In a small sanctuary made smaller by the swell of mourners and their “Amens!” pushing against the windowless walls, this world bade farewell Saturday to one of the proud grunts of Georgia’s most exulted football team.
The name Jimmy Womack may not be the first or the fifth that comes to mind when remembering the Bulldogs’ 1980 national championship team. Neither could Womack claim the marquee in high school, as the 1976 Warner Robins Demons became recognized as the best in the country his senior year. Both those had other running backs who sucked up all the fame.
“But what did Herschel Walker and James Brooks have in common?” Warner Robins councilman Chuck Shaheen asked from behind the lectern Saturday.
“Jimmy Womack.”
They gathered Saturday to celebrate a facilitator, a man who seemed destined to occupy the “B” side of glory. One who both wrestled his faults and carried his victories quietly. One who found his own kind of peace in a trucker’s solitude and even a fullback’s obscurity. And there was so much of that to go around when one shared a backfield in 1980 with Herschel Walker.
You can catch a glimpse of Womack’s work if you reach back online to watch Walker scoring on a toss sweep against Notre Dame, finishing off the championship season. That would be Womack, No. 25, out in front, planting a poor defensive back playing up tight.
“He knocked him flat back,” Vince Dooley, the coach then, said last week. “That shows Jimmy’s versatility. That defender was trying to set the corner, he wasn’t going to let the run go outside. And Jimmy ran slap over him.”
Much of the rest, you must take as a matter of football faith.
“Any time you saw Herschel Walker break a long run, you can rest assured that Jimmy had knocked somebody out,” Mike Cavan, the Bulldogs’ running back coach of yore, said.
Womack died Tuesday following complications surrounding hip-replacement surgery. He was 56.
They are not immortal. They were not preserved in amber shortly after becoming champions, only their deeds. They grow old. They get fat. They ache and limp. They die. Womack is the 10th player from the 1980 team to go.
“The surgery seemed to go well; he looked up me and smiled afterwards. You don’t know how much I’m clinging onto that smile; it’s the last thing I saw,” Ron Simmons said. Long before Simmons played the line at Florida State and became a professional wrestling giant, he was a kid growing up in the Womack house. Along with Brooks, he was another of the hotshots on the ’76 Warner Robins team who partially eclipsed Womack. And he was one of a dozen people who over the last week talked about the wattage of Womack’s smile.
Warner Robins is covered with Womacks, living and dead. “There’s a saying in this area: ‘Womacks are the strongest people we know,’” said his cousin, Douglas Womack.
That trait showed itself in Jimmy from the time he arrived in high school. He had his big moments on the field, such as rushing for 139 yards in a state championship game. Still it was Brooks — who went on to Auburn and a long NFL career — and Simmons who most dazzled the recruiters. Womack seemed destined for a supporting role.
He was not built to the classic specs of a fullback, at maybe 5-foot-9 and just over 200 pounds. They grow equipment managers bigger than that today. But he was Womack strong.
Or, as Cavan puts it, “Strooooooong.”
“All metal and steel,” said his old former quarterback at Georgia, Buck Belue.
Even his nickname was about as glamorous as bib overalls. They called Womack “Hatchethead,” because of the way he fearlessly lowered his helmet and went to work chopping down linebackers. That low center of gravity and a hard head was a defender’s bane.
When Herschel came along for Womack’s senior season, his few carries shrank even more (Womack got 49 that season, gaining 209 yards). There was a transcendent star on campus, and while everyone served the Herschel phenomenon one way or another, Womack was asked to pay it more tribute than most. He was the road grader to Walker’s Ferrari.
Post-football, Womack had his struggles. He tried a few jobs around Atlanta before discovering the freedom of trucking. The father of two daughters, he battled drug issues. “He played for the (Warner Robins) Demons, and he fought a lot of demons,” as Shaheen put it.
But as he settled back home in Warner Robins a few years ago, Womack seemed to beating the lower-case demons with the help of a new-found faith. “He told me if he had known how good (finding religion) felt, he would have done it a long time ago,” Douglas Womack said.
One thing he never fell into was any kind of resentment about his place in the football food chain. Just as teammates and coaches remembered him blocking without complaint, his family seemed to hear nothing but the good memories.
“He gave Herschel Walker all of the credit. He would push Herschel Walker way above himself,” cousin Douglas said.
Said Belue, the old quarterback: “When I hear people say, ‘I saw that ESPN documentary on Herschel,’ I always try to tell them, ‘Well, I hope you watched on those running plays that No. 25 was getting up there and taking care of the linebacker and opening up these running lanes for him.’”
Of course, no one does. Great teams of all kinds owe their spirit to the grunts who do their part without the bonus of adulation.
But by heaven, on the day they buried Georgia’s championship fullback, someone was going to hear about the part he played.
Shaheen remembered talking to his friend one day about seeing a replay of one of Walker’s long runs, when the broadcaster actually did mention Womack’s name.
“Ah, Herschel could have done that without me,” Womack said.
“No, he couldn’t have done it without you, Jimmy,” Shaheen said then and said again Saturday.
“Amen,” the funeral-goers agreed.
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