Bulldogg Football Community mourns a Fallen Teammate

By Adam Wynn | Published in the Barrow County News on Sept. 18, 2013

The bond of football makes men more than friends. It creates teammates.

Something incredible happens, though, when those men move on and new players take their place. Those men are not forgotten. Rather, they just have more teammates.

Eddie Mitchell, former quarterback for the Winder-Barrow Bulldogs, died earlier this week after an extended battle with cancer.

Mr. Mitchell was one of a few starting Bulldog quarterbacks for the 1968 season, his senior year. Sharing duties with Larry Barnette and Ronnie Shepley, Mr. Mitchell came long before the days of the “extra G,” playing for a team that would finish 2-8 in that 1968 season, the highlight being a 24-0 win against a now defunct Forsyth County High School. The year before, under a different coach, the Bulldogs went 7-3.

The 1969 season found Eddie Mitchell calling himself an alumnus of Winder-Barrow High School, and an alumnus of Bulldog football. That same season, on Sep. 19, 1969, Winder-Barrow High School dedicated a new football stadium, W. Clair Harris Stadium.

One of Mr. Mitchell’s childhood neighbors and teammates, Ronnie Brasfield, remembered Eddie Mitchell fondly.

“He was a great athlete. He had a lot of speed and agility,” Brasfield remembered. “He had a lot of physical toughness and mental toughness.

“I remember once, he was always shorter than me, so he came up and hit me in the chin and broke one of my teeth. I had to get a root canal because of Eddie. He’d hit you hard.”

In the 45 years since Eddie Mitchell played for the Bulldogs, much in the world of football has changed. The Atlanta Falcons are no longer picked to lose against an NFL team from Los Angeles. The National Football League scores, for that matter, are no longer listed underneath American Football League scores. Southern Methodist University is no longer referred to as a powerhouse program in college football after their scandal came to light in the 1980’s, but the tradition of Winder-Barrow football still exists, and its members still remember each other well.

“It pulls at your heart strings when you see someone’s life cut short due to cancer,” Winder-Barrow Principal Dr. Al Darby said. “When you reach out, it teaches you that life’s not fair. It’s rewarding, but it also pulls at your heart.

“He’s one of ours. It was exciting that we could give back,” Darby added.

Dr. Darby went with Head Coach David Wagner, Athletic Director Robert McFerrin, and players Tyler Junius and Chandon Sullivan, to visit Eddie Mitchell a couple weeks before his death. While there, they presented him with a football signed by the team and a jersey of his old number, 10.

“It teaches these kids how important generosity is,” Darby said.

“Football brings so many life lessons. When you play football, there’s a sense of toughness, sportsmanship,” Darby added. “We’re going to war. How does that compare to fighting a battle with cancer? It’s a great life lesson.”

Dr. Darby, a member of Winder-Barrow’s class of 1992, understands how important it is to maintain alumni relationships, and that is how the school became aware of Mr. Mitchell’s situation.

“When you have a tradition and pride that reaches into our community, like ours, it goes deep,” Darby stated. “You try to find your own identity, who you are as a school.

“We do have a tradition of excellence and effort,” Darby said. “Keeping the value of a person’s life at the forefront of our minds and at the forefront of that tradition…it’s powerful.”

Coach Wagner and his players came away from the experience with a respect for how powerful it is to change someone’s life, and they left knowing that they had done just that in spending some time talking with Mr. Mitchell.

“Just seeing the smile on his face was powerful,” Coach Wagner said. “You could see what Winder-Barrow means to him and seeing some of the players and being able to hold a football again.

“I’ve always been a firm believer that sports change lives. Teams change lives,” Wagner commented. “These kids had no idea that what they do on Friday night reaches far more than they can imagine.”

Wagner had no doubt, though, that the two young men who came with him to see Mr. Mitchell left with a new respect for the man and for the legacy that comes with wearing the red and black for Winder-Barrow.

“You could tell in the conversation afterwards,” Wagner said of his players after meeting with Mitchell two weeks ago. “There was this silence in the truck. You can’t put it into words. They’ll take it with them for the rest of their lives.”

Although Mr. Mitchell’s tenure as a Bulldogg ended under a lean year, not unlike where the program finds itself now, he is still a member of that proud tradition of excellence, and his life is worth celebrating as a human being and as a member of the Bulldogg tradition.

“It’s those special memories,” Brasfield recalls, discussing his own connection with the Bulldogg tradition. “To be a part of the team, that teamwork, it’s special. There are those people who share goals with you, who believe in you.

“Sports bring that growth into your life like no other experience,” Brasfield said.

The teammate connection is one that men embrace and grow as well as they can, according to Brasfield, who played midget and Pop Warner football with Mr. Mitchell.

“I kept up with quite a few of those guys,” Brasfield said. “I lived in Winder until 1999, so I could keep up with a lot of them just because of living in proximity. Shepley and I did business together,” Brasfield recalled, referencing one of the three men who played at quarterback in 1968, “so I kept up with him better.

“Shepley threw me more touchdown passes than Eddie, so I liked that,” Brasfield joked.

Brasfield also remembered how important it was to him to be a part of the football tradition in Winder and how it impressed on him from an early age how important that tradition was to the city.

“I moved to Winder from Memphis when I was 10. You know, I could tell when I moved here that football wasn’t just a sport. It was a tradition,” Brasfield remembered.

“Our old high school burned down in the 70’s, but I remembered walking through the halls and you could see all the trophies from old championships and the jerseys of guys before us who’s numbers had been retired. I wanted to be a part of that,” Brasfield added.

Echoing previous comments made by current Winder-Barrow coach David Wagner about this team, Ronnie Brasfield remembers playing football with Eddie Mitchell at just about every level of the game. They played together on teams in official leagues, but they also just played around in the backyard as kids because they were neighbors. Football, for Eddie and Ronnie, was a community.

For Winder-Barrow Bulldoggs, it still is a community.

Dr. Darby also mentioned, “People see these kids going through what they went through, it builds that sense of community.”

The Winder-Barrow Bulldoggs will face the Salem Seminoles this Friday, Sep. 20, exactly one day and 44 years after W. Clair Harris Stadium was dedicated in the presence of former governor Ernest Vandiver and the governor at the time, Lester Maddox, with words from Harold Harrison who served as master of ceremonies.

“Tonight we honor him, not only for what he has done, but for the high goals he has set for all of us, by naming this athletic facility – the W. Clair Harris Stadium.

“I trust that we who use it will be as honorable as its name.”

When the Bulldoggs take the field on Friday night, they will do so honoring every one of the men and women of the Bulldogg tradition who came before them. They will honor Ronnie Shepley, Ronnie Brasfield, and W. Clair Harris, too, but this week they will especially honor Mr. Eddie Mitchell – their fallen teammate.

NOTE: The Winder-Barrow High School athletics programs refer to themselves as the “Double-G” Bulldoggs. The frequent usage of Bulldogg in this story is not a misspelling.