SUGAR RAY ROBINSON

SUGAR RAY ROBINSON
Dublin's World Champion

"Sugar Ray" Robinson, a world champion boxer whose real name was Walker Smith, Jr., called many places home. Montgomery County, Wheeler County and Laurens County along with New York and California were all home to Ray at different times during his lifetime. Many people don't realize that he was a native of Georgia. As a result, Robinson is not a member of the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame. Ray's parents, Walker Smith and Lula Hurst, lived in Laurens County and were married here on February 20, 1916. His father was born near Rentz and grew up on the Peterson place south of Ailey. His mother's family roots were on the Hurst plantation in Washington County.

Ray Robinson recounted in his biography that his father, Walker Smith, farmed a small plot of ground, earning about forty dollars a month raising cotton, corn, and peas. In 1920 his brother in law, Herman Hayes, invited the elder Smith to come to Detroit, Michigan to seek a better living. Walker Smith received his first weekly paycheck in the amount of sixty dollars. It did not take long for Mr. Smith to figure out where he needed to work. The family stayed behind until Mr. Smith could establish a home. "Sugar Ray" recounts the trip that his mother, his sisters, and he took from Dublin to Detroit. Sugar Ray didn't seem to remember that he was born in Ailey, Montgomery County, Georgia. When he was seeking his birth certificate for medicare coverage, he found it in the Probate Court of Montgomery County. The house where he was born still stands across the railroad from the Thompson Lumber Company sawmill.

Sugar Ray's parents had their share of marital problems. At the age of six Ray was sent back south after living all but the first of his pre-school years in Detroit. He lived with his maternal grandparents near Glenwood in Wheeler County, just below the Laurens County line. He attended school there. He stayed in Dublin at times with his mother and grandmother before going north in the early 1930s.

Robinson's maternal grandmother, Anna Hurst, lived in a house at 518 South Jefferson Street in Dublin. Laurens County sold the house for taxes in 1935. Robinson's aunt, Maud Ree Hurst, purchased the house in 1938. Robinson fondly remembered the times he spent with his uncle Herschel "J.B." Hurst at the cotton market in Dublin. Uncle J.B. spent a lot of time with Junior buying him a boxes of Cracker Jacks on their trips in to town on Saturdays. The family operated a store next to their home on South Jefferson Street. J.B. and his brother Gus were mechanics in Dublin. Willie Lee Wells, another aunt, was slain by her husband Felix Wells in 1941.

As a boy, Ray was always looking for a fight. His aunt Maud Ree Hurst Foster remembered him saying "I want to find me some body to beat up!" Ray idolized his Aunt Maud Ree and tried his best to be like her. The Hursts have a strong sense of family. Many members of the Hurst family and related families still live in Laurens County.

Maud Ree Hurst Foster, a delightful lady, has returned home to Dublin. Anna Hurst loved to watch Ray dance. She often asked Ray "come on 'Sugar', dance for me." The pet name stuck with the young man for the rest of his life. One day Sugar Ray brought one of his friends with him when he stopped in Dublin to see his grandmamma. That friend was a pretty fair boxer himself. Imagine the sight. There was Anna Hurst standing on her front porch asking Sugar Ray Robinson and Joe Louis, two of the greatest boxers ever, to dance for her. Early in his boxing career Robinson, was known as "Harlem's Dancing Dynamite and the Pride of Harlem."

Walker Smith, Jr. took the name "Sugar Ray" Robinson as an amateur boxer. As an amateur Ray won New York City titles in 1939 and 1940 with a career record of 69 knockouts, 40 of which were in the first round, in a total of 85 matches. Robinson's first professional fight was a 2nd round knockout of Joe Echeverria on October 4, 1940. He won his first 40 fights before losing to the legendary Jake LaMotta in February 1943. From then on Robinson was undefeated for over eight years. On December 20, 1946, Robinson won the World Welterweight Championship over Tommy Bell. Sugar Ray successfully defended his title five times. Sugar Ray defeated Jake LaMotta for the World Middleweight championship. That summer he lost the title to Randy Turpin in only his second professional loss in the ring. Ray took the title back in a rematch. Ray defeated Carl Olson and knocked out the great Rocky Graziano in his title defenses. He was knocked out for the first time in his career by Joey Maxim on June 25, 1952.

Sugar Ray retired after the Maxim fight, but returned to the ring on November 29, 1954. On December 9, 1955 he defeated Bobo Olson to regain the Middleweight title. After defeating Olson in a rematch in 1956, Robinson lost the title once again, this time to Gene Fullmer on January 2, 1957. Five months later, Robinson won the Middleweight title for the fourth time in a rematch with Fullmer. He lost the world title again in September of 1957, this time to Carmen Basillio, Ray regained the title in a rematch with Basillio on March 25, 1958. Sugar Ray surrendered his title for the last time against Paul Pender on January 22, 1960. The last five years of his career were spent fighting younger fighters with only moderate success. Sugar Ray Robinson, then 45 years old, lost his last fight on November 10, 1965 to Joey Archer in a 10 round fight.

Over his 202 fight - 30 year career, Robinson only lost 18 fights, most of those being the twilight of his career. After his career in the ring, Sugar Ray appeared in several television dramas. Sugar Ray Robinson, who once showed his athletic prowess on the streets of Dublin, was regarded by many as the greatest boxer of all time. He was a five time Middleweight Champion, a one time Welterweight Champion, and was revered by Muhammad Ali as "the King, the Master and my idol."

CHARLIE BRADSHAW - From Gridiron to Boardroom

Charlie Bradshaw
@ South Carolina Business
Hall of Fame


CHARLIE BRADSHAW
From Gridiron to Boardroom

Old time Dublin High football fans will tell you that he was the greatest player ever to wear the green and white. With the possible exception of Tennyson Coleman, he is certainly the best Dublin player ever to play on the old Battle Field. But Charlie Bradshaw's success as a football player, first in Lake City, Florida, Dublin and later at Wofford College, was eclipsed by his success as a businessman and entrepreneur. Today, Charles J. Bradshaw, a former Dublin High quarterback, stands as a legend in the business community of South Carolina.



Charlie Bradshaw, the fifth of six children of James W. and Florence Sanders Bradshaw, was born in Lake City, Florida on July 15, 1936. Bradshaw grew up in the sleepy community of Lake City, where he played football for Columbia High School. Bradshaw tells the story of how he was too young to work in the local tobacco warehouses. With the help of his mother, Charlie sold snow cones to workers at a profit superior to that of his hard-sweatin' brothers.



When Charlie was a junior in high school, the Bradshaws made the 162-mile trip up U.S. Highway 441 to their new home in Dublin, where the elder Bradshaw worked at the V.A. Hospital. In his first year at Dublin High, Charlie was instantly popular with his classmates, who elected him as Class Secretary and Representative on the Homecoming Court. Charlie was a five-sport star in football, basketball, golf, tennis and track. There were no other sports for him to star in. In his senior season in 1953, Charlie was named the All Region quarterback and Mr. Dublin High School. But Charlie wasn't just a jock. He was a member of the Beta Club and the Spanish Club.



Following his graduation from Dublin High School, Charlie went on to play football for the University of Georgia, the first Dubliner to play for the Bulldogs. A preseason injury just before his sophomore season forced Charlie to contemplate his future in Athens. After consulting with his coaches, his father and friends, Charlie, a back up quarterback, decided to transfer to a smaller school, Wofford College, in South Carolina. As he was in Dublin, Charlie was popular with his classmates. He was a member of the Kappa Alpha Fraternity and President of the Student Body. It was at Wofford, where Charlie's destiny as a quarterback and a businessman was set. With a fresh start in a new setting, Charlie, a member of the South Carolina Athletic Hall of Fame, excelled on the football field. In 1957, he was named to the All American Team for smaller colleges. In his primary wide receiver Jerry Richardson, Charlie found a life long friend and business partner.



Charlie met his wife Judy Brewer on a wager with teammate Donnie Fowler. That bet turned out to be another one of the pieces of puzzle which led to Charlie's future in business. Fresh out of college with a degree in mathematics, Charlie married Judy in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. They set up their home in Spartanburg, where Charlie took a job with a local Ford dealership. At the request of his brother in law Joe Brewer, Charlie took a look at a hamburger stand in Rocky Mount. Bradshaw doubted that he could ever get rich selling 15-cent hamburgers and cokes and fries for a dime. But Charlie had a talent for business. He analyzed the sales and dreamed of franchising the restaurant across the Carolinas. So in October 1961, Charlie and Jerry, with his earnings from the Baltimore Colts, opened their first fast food restaurant at 431 Kenney Street in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The restaurant, the first franchise in the chain, was the popular Hardee's Hamburgers.



The business began to grow. In 1969, Bradshaw and Richardson combined their business interests across the Carolinas and founded Spartan Food Systems, Inc., which went public and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1976. In 1977, the company began to acquire numerous restaurants of the Quincy's restaurant chain and later a string of Denny's restaurants. At the peak of the ownership, Bradshaw and Richardson owned more than 600 franchises in a company which oversaw fifteen hundred more restaurants.



The Transworld Company purchased Spartan in 1979. Charlie Bradshaw was named the company's senior vice-president in charge of food services, which included the Canteen Company, the largest food vending service in the world. In 1984, Bradshaw was promoted to president of the company, which included among its holdings, Century 21, Hilton Hotels and Transworld Airlines. When the company's stockholders and directors opted to get into the nursing home business, Bradshaw felt it was time for him to leave the company, although many had been grooming him to become the company's chief executive officer.



After a quarter of a century in the food service business, Charlie Bradshaw decided to go home, back to his family. He formed Bradshaw Enterprises to work with his children and teach them the business skills he had learned from the first day of the Hardee's in Spartanburg to the tactics of the boardrooms of one of the country's largest companies. Bradshaw was active in the Junior Achievement as it epitomized everything America stands for. Charlie believed in the program which followed the same ideals he used in his own business ventures and pushed it as a way of getting young people involved in business. More important, Bradshaw believes that they know the proper way to go into business and how to handle problems which inevitably arise.
In 2001, Charlie took over the management of Team Sports Entertainment, which was the parent company of Team Racing Auto Circuit "TRAC." Though he continues to work today at the age of seventy-two, Charlie spends more time with his family and grandchildren and playing golf every chance he gets.



To his friends, Charlie has always been known as a hard worker and a generous man. Charlie poured his efforts and his money into the Judy Bradshaw Children's Foundation for needy children. He supported the Spartanburg Regional Medical Center Foundation and the Boys Clubs of America. Charlie has been awarded the Distinguished Service Award by the South Carolina Jaycees, the Spartanburg Distinguished Citizen Award and Distinguished Alumni Award from his alma mater Wofford.



In 2006, Charlie Bradshaw was inducted into the South Carolina Business Hall of Fame. Bradshaw attributes his success toward those he worked with and those who worked for him by saying, "I think the most important thing for any young person is picking his peer group, the persons he or she surrounds himself with. I don't care if it's his teen age years. I don't care if it's in his college years, business, or whatever it is. You are not going to be more successful than the people around you."

BRIAN MIMBS - PUTTING HIS BEST FOOT FORWARD

PUTTING HIS BEST FOOT FORWARD

The "P" behind Brian Mimbs’ name on the Georgia Bulldogs roster stands for punter. It could stand for "perserverer." For the last five football seasons, Brian, a former All-State kicker from Dublin High School, has triumphed over tragedies, disproved his doubters and conquered his competitors. Never losing sight of his goal instilled in him by his parents, this unpretentious and unselfish young man has quietly become one of the greatest punters in the history of Georgia Bulldog football.

Brian Mimbs, the baby boy of Gary and JoAnn Mimbs, of Dublin, was born on May 19, 1986. Some considered his older brothers, Lee and Payton, to be better athletes. But, Brian discounts the notion that he and his brothers competed to see who was the best. "We all played at different skill positions in football and baseball and we never tried to outdo the other," Mimbs said. Old time Dublin sports fans saw and still see something special in Brian. They will tell you that he was a very good athlete, very strong for his size, and as determined to succeed as much as anyone on the field, whether on the diamond or the gridiron.

In point of fact, Brian was a better than average baseball player at Dublin. In batting more than .400 in his career, Brian helped to lead his team to the AAA Championship series in 2003. In his junior year at Dublin High, Brian’s automatic extra points and long field goals helped the Irish to play in the championship game against Screven County. Brian points to the school’s and his coach Roger Holmes’ first game in the Georgia Dome as a career highlight. It was during that game when a veteran security guard remarked to me, "Where did you get that kicker?" When I responded that he was one of our native kids, the guard responded, "He kicks better than some of the NFL kickers I see here."

One highlight of Brian’s place kicking career came in a preseason game against the East Laurens Falcons. After his teammate called for a fair catch, Brian placed the football on a tee a yard on the south side of the mid-field stripe. The 2002 AAA All State kicker took the requisite number of steps back, stepped forward and booted the pigskin between the uprights for a 61-yard free kick field goal, the longest in Dublin history and one of the longest in state history, but one which will never appear in the record books.

Middle Tennessee State offered Brian a scholarship to play both football and baseball. He turned it down. His father Gary urged Brian to play with the best and he thought the Bulldogs were the best team he could play for. "He inspired me to go to Georgia to follow and live out my dream," Brian remembered, "and, I am grateful that I did."

Mimbs was given preferred walk on status with the team as a red-shirt freshman. For most of the next two years, Brian worked hard to earn a spot as the team’s place kicker. When the Dog’s holder went down with an injury, Brian, who had worked all fall as a backup, stepped up and went into the Auburn game to hold for Andy Bailey. From that moment on, Brian, who first wore the number 26 jersey, would be the team’s holder. He never muffed a single snap. It wasn’t until the final regular season game of his sophomore year in 2006 when he got the opportunity to kick off for the first time. But Brian had an empty feeling inside. His father died on the first day of summer. "When I went on the field for the first few times, I thought of my dad and how much he meant to me and how it was he that encouraged me to come to Georgia and kick," Brian recalled. Mimbs kicked off twice against Georgia Tech that season for a respectable average of sixty yards per kick off. Actually, he had a third kick. It was in the Chick-fi-la Peach Bowl. With his team trailing Virginia Tech by the score of 21-6 early in the third quarter, Georgia coach Mark Richt sent Brian in to kick off after a field goal. Brian made his last career kickoff his best. He booted the ball at an angle into the artificial turf, sprinted toward it and cradled it like he was protecting a new born infant. Brian’s recovery of his own kick, a football rarity, ignited the Bulldogs, who went on score 18 more points and overcome the Hokies, 31-24.

Brian never faltered, even after the death of his paternal grandmother and his maternal grandfather. He remembered the lessons his parents taught him. Mimbs turned to and found comfort from his heavenly father to carry him through his trials. He credits his fellow specialists with his growth as a punter, coping with the shanks and bringing him back down to Earth when he needed it. "Coach Hagler at Dublin taught me everything I knew about kicking, but I didn’t have him here to help me, so a lot of it was trial and error," Brian remarked. Dublin Head Coach Roger Holmes recognized his field goal kicker’s potential as collegiate punter and gave him his first chance at punting. In his senior year at Dublin, Brian posted an outstanding average of 39 yards per punt.

After thousands and thousands of summer practice punts, Brian was only promised that he had the first punt of the season. He was challenged in 2007 by Drew Butler, son of the legendary Georgia place kicker Kevin Butler. Brian welcomed the competition and went on the prove that his coach’s choice was the right one. In his first season, Brian ranked third in the SEC with an average of 42.4 yards, one of the ten highest marks in Bulldog history. Coach Richt asked Brian to make several kicks for the team by calling for angle kicks toward the sidelines. "It hurt his average, but he was a team guy about it," the Bulldog coach said.

Brian’s most popular "You Tube" moment came in the 2008 Sugar Bowl against Hawaii. "They came into the game high and saying they were going to upset us," Brian remembered. Some people believed that if they won, it wouldn’t be an upset. Near the end of game, the Bulldogs were enjoying a big lead. Brian, who says he rarely, if ever, wears his emotions on his sleeves, grew frustrated at the way the smaller kickers and punters were being hit while not actively trying to make a tackle. After a long punt, Mimbs, on behalf of small kickers everywhere, shoved a massive Hawaiian to the ground, a noble gesture which drew him a personal foul penalty. When asked by Coach Richt if it was worth the punishment drills, Mimbs responded in the affirmative.

During his career at Georgia, Brian counts as his most memorable moments as the punts he made from his own end zone. As a matter of fact, his first punt ever came out 42 yards from the Dog’s end zone. In his first game, he punted five times for a 42.4 average without a single one returned. Brian thrives on pressure. "It happened four times this year," he recalled. And, on all four attempts, Brian boomed the ball high and long to bail out his team and give his defense good field position. One of those punts, a 77-yarder against South Carolina, ranks as the 6th longest in UGA history and the longest since 1973.

This past season was his best. After his final game, Brian looked at his season stats and found himself in 2nd place in the conference. Then he looked at his career average. "I try not to get caught up in stats. They put too much pressure on me, and I need to go out and do what I am capable of doing for the betterment of the team." Brian divided his total yards by the number of punts and was amazed to see that his career average was 43.1 yards, second by only 3.6 inches behind Chip Andrews. His season mark of 44.0 yards was the 4th best in Georgia history. His 54 yard game against Tennessee and 52.2 yards per punt against South Carolina rank respectively as the 2nd and 3rd best average yardage in a game by a Bulldog punter ever. In a story for his grandchildren, Brian posted a career rushing average of 8 yards per carry, albeit his sole rush came after Mimb’s inexplicably missed the balled as it dropped to the ground during the team’s victory over Michigan State in the Capital One Bowl. Mimbs reverted back to his first baseman days, scooped it up and ran straight ahead, some six yards short of a first down.

Perhaps Brian Mimbs most notable and unheralded accomplishment at Georgia came not on the grass of Sanford Stadium, but in the class rooms. In 2007, Brian was named to ESPN’s All District Academic Team. In 2008, he was a semifinalist for the Draddy Trophy given for the nation’s most outstanding student athlete. From his freshman season through his senior season, Brian Mimbs was named to the All SEC Academic team, making him only the fifth player in the 117-year history of Georgia football named to the prestigious team for four consecutive years. Brian’s old coach, George Hagler, still stays in contact with his former pupil. "Of all Brian has done, I am most proud of this accomplishment," Hagler said.

This spring Brian is weighing his options and figuring things out. The Risk Management and Insurance major is sending out resumes and knocking on doors. He plans to work on his technique with a coach in Arizona and give the NFL a try. Who knows what the future holds for Brian Mimbs? So far, Brian has always put his best foot forward and got out of his life exactly what he put in, just like his momma and daddy always told him he would.

HUBERT MIZELL

HUBERT MIZELL
A Legend That Never Ends


In a world where cliches are never cliche, Hubert Mizell has seen it all. For the last fifty years, he has written about courage, loyalty and self-sacrifice. Hubert has told stories of leadership, teamwork and the triumph of the human spirit. He loves sports and loves to write about the events which keep on taking us out to the old ball game. For this Dublin native, his dream to become a sportswriter has come true, more than he could ever imagine.

Hubert Coleman Mizell was born in Dublin, Georgia in 1939. His parents, Leon Mozart Mizell and Annie Mae Williams Mizell, named him for Dr. Alfred Coleman, the doctor who delivered him. Hubert grew up in the days of Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, Ben Hogan, Sam Snead and Joe Louis. As a child of a poor family, Hubert lived in eleven towns and in twenty-seven buildings. His father left school after the end of the 5th grade. A saw mill accident left the elder Mizell with a severely mangled arm, relegating him work at strenuous jobs, often enduring eighty-four-hour work weeks. Hubert's mother worked whenever and wherever she could to help make ends meet to support the family, which included Hubert's baby sister Linda.

When Hubert was seven, the Mizells moved to Jacksonville, Florida. A trip to the Georgia-Florida game, long before it became the wild spectacle it is today, sparked young country boy's love of sports. At the age of fourteen, Hubert took a job as an usher and later as a scorekeeper at Wolfson Park, home of the Jacksonville Tars. Playing for the Tars that year was a young kid by the name of Henry Louis. You know him better has Henry "Hank" Aaron.

Before he completed high school, Mizell developed a relationship with the Times-Union, Jacksonville's leading newspaper. At first he worked as a sport's copy editor. During his spare time, Hubert studied and carefully analyzed the writings of the nation's greatest sportswriters. After his college days at the University of Florida were over, Hubert returned to the Times-Union as the High School Sports Editor. In 1964, he took a job in the public relations department of the Gator Bowl.

In 1967, Hubert came of retirement as a sportswriter for the first time. He returned to the Times-Union as its Florida Sports Editor. In addition to his duties in the sports department, Mizell covered hurricanes and even the 1972 Republican National Convention. Later in the 1970s, Hubert became the state sports editor of the Times-Union.

Hubert Mizell's first major sports assignment came in the late summer of 1972. Hubert witnessed swimmer Mark Spitz's world record seven gold medal performance and the emergence of one of the world's greatest gymnasts, Olga Korbut. He was there when the zebras gave the Russian team three unwarranted chances to defeat the US basketball team in one of the most controversial games in Olympic history. Hubert was an eye witness to one of the darkest moments, not only in Olympic history, but in the history of sports. Working closely with a young Peter Jenkins of ABC News, Hubert saw the hooded gunmen who killed eleven Israeli athletes. He was stationed at the airport when their corpses were sent back home. "It was like a punch in the stomach," Mizell remembered. Hubert still lists the '72 Olympics as the highlight of his career.

Being based in the subtropical climate of Florida, Hubert normally didn't cover hockey games. But in the winter of 1980, Hubert was in Lake Placid, New York, covering the first of his four Winter Olympic games. Mizell and the corps of sportswriters, normally trained to be neutral in their coverage of sports, shivered in emotion as they witnessed, in Mizell's words, "the most colossal upset in the history of sports." Mizell still rates the game in which the upstart US team defeated the heavily favored Russians as the No. 1 game he has ever covered. In 1986, he moved to Atlanta and took a job as a feature writer and television critic for the Atlanta Constitution. It wasn't long before Hubert decided to return to Florida and the love of his life.

Mizell was present at one of baseball's most memorable games, not because of the score or the events which transpired on the field. It was late in the afternoon on October 17, 1989. The Giants and Athletics were preparing to play their 3rd World Series game when the stadium began to shake violently. Hubert hit the floor and then the lights went out. He managed to make it out of the stadium safely, writing his column on the hood of an ABC -TV truck. The calamitous earthquake was the most frightening thing Hubert ever witnessed in sports.

During his fifty years in journalism and sports, Hubert has attended nearly fifty college football bowl games, forty Masters golf tournaments and more than thirty college basketball final fours and Super Bowls. He has been in attendance at more than a dozen U.S. Golf Opens and Kentucky Derbies. Hubert has crossed the Atlantic to witness a half dozen or more British Open golf tournaments and even more Wimbledon tennis tournaments. Mizell has covered six summer Olympic games and four of the winter games. The number of the other sports events he has seen is virtually incalculable.

College football and golf are Hubert's favorite sports. He loves going to Notre Dame to watch a football game the best, though he does rank Grant Field as number nine and between the hedges at Sanford Stadium as his sixth most favorite college football venue. He lists Arnold Palmer, Steve Young, Pete Maravich, Jack Nicklaus, Magic Johnson and Richard Petty as his favorite athletes. Interestingly, he list former Tampa Bay Buccaneer Lee Roy Selmon as the most honorable athlete he has known. Nancy Lopez is a close second in his mind. Among the most mesmerizing
interviewees, Mizell lists Muhammad Ali, Bobby Jones, Jackie Robinson, Joe DiMaggio, Red Grange, Charles Atlas and Jesse Owens. His favorite sportscasters include Pat Summerall, Jim McKay, Bob Costas, Jack Whitaker and Howard Cossell.

Frequently honored by his colleagues, Hubert has served on the ESPY committee of ESPN Sports, which annually honors the best of the best in sports. Mizell was a charter inductee into the United States Basketball Writers Hall of Fame. In 1980, his fellow sportswriters elected him as president of the Associated Press Sports Writers Association. Chris Berman of ESPN remembered Hubert for being kind in helping him out when he first got into broadcasting. Veteran St. Louis announcer Jack Buck said, "Everybody loves Hubert, especially the athletes - they trusted him." Jack Nicklaus said "Hubert tried to do the right thing and be in the right place at the right time." Fellow golfer Gary Player echoed Nicklaus, "He's been a tremendous contributor to golf, but he's been a great gentleman. Really a nice man and you can't say much more about a person than that."

Hubert retired from sports writing, at least partially, in 2001. He and his wife moved to Virginia and the promise of peace and quiet. Hubert did continue to write a weekly column for the St. Petersburg Times until the end of 2004. He planned to retire, but Hubert couldn't leave sports. He returned to the sports room last year and writes today for the Gainesville Sun. This past April Hubert Mizell was honored by the Augusta National Golf Club, which awarded him and thirteen other writers and broadcasters with the first "Masters Major Achievement Award." According to the editors of Sports Cliches dot com., a sportswriter must be around for at least thirty years to qualify as a legend. Hubert Mizell is twenty years beyond that level and still going strong, watching and writing about the greatest legends in the games we play.

As a point of personal privilege, I dedicate this column to my son Scotty as he continues his major studies in journalism at Georgia College and State University. Hubert Mizell's career shows that a love of sports and the triumph of the human spirit, a fundamental appreciation of our heritage and a passionate talent for writing can make the dreams of a little boy from Dublin come true.