Month: June 2023

They call him Coach

It wasn’t so much about wins as it was life lessons for Gerald Tabor.

It’s been 10 years and I still miss my friend

Editor’s Note: This story was originally published Tuesday, June 4, 2013. It’s being republished here on the 10-year anniversary of the passing of my friend, Gerald Tabor.

I awoke Tuesday morning. Logged into my Facebook account and my spirits instantly fell.

Gerald Tabor had passed away during the night.

Here in North Carolina, Gerald Tabor’s name means nothing.

He was a girls basketball coach and taught history at a medium-sized high school in rural western Kentucky, where coal is king and corn runs a close second. I grew up in this small town, attended his history class and swam at the community pool he helped oversee during the summers. After graduation and landing a job in newspapers, I spent many a nights in the stands watching his teams compete on the hardwood.

One very talented squad won a Kentucky state championship and featured a Miss Basketball. And there were several regional champions in there as well. But there also seemed to be far more teams that finished with records of 8-16 or 13-11 during those years he spent working the sidelines at the Union County High School gym.

In Kentucky, basketball reigns supreme. College basketball, especially the University of Kentucky, can be seen on TVs and heard on radios from Pikeville to Paducah. The University of Louisville numbers a large base of fans, and you also have the grads and small school sympathizers who cheer for the other state schools such as Western Kentucky University and Murray State University.

In Kentucky, you are largely associated with “who you pull for.”

High school boys basketball has a similar draw. The state remains one of the few in the nation who crown just one state champion and, though attendance has lagged in recent years with college games on TV most nights and other entertainment options, the state tournament’s Sweet 16 at Lexington’s Rupp Arena and Louisville’s Freedom Hall were a true spectacle and a “must-have ticket” each spring.

But girls basketball? It ranks a very distant third.

And at a rural school on a cold and wet Monday night in late January where you have a junior varsity/varsity girls doubleheader, the stands are littered with a few hardy souls – mainly family, a couple friends, the team manager, scorekeeper and one unfortunate sportswriter who drew the short stick.

Basically, those who coach girls basketball at this level are not doing it for the money. Nor the fame.

They are simply doing it for the love of the game.

And that was Gerald Tabor.

I was there, off to the side, as Coach Tabor watched the members of his state championship squad cut down the nets in Bowling Green’s Diddle Arena one Saturday night in mid-March in 1996. There was a smile across his face, but you could almost feel a sense of relief and weariness radiating from him.

This had been a long time coming. There were plenty of times when his squads were on the wrong end of a 25-point blowout. A couple of seasons of first-round losses in the district tournament.

Yet, he remained. Teaching the fundamentals. Teaching teamwork. Teaching loyalty and perseverance.

He truly cared for each member of his team, whether they were a state champion or a squad that finished below .500.

On the day I heard the news that Coach Tabor had died, I read that Louisville men’s basketball coach Rick Pitino was planning to unveil Maker’s Mark bourbon bottles bearing his face and achievements.

Sure, Connecticut women’s coach Geno Auriemma has won eight Division One national championships and been named Coach of the Year on six occasions. Say the words Pat Summitt, and you instantly recall the victories and national titles won at Tennessee.

Say the name Gerald Tabor.

And the former players and his many friends and family say the life lessons he instilled in them and left them with are far greater than any bourbon bottle or national championship.

They’ll say he was simply Coach.

South Carolina’s Best in Show

Patty Wentworth has won more than 300 ribbons from the South Carolina State Fair for her cooking and crafts.

Wentworth’s won 300-plus ribbons for cooking, crafts

Patty Wentworth is shown in her Columbia, S.C., home alongside her prized mixer and other cooking tools that have helped her win more than 300 blue and red ribbons from the South Carolina State Fair over the past 40 years. Photo by Travis Bell.

A self-described visual learner, Patty Wentworth often thinks of the others that came before her when she’s in her kitchen or at her crafts table.

She’d watch as her father, Robert, would craft his own fishing lures and replace a faulty carburetor. She’d mentally takes notes as her mother, Margaret Moon Wright, mended a ripped seam or stood at the stove, her biscuits baking.

“My mother made the very best candied yams. And she never used a recipe that I saw. She was just a wonderful cook who could make good food out of whatever,” Wentworth says. “I was fortunate to have those people around me to learn from and also learn that you can do a lot of things yourself.”

Wentworth is one of the top prize winners in South Carolina State Fair history as her handiwork — whether it be her biscuits or a miniature camping scene captured in an old pork and beans can — has captured more than 300 blue and red ribbons over the past 40 years.

Wentworth often starts with a recipe but isn’t afraid to go off-script. For example, a prize-winning candy entry started off as cake.

“It was a terrible mess,” she says. “The cake was just goo. I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, this is not good.’ So, I turned it into candy, rolling it into round balls and then pecans. And it ended up winning the Sweepstakes. That was just a stroke of luck.”

She likes working with miniatures, creating entire Christmas villages out of handmade items. She’s used clay to make Halloween figures, adding moss and sticks from her backyard. She’s painted gourds and rocks and won numerous ribbons for Christmas ornaments and door decorations.

“When you get lost in what you’re doing, it’s a wonderful thing,” Wentworth says.

She has three children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. In the past, her daughter won a blue ribbon for her biscuits and one granddaughter won a blue ribbon in photography at this year’s fair.

“A little bit of my creativity has been passed down and that’s a wonderful thing to see,” says Wentworth, who won seven ribbons at the 2022 State Fair. “It’s a great thing when your children have inherited your love of art.”

Getting to know Patty Wentworth

Claim to fame: Over the past 40 years, she’s won 300-plus ribbons at the South Carolina State Fair for her baking and crafts. The multitude of ribbons are kept in a drawer in her kitchen.

Day job: She works in the South Carolina Office of the Inspector General handling complaints via the hotline. The agency investigates fraud, waste, abuse, mismanagement and misconduct in the executive branch of state government.

Hometown: Columbia, S.C.

Kitchen essentials?: “Butter makes everything better,” says Wentworth, who swears by Crisco and buying quality, fresh ingredients. A good stand mixer also pays off as she’s had her Kitchen Aid mixer for 30 years.

Editor’s Note: A version of this SC Stories profile was featured in the May 2023 issue of South Carolina Living, a magazine that is distributed 11 times a year to more than 1 million South Carolinians by The Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina.