George "Blackie" Heath

He came to Guntersville in 1940 because the assistant coach Clyde White had moved from Pine Apple. Coach White told Marshall County High School coach Henry Lee Burgett about this young halfback named George Heath. George had played at Moore Academy in Pine Apple. A job was secured for his father and the family moved to Guntersville.

The 1940 Wildcat season culminated with a 7-2 record with the team holding all three county rivals scoreless. In 1941, a team of Alabama all-stars played a team from Tennessee in Decatur. High school coaches “Shorty” Ogle and Jim Glover teamed up with Alabama’s Paul Burnum and Auburn’s Jimmy Hitchcock against the Tennessee players and coaches. George Heath scored a TD in a 12-0 victory and averaged 50 yards per punt.

Tennessee’s Union College coaches noticed the outstanding young talent of young George and soon had him signed up for the season of 1941. The coach could not remember his name, so he just called him "Blackie" because of his thick, wavy black hair. “Blackie” considers the time at Union under a group of coaches that had played for General Bob Neyland at Tennessee was some of the best coaching of his career.

The 1942-1945 war years were spent in the U.S. Navy building and maintaining a two-mile airstrip and other airfields and roads on Okinawa and Guadalcanal. After his naval career, which included a 20-month stay on Guadalcanal, the young man resumed school and football at Jacksonville State University. Don Salls was his coach in 1946 when “Blackie” became Jax State’s first All-American. He was captain in 1947 of the first unbeaten Gamecock football squad. “Blackie” led the 1948 Gamecocks to within a point of a second perfect season and beat Troy State in Pensacola’s Paper Bowl. Heath, as the Gamecock punter, averaged 39.6 at a time when statisticians subtracted 20 yards each time a punt went into the endzone, a rule that no longer exists.

His teaching and coaching career started in 1949 at Athens as an assistant to Coach Furman Elmore. He spent 1954-65 at Emma Sansom, six years as an assistant and six as head coach. “Blackie” was an Albertville assistant coach from 1966-67 and Worth County, Georgia, head coach from 1968-72. Jax State selected him, in 1982, one of the schools Top 100 Athletes in the First 100 Years and inducted him into the Jacksonville State Hall of Fame in 1988.