Patrick O'Neill: Solitary Confinement
“I have been in solitary confinement for two weeks, following a 4-day stay in the hospital about 45 minutes away. While in the hospital, I was under armed guard (2 corrections officers at all times) who kept me in leg irons and chained to the bed 24-7.
The following column by Ted Vaden originally appeared in lastgaffe.com, an online blog for people in their retirement years.
I wrote to you recently about Patrick O’Neill, the Garner, NC, Catholic pacifist who is serving 14 months in federal prison for following his conscience. That is, he broke into a Naval base in Georgia and defaced a monument to nuclear warfare. The official sentence was conspiracy, trespassing and damage to government property.
Patrick since has written to me – a pencil-scrawled letter on yellow legal paper – to express gratitude for the people who have sent him letters of support after reading of his ordeal on this blog. He recounted a harrowing tale of his recent hospitalization after experiencing a heart flutter in his cellblock. I’ll let Patrick tell the story from here:
“I have been in solitary confinement for two weeks, following a 4-day stay in the hospital about 45 minutes away. While in the hospital, I was under armed guard (2 corrections officers at all times) who kept me in leg irons and chained to the bed 24-7. I was only out of the bed (always in leg irons) for brief tests. I was expected to use a handheld urinal instead of the toilet….
“The guards worked 8-12 hour shifts over the four days. (They basically ignored me, but one of them I became friends with.) I listened to their conversations and realized some of them were working overtime at close to $50 an hour, so the cost of guarding me for those 4 days was likely in the $5,000 to $10,000 range. Your tax dollars at work.
“I spent my birthday (March 27) in the so-called ‘Special Housing Unit,’ AKA ‘The Hole,’ and I may be in here for Easter as well. So this Lenten season is unlike any other I’ve ever experienced (harder than the year I did a juice-fast all 40 days for Peace in Iraq and lost 30 pounds.) I really do thank God daily for my suffering, but I do have my moments when I try not to think about the fact that I’ve now been in a 9x5-foot room for 13 days and counting without the door opening once. I did feel a little stir-crazy one night and paced and recited the Rosary and felt better. I’m not as tough as I used to be, that’s for sure.”
Patrick’s wife Mary told me that she finally had received a phone call from him on April 7 and that he had been released from solitary confinement. He had been placed there because of COVID. He still has not been vaccinated but was returned to his cellblock of more than 100 inmates. The disease reportedly has infected hundreds of inmates and staff at the Ohio federal prison complex where he is incarcerated.
In a recent letter to supporters, Patrick wrote, “Some of the men in this room have been here for more than 10 years, many have 10 years to go! And almost all for charges that warranted placement in a ‘low security’ prison that has cubicles instead of cells. That means the Bureau of Prisons finds all the men in Elkton are low risk for any kind of violence, which begs the question – Why are they here? Why didn’t they get compassionate home confinement due to Covid? Why didn’t they get some alternative sentence to years in prison? Answer: because the U.S. Prison-Industrial Complex is a self-perpetuating institution that employs thousands of people doing unnecessary jobs, such as watching TV in Patrick’s hospital room.”
Patrick O’Neill is age 65. He and his wife Mary are the parents of eight children and are grandparents. He will complete his prison term in March of 2022 – maybe by Christmas, if gets out on good behavior.
Patrick O'Neill: A Birthday Behind Bars
Next Saturday, March 27, Patrick turns 65. He will observe his birthday living in a prison cellblock at the Oakton Federal Correction Institute in Lisbon, Ohio, where he is serving a 14-month sentence for breaking into a U.S. Navy base to protest nuclear weapons.
The following column by Ted Vaden originally appeared in lastgaffe.com, an online blog for people in their retirement years.
I would like to tell you about my friend Patrick O’Neill.
Patrick and his wife Mary live in Garner, where they operate a Catholic relief shelter for women and children in crisis. The couple raised 8 children of their own there, and they now are proud grandparents.
Next Saturday, March 27, Patrick turns 65. He will observe his birthday living in a prison cellblock at the Oakton Federal Correction Institute in Lisbon, Ohio, where he is serving a 14-month sentence for breaking into a U.S. Navy base to protest nuclear weapons.
Patrick is a man of unimaginable faith and adherence to his convictions. A longtime pacifist, he is one of the so-called Kings Bay Plowshares 7, a group of peace activists who on April 4, 2018, cut through a security fence and slipped into the King’s Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Mary’s, Ga. King’s Bay is the world’s largest nuclear sub facility, where six Trident submarines bearing nuclear-tipped missiles are berthed.
The group of activists chose the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to protest the nuclear weapons stored at King’s Bay. Patrick was apprehended banging on a monument to nuclear warfare with a hammer made of melted-down guns.
The seven protestors, all Catholic pacifists, were convicted in 2019 in federal court in Georgia, on charges of conspiracy, trespassing and damage to government property. They pleaded not guilty, saying they had entered the base not to commit a crime but to prevent one - “omnicide,” from nuclear warfare. They were sentenced last fall to terms ranging up to 33 months. Patrick was sentenced to 14 months and entered the Ohio prison on Jan. 14. With time served and good behavior, he could be released in 10 months.
Even though Patrick is in a low-security facility, his incarceration has been anything but easy. First, there is the threat of COVID-19 infection. Hundreds of inmates and staff in the Elkton facility have been infected, and nine inmates have died of COVID. A federal judge denied Patrick’s request to delay the start of his sentence until vaccines would be available for inmates.
Because of the infection, the prison is in lockdown, which means prisoners cannot receive visitors and are confined to their cellblock. “My block includes a range of 110-120 men living in a room with bodies always in constant motion as men move about looking to pass time in meaningful ways,” he wrote in a recent letter to supporters. “Many guys speak too loudly and there’s a public address system where guards make shrieking, sometimes shocking announcements throughout the day. The sensory overload is relentless, something akin to low-level torture.”
Patrick reports that many of the inmates are in prison for sex offenses – not for touching children or for manufacturing porn, but for viewing or sharing it on computers. They receive little or no rehabilitation and are treated by guards and other inmates as the lowest caste in prison society.
It is also a race-reversal society.
“Here, in an ironic reversal of fortune, whites are second-class citizens, so I have to learn and follow the rules, rules which are made by the inmates,” he writes. “I see it as my required affirmative action.”
Patrick is an indefatigable spirit. I first came to know him 28 years ago, when he was a reporter at The Chapel Hill News, where I was editor. He covered UNC like a bloodhound, producing such scoops as the story that 50 coaches and Ram’s Club officials were receiving free loaner cars from 45 auto dealers in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. Among the beneficiaries were basketball coach Dean Smith (a Cadillac Sedan de Ville) and former star Phil Ford. The dealers were made members of the Rams Club and given free season’s tickets to football and basketball games.
Within a month after Patrick’s stories appeared, UNC cancelled the program.
Another Patrick story was about cars with Rams Club stickers being allowed to park in fire lanes outside Kenan Stadium on football Saturdays. Shortly after, then-Athletics Director John Swofford (now ACC Commissioner) encountered me on campus to ask why the newspaper was so negative about the athletics program. I told Swofford we were just covering the news and told Patrick to keep doing his job – which was not necessary to tell him.
Over the years, Patrick has continued as a freelance journalist, but he has devoted himself foremost to his Catholic activism protesting nuclear arms, the death penalty, racial injustice and mistreatment of immigrants. In his peace work, all in the form of nonviolent protest, he has served more than two years in jail and prison, even before this current term.
After Patrick was sentenced last October, he emerged from the courthouse with an upbeat attitude. The judge, moved by testimony from Patrick’s children and others, gave him a lesser sentence than the 26 months allowed by law.
He said then: “I’m pleased with the outcome. I’m sad that I’m going to be away from my family for quite a while, but I think that the purpose of the Kings Bay Plowshares was to be willing to face the possibility of redemptive suffering, and so it is. It’s not the most severe thing. It’s certainly something that I can tolerate.”
In prison, not surprisingly, he has been an advocate for his fellow inmates, seeking better treatment and more opportunity for pastoral care. He says he sees his sacrifice as a blessing:
“I pray in gratitude each morning for redemptive suffering and humility. The unpleasantness of solitary is also a gift, as I experience a small taste of the suffering that most human beings face every day all over the world. I hope to feel a little more empathy for my sisters and brothers who barely survive in the world.”
Only Patrick O’Neill would see forced isolation in a COVID-invested prison as a gift.
Happy Birthday, Patrick. Happy Easter.
1968: School Integration Comes to Garner - Part 2: Teacher Perspectives
One largely characterizes integration as unproblematic, but judges it that way because of the lack of blatant conflict. The other recalls rallying black teachers together to support one another against a racist backdrop, and emphasizes the importance of acknowledging both the good and the bad.
Garner High Integration’s Impact on Teachers
BY MARGARET DAMGHANI
Part two of the series on the year of Garner High School’s integration focuses on the perspectives of the teachers. Two teachers, Mary Yarborough and Margie Hall shared their memories of the time. (Find Part 1: 1968: School Integration Comes to Garner - Principal Wayne Bare HERE)
Two local teachers, both transferring to the new Garner High from the school on Powell Drive and teaching there for three decades, are able to shed light on a complicated reality.
One largely characterizes integration as unproblematic, but judges it that way because of the lack of blatant conflict. The other recalls rallying black teachers together to support one another against a racist backdrop, and emphasizes the importance of acknowledging both the good and the bad.
Most staff undoubtedly believed in the aims of Wayne Bare and Earnest Sanders in regards to wanting an untroubled integration process, if nothing else, while dealing with the hardships of an unfinished school. None of the teachers appear to have opposed the changes being made openly, though a few quietly disagreed or showed their political views in regards to segregation outside of school.
Coming Together: Apprehension. Hope. Reality.
Mary Yarborough
“It was at this time that all of us, principal, teachers, students, custodial staff, and parents in the community pulled together to make our opening a success. The atmosphere was one of excitement and fear for two schools, one black and one white, merging together as one in 1968,” said Mary Yarborough. “We had issues just like any other school in Wake County, but we had an educated and caring principal who tried not to use prejudiced practices and decisions in solving problems.”
Yarborough was there full-time until 1997 and worked with Bare for one year when Garner High was still on Powell Drive.
Despite the concerted efforts of so many at Garner High that year, entrenched attitudes surrounding segregation and race would rear their ugly heads in situations less controllable than picking a new mascot or school colors. Teachers interacted with the entire community; students, parents, each other and administration, and staff from neighboring schools. These would prove to all be relationships affected by integration.
Extra Challenges for Black Teachers
One stubborn racist belief that black teachers were not as smart as white teachers cropped up in parent-teacher relations.
“Black teachers were sometimes confronted by prominent parents in the community about their child not receiving an A or B in their class. Some white students felt that a black teacher was not smart enough to teach them so they didn’t work as hard for an A or B in that teacher’s class,” Yarborough said. “I had a few like that. But I was always prepared for that kind of conference with parents by keeping a folder of every graded work and required work in a folder for each student.”
Yarborough took on an unofficial leadership role when it came to supporting the other black teachers at the school in those first years, sometimes getting 20 or so people together for socials. There were about 100 teachers in all.
“I wanted to let them know that I was always backing them in terms of them being included, them being heard, and them being not stepped on like they were nothing. They knew they could come to Mary Yarborough and sit and talk to me about it, and try to see both sides, and that’s the way we made it. We weren’t working against anybody, we just wanted to be treated fairly,” she said. “I think the reason I was successful at what I did is people thought that I was fair, that I cared about people. I brought that from my roots. Every bit of it.”
Black teachers had a harder time getting new resources, which seemed to generally go to the white teachers, she said. At times they were a listening ear for their black students who were subject to racist treatment by white students, whether or not it was on school grounds, and the two school counselors helped both parents and students wrestle with their differences in treatment.
“Teachers got along decently. There were issues over white teachers getting the best equipment for advanced classes and teachers of beginner classes had to wait for a couple of years for new equipment. As usual, blacks had to wait most of the time, especially in the vocational education classes,” said Yarborough. “We socialized in cliques a lot of times. You didn’t hear a lot of name calling or use of vulgar language unless you walked up on a conversation that you were not supposed to hear.”
Challenging Times & Tough Decisions
Margie Hall taught for two years at the school on Powell Drive before integration and taught Health Occupations. She doesn’t remember tension or specific conflicts between teachers, but says not all teachers agreed with some of Bare’s decisions.
Principal Wayne Bare
“I think some of them didn’t agree with it. There were a few of them that I didn’t agree with. You got to be flexible and understand where they are coming from, and I think we did that,” Hall said, of the compromises made, adding that Bare’s communication skills paved the way for the teachers’ success. He explained the changes and his reasoning clearly, regardless of how individuals may have felt about decisions.
“He was a tremendous leader. He had that talent, and that’s what made it work. I give him basically all the credit for just great leadership,” Hall said.
Hall also doesn’t remember witnessing any racist incidents happening in her particular class and didn’t approach anything differently after integration. She wonders if her background as a nurse and growing up on a farm made her more comfortable with her black students at a time when fellow white teachers may never have spent any time with anyone of a different race before, and she remembers a string of property damage and downed mailboxes targeting black residents in Garner some time before integration.
“I didn’t really have any problems. I just did what I thought was right. I just treated everybody the same. That’s what people want anyway. People just want to be treated fairly, when you get down to it,” Hall said. “I think that was the answer to all of it.”
Standing up together for Staff: Coach James Farris
Outside the walls of Garner High, it became necessary to stand up for black coaches, at least on one well-known occasion.
After the well-qualified James Farris from the Consolidated School was appointed basketball and golf coach despite some complaints, he faced discrimination when trying to coach his team, sometimes not allowed to get off of the bus during games.
“There were disputes and hard feelings among coaches and some parents in sports from both schools. White head coaches wanted to remain as head coaches and felt comfortable with black coaches being assistant coaches. There was the same feeling among administrators. However, the late James Farris, a black coach, was a pioneer in sports at Garner Senior High School,” Yarborough said. “He worked very hard to become the head coach of the boy’s basketball team and head coach of the boys golf team. He wasn’t allowed to be on the golf course during a tournament with his players.”
Because of the athletic division Garner High was in, the teams played schools along the Virginia border, as well as Durham and Chapel Hill. Bare was a part of an administrative organization for the division that consisted of coaches and school administration, so he decided to look for support there.
“I called a person at Chapel Hill High School. ‘This is the situation we’re in, and I’m looking for a sympathetic ear from somebody who attends these conference meetings’,” Bare said, adding that he doesn’t believe there were any other black coaches in the entire division at that time. “He was responsive to that. He and I in essence set the tone. We got over that in just a matter of months.”
Paving the way for the future:
Even Positive Progress is never perfect
The guiding principles of Garner High’s integration and situations in which leadership chose to advocate for black teachers were unique for the time period, yet it’s also clear that prevailing attitudes could not be overcome solely by the manner of Garner’s integration.
“There were a lot of things the black teachers especially knew weren’t going right, but we just didn’t push the button,” Yarborough said. “It was not something that kept us from functioning and being able to get the best we could out of what we had on campus, that includes the teachers and students. We still tried to do our best when it came to Garner Senior High getting things done.”
These truths make it hard to define what impact Garner’s unique integration plan had on the working life of Garner High’s staff in the 1968-69 school year, but unsurprisingly, the experience of the time period was different, depending on whether one was black or white.
1968: School Integration Comes to Garner - Part 1: Principal Wayne Bare
“We haven’t overcome all these things yet, which is disappointing,”
— Wayne Bare
Wayne Bare at his home in 2020, holding the first Garner High School yearbook.
BY MARGARET DAMGHANI
The 1968-69 school year was not business as usual for 11th and 12th graders at Garner High, who were starting the year in a newly built school, with a new principal and a new vice principal. A new mascot, and new school colors. Two school counselors instead of one and for athletes, new teammates.
1968 was the year Garner’s high school integrated, and unlike in most places, a group of student ambassadors and administrators took steps to make the identity of the new Garner High representative of all students, and the black and white schools from which they’d be transferring.
1968: Still Separate. Still Unequal.
In 1968, North Carolina schools were still nearly entirely segregated, and Garner hadn’t been any quicker to embrace integration than the rest of the state. Nearly 15 years after school segregation was ruled unconstitutional, school systems were relying on Freedom of Choice programs, allowing for token amounts of black students to apply to white schools, rather than committing to or believing in the importance of integration.
“We haven’t overcome all these things yet, which is disappointing,” — Wayne Bare
Garner Consolidated School (now the site of East Garner Middle School), served every grade level for black students.
Six other elementary schools and a junior high existed, as well as what is now North Garner Middle School, serving ninth through 12th grades, among the traditional white schools.
Often when school systems integrated, white schools only did so after federal mandate, forced to enroll black students while black schools were shuttered and closed down, with little to no thought given to the sentiments nor impact black students and the black community.
Garner’s New Way Forward
The efforts at a thought-out integration process in Garner, at least at the high school, were successful enough that Principal Wayne Bare and Garner High are referenced in a scholarly article by J. Michael McElreath contrasting Garner with Chapel Hill, which struggled with years of tensions after Lincoln High was unceremoniously closed and the black students joined the white students at Chapel Hill High School.
Wayne Bare.
“During that time we were fully aware that there were people in the majority group, that loosely translates to the Caucasians, who weren't excited about this because they had the perception that desegregating schools, and bringing children of whatever race they happened to be all into one school would dilute the academic progress of the school. In particular, their children."
Wayne Bare, at the time principal of the old Garner High, began meeting with acting principal of Garner Consolidated Earnest Sanders, while the new school was under construction, to discuss how to best approach integration. Bare would become Principal of the new high school, and Sanders would become Assistant Principal, developing close, positive relationships with their students. Both have been spoken highly of by students in the community.
“As we were preparing for that year, we were attempting to lay the groundwork for getting to know people and what they were accustomed to at least in the school culture, from each side of that,” Bare said. A variety of questions had to be considered. What about the different styles of cheerleading? What if the prom queen and king are different races and how will the community react?”
Students Lead The Way
In early 1968 while Garner High was being constructed, they arranged for rising 11th and 12th graders, the only grades the high school would house at first, to meet and discuss student activities and spend time at each other’s schools.
Student input was involved in choosing a new mascot, merging school colors, ensuring there would be both black and white cheerleaders, and drafting a student council constitution that said that the President and Vice President should be of different races, to represent the student body fairly.
“That is credit if I have any,” Bare said, of the student advisory groups. While he is quick to downplay the credit he receives for Garner being seen as an example of where integration went well, there were dozens of little decisions impacted by integration to be made before and after the school opened.
Applying The Lessons
Wayne Bare brought his experience at Forsyth County schools, where he had been an assistant principal. During his time there, a smaller county school merged with a larger city school, and he applied what he learned to the issue of integration.
Bare said he faced an “unbelievable amount of skepticism and fear” from the smaller county school that coaches and others would be completely looked over in favor of the city school.
That brought home the importance of bringing teachers and coaches from both schools and ignoring some prominent members of the Garner community that voiced opposition to some of the decisions, notably the hiring of the well-liked James Farris as the basketball coach.
In an effort to make the students and parents feel more secure, Bare fought for the resources to have two school counselors, Christine Toole and Betty Knox.
“I stretched things a lot money wise and was able to eventually get agreement from the superintendent’s office. We twisted as much arms as we had leverage to do,” Bare said. “The counselor [Toole] exercised a certain amount of disciplinary guidance because not only did she know the students that had come from Garner Consolidated, she knew their parents and might have taught them. I think the fact we had the two counselors there was as much of a positive thing as we could have done.”
Yearbook Dedication
“This is my bragging page. They dedicated the first yearbook to me, and that’s the dedication,” Bare said.
Pages 4 and 5 of the yearbook read:
Happiness is not an easy thing. You must be willing to work for it and to shape it for yourself. Happiness is not dependent upon complete freedom from pain, but the ability to transmute pain into power. The human self is not a gift; it is an achievement. The same is true of happiness, for it is not a static reality sprung full blown. Rather, happiness is a painfully earned progress past lions in the way, a running battle, a continuing progress. Happiness is not something that comes upon from without, but is it is something that has its fountainhead in the heart.
It is knowledge that give man a clear, conscious view of his own opinions and judgement, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them, and a force in urging them. It teaches him to see things as they, to go right to the point, to disentangle a skein of thought, to detect what is sophisticated, and to discard what is irrelevant. To have knowledge — broad, deep knowledge — is to know true ends from false and lofty things from low. To know the thoughts and deeds that have marked man’s progress is to feel the great heart-throbs of humanity through the centuries.
Change Brings Success and Tumult
Perhaps one measure of the initial success of integration could be in the amount of incidents that required intervention.
“That's a point of pride. We made zero calls to the law enforcement or our central office about any kind of disruption at school,” Bare said. “I’m not dumb enough to tell you that there were never any problems. But there was never anything that would be described as a mob fight or any type of disruption in the building.”
When no black students made the cheerleading team, Bare intervened and went back to the wishes of the student ambassadors, administratively adding one of the two black students that had tried out.
“In my opinion, there is no group of students other than possibly some athletic teams where the school representation is more visible, to the community, to people in other communities,” he said. “And on the year where we have just brought two groups of students together, what message does it send about the nature of our school not to have a single minority? We had to have some representation.”
Right Man. Right Time. Right Place.
Bare doesn’t indulge much in reflecting on if their decisions during integration and building a new school had much impact beyond the immediate, nor does he speak much about the implications of those actions in a turbulent time period in which many white people accepted segregation as reasonable.
“We haven’t overcome all these things yet, which is disappointing,” Bare said.
He also says they didn’t waste time looking at how integration was going anywhere else.
“We were attempting to have equal opportunity in school events,” Bare said. “I don’t know that I made a judgment on it being radical, but it probably was. I did it from the standpoint of caring.”
All of these decisions were complicated by the fact that while all this was happening, Garner High’s construction wasn’t completed before the first day of school. But the community banded together and got the school ready enough for classes to start.
The lessons were yet to come.
To be continued in Part 2
A theatrical interpretation of Garner High’s integration can be watched below
The Story of Our Storyteller: Garner's Tim Stevens Inducted into North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame
Life-long Garner resident Tim Stevens is one of twelve people to be honored later this year with induction into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, paying tribute to his 48-year career as a high school sports writer and editor for the Raleigh Times and later the News and Observer.
BY MARGARET DAMGHANI
Tim Stevens vividly remembers the December night over 30 years ago when Garner became a ghost town. There were only 12,000 residents of Garner at the time, yet 10,000 people traveled from this area to Charlotte to cheer Garner High’s football team on for Championship game. When a media team came to Garner that night to interview local residents, none could be found. Signs on the front of businesses said they were closed.
There are too many highlights of his five-decades long career in sports writing to mention, but he relates the story of the 1987 Championship Win by Garner High with a mix of fondness and pride that seems to portray his way of thinking about his work.
“It had almost nothing to do with football. It was really about community.”
A life-long Garner resident, Stevens is one of twelve people to be honored later this year with induction into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, paying tribute to his 48-year career as a high school sports writer and editor for the Raleigh Times and later the News and Observer. During that time, he tirelessly covered all types of high school sports and anything else that he was moved to write about; the socioeconomics of high school athletics, concussions, transgender athletes, and more.
“I’m a storyteller. I tell stories in plays. I tell stories in sports. I’m not much of a sports fan at all. I’m a people fan.”
It’s clear he enjoyed the time he spent as a sportswriter, however, though not for the fame and fortune many associate with the highly publicized arena of college and professional athletics, or even the many other honors he’s received along the way. It’s the values that sports instill in young people that draw him to it; accountability, consequences and a sense of community. It’s because sports and high school work together to make better people.
“It doesn’t affect my life who wins the Super Bowl. But what is taught in high school does. I came to the realization high school is more important than anything,” Stevens said. “I got to write about all these diverse things. I got to write about society through the lens of young people. I got to write nice things about kids that may not have nice things being said to them.”
He is honored, of course, to be recognized in the Hall of Fame for his body of work, which includes other accomplishments like co-authoring the first North Carolina High School Records Book, along with some of the giants he grew up watching.
“I’m in there with people I grew up dreaming about, I can truthfully say I’m the most unathletic person in the NC Hall of Fame.”
Garner’s history and future are both important to Stevens. His family has been in the area for 200 years, he says, and long-time Garner residents may remember his mother Evelyn Stevens as an editor of the weekly Garner News that ended in 2013, and his father as Town Council member James R. Stevens. His son, one of three children, teaches and coaches at Garner Magnet High School.
Retired from the News and Observer in 2015, Stevens spends his time on his work at Aversboro Road Baptist Church and enriching the lives of Garner residents through his plays focusing on Garner’s history, such as the one he wrote about that 1987 win. He has written plays on the civil war, WWII, integration, and the Vietnam War, all focusing on Garner’s specific people and contributions.
The Wall that Heals will on display at Garner’s Lake Benson Park from April 16 to April 19, 2020.
He brings entertainment to the area with projects like the long-running Broadway Voices series. Most recently, he set his sights on successfully bringing to Garner the Wall That Heals, a traveling replica of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C.
Stevens has also been inducted into the National High School Hall of Fame, the North Carolina High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame, the Garner High Hall of Fame, and the Broughton High Hall of Fame. He was honored in 2015 with the annual James R. Stevens Service to Garner Award, an award named after his late father.
“They’re all different but they all mean as much to you,” Stevens said, of the many recognitions he has collected over the years.
NCSHOF 2020 Inductees
A brief biography of each 2020 inductee follows; deceased inductees being inducted posthumously are indicated by an asterisk:
Debbie Antonelli – Entering her 30th season as a full-time broadcaster for ESPN, Antonelli is one of the best-known female college and professional women’s basketball television analysts in America today. An Emmy Award winner and Gracie Award winner for broadcasting, she is also known for her on-air commentary for men’s basketball and in 2017, Antonelli became the first woman in 22 years to be a color analyst during the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.
Tyrone “Muggsy” Bogues – After a standout career at Wake Forest, the 5-foot-3 Bogues defied the odds and played 14 years in the NBA. He remains the shortest player in NBA history. A first-team All-ACC selection as a senior, he led the ACC in both assists and steals in 1985, 1986 and 1987 and was the 12th overall selection in the 1987 NBA Draft. Bogues currently ranks 23rd in NBA history with 6,726 career assists and 20th in assists per game (7.6).
Mack Brown – After recently completing his 11th season as head football coach at the University of North Carolina, Brown has compiled a record of 244-123-1 (.664) in his tenure as a head coach at the FBS level. His 244 career victories rank 10th on the all-time list and are the most among active coaches. A two-time national coach of the Year (2005 & 2008), Brown is 13-8 in post-season bowl games with his 2005 Texas team winning the national championship with a 41-38 win over USC.
Dennis Craddock* – One of the most successful coaches in Atlantic Coast Conference history, Craddock coached the men’s and women’s cross country and track and field teams at the University of North Carolina for 27 years, winning 45 conference championships, more than any coach in any sport in the history of the league. He was named ACC Coach of the Year 31 times and 25 of his athletes won 38 NCAA titles while 19 of his stars competed in the Olympics winning five gold and two bronze medals.
Dr. Charles Kernodle – The 102-year-old Kernodle has been the Burlington Williams High School football team doctor more than 60 years. He has lived in Burlington since 1949 and has missed only a few home or away games during that time. The football field at Williams High was named in his honor on his 90th birthday in 2007. In addition to his duties at Williams, he also helped with the football and basketball teams at Elon University.
Mac Morris – A member of the NCHSAA Hall of Fame and the co-executive director of the North Carolina Coaches Association, Morris served as the head basketball coach at Greensboro’s Page High School for 25 years and compiled a 456-151 (.751) record, that included state 4-A titles in 1979, 1983 and 1990. Both his 1983 and his 1990 teams were undefeated at 26-0 and 31-0, respectively. The 1983 team ranked second nationally by USA Today and he was named the AP Coach of the Year.
Trot Nixon - A two-sport star at New Hanover High in Wilmington, Nixon became a standout baseball player with the Boston Red Sox. As a high school senior, he was named the North Carolina player of the year in both football and baseball and was named Baseball America’s national player of the year. A right fielder, Nixon hit .274 in a 12-year major league career with 137 home runs and 555 RBIs. In 42 post-season games, Nixon hit .283 with six home runs and 25 RBIs.
Julius Peppers – One of the most celebrated players in pro football history, Peppers finished his 17-year career with 724 tackles, including 159.5 sacks – the fourth-best mark in NFL history. His 266 games played are a record for a defensive lineman and his 13 blocked kicks are the second most ever in the NFL, as are his 51 forced fumbles. At the University of North Carolina, he led the nation in sacks in 2000 with 15. A unanimous All-America in 2001, he also won the Chuck Bednarik Award as the nation’s best defensive player and the Lombardi Award as the best collegiate lineman.
Bobby Purcell - The Executive Director of the Wolfpack Club. Purcell has served in a number of capacities since joining the N.C. State athletics department staff in 1981. He served as an assistant football coach and recruiting coordinator under Monte Kiffin, Tom Reed, and Dick Sheridan. At the Wolfpack Club he has overseen the construction of the Murphy Football Center and Vaughn Towers as well as the funding of nearly 300 student-athlete scholarships annually.
Judy Rose - The former Director of Athletics for 28 years at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Rose became the third female to serve as the athletic director of an NCAA Division I program when she accepted the position in 1990. In 1999-2000, she became the first female to serve on the prestigious NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee. Chief among her accomplishments with the university was the overall growth of the 49ers athletics department, culminating with the unveiling of the school’s football program in 2013.
Tim Stevens - One of six North Carolinians in the National High School Hall of Fame, Stevens built a national reputation for his reporting of high school athletics. He covered high school sports for The Raleigh Times and The Raleigh News & Observer for 48 years, winning numerous national awards. Named as one of the top 10 sports reporters in the country by the AP Sports Editors, Stevens is a member of the NCHSAA Hall of Fame and its media award is named in his honor.
Donnell Woolford – A three-sport star at Fayetteville’s Douglas Byrd High School, Woolford graduated from Clemson University, where he earned All-ACC and All-American honors twice. A first-round draft pick of the Chicago Bears in 1989 and a Pro Bowl honoree in 1993, Woolford started every game from 1989-1996 and ranks third in Bears history with 32 career interceptions. A Graduate Assistant Coach at Clemson in 2016, he was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame in 2005.