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1969 Carr Jr. High Greenies.

1971 North Vicksburg Buccaneers.

Iley Behr, Joey DiRago, Corin Morrison, Wendy Behr, Joni Rigby, Swayze Rigby, Keith Kellum and Bob Morrison look at scrapbooks at the Featherston-Magruder House during their “Meathead Reunion” in September. (Submitted to The Vicksburg Post)

Keith Kellum, Swayze Rigby, Joey DiRago and Bob Morrison hang out at the H.C. Porter Gallery. (Submitted to The Vicksburg Post)

Swayze Rigby, Bob Morrison, Joey DiRago standing: David Hosemann, George Nasif, Iley Behr and Keith Kellum pose together for a photo in September. The group played football together at Vicksburg High School in the early 1970s and was celebrating a 50th anniversary reunion. (Submitted to The Vicksburg Post)

South Vicksburg Greenies.

Football teammates from Cooper High School, Temple High School and Vicksburg High School who played together in the early 1970s gathered in September for a reunion. (Walter Frazier/For The Vicksburg Post)

By Bob Morrison
Special to The Vicksburg Post

Over the summer of 1970, public schools in the South changed forever and for the better. That was the summer that desegregation was finally implemented in earnest. The process went more smoothly in Vicksburg than in other Southern cities thanks to open-minded teachers, administrators, students, parents and coaches.

Possibly the most important figure in the transition was the late Jim Stirgus, Sr. Mr. Stirgus was the principal of Temple High School, the predominantly black high school.

Under the original desegregation plan, which lasted only a single year before being struck down by a federal court, all sophomores Black and white attended Temple. All juniors, Black and white, attended Cooper High School, the predominantly white high school. Seniors were allowed to choose between attending Temple or Cooper.

That last part was the sticking point with the courts. Most Black seniors chose Temple, and most white seniors chose Cooper, thereby diluting the effect of the desegregation mandate. As such, Temple remained predominantly Black, with a sophomore class half Black and half white and a senior class almost exclusively black. Cooper remained predominantly white for the same reason — a half-and-half junior class with an almost exclusively white senior class.

Moreover, for that single year, students could choose which high school’s extracurricular activities they would participate in. That element exacerbated the obvious feel of imbalance to all involved.

So all the members of the Class of 1973 were sophomores at Temple in the fall of 1970. Whites were in the minority for the first time, 3 to 1, a situation only a few courageous black students had experienced in the past in barely integrated white-majority public schools. But Mr. Stirgus was “The Man,” and he made sure that all students felt comfortable and accepted. He also expected all students to conduct themselves as ladies and gentlemen.

We did. Because he was The Man.

There were beautiful social lessons learned that year that could never be taught in a book.

Still, the whole sports situation was a bit crazy. All of the white sophomore football players who attended school at Temple chose to play on the Cooper football team for Coach Rush McKay. Most of the Black juniors at Cooper chose to play football at Temple along with the Black seniors for legendary coach Houston Markham.

The Cooper Greenies struggled that fall while the Temple Buccaneers wiped up the field with their opponents’ jerseys. William Wooley, the star quarterback for the Bucs, and his victorious team strutted into school Monday morning while the Greenie sophomores — several of whom were already starters who had gone undefeated the prior year at Carr Junior High School — generally limped up the front steps at Temple after a trying Friday night.

Over the next summer, the school configuration changed once again by a federal judge’s mandate. The choice component was nixed. A line was drawn through the middle of town. Those whose families resided on the south side of the line attended and played for short-lived South Vicksburg High School. Those on the north side went to North Vicksburg High School.

The change split up players who had played together since junior high school, but it lasted only two years before both schools were consolidated into Vicksburg High School in the fall of 1973. The combination of the two football teams produced a Big 8 Conference championship — the equivalent of a Class 6A or 7A state championship today — in Vicksburg High’s very first year of existence. There should be a lesson there.

Now hit the fast-forward button. About 35 years. Joe DiRago, a starting linebacker for North Vicksburg’s Coach Houston Markham in the fall of 1972 and now living in San Antonio, Texas, issued a challenge for several of his old football buddies, Iley Behr, Keith Kellum, David Hosemann and Bob Morrison, each by now in his early 50’s and each having played at various local schools — some both with and against each other as a result of all the changes.

The challenge in the fall of 2007 was to run four races at the Vicksburg High School track in the stadium where most of us had played: a 100-yard-dash, a 220, a 440 and an 880, all within an hour’s time. Mr. Stirgus, our beloved principal, held the starting gun and the stopwatch. It was brutal and resulted in multiple hamstring injuries. But it rekindled old, good-natured rivalries and close friendships.

We did it again the next year. Our old buddy Robert Sigh, who played for Markham and Southern Miss, joined us for this second round of races while fighting cancer that ultimately took him down.

Fast-forward once again to 2024. Somebody in the old group had an epiphany. Now closing in on 70 years on this planet, this crew should get back together to support each other as Father Time, dressed out in pads, was surely locking in to make some big blocks or even form tackles late in the fourth quarter.

The Meat-head Reunion of 2024 was born. Hosemann, who was a star at St. Aloysius High School and went on to start at fullback at Southern Miss with Sigh; and Morrison, who mostly rode the pine at South Vicksburg, still lived in Vicksburg.

Behr, who played for Coach Markham his junior year, lived in Nashville. DiRago lived in San Antonio. Keith Kellum, who was part of the unified 1973 team that won the state championship and who went on to play defensive tackle at Ole Miss, was in Baton Rouge.

Another good friend, Swayze Rigby, who grew up with the group in Vicksburg and is now a cardiovascular surgeon in Baton Rouge, also wanted to join the reunion.

Everybody naturally wanted to meet in Vicksburg. The only two rules were: 1) bring your lovely spouses (Wendy Behr, Penny DiRago, Connie Hosemann, Vicki Kellum, Corin Morrison and Joni Rigby); and 2) no freaking races.

DiRago suggested attending a Vicksburg High home game as the central activity for the reunion.

Brilliant!

Kellum jokingly suggested that the group might even get recognized at halftime. Everybody was fired up. The Gators’ home game against Terry on Sept. 20 was chosen. Dates set, the out-of-towners needed lodging. Since Morrison’s home, though in Vicksburg, was in the middle of renovations that kept him and his spouse, Corin, out of their home, she suggested that the group rent a large antebellum home that could hold everyone. Corin found such a place and booked it for the weekend.

Morrison contacted his old friend, former Vicksburg head coach and current school board member, Alonzo Stevens, to tell him of the reunion. Coach Stevens immediately offered to give the group special seating in the stadium and later arranged for a recorded interview for radio of the three guys who had played for Coach Markham: Iley Behr, Joe DiRago, and Keith Kellum. Game and radio announcer T.J. Mayfield, whose day job is serving as North Ward Alderman, did the interview.

Kellum called out and thanked a host of Vicksburg assistant coaches, including James Knox, who went on to become the Gators’ head coach from 1989 to 2000; Leslie Newton and Curt Nix; and teammates who also went on to play college ball, such as Michael Sweet, Ernest Young, Richard Blackmore, and Michael Dottorey.

DiRago joked that Coach Markham, who had not previously coached white players, was a great disciplinarian and was in no way biased.

“He treated us all like dogs,” DiRago said.

That tough love, of course, paid off eventually with a state championship in the fall of 1973.

After the group was escorted to special seating in the west end zone on Friday night, Coach Stevens led the entire entourage to the pregame locker room where DiRago, Kellum, Hosemann and Stevens gave rousing words of inspiration to the team.

At halftime, the former players were introduced to the crowd by Mayfield while his pre-recorded interview was broadcast on the air on radio station 107.7 FM.

Michael Dottorey, whom Kellum mentioned in the interview, somehow heard the broadcast in Senatobia and texted Kellum the next day to say thanks for the shout-out.

The Gators fought hard against Terry but came up a little short. For a handful of former players whose memories of conquest and glory were ever-expanding, however, it was an evening they will never forget.

For the rest of the reunion weekend, the couples enjoyed the restaurants, boutiques, art galleries and museums of downtown Vicksburg, the delicious dishes prepared by each couple, and, most importantly, each other. Old friend and Greenie standout George Nasif, who went on to start at cornerback for Ole Miss for three years, joined the group with his lovely wife, Judy, for grilled turkey burgers on Saturday night.

Everyone could feel the love. A fine Meat-head Reunion, indeed.

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