For a howling good time, teens tuned to Wolfman Jack

Who knew that the legendary radio disc jockey Wolfman Jack spent his final years tucked away in rural eastern North Carolina howling “at the moon over Belvidere?”

Wolfman’s wife, Lucy Elizabeth “Lou” Lamb, grew up in a big family in this small unincorporated village in Perquimans County. When the grand, old Lamb family manor came on the market in 1977, Lou convinced her Wolfman husband, Robert Weston Smith, that they should buy it. 

This real estate transaction was big news for The Perquimans Weekly, and reporter Kathy M. Newbern interviewed the new owners. Wolfman said the family was looking forward to “a little privacy,” a pleasant change of pace from their life in Beverly Hills, Calif.

 “We’ve been able to escape down here pretty much,” he added. “We didn’t buy this house to put a security guard outside. We’re here because we choose to be here to get away from the world.” 

Bob Smith was born in 1938 in Brooklyn, N.Y., and grew up listening to music on a large Zenith Trans-Oceanic radio. He became a huge fan of rhythm and blues music and idolized the disc jockeys who played those records. 

Smith studied radio broadcasting by going to night school, while working as a door-to-door salesman during the day – peddling encyclopedias and Fuller Brushes. 

He got his first radio DJ job in 1960 at WYOU in Newport News, Va., where he went by the name of “Daddy Jules.” It was here that Smith met Lou, “the love of his life.” They were married in 1961. 

Later that year, he took a new job at KCIJ in Shreveport, La. By 1963, Bob Smith had “transformed himself” into that howling creature that became known as “Wolfman Jack.”

 

That was the ticket that took the Wolfman to XERF in Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, a station across the U.S. border from Del Rio, Texas. Its “high-powered border blaster signal” was five times the U.S. limit. XERF’s signal could be picked up all over North America, and at night as far away as Europe and Russia. 

Listeners loved hearing his soulful, sandpapery voice blurt out: “Wolfman plays the best records in the business, and then he eats ‘em!” 

In 1973, Wolfman Jack appeared as himself in George Lucas’ feature film “American Graffiti.”

 

In the movie, the Wolfman asks his male teenager caller from Middle Rock, Calif.: “What kind of entertainment you got in that town?” The fellow replied: “All we got is you!” 

“So true of so many places,” said Thelma Raker Coffone of Blue Ridge, Ga., a freelance writer. 

“In those days radio was like magic. And Wolfman Jack was part of that magic,” she said. “You could lie in bed at night listening to him on your transistor radio.” 

At his peak, Wolfman Jack was heard on more than 2,000 radio stations in fifty-three countries.

 

In 1995, Wolfman Jack, 57, suffered a massive heart attack in Belvidere, and literally died in Lou’s arms. 

Lou’s words at a “celebration of life” service were: “All he tried to form was a circle of love. He has waited long enough in the green room of life to do his biggest performance, before the throne of the Almighty.” 

Paul South of The Virginian-Pilot, published in Norfolk, Va., wrote at the time: “His purpose was happiness. They came by the hundreds. Bikers and broadcast executives. Old folks and small children. Fans attired in Sunday best and cut-off shorts. All to remember Wolfman Jack.”

‘Buddy Holly Day’ is Feb. 3 in Clear Lake, Iowa

Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, presents its annual “Winter Dance Party” Feb. 3-5. The opening act features music legend Don McLean, who will be launching his “American Pie 50th Anniversary World Tour.”

The old music hall in Clear Lake will be rockin’ with memories.

Don McLean, now 76, said that 2022 is “the 50th anniversary of his ‘American Pie’ recording making it to No. 1 on the Billboard chart.” He said he’s “thrilled to perform with his band at the Surf,” because the event is way more than just a music concert. Here’s why: 

McLean’s classic ballad “American Pie” memorializes the death of rock’n’roll singer Buddy Holly, who perished in a single-engine airplane crash early in the morning of Feb. 3, 1959, only minutes after takeoff from Clear Lake. 

McLean’s song said that tragedy was “the day the music died.” 

Buddy Holly, just 22, was the headliner on the “1959 Winter Dance Party” tour. Artists were scheduled to perform in 24 towns in 24 days – crisscrossing six upper Midwestern states in a worn-out bus with a malfunctioning heater.

 

On a cold and blustery night on Feb. 2, 1959, the bus limped into Clear Lake, Iowa. The performers got off, thawed out and delivered one heck of a show that brought the house down. 

Even before the final curtain, Holly had arranged to charter a small airplane to carry him and band members Waylon Jennings and Tommy Allsup on to the next venue in Moorhead, Minn. 

The fare was fairly dear – $36 per passenger – but it sure beat the anguish of a grueling 365-mile bus trip in frigid weather. 

The plot thickened. Jennings was persuaded to give up his seat on the flight to Jiles Perry “The Big Bopper” Richardson Jr., who complained of having flu-like symptoms. Young teen heart throb Ritchie Valens begged for Allsup’s seat. Allsup agreed to let a coin toss settle it. Valens won.

 

The 21-year-old pilot of the 1947 Beechcraft 35 Bonanza departed from the municipal airport about 12:55 a.m. with “light snow and winds from 20 to 30 mph.” The plane smashed into the ground within a matter of minutes. Authorities said that all aboard were killed instantly in Albert Juhl’s cornfield. 

The music didn’t really die, and Buddy Holly’s greatness grows stronger every day, hey, hey. 

Radio station KZEV in Clear Lake went on the air in 1978, and its main DJ was Darryl Hensley, dubbed “The Mad Hatter.” One day, Hensley told listeners: “Buddy Holly has just walked into the studio.” 

Hensley pretended to have a conversation with Buddy Holly, who suggested the idea of holding a memorial concert at the Surf in 1979 on the 20th anniversary of his death. (Hensley said Elvis Presley was in the studio, too, and Elvis uttered: “Yeah, man, we got to do this for Buddy.”

 

The Mad Hatter

Hensley agreed to put the show together, but the original slate of entertainers for the first commemorative concert cancelled just six weeks prior to the show. In a near panic, Hensley turned to his radio DJ friend, Robert Weston Smith, and asked for help. 

Smith contacted some folks and managed to book a few acts so the show could go on – Del Shannon, The Drifters, Jimmy Clanton, The Whitesidewalls and Niki Sullivan, who was the original guitar player with Buddy Holly’s band, the Crickets. 

Who was this guy who came to Mad Hatter’s rescue?

South Carolina flag variances stir up lively discourse

Flag design experts generally agree that South Carolina’s state flag is one of the five best in the nation. White images of a palm tree in the center and a crescent in the upper left on the hoist side appear on a dark blue background. It’s quite striking, actually.

 

In recent years, however, the South Carolina state flag has been singled out for its “inconsistencies.” 

Scott Malyerck of Newberry, S.C., observed that the flag flown atop the state capitol in Columbia was different from the one standing in the governor’s office. Malyerck is a principal in a political consulting and strategic communications firm. 

He was interviewed by Jeffrey Collins of the Associated Press. Malyerck’s research found that South Carolina doesn’t have written standards regarding its flag. The shades of blue differ. Some flags have symmetrical palmetto trees while others have more natural-looking trees.

 Scott Malyerck

“The details were often decided by which flag maker offered the lowest price to the state,” Malyerck said. “I thought it was kind of careless to leave it up to the low bidder.” 

When state legislators became aware of the conundrum in 2018, they did what lawmakers do – they formed a committee. 

The five-member South Carolina State Flag Study Committee noted that all of the flag’s symbolism goes back to the American Revolution. 

Col. William Moultrie’s South Carolina regiment repelled the first attempt by the British Navy to take Charleston in the Battle of Sullivan’s Island on June 28, 1776. 

The flag’s shade of indigo – a critical crop to South Carolina 250 years ago – matched the color of uniforms worn by Moultrie’s men. 

The flag’s crescent is not the shape of a waxing moon. Some researchers suggest that Moultrie and other officers wore known silver gorgets around their necks, crescent-shaped pieces of throat armor. South Carolina infantrymen adopted the symbol as their cap badge. 

Collins of the AP wrote: “The Sabal palmetto tree honored the material that Moultrie’s soldiers used to hastily construct a fort. British cannonballs bounced off the trees’ spongy bark and the invaders couldn’t get onshore.” 

Viewing the recommendation of the flag study committee, State Sen. Ronnie Cromer of Newberry said the revised image of the tree, although authentic, was perhaps a bit too unattractive to sell to the public.

Some critics said the shape of the tree looked like a scraggly toilet bowl brush in need of replacement. 

The committee went back to its drawing board and surfaced again with “an addendum” early in 2021, featuring two options that showed “healthier” palms. One was nearly symmetrical; the other was more natural.

The state flag bill got sidetracked when it hit the floor of the Senate. The legislature adjourned in May of 2021, leaving the issue unsettled.

Adam Benson of The (Charleston) Post and Courier reported that Sen. Brad Hutto of Orangeburg was responsible for gumming up the works.

Sen. Hutto said spending time “deliberating the flag’s nuances” would have been a waste, according to Benson’s article.

There are more pressing problems facing the people of South Carolina than standardizing the design of the South Carolina flag, Sen. Hutto said.

 

Such as: What happened to Clemson’s “football dynasty?”

Tennessee and Georgia offer “contrasting” flag concepts

North Carolina’s neighbor to the west – Tennessee – has a distinctive and simple state flag, which was designed by Lee Roy Reeves of Johnson City, Tenn., who was a schoolteacher and a lawyer. Reeves’ flag was adopted in 1905 by the state legislature.

The field of crimson features “three stars of pure white, representing the three grand divisions of the state – east, middle and west.” They are bound together by a blue circle, trimmed with a white border. 

An up-and-down narrow white stripe and blue bar on the fly side edge “relieves the sameness of the crimson field and prevents the flag from showing too much crimson when hanging limp.”

 

The official salute is a rhyme:

 Three white stars on a field of blue

God keep them strong and ever true.

It is with pride and love that we

Salute the Flag of Tennessee.

 

Three southwestern North Carolina counties share a boundary with Georgia. 

It seems that no one is very happy with Georgia’s state flag, which has been “edited” more times (seven) than any other state banner in an attempt to make it “politically correct.” 

The current version dates back to 2003. It consists of a field of three horizontal bars of equal height, two red separated by a white bar in the center. In the upper left corner is a square blue canton. 

Within the canton, a circle of 13 white stars, symbolizing Georgia and the other 12 original states, surrounds Georgia’s coat of arms. It’s the image of an arch that represents the state’s “constitution,” supported by three pillars that stand for the three branches of government – legislative, judiciary and executive.

 

A figure dressed in colonial garb with a drawn sword defends the principles of “wisdom, justice and moderation,” words that are wrapped around the pillars. 

The primary objections to Georgia’s new flag relate to the “busy-ness” of all that is going on inside the small blue canton. 

Obviously, this is a flag designed by a committee, looking at the flag up close…and not from a distance.

Maryland’s state flag is so bad it’s good!

Zany. That’s a good word to describe Maryland’s crazy state flag. It’s a bit psychedelic when the wind blows it around.

Folks seem to love it or despise it, but no one disputes its uniqueness. The Maryland flag defies all the “rules” of good flag design. Yet it works for Maryland.

In an online public opinion poll hosted by Ranker, a digital media company, participants rate Maryland’s state flag as the best in the land.

 

“Maryland’s flag is the only ‘heraldic banner’ among the 50 U.S. state flags,” wrote Mikaela Lefrak of WAMU, a National Public Radio station in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, owned by American University. “The red, white, black and gold pattern is hard to forget.” 

Or is it gold, black, red and white? 

“The story of the Maryland state flag started about 400 years ago, and it’s one that fascinates historians, flag experts, design buffs and regular citizens,” Lefrak said. 

“Maryland’s flag is comprised of four distinct quadrants. The first and fourth are a strangely diagonal checkboard pattern of black and gold. This design comes from the coat of arms of Sir George Calvert, also known as the first Lord Baltimore,” she said. 

England’s King Charles I agreed to grant land in 1632 to Calvert to establish a haven for Roman Catholics in the New World. The province was named Maryland, after Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I. 

Sir George Calvert died, however, about two months before the deal was sealed, so Cecil Calvert, the eldest son, became the provincial proprietor. Cecil Calvert’s coat of arms embellished his father’s crest by also incorporating a red-and-white pattern from the Crossland family from his mother’s side. 

The Crossland’s “cross bottony” symbol was selected to fill the second and third quadrants of the Maryland flag. 

The office of Maryland’s secretary of state said the combination of bold colors creates a flag that “shouts ‘Maryland.’” 

People who poke fun at the “tackiness” of the competing elements within the Maryland flag also pick on Maryland for its weird geographic shape. “Maryland is the only state that looks like a gerrymandered district,” one person commented online. 

One of Maryland’s next-door neighbors – Washington, D.C. – has a flag that “follows the flag rules.” It’s simple, clean and elegant.

 

Washington’s white flag features three red stars above two red bars, borrowing from the heraldry in the coat of arms granted in 1592 to George Washington’s great-great-great-grandfather Lawrence Washington in Northamptonshire, England. 

The flag’s designer was Charles A.R. Dunn, a native Washingtonian, an illustrator with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He submitted his drawing in 1924. Congress finally got around to selecting his design for the flag in 1938. 

Maryland also borders Virginia. The design of Virginia’s state flag seems rather ho-hum at first glance. It’s blue with the state seal in the middle. 

The Roman goddess Virtus is depicted as victorious. Her foot is resting atop the torso of the defeated tyrant lying helpless on the ground. She symbolizes Virginia and he represents Britain.

 

The seal was designed in 1776 by a select committee of Virginia’s hall-of-fame patriots – George Mason, George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee and Robert Carter Nicholas. 

Egads. What were they thinking? Clearly, Virtus’ gown needs more fabric. 

Yes, Virginia, your state flag is ripe to be re-fashioned.

Like so:

N.C. state flag deserves our respectful consideration

North Carolina’s state flag is both patriotic and distinctive, but is it the best it can be?

On the hoist side lies a blue vertical band with the state’s initials in yellowish-gold and a white star separating them. A red horizontal band on the top and a white horizontal band on the bottom of the flag complete the overall look.

 

Two accent yellowish-gold ribbons above and below the “N” and “C” contain the dates of May 20, 1775 (Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence) and April 12, 1776 (Halifax Resolves). 

These events were considered the first official statements from one of the colonies in opposition to British rule. 

However, there is some question about the flag’s accuracy related to the “Meck Dec,” as Dr. Daniel Fountain calls it. He’s a history professor at Meredith College in Raleigh. “The Meck Dec doesn’t exist in a physical form,” he said.

Dr. Daniel Fountain

 

“The so-called Mecklenburg Declaration is regarded by most historians as a spurious document, because there is no such document,” added Dr. Jeffrey Crow, former deputy secretary of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources.

 Dr. Jeffrey Crow

That could present a big problem. The Meck Dec date also appears on the state seal, so any “alterations” would be extensive and quite expensive, Dr. Fountain indicated. 

Setting accuracy aside, the appearance of North Carolina’s flag gets a middle-of-the-pack “wave review” from the North American Vexillological Association (NAVA). 

NAVA recommends no lettering on flags. Ted Kaye, the association’s spokesperson, says: “If you need to write the name of what you’re representing on your flag, your symbolism has failed.” 

“If you want to design a good flag, start by drawing a 1-inch by 1.5-inch rectangle on a piece of paper. Your design has to work within that tiny rectangle,” according to Kaye. 

“A 3-foot by 5-foot flag on a pole 100 feet away looks about the same size as a 1-inch by 1.5-inch rectangle, seen about 15 inches from your eye. You’d be surprised at how compelling and simple the design can be when you hold yourself to that limitation,” he said.

That little exercise might give cause for the ribbon treatments to disappear completely from the North Carolina state flag, eliminating the display of the historic dates. It’s a form of de-cluttering. 

On the other hand, removing the state initials would leave the Tar Heel state flag with a lone star on a blue field…looking a lot like the flag of Texas.

 

Among the original 13 states, NAVA favors the designs of the flags for Rhode Island and South Carolina. 

Both are simple, attractive, classy and clean. 

Rhode Island’s white flag features a gold anchor in the center surrounded by 13 gold stars that represent both the original 13 colonies and Rhode Island’s role as the 13th state to ratify the Constitution. 

A dark blue a ribbon below the anchor contains the state’s motto, “Hope.”

 

South Carolina’s deep blue flag has only two elements – a white palm tree in the center and a white crescent in the upper left corner. To this day, there is a debate about the image of the palm and whether the crescent is the moon, a gorget or a “who cares?”

Williams family begins its journey to Chapel Hill

One day in 1978, the offer came. Coach Dean Smith of the University of North Carolina men’s basketball team invited high school coach Roy Williams to leave Black Mountain, N.C., and move to Chapel Hill to join Smith’s staff as a part-time assistant coach. The job paid a paltry $2,700 a year.

By then, Roy and Wanda Williamses had an infant son, Scott, and a mortgage on their new house. They both had decent jobs in Black Mountain – Wanda taught high school English. They had a combined income of $30,000 a year. 

“When Roy mentioned the offer to Wanda, she groaned in protest. ‘That’s the dumbest idea I’ve heard of,’ she said. ‘We’ve got a new baby. We just moved into this house. I’m from here. You’re from here. Our friends are all here.’” 

“‘When do we leave?’ she asked.” 

“After the boys (his players) are told,” he reportedly replied. 

Tim Raines, one of the golf team members, said: “Coach Williams gathered us all together and gave us the news. He was really upset about it. And we were like, ‘Coach, we love you, but this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.’” 

Another player from Williams’ golf team, Kenny Ford, said: “I remember asking Coach Williams what he was thinking? I thought at that time he had everything. To be a head coach and an athletic director at Owen High School…what more could a man want?” 

Bill Mott, a coaching colleague of Williams at Owen High, advised Williams to turn down the offer because the pay was lousy. 

Fast-forward 40 years. Roy Williams tied Dean Smith with 879 career college wins in late December 2018.

 

To celebrate, a crowd gathered for lunch one day at Phil’s Bar-B-Que Pit in Black Mountain. “They gave Mott “a hard time about his career counseling skills,” wrote Andrew Carter of The (Raleigh) News & Observer. 

Carl Bartlett, who was Black Mountain’s mayor for 25 years, has a noon-time reservation at Phil’s “back table” every Tuesday, and typically, the old gang’s all there. 

They don’t always tell stories about “Roy Boy,” but “the thing that we really appreciate and love about Roy – he’s not changed,” Bartlett said. 

“At Owen, Williams tried to model everything after how Smith did it,” Mott said. “I told him, ‘That’s all you talk about – Dean Smith. He can’t walk on water.” 

“Roy said, ‘No, but I’ve seen him fly for short distances.’” 

Of all the Owen High Warhorses to play basketball under Coach Williams, the longest running relationship that Williams has with a former player is with Napoleon “Porky” Spencer. 

“I felt like a part of his family,” Spencer said. “He was like a father.”

 

At Carolina, Williams put Porky Spencer’s name on the “ticket list” for every home game. The men shared a special bond; they grew up poor. Williams was raised by his mother in a small home in Asheville. She took in laundry. 

Spencer grew up in a house in Black Mountain with no running water. 

Porky Spencer’s gift to Roy Williams was the script for the pre-game pep talk that Roy used to get his Tar Heels team ready to play Notre Dame in an “Elite Eight” game of the 2016 NCAA Basketball Tournament held in Philadelphia. 

Williams echoed Porky’s words of wisdom: “We didn’t come this far, just to come this far.”

The Tar Heels won that night, 88-74, and moved on to the “Final Four” in Houston.

Roy Williams opted to return to his roots in western N.C.

Picking up on the story about Roy Williams, the University of North Carolina men’s legendary basketball coach who retired in 2021, his resume showed that he graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill 50 years ago, in 1972.

Williams majored in education and then earned a master’s degree in 1973. Later that year, he and his high school sweetheart, Wanda Jones, were married. 

Williams was hired as the new 23-year-old boys’ basketball coach at Charles D. Owen High School in Black Mountain, N.C., about 10 miles east of Asheville. He wasn’t much older than some of the upperclassmen he was assigned to coach.

 

Roy Williams had never coached a lick. However, he came “highly recommended” by Carolina’s men’s basketball coach at the time – Dean Smith. 

Years later, a Sports Illustrated staff writer interviewed the school’s principal Charles Lytle on the subject of “the Roy Williams hire.” 

“I was laughed at when I hired him,” Lytle said. “Everybody told me, ‘Roy Williams is nothing but a statistician at North Carolina!’ But I’ve never known anybody who could motivate kids like he could.” 

“One of the best decisions I ever made was my first year as a coach in high school,” Williams said. Principal Lytle came up and said, ‘Roy, I hate to do this, but I really do need you to coach a spring sport, too, because we’re short on coaches. I’ll give you a choice, baseball or golf.’” 

Williams said to himself: “I played baseball from the time I was 11 years old, and I remember the coaches lining the field, dragging the field and picking up pebbles, but I’ve never seen a golf coach mow a green.” 

“So, I told the principal, ‘I’d like to coach the golf team.’”

 

During Roy Williams’ five years (1973-78) at Charles D. Owen, he tried to instill in his players a “sense of self-worth.” 

“If you’ve built a team of character, they can handle moments that others cannot, and they accept coaching on how to manage pressure,” Williams said. 

He told his players: “We’ve got to know that the name on the front of the jersey is more important than the name on the back.” 

He once said that when his coaching days were over: “I’ll remember the hugs (from the players) long after I’ve forgotten cutting down the nets.”

 

William Nack of Sports Illustrated said Coach Williams took his high school players “on steak cookouts, had them over to his house to watch television and fed them milk and doughnuts during off-season shootarounds.” Wanda Williams would pack ham-and-cheese sandwiches and drinks for road trips. 

In 1977, Williams was rewarded additional responsibilities at Charles D. Owen, becoming the school’s athletic director. 

John Le of WLOS-TV in Asheville spoke to a former Charles D. Owen varsity athlete – Tim Raines, who recently retired from the faculty at his alma mater, where he taught and coached. 

“Coach Williams had a lot of energy, a lot of fire,” Raines said. “He was wonderful; he cared about and loved his players.” 

“Some of my best memories from high school are from those golf teams,” Raines said. “Coach had an infectious smile and great laugh.” 

Raines added that four of the players from that golf team went on to coach later in life, “a testament to the coaching acumen of Roy Williams.” 

“It says a lot about him that so many of us would want to go into his chosen profession because of his leadership,” Raines said.

 

Roy Williams is just a ‘dad-gum country bumpkin’

University of North Carolina men’s basketball fans are prepared to politely sit back and endure a season-long Atlantic Coast Conference “farewell tour” that pays tribute to Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski (shah-SHEV-skee), as he prepares to retire from the game in 2022.

 

Coach Roy

It’s not that Coach K doesn’t deserve the spotlight, for he is the winningest college coach of all time. But still, you know those Tar Heel faithful will be doing a slow burn. 

Carolina’s beloved coach Roy Williams chose to retire in April 2021 – after all the games had been played and the arena was dark, deftly avoiding extended hoopla and folderol. 

There’s no animosity between the two venerable coaches; they’re friends and each loudly sings the other’s praises. Krzyzewski is from Chicago and played basketball at Army under coach Bobby Knight. Krzyzewski was team captain his senior year.

 

Williams, who was reared in the North Carolina mountains, graduated from T.C. Roberson High School in Asheville, and went to Carolina to hopefully play basketball under coach Dean Smith. That didn’t work out, but Williams became the team statistician. 

Observers of the sport say Coach K and Coach Roy have different styles and different personalities. 

Williams is the third most common surname in the United States, after Smith and Johnson. Krzyzewski is pretty much at the other end of the spectrum. 

Ron Kantowski of the Las Vegas Review-Journal once calculated that Krzyzewski was worth a whopping 42 Scrabble game points, because “Z” counts for 10 points and “K” scores 5 points. 

Kantowski said he knows there is a 7-letter limit for each player and that there is only one “Z” and one “K” in the real Scrabble game…but he said he was using “Jim Boeheim-at-Syracuse rules.” 

Roy Williams deserves a little “ink,” so readers of the Carteret County News-Times can appreciate what Coach Roy brought to Chapel Hill.

 

When Roy Williams left Asheville in 1968 to enroll as a freshman at the UNC-Chapel Hill, he was the first in his family to attend college. 

“I came down here (to Chapel Hill) as a country bumpkin from the mountains of North Carolina and probably still am,” he said. 

He added that he gained confidence that he could succeed from his high school coach, Roy Eugene “Buddy” Baldwin. The coach’s wife, Rosa Lee Case Baldwin, did her best to test that new-found confidence. 

Mrs. Baldwin taught math at T.C. Roberson, and in class one afternoon, she chided Roy for turning down a full scholarship to study engineering at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Mrs. Baldwin warned all the girls in class, including Williams’ future wife, Wanda Jones, “not to have anything to do with him.” 

Williams, imitating her slow drawl, still recalls her remarks with relish: “Now, you grrr-lls, I don’t want any of you grrr-lls to mess with Roy, cuz Roy is not gonna take this engineering scholarship cuz he wants to be a coach. An’ one of these days, Roy is gonna come over to my house to borrow a loaf of bread....” 

At Carolina, Williams played one season on the junior varsity basketball team. His relationship with Coach Smith began when Williams volunteered to serve as a statistician. 

Williams began “to attend practices as if they were academic lectures,” wrote William Nack of Sports Illustrated. “Sitting high in the bleachers, Williams was a lone and feverish scholar, scribbling notes on how Smith taught the game and orchestrated his clockwork practices.”