The Oglethorpe Echo
Dear Dad:
Honest to God, I began this note on my phone in the Mercedes-Benz Dome in 2018, thinking I’d send it to you the day after we won a national championship. I saved it in my notes, thankfully, because I thought I’d need it again.
So here goes: In 1968, my parents moved from their West Virginia home to Athens, and a 4-year-old Bulldog was born. Dad took me to countless Dawgs games — always a highlight of the fall. Through good teams and bad, in every kind of weather, we cheered our lungs out.
We, like so many other Georgians, listened to Larry Munson on the radio each week, gave one another myriad G-festooned Christmas presents and learned to bark as we learned to talk.
An Athens YMCA boy, I even played football in Sanford Stadium before a few Bulldog games. That’s right: back in the olden days, as a form of pregame entertainment, young boys scrimmaged one another on the field before games.
In 1976, I won the 12-year-old’s lottery and was assigned the scrimmage before the UGA-Alabama game. The Dawgs won 21-0 that day, cementing the SEC title. From my bedroom window, I could hear car horns on Milledge Avenue all night.
I can recall standing in a parking lot cheering the 1976 Junkyard Dawgs as they prepared to leave for the Sugar Bowl. I was 12. You and mom took us. You may not remember; I do.
That’s how fandom works: generations make deposits in the memory banks of their children.
Then, 1980. A rebellious teenager, there was little my parents and I could discuss civilly, save for the amazing Georgia Bulldogs and Herschel Walker. On the night we won that Sugar Bowl against Notre Dame, I rang the Chapel Bell and we danced in College Square.
Over the decades, a love so deep, so enduring took root. As soon as I grabbed an undergrad degree, I came back to Athens and the legendary Grady College, to my 22-year-old mind, the finest destination imaginable.
Nearly 30 years later I won life’s most amazing lottery ever and was offered the deanship of Grady College. It’s been a dream come true, every day.
Dad and I went to a bunch more Georgia games. We left some of them sad and frustrated, for we knew Georgia fans wanted and deserved more.
So imagine how I feel as I type these words, in the midst of the national championship game.
This victory is for you, Dad.
It’s for generations of children and fathers, grandmothers and daughters, donning the red and black and woofing like crazy people.
It’s for Larry and the Railroad Track people.
It’s for my beloved high school social studies teacher, Ray Clark, who as a retiree, helps people find their way as a Silver Dawg on game days.
It’s for Herschel, for Pulpwood Smith, for Frankie Sinkwich and Charley Trippi, for Liz Murphey, for Terry Hoage, for Dominique Wilkins, for Teresa Edwards, for Suzanne Yoculan, for Jack Bauerle.
Oh my lord, is it ever for Loran Smith, for every damned one of us who forms the Greater Bulldog Nation.
Every devoted alumnus of every university feels their love for their alma mater exceeds all.
They are wrong.
Ours, Dad, is forged in Athens.
Love you. Go. Dawgs.
Charles Davis is the dean of the Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.