From the past: God’s QB Club Has Its First Speaker, Now

Posted Oct 16, 2011 by TBO.com

Updated Oct 16, 2011 at 01:12 AM

I thought it a good idea, since John Wright, Dean of the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Florida is coming down to discuss with a group of us how to create scholarships in Tom McEwen’s name this week, that I submit to you this classic eulogy dedicated to his great old Gator friend. - Linda
 

 
He was funny and he was fun. He was a Gator and he was committed to make all around him laugh. So, he was perfect for his River City sales routine. He could entertain you one-on-one or if you were among 1500 at a dinner. He was a solid athlete, great citizen, remembered your name. But ailments lingered and he left for a speaking job in Heaven. This is a eulogy by America’s Friend, Red Mitchum.
 
OCALA- If The Lord’s 2003-04 Quarterback Club fiscal year starts mid-summer, Red Mitchum will be His first speaker.

Red became available on this Special agenda this weekend.

The best at what he did, make you laugh on a full belly, Red Mitchum left our QB Club tables for that of The Lord when he died quietly this mid-May weekend in Ocala after being our buddy all these years.

Red Mitchum, Florida Gator to the bone, down home humorist who had that rarest of qualities, to make you laugh at the same story be was telling you for the umpteenth, died at 78 after so many serious ailments flat wore out his big ole, good ole, funny ole, friendly ole, Alabama-born body.

Anyone who knew Red Mitchum, even Gator Haters, loved him, and he loved every dadgum one of us all, even Georgia Bulldogs, even Florida State Semiholes he loved to bait, even when they were winning.

A bunch of his pals drove from Tampa here Monday to say so-long, to visit with good wife Grace, son Scott, and the other kids. A graveside service was scheduled the next day. Didn’t care to have a regular service in a full church.

Heck, Red may have gotten up and asked is if we heard the one about the gal from Georgia, and we had. In fact, he had a story, and a good one, about an old woman who was so bent over they had to strap her down and straight in the casket.

During the service, the straps broke as the preacher was preaching and she reared up in a sitting position. Red said not everyone could get out through the door, so he said the husband of the bereaved found himself running down the road with the preacher passing him. The preacher had a window sash around his neck, as did the surviving husband, causing the minister to say, still on a dead run, “Dad blast a church that has only one door!”

So, I asked Grace Mitchum, the great and gracious wife, Grace, if he told jokes to the end.

“Absolutely,” said great wife, Grace. “Even when there was no one in the room with him but me, he’d tell one of those old jokes and laugh and laugh,” like he did when stories to the Birmingham, or the Miami, for the Jacksonville Quarterback Clubs, or the Truss Manufacturers of America. You know Red would talk to anyone, anytime, anywhere. He liked to get paid, but the laughs were enough, plus a free meal and the good he did with his appearances for the Gators of his boss-buddies in Florida Lime Rock, Whit Palmer and Fred Montsdeoca Wilbert said, ‘but, ob, heck, Red, Hahira ain’t no big town.’ And it wasn’t and they got married and lived happily the rest of their lives.”

Yes, Grace said he was telling all those, and all the old Gator stories, like he’ll be telling to old friends who’ve forgotten the old ones and haven’t heard the new ones who haven’t, or pretended they hadn’t.

“I hope,” said friend Leonard Levy, who made the trip Wednesday, “he’ll be introduced by Huerta or Kynes as the most improved Gator football player in history-after graduation.”

Gator Booster buddy Tom MacDonald says he’ll have to tell the true one about Coach Ray (Bear) Wolf at Florida taking a long time to work with tackles Mitchum and Curtis King, emphasizing that the tackle position was where games are won or lost. Then, in the Q-A session afterwards when Wolf (the Golden Era 0-13 head man) asked King “where are most college football game lost games lost, King answered in that country tenor of his,  “why, right here at Florida, coach.”

In truth, Mitchum was a quality player, an entertainer at heart, and surely had Gator scales on his hide.

In New Orleans, in the Sixties, when a Florida-LSU game was postponed because a hurricane was on its way, Gator reporting Orlando Sentinel man Bob Bassine, writer Jack Hairston, and I went down to the Pat O’Brien saloon on bourbon street where the big ladies played twin pianos and sang college songs, along with a man who knew the words to them all, and a song and dance man who kept time with his nails clicking a tempo on the bottom of a metal plate with coins on it, at the same time tap-dancing. Well, the wind was coming up and when the singer left early, Red Mitchum, with some urging, took over for some singing, plus the stroking of a set of safety matches like a miniature banjo in time with the music, of course. Red could sing, folks, and play those matches. A favorite song with that accompaniment knew sung best by Red was: “Just a Bowl of Butter Beans. . . Pass the cornbread if you please…”

We went home in New Orleans that night, rose early to catch the last train north to beat the storm, and did, to return to Baton Rouge in December later where the Florida team of Steve Spurrier, Jack Harper, Graham McKeel and that crowd won big time for a major bowl bid. But, I wrote about the stormy night in New Orleans and bow Red Mitchum had saved us aU and Pat O’Brien’s profits.

Somehow, I guess, well, he called early, he’d told wife Grace by phone he and the rest of the Gators were stranded in the Roosevelt Hotel and Mitchum was born in rural Alabama and was raised by an early widowed mother who worked in a cotton mill. Red was big, and he was a good athlete. He hitchhiked to Gainesville where he won a football scholarship to Florida. He would play for the worst of teams (0-13, called the Golden Era), and one of the best (1952 of Bob Woodruff) where his teammates became lifeline pals and joke subjects-Rick Casares, Haywood Sullivan, Doug Dickey, Angus Williams, Jack Pappas, Frank Lorenzo, Charlie LaPradd, Jimmy Kynes, Bufford Long, punter Montsdeoca and two buddies who were the butts of so many of his jokes, the late Coach Marcelino Huerta (guard) and King (tackle).

Mitchum said to me a long time ago it was so much better to be a part of the

0-13 Golden Era than the winning teams because you could talk endlessly and tell great stories about losing, but not many about winning, “because people get bored. Winning isn’t funny. Losing can be made fun. . .as in funny.”

When a Florida team was being pounded by a Great Alabama team coached by Bear Bryant, nobody taking more the brunt than linemen like Kynes (center), Huerta, him and King, “we broke the huddle to go face those gorillas like Bob Gain,”

Mitchum said, “and Curtis King, in his high, country voice said, ‘Come on Red and Jimmy, on the way up to the line, let’s yell something ugly at ‘em, even if we have to take it back.’ We did and we did.”

After college, Mitchum became the unofficial Gator spokesman, president of this or that relating to Florida, saw all the games, wore outlandish orange and blue, sold his products well, and simply left his audiences laughing and feeling good, all, by the way, without smut. He didn’t need it.

Well, here was an off color story for Mitchum.

There was, said, this friend named Melvin Drawdy from Eufala, Alabama, who told he his favorite thing was counting cars as they passed his second story hotel in Mobile. “Melvin got married and the couple went to Mobile for their honeymoon,”

Red said. “I asked him how things went, and Melvin said, “well, Red, I’ll tell you one thing, counting cars ain’t my favorite thing to do in Mobile no more.”

Here’s another one that should pass a Heavenly muster, about “another friend of mine,” said Red, “named Wilbert Wadsworth from Hahira, Georgia, who came home from the war and said he was going to marry Mary Beth Bradley. But, I told him while he was away, Mary Beth went out and got frisky with about every fella in Hahira, to which, frightened of the storm and bored. Then, she read in Ocala the Tampa Tribune Morning After I wrote for that Sunday and pasted it to Red’s bathroom mirror.

But, all in fun. No problem, though Red never forgot it, and said he’d thought the night out was off the record.

By the way, Red’s great son, Scott, said he found a cache of safety matches in his dad’s sock drawer. Among Red’s favorite things was to swipe packages of safety matches coat pocket, for later use. We, mom, my sisters Pamela and Sherry, know he was keeping a bunch so he could play them later when he spoke.’’

Yep, a Mitchum specialty, was to take out a packet safety matches, open  the flap and play the matches like a small hand-held guitar. It worked. It was neat as heck, especially his favorite song, “Butter Beans…..Just a bowl of butter beans,’’ he’d sing. And again, “Pass, the cornbread, if you please. . .’’ We all know butter beans were a Godly creation for Red, and surely was on that first menu of the Lord’s Inaugural QB Club Dinner featuring Red Mitchum, but ending with the standing and the singing of “We Are The Boys From Old Florida…..F-L-O-R-I-D-A . .,’’ and swaying, of course.