Whenever he walks into a high school football stadium, Nash Nunnery sees more than just 100 yards of turf and some metal bleachers.

He sees history. He sees passion. He sees the memories and stories of the young men who played there.

“I’ve always been enthralled with old high school football fields, all these old monuments in time that people love. I wanted to capture that in some kind of way,” Nunnery said.

The way Nunnery found to do that was through a book. The Brandon resident has been a freelance writer for magazines and newspapers for more than 40 years. His first book, “Magnolia Gridiron Cathedrals,” will debut Aug. 19 at the Mississippi Book Festival at the state capitol in Jackson.

The 213-page book includes 240 photographs interspersed with essays about some of Mississippi’s most historic high school football stadiums.

Each stadium featured in the book is at least 50 years old. One of the 47 chapters is about the history of St. Aloysius’ Farrell Stadium/Balzli Field, the site of which has been used by Warren County’s athletes for more than a century.

“I played there one time. Clinton played St. Al a couple of times in the early 70s, and I remembered it,” said Nunnery, who attended Clinton High School. “I thought how cool it was that you had the hillside and the cliff in the north end zone, and the trees surrounding it. The stands were right on the playing surface. That site goes back to as early as 1890, and that really thrilled me.”

Nunnery said people had often suggested that he write a book, but he never found a subject he was passionate enough about until around 2020. A road trip to kill boredom during the pandemic led him to visit some of the state’s high school fields.

He collected his thoughts into a handful of Facebook posts about each one. A friend saw the posts and got Nunnery into contact with Mike Frascogna, a Jackson lawyer who has also written several books about Mississippi sports.

A meeting turned into a business arrangement, and Nunnery was off and running. He also gained another invaluable asset for his book.

Renowned Mississippi cartoonist Marshall Ramsey is one of Frascogna’s clients. He was brought on board to provide illustrations of each stadium to accompany the photographs taken by Fred Rainer and Nunnery’s wife Vicki.

Nunnery and Ramsey will also be part of a panel discussing the book at the Mississippi Book Festival next month. The book will cost $32.95 and will be available at bookstores around the state, although a distribution plan is still in the works.

“I’ve just been so blessed to have (Ramsey) on board. He added so much to this project with these paintings of these fields,” Nunnery said.

Nunnery said that while each chapter includes some history of a given stadium, he tried to focus more on individual stories of the people who played there. He conducted more than 90 interviews for the book and traveled 3,000 miles around the state putting them together.

“Not about wins, losses, or statistics or any of that sort of thing. I wanted to capture the essence of these fields and how much they mean to these communities,” Nunnery said.

Each stadium is a focal point of the community on Friday nights in the fall. The way they tie Mississippi’s small towns together both in the present and for many decades past led to the book’s title, Nunnery said.

“Every one of them has their own personality. You talk to the people who live in these little towns and it’s a connection almost like a church to them. That’s where the name comes from, ‘Magnolia Gridiron Cathedrals,’” he said. “They look at these fields as a second church. It’s a community thing. It really brings people together on a Friday night five or six times a year.”