This article appeared in the Orlando Sentinel on Jan. 14, 2004.
By JOE WILLIAMS
Former Leesburg football coach Wilbur Lofton loved the retirement home he and his wife, Ethel, built in 1996 in the small town of Reliance, Tenn. To Lofton, fishing in the pond on his property was like heaven on earth.
"He loved his home here," Ethel Lofton said. "Reliance is just a little community, up in the mountains. There are no businesses, no stoplights. The only reason it is a town is because it had a post office, which it doesn't even have any more. We bought the land here in 1987 and for the next 10 years we came up here, camping and working on the land.
"It was like a jungle, but we cleared it, we built a pond and the house. He loved it up here."
Wilbur Lofton, 68, perhaps the most successful football coach Leesburg High School has ever had, died at his home Dec. 21 after a yearlong battle with colon cancer.
"There are a lot of people who know the Xs and Os," said Buford Robinson, Leesburg's former principal, who gave a young Lofton his first head coaching job in 1966. "But he had a special relationship with the players. He knew how to motivate the players."
Lofton's most successful year at Leesburg came in 1969 when he led the Yellow Jackets to what was then the Class A state championship game in Tampa Stadium where they lost to Tampa Blake 27-6. Leesburg also made it into the state playoffs under Lofton in 1971. In 1980, he led Tarpon Springs to the state playoffs.
His 36 years of coaching also included stops as head coach at Tifton (Ga.) High School, three years at Hudson High School and 13 years at New Port Richey Gulf. His first coaching job came at the University or Georgia in 1960, where he worked with the freshman team. That team included future Minnesota Vikings quarterback Fran Tarkenton.
Back in his years at Leesburg, Lofton had more to worry about overcoming than opposing teams.
It was the late 1960s, and while many schools and teams were dealing with racial unrest, Lofton wouldn't have any of that on his football field when students and athletes at Carver High School, the black school in Leesburg, blended with Leesburg's white student body.
"He brought us together, taught us to love one another, to respect one another," said Mike Napier, the senior quarterback on the '69 team. "Everybody in Leesburg was excited about our football team, black and white. There were no racial problems."
Kenny Mitchem, a senior slotback and strong safety for the state finalists, said the movie Remember the Titans, which was about a Virginia high school football team and how it dealt with integration, reminded him of how Lofton handled the situation.
"We were fully integrated that year [1969-70]," Mitchem said "The first thing Coach Lofton did was he pulled us to one side. And he pulled the black players to one side. He told us, we were going to be a team and we, as football players, were going to be the leaders of our school.
"He treated everyone equally."
Leesburg went 9-1 through the regular season in '69, losing only to Lake City. It then beat Auburndale 12-0 and Belle Glades 36-23 to reach the state title game.
But the run towards the state runner-up berth did not happen in just one season. Lofton's ability to motivate players helped build the Yellow Jackets football program from the day he became head coach.
"The first thing he did was call all the males into the auditorium and he asked everyone to stand up who was playing football. Twenty-three guys stood up," Napier said. "Then Coach Lofton challenged us to take pride in our school, in what we do, to be champions, to be winners. Anyway, we ended up with 40-some-odd guys out on the team.
"He was a great teacher, a great motivator."
Napier, who eulogized Lofton during the funeral service, remembers Lofton as a disciplinarian who stressed fundamentals but loved his players.
"I said, the Lord God knew Wilbur Lofton as Coach Wilbur Lofton," Napier said. "He touched thousands and thousands of lives. Green Bay had [Vince] Lombardi. Miami had [Don] Shula. We had Wilbur Lofton. He was the one who motivated us and challenged us and made us men."
Resources
Joe Williams of The Sentinel Staff
Orlando Sentinel
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