Keith Miller and members of the classes of 1971, ‘72 and ‘73 had been meeting since late Friday last week, traveling for the most part back in time, moving through the present and dreaming out loud about what might lie ahead of them.
As class reunions go, this one was pretty informal. No photos or memory books, no dinner or dancing. They attended a concert on Marietta Square Friday night and a meet and greet Saturday at the Hilton Marietta Conference Center.
“At our age, we don’t need much to have a good time,” said Miller, organizer of the weekend gathering.
Sunday at Marietta's Laurel Park, though, was all about Walter Chadwick, the coach their Wills High School football team had for a measly two weeks but could never forget.
Chadwick, you see, gave them hope and some believe, given the chance, would’ve erased the team finally from the losing column and put all their disappointment to rest.
There are few Georgia families with a more distinct football legacy than that of the Chadwick family. To this day, Marist coach Alan Chadwick is considered the most successful high school coach in the history of the Peach State. His brother Dennis, a former University of Tennessee quarterback, was said by his coach to be "the greatest high school football player ever."
But Walter, they say, was something special, a star Tennessee running back who led the SEC in touchdowns and was drafted in 1968 by the Green Bay Packers.
And so imagine what it was like when he showed up as head coach of the Wills High football team, a pathetic lot that had won only two games in the previous three years and would go on to break the state’s record for the longest losing streak in its history.
The mere appearance of Chadwick on the Tigers’ roster gave Miller and his teammates goose bumps. More than that, it gave them hope.
“We were pretty excited,” said Miller, now 62.
It was spring 1971, and even though he couldn’t officially demand they practice, Chadwick invited those who wanted to get an early start to show up at the Smyrna campus we know now as Campbell High.
Miller, then a rising senior, Barry McCurdy and Lee Brownlow were among those who turned out. Chadwick worked them hard, putting them through passing and conditioning drills so intense, they threw up.
Credit: Branden Camp
Credit: Branden Camp
But it didn't matter. A winning season finally seemed within their reach and then, just two weeks in, the unthinkable happened.
Walter was making deliveries for his mom’s gift shop when he stopped at a traffic light and a Wells Fargo armored truck slid across the center line and slammed into his Volkswagen Beetle.
For the next four months, Walter lay in a coma, his brain badly damaged.
“They gave me the last rites,” Chadwick likes to say, “but I fooled ’em!”
The Tigers got a new coaching staff and moved on.
Miller graduated in 1972 and headed to the University of Georgia and the Marine Corps, before signing on as a pilot for Northwest Airlines.
Three decades later, in the midst of doing research for his memoir, Miller was looking for Chadwick’s death record but couldn’t find it.
A classmate had told him the coach was buried in Arlington Cemetery in Sandy Springs. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe he was buried in Tennessee instead.
Miller decided to cold call an Alan Chadwick he found in the telephone directory.
“Are you the late Walter Chadwick’s brother?” he asked.
“Yes, but Walter isn’t dead,” the brother told him. “His brain was damaged and he had to learn to walk and talk again but he’s alive.”
Miller was shocked but his brother corroborated everything he hadn’t found. He also mailed to Miller a newspaper article about Walter.
The 30th anniversary of the April 23 accident was fast approaching. Miller saw an opportunity to pay tribute to Chadwick.
And so about 80 people, including fellow Volunteers from Tennessee, turned out and shared their favorite Walter Chadwick stories.
This being the 45th anniversary, Miller said he wanted to do the same.
"I don't know anyone who has had more challenges than Walter," Miller said. "The hope he gave us when he came to Wills to be our coach is the same hope he gives us now all these years later. He's the personification of hope and perseverance."
Credit: Branden Camp
Credit: Branden Camp
Walter Chadwick is 70 now and has no memory of the accident that changed his life.
This much he does know.
“The Lord worked a miracle and let me live,” he said recently.
Two years after that fateful day, Chadwick said, he was hitchhiking back home. A high school student picked him up and shared with him the words in John 3:3 — Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
His life, he said, had been spared so he could have that moment, to be born again.
“This world is not my home,” he said. “I’m just passing through.”
Friends of Walter Chadwick say his salvation is what has kept him going all these years. And though his speech is garbled and doctors recently diagnosed him with congestive heart failure, his spirit is intact.
Ellen Morrison, who graduated from Tennessee three years after Chadwick and gathers once a week to lunch with him and a group of other Volunteer fans, said the former football standout “has a joy for life that is contagious.”
Yep, you could see that joy dance Sunday in Chadwick’s eyes.
