Coach Turner

Blaine Turner (1939-2025)

     Coach Blaine Turner was the teacher and coach that so many of his students needed. If it was support you needed, he knew what to say. If you needed something more like a good swift kick to the rear-- he was there for you. With a boyish grin and a spit of tobacco, he led us through the high school experience with his special brand of leadership and mentoring. Coach Turner always had a wry smile or just a look that told you he loved knuckleheads, so you were alright. A teenage student of mine once told me that my teaching style was “funny/strict”--I stole that from Coach Turner.

   His easy manner with his fellow coaches, teachers and parents was one to observe and learn from. Congenial, curious, ready for humor while being planted solidly in respect and honesty. He was the same with his students. Leroy Bigsby said he never beat Coach in a game of horseshoes. That line brought back clanging memories of Coach playing horseshoes with us and looking like a man who was exactly where he wanted to be. 

Coach Turner 
1981 FMHS Yearbook

   

   Could he be fiery? When the time was right- absolutely. He was around 40 years old when I took his P.E. classes and played football for him. We knew he had played football at the University of Tampa, but it was still a shock to see that football player's intensity when it exploded. His laid-back style, lit up by the game, was dynamic and contagious.

   When we stretched at practice or in class I was always in awe of how limber he was. Sure, when he got in a three-point stance to demonstrate a play he looked athletic and not someone you would want to go into the pit with (that’s another story!). But the way he effortlessly put his palm to the ground when he bent over for a standing toe stretch was impressive. Not all of us took a warm-up routine as seriously as he did. Coach would shake his head and laugh at Cepada Fulse and me who used partner stretches to try to punish or maim each other.

Frank S. Battle Field
Ft. Meade, FL

    I mowed the Turner family yard for a couple of summers as a kid. I felt like I had hit the big time on the trust rankings. I had this real sense of pride that I was allowed to sweat in that Florida heat and humidity keeping this man’s grass at bay. I also got to see another side of him when he asked me to help the Athletic program by selling advertisements for Fort Meade Miner seat cushions. It felt like I was temporarily promoted to an adult. Here was Coach giving me advice on how to talk to people and present myself to the community when just a couple of weeks earlier on the game bus I was putting chewing gum into a sleeping teammate's ear. He challenged kids and gave them confidence.

    What an educational and sports legacy. What an impact. Thanks Coach.

Bottlebrush Boys

Bottlebrush

   We were late for church. We were in that sandwich of time, tightly pressed between Sunday School and the Prelude. It is a short, sweet and delicious intermission. It’s light. It’s free. It is a deep breath and a wild sprint across Saint Augustine grass outside the sanctuary. St. Augustine grass is spongy and springy. Like a small town, it can be a cushion or a catapult. It uplifts and envelops simultaneously. 

   This St. Augustine patch that Kenny and I were running on was wet. Maybe our pants cuffs would dry before we went home to meatloaf and football. Maybe not. Ahead, concrete and red rugs would easily erase this revelry and deliver us to reverence inside.

   The blobs of fuzzy red bottlebrush flowers caught our attention. The thin branches bending down with their itchy green leaves looked like a spectacular finish line tape for the late but victorious sprinters. Surely those tender red flowers would explode ceremoniously as we crashed through the finish accompanied by the muted but rising organ sounds inside the church. 

  We were late, but felt redeemed by our rush. The foyer just beyond the bottlebrush would wrap us in forgiveness and the deacons would greet us with obligatory looks of disapproval paired with a wink of solidarity with boyhood. 

 

   We blasted through the tilting red flower finish line. Bottlebrush flowers attract butterflies, bees and hummingbirds. They also handily collect the droplets from rain or sprinklers. The soaked flowers left their mark. Our heroic entry would be with wet stains on our church pant zippers, which no one would attribute to an evergreen shrub.

   Entering the foyer, the deacons did not, in fact, lift us up in brotherhood. We were idiots, seemingly in need of diapers and also late. We found a back-row padded pew and endured the service thinking about sprinting away on that green carpet outside. The preacher asked everyone to turn to page 229, and everyone sang:

   Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?  

Are your garments spotless?

  Are they white as snow?

Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?

   It felt as if everyone in this flock turned to snicker at us as we endured that hymn and the remaining 2400 seconds of waterlogged torture. 

   

After our extended repentance, we burst out of the sanctuary doors into the arms of Florida sunshine. The St. Augustine carried us away with the feeling that this Sunday afternoon held endless wonder and mirth. Amen.

Florida...