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ASHLAND George Stout was surprised last fall when he was told that he was no longer on the Sports Day committee for the Ashland Elks.
Stout, who is 94, had been on the committee for 45 years, including being the chairman for 26 of them. The Sports Day program had been dormant since 2019 because of complications from COVID. Many believed it may never return.
But in January, Stout learned why he couldn’t be on the committee. It was because he would be the honoree for the program’s restart this summer. The time has come for one of the original players and planners of the Sports Day program.
Stout will be honored Saturday night with a reception at 6 and dinner to follow around 7. Tickets are available at the Elks Lodge.
He was never an athlete, but the role Stout played in other areas of sports beyond the playing field, including more than four decades of working on the Sports Day committee, makes him an obvious choice.
“I’m looking forward to it,” he said Tuesday. “To have a chance to put my picture on the wall with all those great athletes – and one great newspaper guy – is humbling.”
Stout said he has been congratulated dozens of times since it was announced he would be the honoree in January.
“They kept saying, ‘George you need to be the honoree,’” he said. “So many people have told me that and every time I walk in the Elks they say they’re so glad for me being the honoree. They say, ‘You’re so deserving of it.’ I’ve seen most of them (past honorees) play baseball, basketball or whatever they did. I can go all the way back to 1937.”
That was the year the Ashland Tomcats began playing in Putnam Stadium. Stout, then an 8-year-old boy, watched the Tomcats defeat Ceredo, 20-0, on a sunny fall Saturday afternoon. Lights didn’t come to Putnam Stadium until 1944. “Ralph Felty, one of our honorees, was on that team in ’37 and so was Bill Nolte, who was a neighbor of mine later in life,” he said.
He admired the play of future UK All-American and Green Bay Packer center Jay Rhodemeyer, running back J.C. Kennard and Charlie Edmon.
Stout also earned 15 cents a game being a bat boy in Central Park and he still remembers the teams – Pure Milk Company, Shaker’s Market, the Golden Eagles and the Elks Lodge. Later, he did some bat boy work for the Ashland Colonels, a semi-pro team that played at the Armco Field.
He attended Ashland schools and was a water boy for the Tomcats’ football team before quitting school after his sophomore year.
“I got smart and quit in the 10th grade,” he said. “I didn’t do bad after all.”
Stout said his favorite class in school was history with Joe Rupert as the teacher. “We’d get him off the subject talking about football.”
Stout began his long relationship with the Ashland Daily Independent when he sold “extras” on Dec. 7, 1941. He joined the ADI the next week in the mail room where he stuffed newspapers and later did wrappers that would be mailed to servicemen during World War II. He also did custodial work and drove a truck where he dropped off newspaper bundles in South Ashland to the carriers. He eventually made it to the composing room in 1948 and retired in 1992.
Between those years Stout lived an adventurous life, including 63 years of marriage to wife Jenny. He has a daughter, Diane Anderson, two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
Stout’s role as the game director for the Kentucky-Indiana All-Star basketball series from 1983-1988 was filled with highlights, including listening to a speech from John Wooden in a hotel lobby with his Kentucky All-Stars boys and girls and some adults.
“You could have heard a pin drop and the room was carpeted,” he said. “Listening to him talk was amazing.”
Stout represented the 16th Region well during his five years as the Kentucky game director. Craynor Slone and Jeff Wilcox coached in 1984 and Marvin Meredith and Charles Baker in 1987. He was on the selection committee since 1978 and was instrumental in Fairview’s Jeff Hall, Clarence Thompson and Toni Wright having the opportunity to make the All-Stars which each did. Hall scored 28 and 18 points in his two All-Star appearances in 1982.
Stout recommended Paul Patterson and Jim Day as coaches for the 1978 game.
“It was a lot of hard work and a lot of traveling,” Stout said of being the game director. “I had the opportunity to meet many college coaches and had some great Mr. Basketball and Miss Basketballs.”
Stout’s history of putting together quality basketball and football programs was what got him the opportunity to work with the Kentucky-Indiana All-Star series. He began making programs for John McGill in the late 1950s. He hired Stout to sell program ads for the Greenbo Classic, the forerunner to the Ashland Invitational Tournament.
Stout did programs for Fairview football and basketball teams in the mid-1970s, bringing in more than $200,000 to the athletic program over the years. He also put programs together for the 16th Region basketball tournament for decades.
He has also been a devoted Elks Lodge member for nearly 70 years and participated in the Elks Christmas and Thanksgiving dinners since they started. His family was a recipient of the Elks’ kindness when he was a child, providing a basket of fruit and candy and a sweater to him and his siblings every Christmas Eve for years.
The Elks will be giving back more to Stout on Saturday with the Sports Day recognition.
Former Sports Day honoree Mark Maynard will be the speaker and Jeff Hall will introduce Stout.
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