We lost two first-class community leaders this week

Henry Bondurant age 86 and Greg Jackson age 60…..Both top-notch, first-class community leaders, who used sports as a way to reach out and help……Both now gone, but they will never be forgotten….

Mr. Bondurant got the Guilford College youth baseball leauge started back when they had the Dodgers coached by Richard Collins and then later on Pete Eller…They had the Yankees coached by Charlie King and Herman Midkiff…The Red Sox were coached by Stumpy Brown…The Tigers were led by Ed Royal and Ralph Stafford…And you had the Indians coached by Henry and later on Jerry Carrick…Plus further down the road, the A’a came on board, coached by David Page….A very good league, that used to play their games at the old Guilford High School baseball fields…Henry did a great job of getting this league up and going and the community really bought into this youth activity….

Henry also helped form the Guilford College Steelers youth football league and he coached in that leauge as well…He also spent tireless hours working on the fields at Western Guilford, handling mowing and other duties on a regular basis and he hardly ever missed a Western Guilford High School baseball game….He sat right beside me, as I was broadcasting a game from there back in March, along with Enad Haddad….Henry was the heart and soul of the Guilford College youth sports community….He did a lot of digging and fundraising and so much to keep it going…Even when the old youth league had died out to some degree, he kept it going with the Libby Hill Seafood team….

A job well-done Henry Bondurant….

Anybody that ever followed Guilford College Quaker basketball knows the name Greg Jackson….Robert Kent named his son Jackson Kent after Greg Jackson….Robert and Greg were teammates on that 1973 NAIA Championship team and they formed a friendship and a bond that lasted a lifetime…If you had a radio back in the day, you listened to Guilford College Quaker basketball on 1320 WCOG….And you knew all the players and that included Greg Jackson….There was also Lloyd Free, M.L Carr, Steve Hankins, Ray Massengale, Kent, Johnny Ralls, Coach Jack Jensen and the list goes on and on….You had guys before that group like Tom Ennis, Jerry Crocker, David Smith, Bo Whitaker, Bob Kauffman, Bert Feik and you could go on forever….

Greg Jackson did go on and helped out at a community recreation center in Brooklyn, New York….He made the Brownsville Rec Center the place to be….Jackson helped save to some degree that Brownsville area of New York and he gave the kids and people a chance to be somebody and to have a place to play and feel safe….Good vibes with Greg Jackson on hand back in Brownsville…Almost like the old days of the Brownsville Station……They said Greg Jackson was like the ‘Mayor of Brownsville’……

Both men will be remembered for a long time and I know I will never forget the names of Henry Bondurant and Greg Jackson and what they meant to the Guilford College community……