THE FOOTBALL KING
CP staffer researches her family’s history and homecoming
In 1957, at Grand Coulee High School in Washington, teenagers were getting excited for their next homecoming. Young ladies got their dresses and the gentlemen got their tuxes, preparing for the dance.
Everyone also looked forward to the announcement of homecoming royalty, the highest honor being the Football King. The Football King is our equivalent of the homecoming king and the young man to win this title was Jerry Best, my late grandfather.
Best embodied the Football King, a star football player and good friend with almost everyone in the high school. While looking through my grandpa’s yearbook, so many people gave him long farewell messages. Best’s football coach, Coach Maxwell, even said to him, “I would feel better about ‘G.C’ chances if you were not leaving.”
… now that homecoming is coming up, I encourage you to ask someone, maybe your grandparents, parents, or someone else you know, about the time they went to homecoming. — Jaycee Forell
Maxwell was right as Best wasn’t just in football, he was also in baseball, basketball, track, and choir. On top of all of that, Best was also a good student, ridiculed by his brothers on how good he was at attending to his schoolwork.
Best was also a hard worker.
“He worked at Safeway and worked at the Sawmill,” Cindy Best said.
In the town they lived in, all the stores were open until 6:00 p.m; so Best worked at Safeway until the store closed for the day and then went to work at the Sawmill at night. Somewhere in between all this time, Grandpa would study and go to whatever sports practice he had.
Best may have been well-liked and a hard worker, but his daughter and my mother, Becky Forell, remembers one other thing about him.
“He always told me it was better to be kind than popular,” Forell said. “He was both.”
Between his kind, likeable personality, involvement in sports, schoolwork, and regular work, it is clear that he had earned the title of Football King.
Although this is just a short snippet of my grandparents’ past, it was a great opportunity to learn more about my grandfather, whom I don’t remember, and my grandma. It was a wonderful experience and now that homecoming is coming up, I encourage you to ask someone, maybe your grandparents, parents, or someone else you know, about the time they went to homecoming.
You never know if someone you knew might’ve been the Football King.
