Roy Exum
In the 38 years I was at the former Chattanooga News-Free Press, I was one of three people who had permission to “stop the presses.” To do so is expensive and is a mess, with newsprint having to be refigured in the weave, new plates made, carriers stalled, the works. I used that authority four times, all but one quite valid. I will never forget the time I did what I thought was right, and it wasn’t.
When Jim Morgan died last Friday, I was blanketed by what seemed like a million memories of one of the finest people I have ever known, but from that mountain of warmth also emerged what was easily the saddest day in the history of UTC athletics.
It will not be mentioned at Sunday’s funeral, nor should it be.
But as one of very few who know quite vividly of one of Jim’s greatest moments, it needs to be remembered for one last time before the tale is swept off the shelf for good. It has been 40 years since the bubble formed by UTC’s first-ever SouCon football championship was popped by a horror so unspeakable it should only be fiction.
But I’ll always remember it was Jim’s steady handle on the tiller that got us through the initial shock, and the way he and Harold Wilkes mastered the adversity that permeated a visibly shaken athletic department not just for weeks afterwards, but for much of the 1979 football season.
In mid-July of 1978 there was a charity golf tournament for Joe Morrison’s Mocs at Valleybrook. By then “JoeMo” and his staff had things rockin’ – the team had just won its first-ever SouCon title in football with a stupendous 9-1-1 record in the fall of 1977 and the prospects of another banner year were bright. The golf tournament was especially fun because winning, as is said, can cure anything.
That next Monday morning I was in my office, around 4:30 a.m., ready to face another day when things exploded. Back then we were an afternoon newspaper, which meant the “rural edition” had to be locked in by 7:00, then the final edition by 11. Within minutes after I bounded up our front steps, a couple of editors, and a crime-beat reporter, were at my desk, to find out what I knew – if anything – about a UTC assistant football coach who had just brutally raped a little 12-year-old girl.
Neither “flabbergasted” nor “shocked” could have described me at that moment and since then I have still not found a word that could. Less than 24 hours before, Chattanooga Police knocked on the door of Henry Sorrell’s house that Sunday night and arrested the former UTC football great for first-degree rape and committing a crime against nature.
I was handed a copy of a police report that said Henry Sorrell, a former “Little All-American” linebacker who had played in the Canadian League before the Denver Broncos, had brutalized a little girl after he left the golf tournament that weekend. The police report read Henry had admitted he was under the influence of too much alcohol but that he was unable to remember anything else.
In the 40 years since, I can still say what I told Julius Parker and J.B. Collins that morning -- of all the people on planet Earth, Henry would have been the very last I would have ever expected to harbor such evil.
“Do not run this story. I know Henry. He has never cursed, told an off-color joke, or treated anyone – male or female – with anything less than total respect.” I further explained that Henry was one of the finest guys I have ever known in my life, “This doesn’t match! There is no way Henry Sorrell would have ever done this. I’ll find out the truth and call you as fast as I can.”
Understand, dawn has just broken and I am staggered. I went to the football offices. Joe Lee Dunn was always the first to make coffee and he wasn’t there. I then raced to the PE offices in Maclellan to search for Jim Morgan, who was probably Henry’s best friend, and the lights in his office were off but the door was askew. And I heard Jim before I saw him.
Jim had that familiar towel over his shoulders, it full of wet anguish, and a trash can between his knees from throwing up. Jim had just gotten word Henry had been arrested and was demolished. Henry had been a Southeastern wrestling champion at UTC before he graduated in 1967. After playing football in the pros, Sorrell was the head wrestling coach at MTSU before Coach Morrison had “hired him home” four years before the sick tragedy.
While we were talking Coach Wilkes came in the room and he knew Henry as well as anybody. “This can’t be true!” he joined the rapidly-building chorus. “We need to talk to Henry, to learn more …” and I told him I had the sheriff’s unlisted number.
I got the sheriff on the phone, knowing I was asking to break the rules if not the law, and I drove the three of us to the sally port on Cherry Street, where a sheriff’s deputy waved us in. We were escorted into the jail and went in a small room to wait. When Henry came in, his arms and legs shackled, Coach Morgan grabbed him in a hug and neither wanted to let go, most likely because not a one of us wanted to face what would inevitably come next – in the minutes, the hours, the days, or the years.
The sight of Jim squeezing Henry, of Harold holding Henry’s shoulder with one hand as his other covered his face, is indelibly tattooed in my mind. “What happened, Henry?”
“I don’t know … I want to know but I don’t know,” said this muscular athlete who we all had known as a lovable teddy bear. His defensive linemen adored Henry Sorrell, who came to UTC on a football scholarship from Talladega High School in Alabama. “I can’t remember anything. I can’t,” he told us, his face mottled in grief.
Coach Wilkes told Henry that they would post bond as soon as possible and Jim added, “I’ll be here when they do …If you need somewhere to stay, some money … anything. I’ll be wherever you need me.”
A nearby deputy whispered we needed to leave before somebody saw us, and later that day Henry was released on $20,000 bond. Driving back to the university Coach Wilkes told me the only plausible answer was mental illness and before we got out of the car Jim said a prayer for the little girl that gave us another good cry.
I went back to the paper and told our people that I had seen Henry and that yes, he did it. Six months later – mid-January of 1979 -- Henry pleaded guilty in Judge Russell Hinson’s courtroom and was sentenced to spend 30 years in prison. I remember I “comped” him a mail subscription to the newspaper for years.
It was 10 or 15 years later that our security guard – the fearless Morris Priest – called me to tell me I had a visitor in the lobby. “Send him up,” I said and Priest replied, “No sir … he’ll be right here at my desk.” This was a twist … I had people come by all the time – Mr. Priest never called me to his desk. But Mr. Priest spent time in the military as a guard at Leavenworth’s military wing and “made” Henry the second he walked through the door.
Henry was driving a truck and wearing his prison denims as he and two other men were delivering school books for the state of Alabama. Henry said he knew it was a risk but that he just needed to say hello to a friend. At the time we had a little cafeteria set up for newspaper employees and Alabama prisoners were not allowed to go through any drive-in window, needless to say.
I got Henry to wave the two convicts who were delivering books with him into the building and I can remember, this many years past, that our lunch of the day was meat loaf and mashed potatoes. As Henry asked questions and I answered them, I made sure those guys ate all they could hold and, so help me, by the time I got them back in the truck, you could see the Christmas in Henry’s eyes.
I know Jim stayed in touch with Henry, and I know one of the first questions Coach Morgan will ask our Lord is to explain the Sorrell riddle. It has no earthly answer, but this Sunday when the life of Jim Morgan is remembered, kindly know his was a life far richer than wins and losses.
* * *
A memorial service for Coach Jim Morgan will be held on Sunday, Jan. 27, in Baylor Alumni Chapel at 2 p.m. with a reception to follow. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Chattanooga Community Kitchen, the Chattanooga Public Library, Baylor School, or the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.