Buchanan High’s Shelton saw Full Century

DAILY NEWS JOURNAL, GREG TUCKER, 7/13/2014

Buchanan High’s Shelton saw full century

During the summer months, the young principal visited homes in southeast Rutherford and neighboring counties recruiting students, particularly those with athletic potential.  His efforts found success.

From the 1870s to the mid-1920s, those seeking education in southeast Rutherford County attended Rutherford College near the current intersection of I-24 and Epps Mill Road.  Student family names at the turn of the century included Buchanan, Donnell, Daniels, Goodloe, Woodfin, Goodwin, Marlin, Dromgoole, Hoover, Epps, Messick, Earp, Lyon, Summers, Woods, Ridley, Pearson , Jacobs and Black.  (Before pursuing other business interests, John T. Woodfin, Sr. served as the school’s headmaster, as did P. A. Lyon.)  In 1925 the “College” was closed and students moved to the new Buchanan School (named for former Tennessee Gov. John Price Buchanan who provided land for the new school).  When Buchanan achieved high school status in 1931, a young educator named Paschal Shelton assumed the duties of principal, history teacher, coach and school bus driver.  Shelton’s wife, Wynne, taught home economics and science, and managed the school lunch service.

Born in Eaton Hollow, Shelton lived in the Beech Grove community and daily drove a school bus from the county

line to the school.  Like many other Buchanan students, seven Summers siblings walked from their home community to the nearest Manchester Pike intersection to meet the Shelton bus.

Committed to a quality athletic program at a school with no gymnasium and no school system funds for such an addition, Shelton rallied parents and community supporters in 1934 to pay for and construct such a facility.  The project was completed in one month.  While interviewing and recruiting prospective students for Buchanan from neighboring communities during the summer of 1934, Shelton never failed to mention the new gymnasium and the school’s basketball program for both girls and boys.

[In the late 1930s, Tennessee high school girls basketball was played on a court divided into three sections. For each team, two defensive guards played at one end of the court, two centers competed in the middle to move the ball, and two forwards shot for score at the other end.]  One promising freshman recruit came from Manchester — Alline Banks.  She was tall for her age, so the coach put her at center.  When one of the forwards was ill and couldn’t play, Banks was moved to offense.  In her first game at forward, Banks scored 42 points which earned her a permanent role on offense.  In her senior year she averaged 36 points per game and led Buchanan to the 1938 county and district championships.

 

After high school, Banks played for the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) team sponsored by the Nashville Business College and made AAU All-American in 12 consecutive years.

“I remember watching Alline hit the basket from midcourt,” says Ruby Summers Shelton, a 1940 Buchanan graduate.  During one game in AAU competition, Banks played despite an injury to her right arm.  With her shooting arm strapped to her side, the right handed forward scored 56 points shooting left-handed.

Many of Banks’ teammates were also part of the 1939 Buchanan team including Vivian Crowell from Beech Grove.

“We were the county, district and regional champions in 1939,” remembers Vivian Crowell Farrar, now a resident at Adams Place in Murfreesboro.

Crowell and Bertha Newman were centers on the championship team.  Thelma Jernigan

and Martha Coffman were the first team forwards; Wendell Coffman and Lila Buchanan played guard.  A talented bench included Ruby Jernigan, Charlotte Parker, Mary Edna Hayes, Catherine Brown and Frances Lawson.

The Middle Tennessee Regional championship game confirmed the regional dominance of Rutherford teams, according to local news reports.  The tournament final pitted Buchanan against Murfreesboro Central.  “Buchanan …walked off with the champion’s prize after swamping Central 46-30…,” noted the Rutherford Courier (3/21/39).

Outstanding defensive work by Central’s Mary Ann Zumbro shut down Buchanan’s scoring ace, Thelma Jernigan, but team Captain Martha Coffman stepped up her game for 38 points.  Coffman and Crowell made the All-Regional team, and Crowell was named “Most Versatile Player.”

Paschal Shelton resigned from his Buchanan position in 1942 to join the war effort as a defense plant employee for Vultee in Nashville and Air Utilities near Murfreesboro.  One of his successors was P.A. Lyon, former president of Middle Tennessee Normal and the State Teachers College at Murfreesboro (now MTSU), who came out of retirement to serve as the Buchanan principal during part of the war years.

In 1943 Buchanan’s high school programs were moved to Central High in Murfreesboro, and Buchanan became a grammar school.  The school’s preeminent basketball program endured, however, with the boys’ teams dominating grammar-school competition in the early 1950s.

Shelton resumed his teaching career after the war.  He retired from the Coffee County school system in 1969 and returned to his family farm near Beech Grove where he planted maple trees and studied poetry (two lifelong passions).  Wynne died in 1986 after 60 years of marriage.  In 1990, Shelton married longtime family friend and former Buchanan student Ruby Summers Simpson.  He died in 2008 at the age of 104.

When asked about his key to longevity, Paschal Shelton, a devout Baptist, replied: “Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days shall be long upon the land…”

A special thanks to Jerry Gaither and Susan Simpson for research assistance.

Rutherford County Historian Greg Tucker can be reached at[email protected].