From an unfinished high school product to assistant director of physical education at Christ School is the hop made by Joe “Smoky” Johnson, 19, of Kannapolis, known in this section wherever high school athletics are practiced.
His acceptance as a coach of Christ School fulfilled a dream of years. Where is a high school athlete that does not dream of coaching a team of boys and come back home to take the town by its ears?
Johnson’s ascension goes to show that Horatio Alger was right and that things happen in real life as well as in the story books.
“Smoky’s” rise isn’t a story of studying by the firelight at night for he was a delinquent in his classes. He was five years in high school, yet he never gained units enough to be rated a junior.
But on the diamond, court and gridiron, Oh boy, what a man! In athletics Smoky worked—and he worked hard. When a game started he started and not until the last second of the final play did he stop. In football he played a backfield position, in basketball he starred as a pivot man, and in baseball he shown at every corner of the diamond.
Athletics will love a player—but get a better coach and Kannapolis welcomes the day when Smokey Johnson’s proteges come home with the bacon.
From page 7 of the Brevard News, Saturday, Sept. 18, 1926
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92074063/1926-09-16/ed-1/seq-7/
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