Harlem's first football team remembered

Appling resident Jerry Pearson's memory of the period is fading, but there are certain things he recalls about 1958.

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The Washington Redskins were the closest NFL franchise, the one everyone watched on Sundays. And they were terrible.

The biggest local game of the year was when Valdosta High would travel to Richmond Academy, and everyone would go to Augusta to watch.

Harlem High's basketball and baseball teams were competitive. But no one knew much about football.

"We didn't even know how to get in a three-point stance," said Pearson, 68. "One of the players wanted to play left field."

Pearson and other members of Harlem's first football team will have the chance to piece together their various memories Friday, when the school recognizes the 50th anniversary of the Bulldogs' first season.

The group will share dinner at a tailgate party and then be introduced before the game.

Harlem and Evans started football programs the same year. The Knights celebrated half a century of football last season.

Harlem football coach Jimmie Lewis said the timing was to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the year of when the seniors on that first team graduated.

Lewis was just 6 years old when Harlem first fielded a team, and he doesn't remember much of the first season. But Lewis said when he watched the Bulldogs in the years following, he knew what path he wanted to take.

"They were like my idols growing up," Lewis said of the early Harlem football teams. "You went to the games and wanted to be out there."

Pearson, who played fullback, said he and Pierce Blanchard, the tailback, were the team's captains. Pearson said he was named the most valuable player of that first season.

Blanchard, now with Georgia Bank and Trust, is the son of former Columbia County Superintendent John Pierce Blanchard. Harlem's first roster also included E.G. Meybohm, who later coached at Harlem High and now is owner of the local real estate agency Meybohm Realty, and Edgar Clary, who went on to become mayor of Harlem.

The Bulldogs played on what is now the field at Harlem Middle School. Pearson remembers students using sharp sticks to gouge holes in the dirt and planting grass brought in from the University of Georgia. The group practiced on the parade grounds at Fort Gordon and scrimmaged Aquinas.

"I think it was illegal," Pearson said of the scrimmages. "We had to keep our mouths shut."

The Bulldogs finished 5-3 their first season, according to the Georgia High School Football Historians Association. The Bulldogs were coached by Henry Dukes, who coached Harlem's first two seasons. Pearson said Dukes benefited from a staff of volunteer assistants who had a knowledge of the game.

Pearson said Harlem played Evans twice, losing big the first game but winning the second to split the series.

The Bulldogs' next winning season was 1964.

"It was quite a thing for Columbia County," Pearson said of the early football teams. "We filled the stands."