Former players had worked nearly two years to erect the monument. On Friday evening, the dream became a reality when the monument, which displays memorial plaques for the coaches set atop a nearly 5foot-tall granite platform, was unveiled.
Virginia Mathews, L.H. Mathews’ wife, said her pride in her husband and the NHS team is so strong that she has gone to every Dragon home game since 1952. Virginia was reunited with players still grateful half a century later.
“My only regret is we didn’t get it before they passed on,” said Grady Allen, Class of 1965. “But I think they’re up there looking tonight.” While playing for the Dragons, Allen was awarded a full scholarship to Texas A&M University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in finance in 1968, and later became a linebacker for the Atlanta Falcons. Allen said he attributes his success, both in football and in life, to the men who coached him in high school. The men were more than just honorable coaches, but honorable men as well, Allen said. During World War II, Hale was serving as a major in the Army Air Corps and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, while flying the China-Burma-India hump, a military action against Japanese forces. Mathews was a staff sergeant in the Army, serving with the 142nd Field Artillery, during World War II. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge against Nazi troops in Bastogne, Belgium in 1944. Several people who knew Mathews and Hale came to the event to share the lifelong memories they made with them.
Dustin Anderson The Daily Sentinel Wesley Molandes, Grady Allen and Rick Still stand at a monument Friday of Gean Hale and L.H. Mathews.
“They don’t ever forget you,” she said. “These boys remember and I think sometimes when they hug me maybe they’re thinking of their coach.”