MOULTRIE — Everett Griner well remembers the first time he called the play-by-play of a Moultrie High football game.

It was in 1954, and the 1-1 Packers went to Panama City, Fla., to play Bay County High.

Bob Lenihan was the play-by-play announcer for radio station WMGA, but he had developed a case of laryngitis that worsened as the game went on.

Griner, who had been in radio for severak years, went along with Lenihan to do the commercials, but, he says 54 years later, “I had never done football in my life.”

Finally, Lenihan’s voice gave out and he told Griner he would have to take over.

Reluctant to move in behind the microphone, Griner asked, “What do I do?”

Lenihan, his voice hoarse and scratchy, said, “Just tell ‘em what you see.”

“And for the next 17 years, I told ‘em what I saw,” Griner said.

Griner called Moultrie High football games from press boxes – and the stands – from all over Georgia over the next 17 seasons and saw a number of outstanding performers.

In fact, on that night in Panama City more than a half-century ago, seven men on the Packers sideline went on to become members of the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame: coaches Knuck McCrary, Tom White and Jim Nolan and players Gene Littleton, Jimmy Vickers, Bennett Willis and Ronnie Schreiber.

Now the man who painted word pictures of so many Moultrie High football games and sent them back into the homes of Packer fans will join those and other outstanding performers in the Colquitt County Sports Hall of Fame.

Griner will be inducted into the Hall of Fame at its annual banquet, which will be held Thursday evening in the high school cafeteria.

Griner has been in broadcasting for 60 years and even at 82, still files agriculture-related commentaries for Southeast AgNet from his home studio.

And while most-known for his farm reports, Griner has had a lifelong passion for sports, especially baseball and football, and especially in the community he was born, raised and lived in most of his life in.

In addition to broadcasting Packer road football games, Griner also was, for two seasons, the pubic address announcer for the Moultrie minor league baseball team.

And it all started on Sept. 7, 1926, when he was born at his family’s home in the Rose Hill community.

As a teen, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and served in the Pacific during World War II.

Returning home after the war, he played rhythm guitar and bass in a country band that performed live at radio stations around south Georgia. He first performed at radio station WKTG in Thomasville.

Soon Griner was working at the station as a country music disc jockey and remained there until he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force in 1950. While in the Air Force, he worked as a broadcaster on the AFES radio system.

After his discharge, he returned to Colquitt County and joined WMGA, and worked there for 26 years.

The broadcast of home football games was not allowed until the early 1990s, but Griner led a crew of four out on the road during the South Georgia autumns to broadcast the road games.

He reported the accomplishments of a number of outstanding Packers, and he especially remembers the fine passing of Bennett Willis and Ray Goff, the outstanding running of Gene Littleton and the poise of Jack Montgomery.

“I’ve watched some of the greatest athletes this community has produced,” Griner said.

Griner broadcast games during the coaching tenures of McCrary and Bud Willis

“In my opinion, Knuck McCrary was one of the best coaches we ever had,” Griner said.

One evening, Oliver Hunnicutt, the longtime and highly successful LaGrange coach, was in Moultrie to scout the Packers while the Grangers had an off-week.

During a conversation, Hunnicutt told Griner that if McCrary had the talent that he and other coaches at bigger schools with bigger rosters had, “he’d be unbeatable.”

“That tells you the respect that other coaches had for Knuck McCrary,” Griner said.

And of Tom “Babe” White, Griner says: “Tom White was the man who could get 110 percent out of any player.”

Broadcasting high school football games in the 1950s and 1960s was often an adventure.

Press boxes were often small and Griner says that after scouts from other teams and the print media were seated, if there was enough room, the radio broadcast teams were allowed in.

The WMGA broadcast crew usually included four people, often including a high school student who served as a spotter to help identify opposing players.

At least twice, the crew had to broadcast from the stands at LaGrange. In Thomasville, only two people were allowed in the press box. In Warner Robins, Griner had to broadcast from atop the press box.

The Hugh Mills Stadium broadcast facilities were fine, except for four big posts that were in the way. Porter Stadium in Macon had a separate room for the visiting radio crew, but the window was only 36 inches wide and Griner often had to lean out to make the call. In LaGrange, the press box was in the end zone.

Stadiums often were poorly lit and in the early days, fields were lined off every 10 yards and were marked only on the sidelines.

One year, he and Bob Mullinax, his LaGrange radio counterpart, agreed to try to get the number of the yard lines marked on the field every 10 yards.

Griner said he went out and bought plywood and cut out 4-foot numbers. He then went to Mack Tharpe Stadium, placed the cutouts on the turf and put the chalk on them himself.

“It took two days,” Griner said. “But I did it. And when we went to Callaway Stadium the next year, they had it too.”

“Sometimes, I don’t know how we did it,” Griner said, reminiscing on those days. “We just did the best we could.”

Griner’s love of baseball led him to the press box at Holmes Park, where he was the public address announcer for the Moultrie Colt .22s in the Georgia-Florida League. He received $5 a game.

But what Griner is most proud of in his long association with sports is helping get lights installed at Moultrie’s youth baseball field in 1957.

Griner, Ben Newell, Bob Byers and Emmett Lawson were the first coaches of the Little League baseball program started by Moultrie Recreation Department director Jim Buck Goff in 1955.

Seeing the need for lights at the field, Griner approached City Manager Lloyd Baxter with problem, but was told there was no money in the budget for the project.

Baxter did say that if someone could come up with the $7,000 needed for the transformers, the City would erect the poles.

The Jaycees took on the project and Griner went to Thomasville and bought a Fiberglas boat with a 25-horsepower Evinrude motor. The Jaycees raffled off the boat — which was won by Olin Beverly in a drawing at Holmes Park — and raised the money necessary to purchase the transformers.

Soon, youth baseball games were played at night and more spectators were able to attend.

Griner and his wife Vivion have been married 57 years and are members of Temple Baptist, where he has been a deacon for 35 years.

Their son Billy and his wife Kim, who is the daughter of former school superintendent Walt Thompson, live in Woodbine and work at the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in Kingsland.

Billy and Kim have two children: daughter Brittany, who attends Coast Community College, and son Zachary, who is a senior at Camden County High and is in the U.S. Navy Intern Training Program.

Billy will represent his father when the Sports Hall of Fame inductees are introduced on the field at Tom White Field at Mack Tharpe Stadium before Friday’s football game between Colquitt County and Valdosta.