Unbowed, Unbeaten
Forney endures with memory of killed player
By Mark McDonald, Staff Writer
Dallas Morning News
16 November 1995
FORNEY – The evening sky is the color of Mercurochrome, the color of blood, and from the hill where Clay Jones is buried you can see the lights that are blinking out the dit-da-dit of the Dallas skyline.
From there to here, from town to country, it’s 20 miles and several decades.
Forney is a town that is comfortable in its boot-cut Wranglers, a town that still enjoys a pinch between the cheek and gum. They’ve turned that old cotton gin into an “antique mall” but the chocolate pie at the Kountry Kitchen still is 95 cents. There’s a one-truck firehouse, one high school, one cemetery.
It’s a place of simple pleasures and a kind of prairie pride, especially when it comes to the high school football team.
Player killed by lightning remains in hearts, minds
The Forney High Jackrabbits are undefeated this season, and they open the Class 3A playoffs Thursday night against Kennedale. Folks around town are saying this Forney bunch is better than the ’45 squad, better even than Johnnie Henderson’s ’66 team.
Clay Jones would have been at the Kennedale game, that’s for sure, probably wearing his junior varsity jersey, No. 7, a quarterback’s number.
But Clay Died more than 10 weeks ago. He was a football practice at the high school – the sky had a sickly pallor to it that afternoon – and sparks flew off his helmet when the lightning struck him.
If you had been standing in Clay Jones’ front yard that day, you’d have heard the lightning snap. And if Clay had been able to cry out, you might have heard him.
It’s just a quarter-mile or so from the football field to the Joneses tidy yellow house on Center Street, and when the team is playing at home, you can easily see the Friday night lights above the stadium.
For most of the home games this season, Barry Jones has walked over to see how the team is doing. He did it for Casey, his oldest boy, when he played, then he did it for Corby, and now, full of melancholy and dread, he’s doing it for Clay.
The Forney players – dressed in black pants, black jerseys and black helmets – look as if they’re still in mourning. And in a way, they are. On the back of each boy’s helmet is a small orange decal – the numeral 7.
At Forney’s home games this season, Barry Jones has stood outside of the fence, swallowed back his grief and tried to watch a few series of plays.
“But that’s all I can do right now,” he says, “I can’t go up in the stands. It’s too hard.”
It’s also too hard for Barry’s wife, Linda. She has only been to one game this year.
Sam Tanner has known Barry and Linda Jones for 20 years or so. Sam used to help coach football in Forney, but he’s an insurance agent now. He wears a bolo tie, calls people “podner” and uses phrases like “dad-gum right.” Sam Tanner recalls first seeing Clay “when he was in diapers.” When he heard about Clay’s death, Mr. Tanner says, “It was a hollowing feeling. It just hollowed you right out… Clay was in things – in clubs, in church, in athletics. He was a kid you noticed.”
Like any 16-year-old, Clay was excited when he got his driver’s license. When he applied for the license, he also filled out an organ-donor card.
“Why wouldn’t anybody donate?” he asked about his mother.
“When Clay died, his pluck and his spirit were shared among his family, his town and his football team. And he shared other things, too – his kidneys went to two middle-age men on dialysis, and his cartilage and tissue went to other patients.
“His eyes got used, too,” his father says. “So now there’s two people who can see who couldn’t see before.”
Barry Jones pauses, then says quietly, “Clay had blue eyes.”
Mel Maxfield is the head foot coach at Forney High, and when he played high school football, everybody made the team. You came out, worked hard and whether you carried tackling dummies or the football, you suited up Friday night.
“So that’s the way we do it here,” says Mr. Maxfield, now in his ninth season at Forney. “We’re a throwback, we know that. We don’t cut anybody. If you’re a senior, you make the varsity.”
There are other small-town touches to the Forney program. There are no team captains during the year; they’re elected after the season. There are no “stud stickers” pasted on players’ helmets for big plays, no Nestle Crunch bars awarded for great tackles.
The program is small, yes, but it’s not small-time. There’s a big-time tradition of winning here. People in Forney are used to it. They expect it.
The population of Forney is 4,400 these days, but in 1959, there were just 1,000 God-fearing souls, mostly farmers and ranchers. When the new football coach, Johnnie Henderson, drove into town that year, he was greeted by a freshly painted sign on the side of the cotton gin: Welcome to Forney – Home of 1,001 Coaches.
The population has changed, of course, but not the expectations.
“Just going through the motions,” says coach Maxfield, “that would not cut it in this community.”
There are about 250 boys enrolled at Forney High School, and 107 of them came out for football.
“From grade school on up, one of the big things for kids in this town is to be a football player on a Jackrabbit team,” says Johnnie Henderson, 71, the winningest coach in Forney history. “Having half the boys in school come out for football is not unusual. When I coached here, we had 80 percent come out.”
“Most of us on the team have known each other since kindergarten,” says Kenneth Lorang, a senior linebacker. “it’s expected that you’ll play football.”
Little boys still carry footballs to elementary school here. They still draw you-be-the-bottlecap plays in the dirt at recess. And every third-grade boy in Forney believes he can grow up to be the Jackrabbit quarterback and go out with the homecoming queen.
Which is just how Clay Jones’ life was turning out. He was a tall, good-looking boy. Fine athlete. Terrific student. Voted “Most Handsome” in his ninth-grade class.
“Clay was a wonderful kid,” says Mr. Henderson, the old coach. “I think his death has made them (the current players) more concerned about each other. The kids on this team remind me a lot of the kids I coached years ago. I’ve been out among them in the workouts, and they’ve got that same desire.”
“Most of us on the team have known each other since kindergarten. It’s expected you’ll play football.
–Kenneth Lorang, senior linebacker
In the days and weeks after Clay Jones was killed, more than a few of his players came up to Mel Maxfield, quietly, privately, and said the same thing:
“Coach, you OK?”
Coach, players recall day of pain.
Mel Maxfield was the one who had his hands on Clay’s chest that awful August day, the one trying to get the boy’s heart going again, the one sweating over Clay as the Coach, players recall day of pain helicopters were being scrambled from Baylor Medical Center. Those horrible moments – he doesn’t care to recount them again. He goes out on that field every day, walks it every day, and that’s quite enough.
Mr. Maxfield doesn’t mention Clay Jones in his pregame speeches to his team. The players don’t say his name in unison as they break from huddles. There isn’t a locker left empty in Clay’s memory, nothing maudlin like that. The orange decal on their helmets is quiet enough.
“Each individual has handled it in their own way,” Mr. Maxfield says. “We see it every day in practice.”
“This team was going to be good anyway – we start 17 seniors – and this might be the best offensive football team we’ve had here. But Clay’s tragedy drew us all closer together. It threw us into a oneness, it bonded us, and it got a lot of people’s minds right.”
Discipline on the field at Forney used to be a punishing wind spirit to a far end of the practice field – they call it “touch the bush” – or a coach might even deal out some whacks from a paddle known as The Board.
This year, though, the players have handled a lot of the discipline on their won.
“Because of what happened earlier this year,” says senior Cody Woods, “If anyone starts yelling at each other, we say, ‘Look, guys, you know better.'”
“Clay was a wonderful kid. I think his death has made them [the current players] more concerned about each other. The kids on this team remind me a lot of the kids I coached years ago. I’ve been out among them in workouts, and they’ve got that same desire.”
–Johnnie Henderson, former Forney coach
A defensive end who is small in size but tough as rope, Cody was one of the players knocked flat Aug. 29 by the lightning bolt, the one that caused Clay’s heart to seize up.
“It was an awful sound,” he says. “Everyone was lying on the ground.”
One of the players knocked to the ground was Cody’s best friend, Jacob Gowins, a lanky defensive back.
“It made me realize I might have lost my best friend,” says Cody, the son of a ranch manager. “When you get down, [Clay’s death] pushes you. It makes you realize you can’t take anything for granted.”
Barry and Linda Jones hadn’t exactly planned on Clay. They already had two boys – Casey was 10 and Corby 7 when Clay was born – and that was plenty.
“Clay was a surprise, yes he was,” Barry says. “But he was the best thing that ever happened to us. He got the best qualities of all of us.”
In the weeks before his death, Clay was excited about maybe getting a Jeep, and was eager to see the new James Bond movie. Corby says Clay was fascinated with the Bond movies and he thinks his kid brother might have picked jersey No. 7 because of Agent 007.
Douglas Clayton Jones never will get to order a martini the way Bond likes them – shaken, not stirred. He’ll never wear an Armani suit or win a bundle in Vegas. he won’t flirt with the girls at the church suppers, won’t dance at his prom or toss the football with his own son.
But Clay Jones will be there Thursday night at Pennington Field in Bedford as the Jackrabbits start the playoffs. he’ll be there beside the sophomores struggling with their orthodontia, beside the juniors jawing smoke rings into the air, beside the Highsteppers drill team and coach Maxfield and the players and the water boys.
Clay Jones will be there beside his father, too, standing just outside the fence.
Even if his wife and other sons don’t go with him, Barry Jones won’t be alone. His boy Clay will be there with him. Those blue eyes shining bright.
