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Earl Sullins Autobiography

When I, Earl Sullins, came to Ponca City in the fall of 1930, as a state Oklahoma was 22 years old. My first football  team at East Junior High was undefeated, untied and unscored on; a record that may sometime be tied but will never be broken. It was the first of the six undefeated football teams that I had during my tenure there. The second semester, I turned to Central State University to complete my degree. That spring, I played shortstop on the baseball team and pole vaulted on the track and field team, being undefeated in dual meets that season and winning first in the Oklahoma Collegiate State Conference meet in that event.

In the fall of 1931, I returned to East Junior High where I was to coach football through the 1938 season. One of the greatest thrills of my coaching career was going to the high school in the fall of 1939 to have again those boys who had played on those undefeated East teams of yesteryear. I shall never forget that season nor them. However, my memories are somewhat ambivalent with much pleasure and some pain. All members of the varsity squad and all three of our coaches, Delbert Carlile, Melvin Clodfelter and I, were to serve in World War Two. Four of the starting lineup were to lose their lives, viz., Riley Hurst with the infantry in France; our team Captain, Warren Dailey, over Manchuria; Charley Mertz, flying fighter planes in the South Pacific; and Tracy Young, leading his platoon in an inspired charge against a Japanese stronghold on Leyte. Alvia Minor, guard and American Legion Home School boy, who had played with this group since our undefeated 9th grade team, quit school to join the Navy and was lost at the battle of the Coral Sea. The Huff-Minor American Legion Post bears his name, as the Army Reserve Center does that of Tracy Young. That 1939 team lost only one game and that to an old rival, Enid.

I was to spend, at least to me, seventeen great years coaching football and baseball at Ponca City High. What a flood of  memories they bring-the camaraderie of the practices on the warm days of early autumn to the chilling days of late November, the hilarity of victory and the agony and sometimes tears of defeat. And the boys who made it all possible, how can I forget them? I would like to mention a few.

Tracy's cousin, "Waddy" Young, Al1-State end at Ponca City High and All-American end at Oklahoma University, played on that initial team that I had at East. He and his B29, Waddy's Wagon, were lost on a successful bomber raid over Tokyo in January, 1945. He dropped out of the returning formation with no apparent damage to his plane in an attempt to aid a fellow pilot in distress. He has been inducted in The National Collegiate Football Hall of Fame.

Tom Catlin was our Wildcat Captain and an All-State center in 1948. As a junior, he played on the 1947 team that lost to the State Champions, Okmulgee, in a 7 to 7 tie, decided on the playoff first-down rule. By the rule book it was a tie so we were actually an undefeated team that year. Tom was twice All-American at Oklahoma University, played with the Pro-champion Cleveland Browns and with the Philadelphia Eagles the year before they won the Pro-championship. He has had a great Pro-football coaching career with the Kansas City Chiefs, Los Angeles Rams, Buffalo Bills and the Seattle Seahawks. He is on the All Time All State High School Football Team of Oklahoma.

There were Delbert Long, Jim Krider, Marty Bacon, Bob Beattie, Ronnie Baker, Lew Blood, Tom Ross, Larry Cannon, John Selvey and Dale Harrison; that great crew that made us state finalists vs. Ada in 1951. The 1953 team, the smallest to ever represent Ponca City High in the playoffs, beat a highly-favored Mid-West City team 32 to 0 for the Regional Championship. Our diminutive starters were 132-pound, Barney Calvert, and 137-pound, Billy Taiclet, with only four players weighing more than 160, Chuck Bowman being the largest at 180. The 1954 team that missed an undefeated season by one point was, I believe, the best ball-handling backfield to ever represent the Wildcats. They were Dick Wilson, Jack Rein, Roy Boring and Dave Richards.

While coaching football at East Jr. High, I also coached the high school baseball team until it became a casualty of the depression. During those early depression years, Eddie Carnett played for me. He went on to have a fine major-league playing career with the Boston Red Soxs, the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians. He later returned to Ponca City to manage its minor league team. Of our post World War Two high school baseball teams, the 1955 team was one of the best, losing to the state champion Tulsa Central Braves in the semifinals. Lu Clinton made All-State and became a major league star principally with the Boston Red Soxs but finished his major league playing days with the New York Yankees. Lu is in the state of Kansas Baseball Hall of Fame. One of the great three-sport lettermen at PoHi was Hershel "Pop" Martin. I did not coach Hershel but my brother, Oscar Mailett Sullins, who played baseball and basketball at Oklahoma A & M, and I were playing with Hershel on the Stillwater Boomer City team when he signed his pro contract. He had a great major league career with the Philadelphia Athletics and the New York Yankees, 1937 through 1945. Like Eddie Carnett he later managed a team in the old KOM, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri minor league of which Ponca City was a member.

Although I was born in Missouri, I have spent practically all of my life in Kay and Noble counties of the old Cherokee Strip. My original ancestor to America, John Sullins, along with his brother, Nathan Sullins, came to America from the British Isles about 25 years before the Revolutionary War. He is listed in the 1790 Virginia census, the first ever taken in the United States. He took a Spanish land grant in present Missouri a few years before President Jefferson made the Louisiana Purchase. Nathan's great grandson, David Sullins, founded and was the first President of Sullins College at Bristol, Virginia. Long a prestigious girls school in the south, it is now Coed. It is Nathan's progeny that make up the Virginia, Tennessee branch of the Sullins family. My cousin, Forest Sullins, was superintendent of schools at Kaw City High School and also a high school at Three Sands, now both extinct. A distant relative, R. A. Sullins, was the first county superintendent of schools of Kay County, territorial days, as the county was not organized, as such, until 1907. Sullins was an early superintendent of the Territorial High School of Oklahoma City. His full name and a picture of the Territorial High School can be found in an old Sturm's magazine, circa 1908, at the Oklahoma State Historical Society.
At Ponca City High, the main and original building is named for my one time superintendent, Charles Howell, the Anderson Building for my former principal, Homer S. Anderson, and the Robson Fieldhouse for Allan Robson, former superintendent who as a coach worked with me in football at Ponca City High and Junior High to earn a Lifetime Career Football Coaching Record (won 175 games, lost 52, and tied 14). He and I were the entire varsity coaching staff in football. The football stadium bears my name, an honor which I cherish, but which I consider a tribute to those teams of my twenty-five years of coaching football in Ponca City, rather than to me personally.

Submitted by Earl Sullins
Addendum: On September 1, 1995, Clint Sodowsky, a 1990 Po-High graduate, was drafted into the Detroit Tigers major league baseball team as a pitcher. He won his first game on September 4, 1995, playing against the Cleveland Indians.

First published in North Central Oklahoma Rooted in the Past - Growing for the Future, compiled and edited by North Central Oklahoma Historical Association, Inc. 1995.