By Thomas Corhern, TTU Sports Information
When Jim Thompson made his pilgrimage to Cookeville two weeks ago for the Golden Eagles' game against Austin Peay at Tucker Stadium, it was the first time he had been back to the area since he was roughly a year old.
He didn't have a lot of memories of Cookeville and the campus, but as he visited it felt like a part of him.
Thompson didn't go to school at Tennessee Tech – he went on to become a student at Georgia Tech – but he always felt that connection.
After all, Tennessee Tech football was in his blood – literally.
"A lot of people will say that phrase," Thompson said, "and it's just a figure of speech. So I was born in December of 1954 – the 18th, seven days before Christmas. It was a Saturday night and my mother needed a blood transfusion at the time I was born here in the hospital. Our family was close friends with Coach (P.V. "Putty") Overall and his wife. Coach Overall recruited my dad out of high school.
"To make a long story short, Coach summoned two or three of his guys that had Rh-negative blood – which was somewhat rare – because my mother was Rh-negative. Literally, those guys, and I have no idea who they were, from the Tennessee Tech football team came up to the hospital and donated the blood for the transfusion as my brother and I – identical twins – were being born."
Thompson continued, "My mother, in fact, did not know she was having twins until that night. Back then, I suppose they didn't know like they do now. Coach remained good friends with the family. Even into the '60s, Coach and his wife – they didn't have any children – so they would travel around and visit, and one of their stops every Christmas was at my grandparents' house down in Sycamore, Ala., to see my brother and I and my grandparents and bring us a little Christmas/birthday present."
Overall was a college football player himself, a lineman for Dan McGugin's Vanderbilt Commodores, then coached at nearby Livingston Academy. Overall wasn't the first Tennessee Tech head football coach, but when he came to the program in 1923 – the team's second official season of varsity football – it was an athletics program that was essentially in its infancy. He coached the football team through the 1946 season, then ended his retirement following the departure of Star Wood to take the head post at East Tennessee State to coach the 1952 and 1953 seasons before retiring again.
Overall won two Ohio Valley Conference championships in 1952 and 1953, as well as a Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association title in 1939, while also posting undefeated seasons in 1928 and 1932. He led the Golden Eagles to a 1952 Tangerine Bowl (now the Citrus Bowl) appearance. He helped put the Tech football program on the map, especially games like the 1939 season opener as the Golden Eagles shocked Ray Morrison's Vanderbilt team, tying the Commodores 13-13.
He remains the winningest football coach in Tech history by total wins with a 92-90-18 record and a .505 winning percentage. Don Wade (.509) and Wilburn Tucker (.514), a player for and assistant with Overall, are the only Tech multi-year head coaches with better winning percentages.
The football field was dedicated as Overall Field in his honor in 1949, then again when a new facility was opened in 1966, while that stadium was dedicated to Tucker in 1980.
Overall coached not just football, but basketball and baseball as well, while he was also the chairman of the Department of Health and Physical Education, the faculty chairman of athletics and the president of several state and national health and physical education organizations.
He was named a "Distinguished Alumnus" from Middle Tennessee State University in 1961, was inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame in 1966, and was an inaugural inductee into the Tennessee Tech Sports Hall of Fame in 1975. He passed away the year prior in 1974.
"I grew up idolizing Coach Overall," Thompson said. "This past summer, I decided it was time to come back. I haven't been here since I was one. My dad graduated here in 1955 and got a job down on the Gulf Coast. We left and I hadn't been back since.
"My dad's getting up there in age – he's 89. Originally, I was going to bring him, but he couldn't make this trip. I said, 'Doggone it, I need to go anyway.' He gave me his blessing to go, so I decided to make the trip. It's time."
Thompson had never been to a college football game on the Division I Football Championship Subdivision level, but he started making calls to make everything happen.
"I called a sweet, sweet lady in the ticket office named Jessica (TTU Athletics Ticket Office Manager Jessica Morgan) – hat's off and thanks to Jessica," Thompson said. "I know she got tired of hearing from me because after I got tickets I had to call back and get hotel recommendations."
He continued, "So I called my best friend in the world – we're both ol' Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, I was there from 1973-77, he was 75-79. We've been friends for a long time and I asked him if he'd meet me here. I've been here since Thursday and it worked out perfectly – Georgia Tech had an off date, so we decided to come to Cookeville and it's been my first time in 63 years."
It's tough for him to remember Cookeville and Tech from that long ago and at such an early age, but he remembers hearing stories.
"My mother told me such wonderful stories," Thompson said. "We lived on Cedar Street, very close to the intersection of Cedar and Broad. There's a wonderful guy named Bob (Larrick), who's the proprietor of a store (Sports One) just next to the corner of Cedar and Broad that sells old football memorabilia. We had a great talk yesterday. They have their store under the shadow of the old Shanks Hotel and there was a little duplex that is obviously no longer there, and that's where my mother and father were actually living. They rented the place from, I think, Polly Shanks. I found the spot, though it's a vacant lot now.
"I've spent 48 hours in Cookeville and met the most wonderful people that you'd ever want to meet."
Then there's the campus, which certainly looks nothing like what it did back in 1954, which has seen so much growth under the direction of University presidents Everett Derryberry, Arliss Roaden, Wallace Prescott, Angelo Volpe, Bob Bell and Phil Oldham.
"This is a beautiful campus," Thompson said. "With all the construction that's going on, it's amazing. I went to a technical school, an engineering school in Georgia Tech, but what a wonderful feeling to see growth happening. Georgia Tech is a wonderful school, but it's sandwiched in downtown Atlanta. How wonderful is this to have the land, the campus and this great community feeling.
"I see all the construction with the fitness center and the science building. Yesterday, I took a self-guided walking tour of the campus and this sweet young girl from California named Amethyst, a student here, walked me all around campus and was kind enough to show me where the bookstore was and all of the sights on campus. There's just nothing but great folks here."
He continued, "I'm going to retire in March. Who knows? I may be back in Cookeville again someday."
