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SEC Basketball Referee, Mayor, Realtor, Veteran, former Tennessee Government Official, and star ball player Dale Kelley was inducted into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame on Friday, January 17, 2003.

Having called Tennessee hoops since 1965, his path crossed Dale Kelley's numerous times. Kelley, an SEC basketball referee, and Ward burned up a lot of the same road in those days.

"Are you asking me if Dale Kelley ever made a bad call?" Ward mused with a chuckle. "Yes, he did," Ward remembers with laughter. But he paid perhaps the best compliment of all for a basketball official.

"You always knew what you were getting with Dale," said Ward during a phone interview Monday. "He was consistent and, to me, that's the measure of an official."

Kelley, who called three NCAA Final Four tournaments, will be inducted this Friday into the Tennessee Sports Hall of Fame.

Kelley may be better known in sports circles as an official's official, but more locally, he is known as Mayor of Huntingdon, a member of Gov. Lamar Alexander's administration, a realtor, a military veteran and pretty fair ballplayer for Bethel College.

Carlene calls him "hubby" while Amanda, Meredith and Cliff call him "Dad."

Kelley has already been inducted into a couple of other halls of fame. He is a member of the Bethel College athletics hall of fame and the Tennessee Secondary School Athletic Association hall of fame. Friday, he'll be in the granddaddy of them all. And it's an honor he didn't expect.

"It was a pleasant surprise," said Kelley. "To be recognized with such an elite group of people and to be associated with that group of people, it's really special and humbling."

Kelley has worn quite a few stripes in his day and has pointed out violations of many great players. He called the NCAA Final Four event in 1978, 1980 and 1981 and, in the process, saw several great players, including Duke's Mike Gminksi, Louisville's Darrell Griffith and Indiana's Isiah Thomas. He has had his ear chewed on by coaches like Denny Crum, Dean Smith, Digger Phelps and Bobby Knight.

Former Duke coach Bill Foster joked with Kelley about the 1978 tournament. Kelley called the semifinal game between Duke and Notre Dame that propelled the Blue Devils into the championship against Kentucky. But Kelley called the ACC tournament, which Duke won, and a few NCAA games that Duke played in.

"I tell Bill Foster all the time that I carried him all the way to the Final Four," Kelley said.

And it's the lasting friendships that Kelley remembers most.
"What really stands out in my mind is seeing great players play and great coaches coach," he said. "And all the great friends I've made through the years, all the lasting friendships."

Kelley said he was privileged to have worked in five different Division 1 conferences. It is a love of basketball that keeps Kelley interested in the game.

"Basketball has always been a favorite of mine since playing in grade school, at Bethel and in the military," he said. "I've seen basketball as a player, referee and in an administrative capacity, so I've had a lot of different perspectives."

Kelley is coordinator of officials for a newly formed alliance between the Big 12, Conference USA and the Sun Belt Conference. In addition, he serves in the same capacity with the Western Athletic Conference.

"Dale has been involved in a leadership role as an official and there are many facets to being a good official," Ward, a Tennessee Sports Hall of Famer himself, said. "When Tennessee was playing somebody and Kelley was an official, we could always depend on him being consistent."

"To be recognized as one of the better officials is as gratifying to an official as it is to a player," Kelley said. "I tell people now to work hard and improve because officiating is such an integral part of the game."

Kelley has served youth, his country and his community and he's always proudly called Huntingdon home.

"Athletics and politics have gone hand in hand with me," he said. "And I've been fortunate enough to serve."

Kelley will be inducted along with Pat Summitt, Watson Brown, Bob Patterson, Carl Poston, Chuck Rohe, Perry Wallace, Win Wilfong (posthumous) and Paul Sloan (posthumous).
 

School children enjoyed an extra long holiday after school was dismissed on Thursday and Friday because of a two to three inch snowfall that hit the area on Thursday, January 16. Coupled with the Monday Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, students had a five-day break from school activities.

West Tennessee experienced only about half of the snow received in middle Tennessee. In Nashville, a blanket of snow and ice paralyzed the city's arteries, causing traffic to come to a halt on many ice-covered streets with traffic along I-40 also at a standstill. Stranded and abandoned vehicles still lined I-40 on Sunday.

The wintry weather held its stranglehold as temperatures remained below freezing until Sunday when temperatures rose to the mid-40s. On Friday evening, temperatures dipped to four degrees in the tri-county area.

A combination of accumulated snow, slick streets, and extremely cold temperatures was reason enough for Governor-elect Phil Bredesen to cancel the Saturday inaugural parade. The Bredesen camp was concerned for the safety of people, especially children, traveling the state during the bad weather. The inauguration proceeded without the usual parade. The four high school marching bands were supposed to travel to Nashville to perform in the parade. All four had combined to become the Carroll County Combined High Schools' Band for this one-time event.

James and Kay Gilliam of Trezevant, who were enroute to Nashville Thursday morning, were among those stranded on I-40 near Dickson when a 16-car pile-up stranded motorists for at least 13 hours in the frigid temperatures without food or restroom facilities.

"Some people ran out of gas, some wet their britches," said Gilliam, who was prepared with a full tank of gas when the shut-down occurred at around 11:00 a.m. Thursday. The Gilliams rationed their gasoline throughout the day, letting the car become cold before restarting the engine for renewed warmth.

Others tiring of the long wait left their cars to build snowmen along the median. "There were at least a dozen snowmen all the way to the Bucksnort exit," said Gilliam, who was stranded along mile marker 154 some three miles from the accident. "When you get in a situation like that you just have to make the best of it."

Seven hours into their ordeal, the Gilliams were encouraged when traffic began moving at 6:00 p.m.

"We moved maybe two miles and were stopped in traffic again," said Gilliam, who was told by a truck driver around 9:00 that evening that two tractor-trailer rigs had jack-knifed, completely closing both lanes of traffic.

"It was a long wait; we thought we might be there all night but at five minutes 'til 11:00 we started moving again. By this time it was solid ice; we're luckily we didn't have an accident," reported Gilliam.

Gratefully reaching the Dickson 172 exit, the hungry couple ate dinner at the Huddle House at 12:30-1:00 Friday morning before opting to rent a room rather than turning back. "What little we had left of it," quipped Gilliam, who shared, "We've been married for 35 years and we got reacquainted all over again."

The Gilliams later heard more traffic snarls resulted in some motorists remaining stranded until until 2:15-2:30 Friday morning. "We thought we had the record for the Guiness Book of World Records until we heard that," laughed Gilliam. "We're told we need to stop and smell the roses, well that day we counted every rose in the field," he said.

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