Panthersville | Friday Night Lights

I am stepping outside the box here.  This week’s blog is not about anything with wheels, a propeller or a rudder, but a football stadium.  Not just any football stadium, but Panthersville Stadium.  

Panthersville is the area in South DeKalb County, Decatur, Georgia stretching west from the intersection of I-20 and I-285 to Flat Shoals Road, Clifton Church Road and the South River.  Southwest DeKalb’s team name is the Panthers, and the original school building is at the corner of Flat Shoals Rd. and Panthersville Rd.  

For years the question has been, at least for many of us, as to whether Panthersville was named after the Panthers, or vice versa.  According to an article by Andy Johnston published in the AJC 10/5/15, it was vice versa.  Panthersville was likely named after a big cat.  The article states that “In a letter dated Dec. 20, 1939 Scott Candler, DeKalb County’s Commissioner of Roads and Revenues, explained the origin of the name, as recorded by Vivian Price in “The History of DeKalb County”.  A family named Johnson (or Lochlin) lived where Blue Creek flows into the South River (near the current intersection of Panthersville Rd and Oakvale Rd.).  Their son, daughter-in-law and infant grandchild were leaving the area, headed back to their home in Decatur when a panther started to chase them.  The area just south of Panthersville on the South River was a swamp, and the commissioner hypothesized that even then, development was pushing wildlife onto the unusable land.  “I know of no better explanation of how Panthersville District secured its name,” Candler said in the letter.*

One last note; I’ve always wondered about the name “Southwest DeKalb” since the school, at least the original, is located in southeast DeKalb County.  My guess is that at that point in time, DeKalb County beyond Panthersville was pretty much wilderness.  So it was, in fact, southwest DeKalb.

Back to Panthersville Stadium.  Built in 1968, Panthersville was originally shared by five area schools, Walker, Southwest DeKalb, Columbia, Gordon and Lithonia.  On Friday nights for so very, very many of us, this was The Center Of The Universe.  Panthersville was dedicated September. 27, 1968.  Walker and SWD played the first game ever played there, with SWD winning 35-26.  The very next morning, at 8:00 a.m. Walker and SWD’s Eighth Grade teams played the second game.  I don’t remember the score, but Walker won on a goal line stand at the end.

For a kid who had only played ball two years at Gresham Park and the rest of his games in Buddy Bryan’s side yard, playing in Panthersville Stadium was mind boggling.  We rode a bus to the game.  The stadium had real locker rooms.  There were mostly only parents, grandparents and a few kids from school in the seats for those eighth grade game, but that didn’t matter.  You were playing for Walker High School.  This was the big time.  

A friend played at Stockbridge High in the mid-80s.  They would travel to Panthersville to play Walker, who was in their region at the time.  Stockbridge was still playing in the old stadium behind the school on North Henry Boulevard.  Sloan said playing in Panthersville was like playing in Texas Stadium.

On game nights, pretty much every kid, parent and teacher was in the stadium, on the sidelines or on the field.  The cheerleaders cheered, climbed the pyramids, dropped, flew and were caught.  The bands marched and played, the drill teams performed with precision.  The majorettes twirled fire batons.  We crowned homecoming queens, sometimes in the driving rain.  And we played football, both in the stifling heat and humidity and in the freezing cold.  It was The Center Of The Universe… 

The cross country team ran their meets before the football games.  Four laps around the track.  We used to go to the stadium in the summer and run the steps.  Back in those days, it was pretty much left open all the time.  We would play pick up games there on Sundays.  The pick up games were brutal.  Full speed, full contact football without any pads.  It’s a wonder someone didn’t get killed.  We used to shoot model rockets off the field in the off season.  No one cared, no one called the cops.  The Center Of The Universe…

The first game of my 10th grade season,  we were playing Southwest DeKalb in a B-Team night game.  It was the first game I ever started, at center.  While we were warming up, I saw an ambulance coming down Clifton Springs Road and turn into the stadium.  I didn’t think twice about it.  There was more important business at hand.  At halftime, not long before we were going back out, one of the managers yelled, “Etheridge!  Somebody wants to see you at the door.”  I went to the door, and it was George Ware, a kid who had lived up the street from us in Gresham Park, but moved to Panthersville a few years earlier.  His parents and my parents were good friends.  “Jimmy,” he said, “I just wanted you to know that your father had a heart attack before the game started and Horis Ward came and got him.”  Horis Ward owned a funeral home on Candler Road, and also owned an ambulance service.  This was in the days before EMTs.  As it turned out, they had taken him to Crawford Long Hospital, but I didn’t know that.  For all I knew, he was on a slab at the funeral home.  Five minutes later I was standing on the 40 yard line getting ready for us to kick off.  I was numb, shocked and frightened, but as soon as the whistle blew and Mark Clem kicked the ball, I tore off down the field, screaming like a banshee.  I took out three guys and hit the ball carrier at the 25.  He went one way and the ball went the other.  They recovered, but we went on to win.  

Fast forward to my senior year.  The last game of the season, the last organized football game I would ever play.  We were ready to take the field against Avondale, a perennial powerhouse.  The seniors were all honorary captains.  We were to lead the team on the field and participate in the coin toss.  As we were leaving the locker room, screaming and hollering and ready to play, my father pulled me to one side.  He had hired Mr. Wilson, our chemistry teacher and school photographer to take my picture.  I had to stand there while Mr. Wilson adjusted the settings on his camera and my teammates ran past me. I was bouncing up and down, back and forth, ready to go.  Mr. Wilson raised his camera and my father said, “Smile, Jimmy.”  I didn’t, and as soon as Mr. Wilson snapped the picture I was gone.  I ran down the stairs as fast as I could in my cleats.  The seniors were already huddled with the refs at midfield.  I ran straight there, feeling every eye in the stadium was on me.  I was embarrassed and pissed.  

The stadium has since been re-named, honoring a legendary coach at Southwest DeKalb.  That’s great, but as one of my teammates and I were discussing at a reunion last year, Panthersville Stadium was shared by four schools other than SWD.  Actually, five, once Cedar Grove High was built.  To those of us who played and performed, won and lost, celebrated and cried on that field, it was and always will be Panthersville Stadium.  Friday Night Lights, The Center Of The Universe… Still Cruisin’!  –J.

NOTE: Prints are available of the above pen and ink.  16″ x 12″, $20 plus tax and shipping.  Click here to order: 

*Published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution October 5, 2015.