Saturday, 8/16/08

J.T. Weber had been athletic director at Clover Valley High School since 1972, the only person there with a longer tenure than Principal Tierney himself. He was from the hills of Mercer County, born and bred as they say. J.T. had a solid working relationship with his boss, but it had never evolved into anything beyond that. For starters, Gene Tierney cared little about the athletic programs at Clover Valley. In his mind, they deserved no more attention than the French club or any other after-school assembly of students. He went to a handful of Yellow Jackets football games a year, but he usually slipped out after the band played at halftime.

More importantly, it was because J.T. did his best to cordon himself off ... not just from Tierney, but from almost everybody. Even though CVHS wasn't that large a school, it wasn't too hard for an experienced athletic director to find out of the way places to spend his days.

If it was hard to find him in the school year, finding him during the summer was next to impossible. A few weeks after a school year ended, he'd be packing up toward the Tennessee border with the minimally necessary camping gear and a few Louis L'Amour novels. He'd set up a camp in some remote spot and spend his days fishing, hiking (less so this summer), and napping (more so this summer). Normally, he'd come back to Clover Valley 10 days before a new school year got underway, but this year there'd been a downpour on his last evening and he felt he needed one more sunset to gird himself for the year ahead.