In the year he will turn 80, former UGA football coach Vince Dooley recently tromped through the swampland of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta in south Alabama to find his ancestral home.
Ben Raines, a reporter for the Mobile Press-Register, accompanied Dooley on the pilgrimage, where the legendary coach discovered the ruins of the home -- which burned down years ago -- he visited as a child.
“My great-great-grandmother bought this land from her brother in 1821," Dooley said. "They farmed it, about 300 acres," he said. Dooley said he hadn't been to the site since the 1960s, when he visited his cousin, Stevie Bangle, a hermit who lived in the swamp for 40 years.
Dooley recounted the meeting: "Out came this man with wild hair and a giant beard looking like Methuselah himself. He looked at me for a moment and said, ‘Hello Vincent,’ like he’d seen me yesterday.”
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