The latest Fike High School Athletic Hall of Fame banquet produced the most startling request of the six.
Doug Flowers, one of the seven inductees, asked: "Does anybody have a gun?"
No doubt, his introduction, provided by older brother, Charlie, left him with the urge to kill.
But as Flowers, a sweet-swinging, left-handed hitter for Fike in the mid-1980s, admitted, he had only himself to blame.
His sibling had resorted to similar antics in introducing him to be presented for induction into the North Carolina Wesleyan College Athletic Hall of Fame.
Nonetheless, if shots had been fired and a crime committed, the belief here is that those in the audience that Saturday evening in the Fike cafeteria would have testified the act was justified.
Doug Flowers was simply "roasted" by his sibling.
Most of the listeners were not certain where Charlie Flowers was headed with his rollicking presentation. However, a few of us were braced.
We had been in Charlie Flowers' presence when he gained access to the microphone during the recent Wilson Hot Stove League banquet and "expanded" upon his planned remarks.
We all learned that, as a tot, when all of Doug's clothes had not been dried, he ran around the house in a pink dress. As his brother informed, Doug was supposed to have been a girl.
Also news to us was that Doug was the lazy one, a "couch potato" and liked to watch television -- especially the daytime drama, "The Guiding Light."
However, Charlie did acknowledge that Doug developed that much-admired swing by beating older brother at his "Strike Out" game.
Doug Flowers termed his induction into the Fike Hall of Fame unexpected. He reasoned he did not excel as a baseball player until arriving at N.C. Wesleyan.
He went on to play professional baseball in the Baltimore Orioles organization for a few years and assured the day was a tough one when he received the following telephone call: "Your services are no longer needed by the Baltimore Orioles."
Doug Flowers turned to softball, playing for at least nine championship teams. He can still swing the bat.
STATS SLIGHTLY PADDED
Michael Dunn, a golf, football and basketball standout for the Golden Demons, graciously -- and quickly -- expressed his gratitude for being inducted.
He joked that his statistics were padded -- just slightly.
Dunn remembered his coaches -- William Huffstetler and the late Eddie Summerlin in football, Jim Boykin Jr. in golf and the late Harvey Reid in basketball.
He especially cited the impact of Will Flowers, his offensive coordinator and now Fike's head baseball coach. A proud testament was the head coach allowing Dunn, the quarterback, and Flowers to call their own plays.
Flowers hailed Dunn as: "The best football player I ever coached, the total package."
MODEL STUDENT-ATHLETES
Zeke Church, Sandy Gay Clark and Marianne Mattox Davis emerged as model student-athletes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, respectively.
Not only did they know what it took to win a state championship or championships but they excelled in every facet of school life.
Their life's path is one of success.
Church earned his degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and moved to Vermont -- where he has resided for 29 years and now flourishes.
Both Gay and Mattox departed from Fike to Peace College, then to UNC.
Gay, married to David Clark, has been associated with Branch Bank for nearly 29 years. Mattox, married to Tommy Davis, manages The Travel Shoppe.
Both couples are the parents of two children.
But to hear Mattox and Gay tell it, modern technology came along too late for their coach, Becky Clark Long.
They indicate she would have benefited tremendously from a GPS (Global Positioning System) in transporting the team to matches.
The players remain convinced it shouldn't have taken them two hours to travel to Kinston.
Nonetheless, Long has her directions straight on surprising topic she divulged during her introductory comments.
During the evening, numerous references were issued about being expedient and concluding the ceremony before the televised start of the Duke-Carolina basketball game.
Long informed the audience that she preferred the days when the players wore the tighter, shorter pants.
She referred to today's loose and long britches as "culottes."
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