Aycock Alumni Community Association Inc.
Rockdale, Texas
Rockdale, Texas
Rockdale Sports Hall of Honor
Aycock Inductees
Aycock Inductees
Rockdale Reporter August 2, 2007
Rockdale High School will have its first ever athletes Hall of Honor with the first class being inducted this fall.
Twelve members of the RHS athletic community who graduated from either Rockdale High School or Aycock High School before 1960, will be the first inductees.
Those ceremonies are tentatively scheduled for Friday, Nov. 2, night of the Rockdale-Cameron football game at Tiger Field.
Plans at the moment call for a banquet honoring the inductees and their families that afternoon. Introductions, and plaque presentations, will be made at Tiger Field prior to the game.
Head Coach/Athletic Director Jeff Miller said a permanent Hall of Honor will be established in the new high school gym. That facility will be built as part of the Rockdale ISD bond program over the next few years.
Committee:
Members of the Hall of Honor committee, who have been working several months on the project are Weldon Alford, Dennis Brooks, Mike Brown, Bill Cooke, Jimmy Keen, Billy Ray Locklin, Darrell Mynar (Athletic Association president) and Miller.
Committee members who were chosen for induction did not participate in the selection process for themselves.
Aycock Inductees: 2007
The following is from the Rockdale Reporter August 2, 2007
Eural Davis, 1940 Aycock graduate.
The “Jackie Robinson of track and field.” Davis was the first African-American to travel with an integrated track team in 1947. He was third in the long jump in the U.S. nationals and was in the top six of Olympic trials for the 1948 games. Three of the jumpers who beat him in the trials went on to win the gold, silver and bronze medals in the Olympics.
Ralph Johnson, Aycock coach from 1951-1956.
One of a handful of coaches who led teams to football and basketball state titles in the same season. Johnson’s Tigers won a 1955 state football crown and a 1956 state basketball title. His Aycock football teams were 38-13-2 and his basketball teams were 128-25. Aycock also won a regional football title and two district basketball titles under Johnson.
Billy Ray Locklin, 1956 Aycock graduate.
A key member of the 1955-56 AHS football and basketball state champs, he went on to a standout career in college and pro football. An All-American at New Mexico State University, where he was
inducted into the university’s athletic Hall of Fame, he went on to play with the Montreal Alouettes and Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League. He was the CFL player of the year in 1966 and was nominated for the Schilling Award, highest award bestowed in Canadian pro football.
William “Bill” Moultrie, 1950 Aycock graduate.
The first African-American coach at Stanford University, he moved on to Howard University and led a track program which produced 71 Division I All-Americans during the next 26 years. He was baton coach (relay events) for the United States in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, coached Michael Johnson to world title wins in the 200-meter and 400-meter events in 1995 and is a member of the National Track & Field Hall of Fame.
**********UPDATE**********
Rockdale Reporter, December 15, 2010
Coach Moultrie finally gets his recognition
It has been three years since our own Rockdale legend Coach Bill Moultrie was inducted into the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame, but when he shows up this week in San Antonio, it will be his first trip to the ceremony.
When Moultrie was placed in the Hall of Fame in 2007, he suffered a stroke just before the ceremony and was unable to attend.
“I’m excited to be going because of all the history of the award,” Moultrie said before he left.
“The long and short of it is I’m taking advantage of the opportunity to finally go”.
Moultrie — a 1950 graduate of Aycock High School—is a legend in the track and field world. He was the first African-American coach at Stanford University before he moved on to Howard University and led a track program which produced 71 Division I All-Americans during the next 26 years.
He was baton coach (relay events) for the United States in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, coached Michael Johnson to world title wins in the 200-meter and 400-meter events in 1995.
Leroy Wright, 1956 Aycock graduate.
Perhaps the best athlete ever to come out of Rockdale, the 6-9, 205 pound
basketball, football and track standout was a key member of the 1955-56 Aycock state football and basketball champs. After graduation he chose basketball and went to College of the Pacific (now University of the Pacific). His 21.3 rebounds-per-game average there is still the fourth best in NCAA history. He played on the Pittsburgh Pipers team which won the very first American Basketball League (forerunner to the ABA) in 1968 and became the league's first African-American assistant coach.
2008 Inductees:
The following is from the Rockdale Reporter - October 9, 2008
Zelma Dykes (1924 AHS graduate, coached Aycock girls sports for decades)
Zelma Lee Hill Dykes returned to Aycock High School and coached AHS girls basketball teams to five straight district titles, including a legendary undefeated team in 1955-56. She graduated AHS in 1924 and went to Paul Quinn College in Waco where she earned her bachelors degree and teaching certificate. Her teaching career began in Davilla. She then went on to the Liberty Hill school of Milam County. When that school merged into the Rockdale ISD she came to Aycock.
Between the 1951-52 and 1955-56 seasons Dykes’s teams won five consecutive district titles and did not lose a district game in any of those seasons. The 1956 team was 21-0. the Tigerettes hosted, and won, a blue ribbon post season tourney that included two other undefeated teams.
Mrs. Dykes died Oct 8, 1998.
Flora Mack (1948 AHS graduate Coached Aycock girls sports in 1950s )
Flora Juanita Fair Mack coached basketball and track at AHS in the early to mid-1950s. Her track teams produced numerous district winners and state qualifiers. Mack excelled in athletics and academics during her middle school and high school years. She was also a member of the school choir and quartet.
She was the 1948 Aycock High School valedictorian, going on to earn a bachelor of arts degree in Tillotson College in Austin in 1951 and doing one year of postgraduate work at Prairie View A&M University.
Mack made history of a different kind after her coaching career was over. In 1961 she became the first African-American teacher in the Rockdale ISD, teaching English at Rockdale Junior-High School in the first phase of the desegregation plan which resulted in the closing of Aycock.
Mrs. Mack died Dec . 29, 2004.
Annie Bell Page Wesley (1956)
Annie Bell Page Wesley was one of Aycock High School’s outstanding female athletes in AHS’s golden age of athletics in the mid-1950’s. Described as a “speedy, snappy-shooting forward” on the Tigerette basketball team, Aycock won district every year in which Wesley was a team member.
The Aycock girls went 21-0 and won a blue-ribbon post season tourney, which they hosted, that also included two other undefeated teams.
Wesley scored 335 points that season, almost half the team’s offensive output. She averaged 16 points per game.
She also ran track. Wesley was second at state in the baseball throw.
She married Charles C. Wesley and the couple had seven boys and one girl, all of whom went on to standout athletic careers at Rockdale High School. They are Lawrence, Darin, Dexter, Cedric, Anthony, Leonard and Roderick Wesley and Barbara Ann Grayson.
Mrs. Wesley died Oct. 28, 1997.
The following is from the Rockdale Reporter – October 30, 2008
Lee Earl Gadison Sr. (1949 AHS graduate)
Lee Earl Gadison Sr. was a member of an Aycock High basketball team that went to three straight state finals in 1947, 1948 and 1949. That team included Gadison, three of his cousins and his future brother-in-law. He also played halfback for the Tiger football team and set records for yards rushing, rushing touchdowns, passing touchdowns and interceptions for touchdowns. In 1949 he and his Aycock teammates won the state 880-yard and mile relays. Gadison was the district champ in the 100-yard dash and 220-yard dash. He was Aycock High School’s Most Outstanding Male Athlete in 1949 and was also the class president and homecoming king that school year. He graduated in 1950.
Gadison went on to Paul Quinn College on a full football scholarship, earning a spot on the varsity team as an offensive and defensive guard his freshman year. He played two seasons at Paul Quinn then enlisted in the U. S. Air Force where he remained for 20 years. After retiring from the USAF in 1972, Gadison went on to run for the Masters Track Club of San Antonio, well into the 1980s, then participated in the Senior Olympics from 1992 to 2002. Gadison won at the national Senior Olympics once in the 50 meters, 100 meters and 3-on-3 basketball and won at the state level three times in each of those events.
Rufus Wolridge (1949 AHS graduate)
Rufus Wolridge Jr. was one of Aycock High School’s first standout athletes to pursue an athletic career in college.
The son of Rufus Sr. and Mary Wolridge, he was the oldest of four boys. He graduated Aycock High School in 1949 where he was a standout in track and continued his career at Texas Southern University in Houston where he also starred in the track program while majoring in biology and math. He joined the U. S. Army in and served in the Korean War, reaching the rank of sergeant. After returning from Korea, he settled in Houston, and retired after a 35-year career in the U.S. Postal Service.
Mr. Wolridge died in February, 1992.
Billie Jean Walton Washington (1950 AHS graduate)
Billie Jean Walton Washington was a standout basketball and track performer at Aycock High School and again in college at Prairie View A&M. A 1950 graduate of AHS, she won numerous medals in basketball and track, and was named the school’s All-Around Girl in 1950, the start of a decade which would see Aycock athletics dominate Central Texas. She went on to Prairie View A&M where she lettered in both basketball and track.
Matthew (Doc) Cook (1950s AHS graduate)
Matthew (Doc) Cook, the eighth child of Roy and Birdie Cook, was a standout track and football athlete in the late 1940s and early 1950s for Aycock High School. Cook was a mainstay on an Aycock football team which won four district championships, and three regional championships, in his four-year AHS career. He was also a standout on the Tiger track team, specializing in the long jump—then called the broad jump—the 100-yard dash and 220-yard dash. Cook was also a member of Aycock’s 220-yard, 440-yard and 880-yard relay teams. After graduating as salutatorian in the AHS Class of 1951, he received a football scholarship to Samuel Huston College in Austin. Cook played defensive tackle for the Dragons in 1951. The next year Samuel Huston College merged with Tillotson College to become Huston-Tillotson College, later Huston-Tillotson University. Cook continued to play defensive tackle for the new school in 1952 and 1953. After serving in the United States Army, Cook returned to Huston-Tillotson, earning a bachelor of science degree in physical education in 1958.
In addition to his athletic and academic accomplishments at Aycock High School, Cook was remembered by classmates as a skilled mimic who imitated animals and people, including roosters, turkeys, mockingbirds, cowboy singer Tex Ritter and even legendary Aycock Superintendent O. E. “Prof” Wilhite.
Rockdale High School will have its first ever athletes Hall of Honor with the first class being inducted this fall.
Twelve members of the RHS athletic community who graduated from either Rockdale High School or Aycock High School before 1960, will be the first inductees.
Those ceremonies are tentatively scheduled for Friday, Nov. 2, night of the Rockdale-Cameron football game at Tiger Field.
Plans at the moment call for a banquet honoring the inductees and their families that afternoon. Introductions, and plaque presentations, will be made at Tiger Field prior to the game.
Head Coach/Athletic Director Jeff Miller said a permanent Hall of Honor will be established in the new high school gym. That facility will be built as part of the Rockdale ISD bond program over the next few years.
Committee:
Members of the Hall of Honor committee, who have been working several months on the project are Weldon Alford, Dennis Brooks, Mike Brown, Bill Cooke, Jimmy Keen, Billy Ray Locklin, Darrell Mynar (Athletic Association president) and Miller.
Committee members who were chosen for induction did not participate in the selection process for themselves.
Aycock Inductees: 2007
The following is from the Rockdale Reporter August 2, 2007
Eural Davis, 1940 Aycock graduate.
The “Jackie Robinson of track and field.” Davis was the first African-American to travel with an integrated track team in 1947. He was third in the long jump in the U.S. nationals and was in the top six of Olympic trials for the 1948 games. Three of the jumpers who beat him in the trials went on to win the gold, silver and bronze medals in the Olympics.
Ralph Johnson, Aycock coach from 1951-1956.
One of a handful of coaches who led teams to football and basketball state titles in the same season. Johnson’s Tigers won a 1955 state football crown and a 1956 state basketball title. His Aycock football teams were 38-13-2 and his basketball teams were 128-25. Aycock also won a regional football title and two district basketball titles under Johnson.
Billy Ray Locklin, 1956 Aycock graduate.
A key member of the 1955-56 AHS football and basketball state champs, he went on to a standout career in college and pro football. An All-American at New Mexico State University, where he was
inducted into the university’s athletic Hall of Fame, he went on to play with the Montreal Alouettes and Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League. He was the CFL player of the year in 1966 and was nominated for the Schilling Award, highest award bestowed in Canadian pro football.
William “Bill” Moultrie, 1950 Aycock graduate.
The first African-American coach at Stanford University, he moved on to Howard University and led a track program which produced 71 Division I All-Americans during the next 26 years. He was baton coach (relay events) for the United States in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, coached Michael Johnson to world title wins in the 200-meter and 400-meter events in 1995 and is a member of the National Track & Field Hall of Fame.
**********UPDATE**********
Rockdale Reporter, December 15, 2010
Coach Moultrie finally gets his recognition
It has been three years since our own Rockdale legend Coach Bill Moultrie was inducted into the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame, but when he shows up this week in San Antonio, it will be his first trip to the ceremony.
When Moultrie was placed in the Hall of Fame in 2007, he suffered a stroke just before the ceremony and was unable to attend.
“I’m excited to be going because of all the history of the award,” Moultrie said before he left.
“The long and short of it is I’m taking advantage of the opportunity to finally go”.
Moultrie — a 1950 graduate of Aycock High School—is a legend in the track and field world. He was the first African-American coach at Stanford University before he moved on to Howard University and led a track program which produced 71 Division I All-Americans during the next 26 years.
He was baton coach (relay events) for the United States in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, coached Michael Johnson to world title wins in the 200-meter and 400-meter events in 1995.
Leroy Wright, 1956 Aycock graduate.
Perhaps the best athlete ever to come out of Rockdale, the 6-9, 205 pound
basketball, football and track standout was a key member of the 1955-56 Aycock state football and basketball champs. After graduation he chose basketball and went to College of the Pacific (now University of the Pacific). His 21.3 rebounds-per-game average there is still the fourth best in NCAA history. He played on the Pittsburgh Pipers team which won the very first American Basketball League (forerunner to the ABA) in 1968 and became the league's first African-American assistant coach.
2008 Inductees:
The following is from the Rockdale Reporter - October 9, 2008
Zelma Dykes (1924 AHS graduate, coached Aycock girls sports for decades)
Zelma Lee Hill Dykes returned to Aycock High School and coached AHS girls basketball teams to five straight district titles, including a legendary undefeated team in 1955-56. She graduated AHS in 1924 and went to Paul Quinn College in Waco where she earned her bachelors degree and teaching certificate. Her teaching career began in Davilla. She then went on to the Liberty Hill school of Milam County. When that school merged into the Rockdale ISD she came to Aycock.
Between the 1951-52 and 1955-56 seasons Dykes’s teams won five consecutive district titles and did not lose a district game in any of those seasons. The 1956 team was 21-0. the Tigerettes hosted, and won, a blue ribbon post season tourney that included two other undefeated teams.
Mrs. Dykes died Oct 8, 1998.
Flora Mack (1948 AHS graduate Coached Aycock girls sports in 1950s )
Flora Juanita Fair Mack coached basketball and track at AHS in the early to mid-1950s. Her track teams produced numerous district winners and state qualifiers. Mack excelled in athletics and academics during her middle school and high school years. She was also a member of the school choir and quartet.
She was the 1948 Aycock High School valedictorian, going on to earn a bachelor of arts degree in Tillotson College in Austin in 1951 and doing one year of postgraduate work at Prairie View A&M University.
Mack made history of a different kind after her coaching career was over. In 1961 she became the first African-American teacher in the Rockdale ISD, teaching English at Rockdale Junior-High School in the first phase of the desegregation plan which resulted in the closing of Aycock.
Mrs. Mack died Dec . 29, 2004.
Annie Bell Page Wesley (1956)
Annie Bell Page Wesley was one of Aycock High School’s outstanding female athletes in AHS’s golden age of athletics in the mid-1950’s. Described as a “speedy, snappy-shooting forward” on the Tigerette basketball team, Aycock won district every year in which Wesley was a team member.
The Aycock girls went 21-0 and won a blue-ribbon post season tourney, which they hosted, that also included two other undefeated teams.
Wesley scored 335 points that season, almost half the team’s offensive output. She averaged 16 points per game.
She also ran track. Wesley was second at state in the baseball throw.
She married Charles C. Wesley and the couple had seven boys and one girl, all of whom went on to standout athletic careers at Rockdale High School. They are Lawrence, Darin, Dexter, Cedric, Anthony, Leonard and Roderick Wesley and Barbara Ann Grayson.
Mrs. Wesley died Oct. 28, 1997.
The following is from the Rockdale Reporter – October 30, 2008
Lee Earl Gadison Sr. (1949 AHS graduate)
Lee Earl Gadison Sr. was a member of an Aycock High basketball team that went to three straight state finals in 1947, 1948 and 1949. That team included Gadison, three of his cousins and his future brother-in-law. He also played halfback for the Tiger football team and set records for yards rushing, rushing touchdowns, passing touchdowns and interceptions for touchdowns. In 1949 he and his Aycock teammates won the state 880-yard and mile relays. Gadison was the district champ in the 100-yard dash and 220-yard dash. He was Aycock High School’s Most Outstanding Male Athlete in 1949 and was also the class president and homecoming king that school year. He graduated in 1950.
Gadison went on to Paul Quinn College on a full football scholarship, earning a spot on the varsity team as an offensive and defensive guard his freshman year. He played two seasons at Paul Quinn then enlisted in the U. S. Air Force where he remained for 20 years. After retiring from the USAF in 1972, Gadison went on to run for the Masters Track Club of San Antonio, well into the 1980s, then participated in the Senior Olympics from 1992 to 2002. Gadison won at the national Senior Olympics once in the 50 meters, 100 meters and 3-on-3 basketball and won at the state level three times in each of those events.
Rufus Wolridge (1949 AHS graduate)
Rufus Wolridge Jr. was one of Aycock High School’s first standout athletes to pursue an athletic career in college.
The son of Rufus Sr. and Mary Wolridge, he was the oldest of four boys. He graduated Aycock High School in 1949 where he was a standout in track and continued his career at Texas Southern University in Houston where he also starred in the track program while majoring in biology and math. He joined the U. S. Army in and served in the Korean War, reaching the rank of sergeant. After returning from Korea, he settled in Houston, and retired after a 35-year career in the U.S. Postal Service.
Mr. Wolridge died in February, 1992.
Billie Jean Walton Washington (1950 AHS graduate)
Billie Jean Walton Washington was a standout basketball and track performer at Aycock High School and again in college at Prairie View A&M. A 1950 graduate of AHS, she won numerous medals in basketball and track, and was named the school’s All-Around Girl in 1950, the start of a decade which would see Aycock athletics dominate Central Texas. She went on to Prairie View A&M where she lettered in both basketball and track.
Matthew (Doc) Cook (1950s AHS graduate)
Matthew (Doc) Cook, the eighth child of Roy and Birdie Cook, was a standout track and football athlete in the late 1940s and early 1950s for Aycock High School. Cook was a mainstay on an Aycock football team which won four district championships, and three regional championships, in his four-year AHS career. He was also a standout on the Tiger track team, specializing in the long jump—then called the broad jump—the 100-yard dash and 220-yard dash. Cook was also a member of Aycock’s 220-yard, 440-yard and 880-yard relay teams. After graduating as salutatorian in the AHS Class of 1951, he received a football scholarship to Samuel Huston College in Austin. Cook played defensive tackle for the Dragons in 1951. The next year Samuel Huston College merged with Tillotson College to become Huston-Tillotson College, later Huston-Tillotson University. Cook continued to play defensive tackle for the new school in 1952 and 1953. After serving in the United States Army, Cook returned to Huston-Tillotson, earning a bachelor of science degree in physical education in 1958.
In addition to his athletic and academic accomplishments at Aycock High School, Cook was remembered by classmates as a skilled mimic who imitated animals and people, including roosters, turkeys, mockingbirds, cowboy singer Tex Ritter and even legendary Aycock Superintendent O. E. “Prof” Wilhite.
Thanks to the Rockdale Reporter, Mike Brown, Editor for permission to use these articles and photos
Rockdale Reporter Established 1893
Rockdale Reporter Established 1893