Remembering Coach Pat Jones

Coach Pat Jones passed away earlier this week at the age of 93. I’m sure there have been a lot of stories and memories of Coach Jones remembered and shared by those who have known him through the years. This is especially true of the many students he taught, and the ballplayers he coached, over the many years at Clement and Lakewood.

Coach Jones taught and coached various sports for 39 years. His baseball teams won 451 baseball games, and his 1975 team was the 1A State Runner-up. He was the President of the NC Coaches Association in 1983, and was the Girls Basketball Coach at the NC East-West All-Star Game in 1987. He was inducted into the Sampson County Sports Hall of Fame. Pat Jones was also active in civic affairs here in Sampson County. He served on the Sampson County Board of Education and was a trustee of Sampson Community College.

I have my own memories of Coach Jones as a student at Clement back around 1970. The one that stands out the most wasn’t in the classroom. I shared it before, but if you had a “Come to Jesus” moment with Coach Jones, you don’t forget it.

It happened when a couple of my buddies and I were hanging around the outside of the old gym at Clement during school. Many of you older folks can remember the gym at Clement that, for some reason, many called “the barn.” So my buddies and I were hanging around outside the gym talking “big.” I didn’t realize that the other guys had stopped talking that way and were giving me some hard glances. I just kept on running my mouth using some choice “adult” words. I hadn’t noticed the reason why they had suddenly become quiet. I also hadn’t noticed that Coach Jones had walked up behind me.

Over the past few years, I had seen and talked to Pat quite often while playing with the Southeastern Senior Golf Association. He was an easy going gentleman, and, by the way, a good golfer. But back then, he could be one scary teacher to a young freshman in high school. Well, to a senior student, also. He was “Coach Jones,” the tall, imposing teacher and coach, who you really didn’t know what he would do if you didn’t obey, but you didn’t want to find out. He was the male teacher that the lady teachers would send us misbehaving students to if they didn’t want to bother with sending us all the way down to the principal’s office.

Finally, way too late, I realized that Coach Jones was standing behind me. With a sense of impending doom, I turned around and saw him staring at me. I pretty much felt, and for good reason, that my life was over. What he said next had an impact then and has since.

“Does your mother know you talk like that?” he said, looking me straight in the eye.

“No sir,” I stammered in reply.

“Well, I better not hear you talk that way again, or she will,” he said firmly. Then he turned around and walked away. I felt relieved, like I had received a pardon from the governor. But he had made his point. I wouldn’t want my mother to hear me talk that way. Isn’t it funny how something said from around fifty years ago can stick with you? And it has. There have been times when I notice I’m starting to use language that’s heading in the wrong direction. Then I hear it, “Does your mother know you talk like that?”

A life well lived. That was my thought as I was reading the obituary for Pat. Not just for the many accomplishments listed in the obituary, but for the positive impact he had on so many lives through the years. Well done, Coach Jones, well done.