"Football is like life - it requires perseverance, self-denial, hard work, sacrifice, dedication and respect for authority." ---Vince Lombardi
Bogalusa native Don Spiers was blessed with a blend of all six qualities. Sailing through eighth grade at Bogalusa Junior High School, situated on the northern part of the Bogalusa High School "BHS" campus, he began BHS as a thirteen-year-old freshman. Deftly describing football in the 1940s in his autobiography "The Boy from Bogalusa," Don noted that there were two separate high schools. The White people went to Bogalusa High School "BHS," on the north side of Bogalusa, and the Black people attended Central Memorial High School, on the south side of town. This is the way it was, prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Don's age was disadvantageous as a Junior Varsity Lumberjack (for ninth and tenth graders) as many of his teammates had started first grade a year late. And some of them had failed a year of school. Hence, Don was thirteen while his peers were fifteen. Yet, he kept his nose to the grindstone. And he was popular, with pocket change for sodas - cokes and root beers - at recess and a 17-inch Admiral black and white television set, the first in Richardsontown, at home.
And fortunately, he possessed a silver football pendant, engraved with a black B - it was fashionable, with all the Bogalusa girls wearing them. Earning the necklace as a football letterman, Don learned its true value as a rising sophomore. Glimpsing Georgia Garris, a beauty who hailed from Columbia, Mississippi, twirling the baton on her front lawn on Main Street in Bogalusa, it was coup de foudre - love at first sight. With Georgia being pursued by other suitors in Richardsontown, that silver and black football necklace, which Don gifted her, pretty much sealed the deal. He reflected, "…[M]y bench-warming nights and dummy-holding days paid off…big time!!"
The daughter of adoptive parents George and Ethel Garris, Georgia was visiting family in Bogalusa. She stayed and started ninth grade at BHS where Don was a sophomore and a star Junior Varsity Lumberjack running back, written up weekly in the newspaper. And the icing on the cake, his brother Glynn bought him his first wheels, a white 1948 Kaiser automobile from Lindsley-Feiber Motor Company. Times were good.
Fortune continued to smile on young Don when the next year he made the varsity BHS team, starting as halfback. As I often say and Mr. Don wrote, "Timing is everything!" In the fall of 1953, he was selected Captain for his second Lumberjack Varsity home game - a dream come true. And while Sid Stewart and Ed Cassidy had earned the award for their superior defensive play, Don was named Washington Parish Player of the Week following his outstanding offensive performance in the Baker game. Legendary writer and publisher Lou Major offered a vivid description in his "Bogalusa Daily News" column:
"The youngster, who did some fancy running for the Junior Jacks in 1952, came into his own in the Baker game. In addition to scoring three touchdowns, he teamed with Harlan Irvine at half-back to keep the Baker defense off guard all night.
The finest run from scrimmage in the game was turned in by Spiers, a 30-yard touchdown run which (illegible word but "which" is my best guess) left Baker fans agog. The boy took off around left end and picked up several fine blocks, but was faced by at least three Baker secondary men near the sideline. Showing the same broken field running form he showed with the JJ's last year for Murphy Corkern, Spiers cut back to his right and streaked past the safety man spinning and churning his legs up and down like pistons."
But Georgia was back in Columbia, forty miles away, which for teenagers might as well have been a million. In her absence, Don commenced working part-time at Sutherland and Welch Hardware and Sporting Goods store and focused on football, earning the nickname "Killer" which has endured in Bogalusa. The moniker came courtesy of the largest player on the team, 186-pound tackle Wayne "Gator" Bond and Coach Sigrest who in a 1953 Wednesday afternoon practice drill hollered, "Get ready, Gator, here comes the Killer again!"
Mr. Don detailed some of the 1953 Lumberjack nicknames, "From left end, to right end, the linemen were "Big End" Hemphill, "Crow" Stewart, "Mike" Stupka, "Sweet-Pea" Barlow, "Blind Ed" Cassidy, "Gator" Bond, and "Possum" New. The quarterback was "Artie" Steinweinder, the Left Halfback, "Briar" Irvine, Fullback, "Butch" LeBlance, and right halfback, "Killer" Spiers."
By season's end, sweethearts Don and Georgia had reunited, following the BHS game in Columbia. At game's end, she - the Columbia High School baton twirling cheerleader - marched out on the field to greet "Killer" Spiers. Lumberjack Number 21, fleet of foot, had scored two touchdowns - taking it to the house for the opposition. Thereafter, the two became inseparable, traversing forty miles to court. It didn't hurt that Don's parents and sisters loved her.
But what did hurt was Don's knee, in no small part because he suffered a severe, deleterious injury in the last game of the 1953 season, effectively ending his football career. Yet during his time on the gridiron, he played against some luminaries - Billy Cannon with Istrouma High School in Baton Rouge and halfback Jimmy Taylor with Baton Rouge High School. And Killer played with four of the 1959 LSU Championship team linemen who were Bogalusa Lumberjacks. He struggled to play his senior year with a steel knee brace, but the damage was done.
•Stay tuned for next week's column, which features Don Spiers as he enters marriage, the military, and the fire department - more Bogalusa history.
