the Earth’s surface, whether it be land or sea, at which time they are called meteorites. 

On November 30, 1954, one such meteor was traveling through space and heading towards Earth.  The meteor entered the atmosphere at a high rate of speed and began to burn.  The meteor was extremely hot and under immense pressure.  At about 12:45 p.m., when the meteor was about 40 miles up in the Earth’s atmosphere, it could no longer take the heat and pressure and exploded. 

34-year-old Ann Elizabeth Fowler “Hewlett” Hodges was enjoying a peaceful afternoon nap in a home she rented on the outskirts of Sylacauga, Alabama.  The day had been uneventful so far, and Mrs. Hodges expected the remainder of the day to be equally as lackluster.  As she slept, the 12-pound meteorite struck the home, tore a three-foot-wide hole through the roof of the living room, ricocheted off Mrs. Hodges’ husband’s console radio, and struck Mrs. Hodges on her arm and hip as she slept.  Even though it had reached a burning hot temperature as it passed through the atmosphere, by the time it reached Mrs. Hodges’ living room, it was “too cold to handle.”  The meteorite left Mrs. Hodges with substantial bruising, but no serious injuries.

Witnesses in three states reported seeing a “bright flash” followed by an explosion in the sky.   A resident of Smith’s Station, Alabama, about 90 miles southeast of Sylacauga, telephoned the Russell County military sheriff’s office and reported seeing the flash and hearing the explosion.  Like many others, the resident thought she had witnessed a mid-air airplane disaster.  Crews aboard two army helicopters from Fort Benning, Georgia, and several airplanes from Lawson Field began searching a 30-mile radius from the Chattahoochee River for the crash site.  After several hours of searching, the search party received reports from Maxwell Air Force Base near Montgomery of a possible meteorite striking a house at Sylacauga.  Searchers in Sylacauga, which included members of the national guard, the state police, reporters, and spectators, drove the backroads around Sylacauga.  They followed army helicopters from Maxwell Air Force Base and converged on Mrs. Hodges’ home.  

Newspapers reported in jest that “some meteorites” including the one that struck Mrs. Hodges’ “continue to travel with ‘great velocity’ after reaching the earth.  An air force helicopter crew took possession of the meteorite so it could be studied at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.  A few days later, the meteorite was flown to Washington, D.C.  Finally, after being in our nation’s capital for just two days, Mrs. Hodges’ attorney retrieved the meteorite and returned it to her.

Within days of its crash, interest in Mrs. Hodges and her meteorite soared.  The Hodges received nearly 100 offers for the meteorite.  The Dayton Art Institute offered $5,000 for the meteorite, the highest price at the time.  The Smithsonian Institute was interested in the object but was unwilling to pay more than $900 for it.  In the midst of the media hype, Mrs. Hodges appeared on an episode of the television game show “I’ve Got a Secret,” in which a panel tried to guess what her secret was.  Seeing how much interest there was in the meteor, the owner of the home Mrs. Hodges had rented sued Mrs. Hodges to take possession of the meteorite.  Mrs. Hodges and the landlord settled out of court and Mrs. Hodges retained ownership of the meteorite.  In 1955, Mrs. Hodges sold the meteorite to the Alabama Museum of Natural History at the University of Alabama where it and the console radio remain on display.

What are the odds of being struck by a meteorite?  Michael Reynolds, author of “Falling Stars: A Guide to Meteors and Meteorites,” said “you have a better chance of getting hit by a tornado and a bolt of lightning and a hurricane all at the same time.”  Although millions of meteors enter our atmosphere each day and an average of 17 reach the ground, Mrs. Hodges is the only person in recorded history to be injured by a meteorite. 

Sources:

1.     “Ann Elizabeth Fowler Hodges (1920-1972) – Find A Grave” www.findagrave.com. Accessed December 28, 2022. findagrave.com/memorial/43549421/ann-elizabeth-hodges.
2.    The Columbus Ledger, December 1, 1954, p.1.
3.    The Galion Inquirer, December 2, 1954, p.12.
4.    Dayton Daily News, December 7, 1954, p.7.
5.    Dayton Daily News, December 9, 1954, p.6.
6.    “First Person Injured by a Meteorite.” Guinness World Records. Accessed December 29, 2022. guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-person-injured-by-a-meteorite-.

BOM’s Many location donated items to the SARC for Christmas. The Arc of Sabine, also known as SARC, is a program for special needs adults in our area. Pictured left to right: BOM’s Tiffany Miller and Tonya Hall, Alexis Rainer, BOM’s Twyla Lovelady, Kayla Sepulvado, and Linda Guay.