My Turn: A salute to Perry Fewell
There was a time in America when little white boys and little black boys came together on grassy fields to play games. It was a simple matter of arithmetic in small, southern towns. Nine players were needed for a baseball team: eleven for football. Two teams and you needed a lot of boys about the same age and skill level. Skin color meant nothing. Skills meant a lot. We knew who could throw and catch and hit and run and who was hard to tackle.
For me the small town was Cramerton, North Carolina. Just on the other side of the South Fork River, across what is now the Bennie Cunningham Bridge, was the companion town of Baltimore. Why it was called Baltimore we never knew, but that is where my friends James and Willie and Abe lived. With their friends and cousins, they met us on Sunday afternoons on the broad lawn beside Mr. Cramer’s mill. Some of us had worn baseball gloves we shared. Most of the bats were broken, taped, and sometimes nailed together. Baseballs were throwaways from the high school team marked by grass stains and frayed stitches. But it was enough to make it through a hot afternoon of laughing and teasing and enjoying being a little boy in the 1950s.
Perry Fewell grew up in Baltimore a decade later. By his own accounting he was not a gifted athlete. “I was slow and weak and overweight when I was a sophomore at South Point High School in Belmont, North Carolina,” he remembers. “But I was a worker. I did what the coaches told me, and it taught me not just about myself, but about the impact a coach can make on a determined athlete.” By his senior year, Perry was playing both offense and defense on a South Point team that won the North Carolina 3A State Championship.
Perry was not only a disciplined athlete in high school, he was also a leader. As the nearby photograph shows, he has an amazing smile, and he never meets a stranger. He was elected president of the student body his senior year at South Point.
From South Point, Perry made his way to Lenoir Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina. Still working hard to the end of his college career he was selected LR’s Most Improved Player his senior year. From 1985 to 1997 Perry carved out a career coaching college football, working as an assistant coach at the University of North Carolina, West Point Military Academy, Kent State University, and Vanderbilt in the SEC.
He next found success as an NFL assistant coach as he became the defensive back coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars under head coach Tom Coughlin from 1998 to 2002 when his players gave up just 13 touchdown passes in the entire season. Then he moved from the Jaguars to the Rams, to the Bears and the Bills, the Giants, and the Redskins, and back to the Jaguars, living the nomadic life of professional coaching.
In 2019 Perry was the secondary coach for the Carolina Panthers and was interim head coach for a time, before settling into a job that has suited him especially well as Senior Vice President of Officiating Administration in the NFL. He has excelled as an administrator and manager with that smile; with a genuinely warm heart; and, with his proven leadership skills. Perry’s accomplishments in his job were recognized on February 1, 2023, when he was awarded the Salute to Excellence Award from the Fritz Pollard Alliance in Phoenix, Arizona.
Few people from Gaston County have risen so far in their careers, nor deserve more the recognition of peers and associates, than Perry Fewell. We can all take great pride that a young boy who grew up in the Baltimore community and attended South Point High School has lived a life that has impacted so many in such meaningful ways. Perry Fewell is a hometown hero and a person we should all applaud.
Congratulations, Perry! We are proud of you not only for your accomplishments, but for who you are and for holding up an good example for all of us to follow.
Michael K. McMahan is the Chairman/CEO of Gaston Capital in Belmont.
This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: My Turn: A salute to Perry Fewell
