Ralph Reed

Albertville Aggie team captain and honor student Ralph "Bulldog" Reed was a two-time All-State lineman in 1945 and 1946.

Ralph attended Sewanee in Tennessee on an academic scholarship where he acquired many honors in the classroom and on the football field. The Little All-American and captain of the football team in 1950 left Sewanee with a degree and joined the Marines during the Korean Conflict. He was critically wounded September 5, 1952, on Bunker Hill, and received the Purple Heart.

This private to captain in the Marines earned his master's degree in English at the University of Alabama. He then coached three years at Albertville with a record of 20-9-1. After a year as assistant principal, he moved to Arab. In March 1958, Reed established the Arab Tribune. He worked tirelessly to organize Little League baseball in Arab.

Young Reed, at age 28, was the only candidate who was nominated to the Marshall County Board of Education in the May 6, 1958, primary without a runoff. Five days later, an intoxicated driver hit the school bus in which Ralph was riding, ending a life that had done so much for humanity. Mrs. Reed and 42 children from Union Grove Junior High were injured. Mrs. Reed was sponsor of the class that had attended the Grand Ole Opry and was returning home. Thirty years later, in 1988, the Phi Gamma Delta library at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, was named the Ralph Wilson Reed Memorial Library.