Willis won 10 letters at Moultrie High School
Published 2:12 pm Monday, October 22, 2007
MOULTRIE — Bennett “Porky” Willis’s mother was not real happy about her son’s decision to play football at Moultrie High. Baseball was OK. So was basketball. But football …?
Then, in his first B-team game as a freshman in 1953, Willis was hit in the mouth and his front teeth cut through the skin of his lower lip.
And his mother was there on the 50-yard line as he jogged off, bleeding.
Although the incident could have spelled the end of Willis’s football playing days, his mother relented.
“If not for my dad, my career would have ended there,” Willis said.
It’s a good thing, T.O. Willis intervened.
Bennett went on to start at quarterback for the Packers the next three seasons. As a senior, he was the Packers Most Valuable Player, was All-Region and All-State and and held the Moultrie High passing record for three seasons.
And before he graduated from Moultrie High, he also earned four letters on the Packers baseball team and three more on the basketball team, giving him 10 letters by the time he graduated in 1957.
One of the community’s most versatile high school athletes will join the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame as member of the 14-member Class of 2007 at the annual induction banquet on Thursday at the Colquitt County High cafeteria.
Willis learned his basketball and baseball playing in the county school program at Okapilco for Walt Thompson. The league also included teams from Sunset, Reedy Creek, Culbertson and Berlin.
When Willis was in seventh grade, Okapilco won the league championship in basketball and baseball. Joining Willis on the championship basketball team were Bobby Bennett, Wayne Littles, Bucky Carlton, Billy Fleetwood and Charles Barnwell.
Willis began to display his football talent when he played for coach Tom White on the B-team as a ninth-grader.
That season, he and fellow freshman JerryTucker were allowed to dress out with and travel with the varsity.
The following season, he joined the varsity as the quarterback on a team that lost a number of outstanding ing players from the 1953 team, but still had outstanding tackles Jack Lanier and Bunker Newsome and future Georgia Bulldog running back Gene Littleton.
“Gene was the best two-way player I ever saw, mentally and physically,” Willis said. “And I don’t think Gene ever came off the field.”
Willis said he remembers the Knuck McCrary teams he played on being fundamentally sound and extremely well-conditioned.
“When you tackled, you tackled correctly and when you blocked, you blocked correctly,” he said. “And we were never out-conditioned.”
With Littleton leading the region in rushing with 984 yards, the Packers did not need Willis to throw the football much in 1954. The sophomore quarterback completed 17-of-42 passes for 190 yards and two touchdowns.
As a junior, the Packers had some other fine players, including Jimmy Vickers, who also went on to play at Georgia, Lee Dunn, Ivan Hortman and Jimmy Bradley.
In 1954, Willis was on the Packers football team that played the first high school game in Mack Tharpe Stadium. On an option play, he pitched to Littleton, who scored the first high school touchdown in the new stadium against Jordan High.
Senior quarterback Barney Boatwright had the honor of throwing the first touchdown pass in the stadium. Jimmy Ricks had the 21-yard scoring reception.
As a junior, Willis and the rest of the Packers wore face masks for the first time. That year, he threw the ball more, completing 29-of-75 passes 345 yards and seven touchdowns.
In 1955, he threw two touchdowns — one of 20 yards to Billy Dean Hudson and one of 22 yards to Donald “Piggy” Norman — in a 20-7 victory over Jordan.
When Willis and Norman hooked up on the scoring pass, The Moultrie Observer noted that “Porky to Piggy nets Packer touchdown.”
Willis was first called “Porky” as a chubby baby when it was noticed how much he resembled the cartoon character Porky Pig, which was popular at the time.
“The name stuck,” he says, although when he played quarterback for the Packers he weight 160 pounds and was far from “porky.”
“Some people who have known me for a long time still call me that.”
Against Leon High of Tallahassee in 1955, he threw a 7-yard game winning touchdown to Vickers.
Willis also threw a 47-yard scoring pass to Vickers in a 14-13 loss to R.E. Lee and a 58-yarder to the future University of Georgia captain in an 18-14 loss to Waycross.
Against Baker, Willis ran for a touchdown and threw an 11-yard scoring pass to Vickers.
As a senior in 1956, he set the school single-season passing yardage record, completing 42-of-94 passes for 685 yards and eight touchdowns. Dykes Barber had set the previous record with 540 yards in 1952.
His biggest game as a senior came in a 34-19 victory over R.E. Lee when he threw for three touchdowns, including an 88-yarder to John Stewart.
At the Dec. 7, 1956, football banquet, he received the team’s MostValuable Player trophy. He had been named to the All-Region first team and joined two teammates — center Wayne Cooper and fullback John Stewart — in receiving honorable mention on the All-State team.
But when football seasons were over, there were no breaks for Willis. He played three seasons of basketball for coaches Jim Nolan and Martin Allman.
Willis said he averaged between 10 and 12 points a game and had “three or four games” of 20 or more.
But his success for the football Packers was more nearly duplicated on the baseball field, where he was an outstanding fielding and hard-hitting first baseman.
As a freshman, he played for the Packers team coached by Knuck McCrary that advanced to the state championship series before being eliminated. That team also included Freddie Burdette, Gene Snipes — current Hall of Famers — Kenny Burdette, Gene Gay, Sammy Tillman and others.
McCrary also coached the Packers during Willis’s sophomore season. Ben Kirk, a Moultrie High chemistry teacher who had played semiprofessional baseball, coached the team his next two seasons.
Among his Packers baseball teammates were Boby Bennett, Joey Miller, Bobby Cagle, Bucky Carlton and Wayne Littles.
As a senior, Willis batted .465 and led the team in both hitting and fielding.
Willis also played American Legion baseball for several years for Kurt Scheub, a coach he still remembers with a great deal of fondness.
“He was just an all-around great person,” Willis said. “If a kid didn’t have a first baseman’s mitt, he’d get it for him. If a kid needed a ride home out in the country, he’d do it.
“Three of my sons also had the privilege of playing for Coach Scheub.”
In fact, Willis’s son Ben was the first second generation player to perform for Scheub.
Willis said he also learned a lot about baseball – and especially about playing first base – from Rip Bennett, who was his mother’s first cousin.
Willis and Bobby Bennett, Rip’s son, grew up together and played many innings of baseball together.
“Rip must have hit a hundred thousand balls to each of us,” he said.
Willis also was president of the Moultrie High senior class in 1957.
Following graduation, he took a job with the FBI in Washington, D.C, for a year, causing him to miss a chance to play in the North-South All-Star football game.
Willis then enrolled at the University of Georgia, earning a degree in advertising. He worked in advertising in the Atlanta, Macon and Tennessee areas before returning to Moultrie in the early 1970s to work with this father-in-law Roy Zess at radio station WMGA.
From 1973-1981, he succeeded longtime announcer Everett Griner and did the play-by-play of Packers football game along side Brooks Sheldon.
He and wife, the former LeVonne Zess, his high school sweetheart, had four sons: Ben, Chad, Zess and Hayden, all outstanding golfers.
“The biggest thrill I’ve had in sports in watching my four sons,” he said. “All four were good athletes, good golfers.”
Son Chad was an All-American golfer at Ohio State. Zess played at Sam Houston State.
Hayden, who recently earned his law degree at LSU, played at Oglethorpe.
Oldest son Ben also is an attorney, practicing in Houston County.
Surprisingly, although all four sons were fine golfers, Bennett Willis did not take the game up until after he retired.
And in 2002, while playing with son Hayden, scored a hole in one on No. 16 at Sunset Country Club