The Grove High School Class of 1952 has established a football award
as a memorial to a late member of the class, Max Williams.
An engraved plaque is to be presented each year to the member of the Henry County High
School football team named as lineman of the year. It is expected to be presented with
other awards at the annual Lions Club Football Banquet.
Williams was a standout lineman for the Grove Blue Devils who became a defensive star for Mississippi State University. Killed in an airplane crash in 1975, he is the only member of the class who has died since graduation.
Announcement of the award was made at a reunion banquet of the class July 23 at Paris Landing Inn. Dedicatory remarks were made by Don Laster of Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, a member of the class and the Blue Devil team.
The award was recognized on behalf of the Lions Club by Robert Jelks, who was Williams' coach in his first years at Grove. Also representing the Grove faculty was Lamar Roberts.
MAX WILLIAMS
Ted Jenkins, who presided at the banquet, had prepared individual wooden plaques bearing
each class member’s high school photo and a picture of the Grove tower.
Identification tags for class members also bore their high school pictures.
Kenneth Chapman, a minister of the Church of God of Prophecy in Coweta, Oklahoma, gave the invocation. Rex Latimer of Paris read the class prophecy. Duane Lacy of Washington, D.C., presented awards and letters from absent class members were read.
The reunion planning committee consisted of Dr. Robert Adams, Clarice Allen Myers, Barbara Boyd Crocker, Diana Diggs Russell, Amanda Hurdle Hailey, Bobbie Louie Hailey, Ted Jenkins, Rex Latimer, Sue Nichols Clark and Marilee Tayloe Burton.
Reprinted from the Paris Post-Intelligencer
Paris, Tennessee
August 9, 1977 Edition
© Used by permission and the Post-Intelligencer retains full rights.