[Posted Nov. 9, 2007]

NSU Series Part 6:

Of Champions And Championships

By Gary Ruegsegger
Special To The New Journal and Guide
        
         The story of NSU athletics is a tale of champions and championships. Its text was not written just in X’s and 0’s or strength and skill; its history was also penned in courage and character.

Glen Mason

       Its trophies and championships were forged in arenas, on playing fields and in classrooms. Many of the names that heated, hammered and tempered the steel are legendary—Joe Echols, John Turpin, Bill Archie, Ernie Fears, Dick Price, Marty Miller
and so many others.
       Their names are chiseled in granite and cast in bronze. The basketball arena is Joe G. Echols Hall, the football facility is the William “Dick” Price Stadium and the baseball complex is Marty Miller Field. Still more names are etched in the hearts of graduates.

       Countless men and women, who were just as concerned about building people as they were about winning titles, penned chapter after chapter in the story. Dr. Lyman B. Brooks, Norfolk State’s first president, described them as “ordinary people doing
extraordinary things.”
       No one added more depth and meaning to the text than the late Dr. William H. Wright Sr., chairman of health and physical education. He was Norfolk State’s man for all seasons.
“My father’s legacy is not in books or great theories of education,” said William H. Wright II, “rather it is in lives—lives touched, lives transformed, lives lived differently,
lives defined as the person living it could never have imagined.”
      Yes, NSU and Dr. Wright were first and foremost in the business of building people.
         Both the university and the professor encouraged their students to dream and gave them the skills to make those dreams come true.

      Although nicknamed “The Little Fellow,” Dr. Wright was really a giant.
       For 42 years, he enriched the minds, hearts and souls of his students from Walker-Grant High School to Prairie View College to Norfolk State University. It was quite a ride.
       Like his mentor Dr. Brooks, service to others was woven tightly and seamlessly into the very fabric of his character. Fittingly, Dr. Wright’s memoir, NSU Graduates 1962-1992, focused on the lives and accomplishments of his students.
         As his son so eloquently stated, their lives are his legacy.
         Dr. Wright was equal parts of champion athlete and champion scholar. At Virginia State, he was the CIAA wrestling champion at 118 lbs. As a former student once said, “Dr. Wright could turn you every which way but loose.”
       Later he built the NSU’s wrestling program, coached its early track teams, headed the physical education department and changed lives in and out of the classroom.

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