‘He made his point clearly and moved on’
By Tom Mattingly
During Ben Byrd’s career at the Knoxville Journal (1947-91) and in his other published works, there were precious few wasted words. He made his point clearly and moved on. He was also a tenacious defender of the King’s English.
Even when the Journal became Knoxville’s afternoon paper in 1986, his writings were still anxiously awaited, especially for his “Free Thought Association” feature that purported to predict the winners of college football games each Saturday.
His final effort came on Dec. 27, 1991, when he penned his thoughts on the upcoming Tennessee-Penn State game in the Fiesta Bowl.
“FIESTA BOWL (Tennessee vs. PENN STATE)—This past August, a freshman football player arrived at UT carrying a kit that contained a screwdriver, a hammer, a wrench, a hatchet and a can opener. Coach John Majors was delighted. ‘This kid can’t miss. He’s got all the tools!’ TENNESSEE.”
Many Knoxville residents didn’t have their early morning coffee until the Journal arrived on their doorstep, and they found Ben’s column, “Byrd’s Eye View,” or searched for his coverage of a Vol sporting event.
He also found time to author three books, biographies of Archie Campbell and Majors, and a 1974 history of the University of Tennessee basketball program. He also shared billing with cartoonist Charlie Daniel on a book of cartoons titled “UT Football Cartoons by Daniel, with some free thoughts by Ben Byrd.”
He also appeared on WATE Radio on game days on a program called “Pigskin Predictions,” alongside Ed Tipton of Tipton Distributing, and the Journal’s Ed Harris and Russ Bebb.
The National Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association named him “Tennessee Sportswriter of the Year” five times. He was inducted into the Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame in 1987 and the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame in 1995.
On April 15, 2010, Congressman Jimmy Duncan honored his life and career in the Congressional Record.
In March 1942, at age 17, he had joined the U.S. Navy following Pearl Harbor. He spent most of World War II aboard the USS Borum (DE-790), a Buckley-class destroyer escort. He piloted the USS Borum as it blockaded the Channel Islands and assisted British forces in their occupation of the Islands.
He helped protect convoys carrying troops and supplies from Britain to the Normandy beachhead during the D-Day Invasion in June of 1944.
“There was no place on earth I would rather have been on that day,” he said.
Ben defined the moment in his column of June 6, 1984, dipping deep into his memory banks.
“The Borum had the distinction of being among the first ships in the invasion area and the last to leave. One by one the others departed, but our ship and our sister ship, the USS Maloy, stayed.
“During the fall and winter of 1944-45, we moved around the Cherbourg peninsula to patrol the Channel Islands of Alderney, Guerney, and Jersey, British territory which remained in German hands until the end of the war. Peace came to Europe on May 8, 1945. On June 6, exactly a year after D-Day, we pulled up one last time off the coast of Omaha Beach. With our little three-inch guns, we fired a salute to the men who had gone there with us and had stayed forever.
“And then we turned toward the west, and home.”
When Belmont College, now Belmont University, coached by Ben’s son, Rick, came to Thompson-Boling Arena, Ben was on press row, watching intently. The game was tight down the stretch run, and the television people had a camera focused on Ben from time to time as play progressed.
Being there with the media, Ben obviously couldn’t cheer, but the camera occasionally showed a grimace when things weren’t going so well or a quick smile when things were. Ben had covered a number of exciting finishes over the years, but watching his son coach in a tight game against Tennessee had to have been something special.
When Ben was chosen as recipient of the 2016 “Thanks for the Memories” award from the Greater Knoxville Sports Hall of Fame, there were 14 carefully chosen words submitted by his family that established the storyline for his life and career.
– Loving Son
– Devoted Brother
– Patriotic Sailor
– Dedicated Husband
– Nurturing Father and Grandfather
– True Friend
Here’s what Ben wrote in the Journal’s final daily edition, Dec. 31, 1991.The words are powerful and touching, defining a career that spanned the generations.
“My work has also brought me into close contact with coaches, players, officials and other citizens of the world of sports. Again, they are too numerous to name, but to say that they have enriched my life is an understatement.
“Sports is an enchanted land through which the little boy or girl who lives inside all of us loves to wander, but too many of us too often forget that winning and losing are not life or death.
“Rudyard Kipling told us to meet triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same, but then old Rudyard never attended a football game at Neyland Stadium.”
No one knows exactly how many University of Tennessee games Ben Byrd covered at Shields-Watkins Field/Neyland Stadium and elsewhere, but he told the story as few others could.
