[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 161 (Wednesday, October 18, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15287-S15288]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              SAMMY HOWARD, MAYOR OF PHENIX CITY, ALABAMA

  Mr. HEFLIN. Mr. President, I rise today to congratulate Sammy Howard 
for his recent election as the new mayor of Phenix City, Alabama, a 
vibrant community in the east-central part of the State. Still widely 
called ``Coach'' Howard since he was a high school football coach for 
so many years, Sammy most recently was a highly successful banker in 
Phenix City. As a coach, he led his teams to 113 victories out of a 
total of 140 games.
  I ask unanimous consent that the text of an article which appeared in 
the Columbus, GA, Ledger-Enquirer on the life and career of Sammy 
Howard be printed in the Record after my remarks. It tells about his 
odyssey from student athlete to coach to banker to mayor.
  I wish ``Coach'' Howard all the best as he takes over the reins of 
government in Phenix City.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

       [From the Columbus (GA), Ledger-Enquirer, Sept. 11, 1995]

              Phenix City Mayor-Elect Not in Game for Self

                           (By Richard Hyatt)

       Nina Jo Keel had her rules. You made a speech in class or 
     you failed. But there was something about that shy kid who 
     nervously told her he would have to take an ``F,'' that he 
     couldn't get up in front of his friends and do that. Bending 
     her own rule, she let him make his speech in private so he 
     could escape with a ``D.''
       Forty years after she taught speech at Central High School, 
     she would watch the 6 o'clock news and mentally get out her 
     red pencil. Her health wasn't good and the boys she taught 
     had turned into men, but in her heart, they were still her 
     students and she was still their teacher. That's why she 
     picked up the telephone and called that 10th-grader who had 
     become a successful Phenix City banker.
       ``She finally taught me how to say amphitheater,'' Sammy 
     Howard said.
       She died several months ago, so Nina Jo Keel never got to 
     see that frightened high school kid become Mayor-elect of 
     Phenix City. He couldn't make a speech in class, but next 
     month he will become the spokesman for the community in which 
     he grew up.
       Never did anyone forecast that Curtis Samuel Howard Jr. 
     would ever be called mayor. He was a football player, then a 
     coach, and in a universe the size of Phenix City, there are 
     no higher callings. It's been 17 years since he blew a 
     whistle or covered a blackboard in X's and O's and yet he 
     can't escape the game that paid for his education.
       ``Some people still look at me as coach,'' Howard said. ``I 
     saw a former player in the bank the other day and he called 
     me Coach Howard. They don't call me mister and they can't 
     bring themselves to call me Sammy. I'll always be the 
     coach.''
       The traits of a player and coach are as close to him as 
     debits and credits. He has used them to build a banking 
     career and he talks about the need for teamwork in making the 
     city operate effectively. There are a few football trappings 
     in his office, including a mint-condition ticket to the 1951 
     Auburn-Alabama game, the season the two schools renewed their 
     rivalry.
       Growing up, some of those traits were not so attractive.
       ``I've always been driven by a desire to win,'' Howard 
     said. ``That almost got me barred from Little League. I'd get 
     mad at the other kids if they made an error. Chuck Roberts, 
     with the Housing Authority, was my coach. He talked to me and 
     said I couldn't chase the other players around the field when 
     I got mad.''
       Red Howard, his late father, was also a competitor. In 
     1919, he scored Auburn's only touchdown in a victory over 
     Georgia. He was the manager of the Frederick Douglas housing 
     complex in Phenix City. He also had a temper.
       ``Sammy and I were double-dating one time and we borrowed 
     Mr. Howard's 1953 Pontiac couple. We had a flat tire and we 
     jacked up the fender instead of the bumper. Mr. Howard had 
     some choice words for us,'' said Pat Thornton, a Central High 
     classmate who is plant manager of Brumlow Mills in Calhoun, 
     Ga.
       The Howard family lived on Dillingham Street, not far from 
     the bridge into Columbus and not far from many of the 
     gambling joints that--like it or not--are so much a part of 
     the community's history.
       ``We were just a few blocks away, but you know, we never 
     felt scared. We never even locked our doors,'' Howard said.
       But when he started playing football, he soon learned that 
     being from Phenix City was a stigma in the eyes of God-
     fearing people who had heard the Sin City reputation.
       ``This is still an issue. This problem won't go away in my 
     lifetime. We still have that reputation,'' Howard said.
       The Central team he played on was a talented group. They 
     went 6-1-3, including a victory over Sidney Lanier, ending 
     that Montgomery school's 19-game victory streak. Howard ran 
     back a kickoff 95 yards. But his classmates talk about one he 
     didn't score. That one came with 20 seconds to play against 
     Columbus High. Central was seeking a third straight Bi-City 
     championship. Howard had scored twice and apparently scored a 
     third touchdown that would have meant a victory.
       It was called back because of a penalty.
       ``It was better to complain about the call because if you 
     admitted the call was right people would want to know who was 
     guilty. They would have run him out of town,'' Howard said.
       He was captain of the football team, vice president of the 
     senior class and an All-Bi-City player. He was even voted the 
     cutest male graduate. Only he wasn't cute enough to get a 
     college football scholarship.
       ``Bill Bush and I went 400 miles for a tryout at Southwest 
     Mississippi Junior College in Summit, Mississippi. We had to 
     make it. We didn't have the money to get back home,'' he 
     said.
       In his second year, he was an All-American halfback on a 
     team that was undefeated. He even married the homecoming 
     queen.
       Those two years were important to Howard. He was away from 
     home. He found there was more to life than football. That was 
     a painful lesson. He had to overcome two concussions and a 
     broken nose his first year in Mississippi.
       His play grabbed the attention of major college coaches. 
     Even though he had grown up as one of the few confessed 
     Auburn fans in 

[[Page S 15288]]
     Phenix City, a few minutes alone with Bear Bryant changed all that. At 
     Alabama, his injuries continued to mount so he played very 
     little. Three decades later, he is reminded of those 
     injuries.
       ``I had my neck operated on a few years ago and the surgeon 
     said I had either been in a bad car wreck or else I got one 
     lick too many playing football.''
       Coaches and teachers had played an important role in his 
     life, so he decided to become a high school coach. Red 
     Jenkins, his junior college coach, had become head coach in 
     Yazoo City, Miss., and he offered Howard a job as a junior 
     high coach.
       His career almost ended after a single game.
       His team played a terrible first half and he took them to 
     the end zone where he pitched a fit, throwing his clipboard 
     and using locker room language, with the heat of his tirade 
     directed at a single player.
       The next day he was summoned to the superintendent's office 
     and when he arrived the room was filled with a number of 
     proper ladies. They were horrified at his behavior. He was in 
     trouble until the superintendent asked the only woman who 
     hadn't spoken what she thought.
       ``What did you say to that boy?'' she asked the young coach 
     who didn't want to repeat his words.
       ``I said something I shouldn't,'' he said.
       ``What did you say?'' she said again.
       He sheepishly repeated the word.
       ``That's exactly what I would have called him,'' she said.
       The woman was Mrs. Jerry Clower. Her husband was a 
     fertilizer salesman then. Their son was a football player 
     like his dad, who had played at Mississippi State. They were 
     staunch Baptists and became staunch friends to Howard, who 
     two years later became head coach.
       Clower, a member of the Grand Ole Opry, is now a legendary 
     comedian who gets paid for telling the stories he has always 
     told.
       ``I thank my God for every rememberance of Sammy Howard. In 
     1969, he took 30 little boys and won a state championship. 
     They played against teams from Jackson that would dress out 
     100 players and they won every game,'' Clower said.
       Clower, who offered the pre-game prayer before every game, 
     talked about Howard's decency and how he was real, not a 
     phony. It was a difficult time in Yazoo City. During 
     Christmas break, federal judges ruled that after the holiday 
     they would be only one school in town. Desegregation came 
     abruptly.
       One of the students who came from the black school was Mike 
     Espy, who became a congressman from Mississippi and, most 
     recently, Secretary of Agriculture. He was president of the 
     student body at his school and the adults were quibbling over 
     who would be president at the new school.
       ``I was impressed,'' Howard said. ``He said he thought the 
     white student ought to be president--as long as they promised 
     that the following year a black student would have the job.''
       Clower was impressed with Howard.
       ``My son played every minute under Sammy Howard. He so 
     loved him that he wanted to be a coach like Sammy Howard. 
     Right now, he is coaching in Gulfport, Mississippi,'' Clower 
     said.
       Wanting a challenge and wanting to be nearer home after the 
     death of his father, Howard became football coach at Hardaway 
     High in Columbus, a program that the previous year did not 
     produce a single victory. He made progress, but in three 
     years took a different challenge.
       In 1973, he moved home to Phenix City, becoming head coach 
     at Glenwood School, at the time a fast-growing private 
     school. He was there five years. He became principal as well 
     as coach and in his final year won a state title. He left 
     coaching with 113 victories in 140 games.
       He joined F&M Bank as a trainee in 1978 and in two years 
     was made president. Through evolution, that bank became part 
     of the Synovus family and Howard its president. Jimmy Yancey, 
     former president of CB&T in Columbus, is now his boss at 
     Synovus. Yancey said it isn't unusual for someone with a 
     coaching background to be successful as a banker.
       ``It obviously has to do with leadership and Sammy showed 
     that as a high school coach. He gets along with people and he 
     deals with people. Those things are more important than a 
     technical knowledge of banking. He inspires people to rally 
     around him and Phenix City is fortunate that he wanted to be 
     its mayor,'' Yancey said.
       Howard was among a group of leaders shopping for a 
     candidate. Everybody said no. Finally, Jerry Holly, a rival 
     banker, turned to Howard and asked why he didn't run.
       Judy Howard was one reason. She had been the wife of a 
     coach, so she had sat in the stands and heard her husband 
     ridiculed and criticized. As the wife of a mayor, she would 
     face similar taunts. So will Howard.
       ``The mayor is the most visible of any elected official. 
     You're always there. I'm going to the Central game and I'll 
     bet 20 people will ask me about being mayor. Coaching 
     prepares you for this,'' he said.
       Forty-seven of his 56 years have been spent in this 
     community, so he thinks he knows its needs. He talks about 
     the need to bridge the gap between north and south Phenix 
     City and he has set three goals:
       To improve the appearance of downtown Phenix City.
       To improve the city's infrastructure, such as roads and 
     sewers.
       To narrow the scope on what kind of industry the community 
     will seek.
       These things are challenges.
       ``We are a city of 30,000 with the tax base of a town of 
     15,000,'' he said. ``If we were a city sitting alone like 
     Eufaula it would be different. But we aren't. Our people do 
     so much of their shopping in Columbus.''
       Working for a Columbus organization, he believes the 
     friction between the two towns is vanishing. ``The problem 
     isn't between the cities, it's between the states,'' he said.
       Howard said yes to becoming major--no one ran against him--
     because of the needs in the business community and because of 
     the life this city has given him.
       ``That sound like the politically correct thing to say but 
     I mean it,'' he said. ``I didn't need this job. I didn't need 
     the recognition. I've had more of that than I deserve in a 
     lifetime. I won't be out there for myself. I'll be out there 
     for Phenix City.''
       Just like a coach who wants to win.
       ``I see that as a plus in being mayor because we will be in 
     a quest for a championship. I guess if I ever lose that 
     desire it'll be time to quit.''

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