By Chase Hartsell
The following article is part two of a series titled “Hidden Heroes: An Arkansas Sports Anthology.” The state of Arkansas has a rich athletic history and, as such, has plenty of sports stories to tell. As a result of this plethora, however, some stories have slipped through the cracks. “Hidden Heroes” sheds light on lesser-known, yet valuable sports tales from the Natural State that have received limited coverage either in their own time or in the present day. Furthermore, the series aims to go beneath the surface of featured athletic stories to uncover universal themes and truths that transcend both time and sport. Click here to read part one, which covers Jim and Leander Tugerson’s push for integration with the Hot Springs Bathers in 1953.
This weekend, Ouachita Baptist University’s football team returns home for a game at Cliff Harris Stadium in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, after back-to-back weeks on the road. The Tigers (5-1), led by head coach Todd Knight, are currently defending their 2022 Great American Conference (GAC) championship after going undefeated in the regular season a year ago.
Knight, a winner of six GAC titles and Coach of the Year awards, is the latest in an esteemed lineage of head coaches for the Tigers. This fraternal group includes the likes of Buddy Benson, a four-time conference champion and the program’s all-time leader in coaching wins. It also features Jimmy “Red” Parker: a coach who spent 50 years leading high school and college programs across the state of Arkansas and the nation.
Only one Ouachita coach, though, can claim that he coached a young Paul “Bear” Bryant. That man is Bill Walton.
Playing Days and Fordyce Football
William “Bill” Walton, not to be confused with the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame member of the same name, was born in Benton, Arkansas in 1900. After starring for Benton High School’s team and winning a state championship in 1918, he continued his playing career with Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas. Walton’s stint with the Warriors lasted just one season, and he soon moved on to the Ouachita Tigers. Despite being known for his play at defensive end in high school, the young man from central Arkansas found himself frequenting the halfback position in college. After playing for four years under Coach Morley Jennings (who ranks third on Ouachita’s all-time win list behind Benson and Knight), Walton set out to start a coaching career of his own.
The first stop on Walton’s coaching journey was Bauxite, Arkansas (which is just minutes away from Walton’s hometown of Benton). In 1924, he received and accepted an offer from Fordyce High School in Fordyce, Arkansas.
Fordyce is the seat of Dallas County and, according to U.S. Census records, saw its population peak just shy of 5,200 in the 1980s. In pop culture, the town is famous for hosting the arrest of two members of The Rolling Stones on the way to a concert in 1975: an episode retold at the beginning of Keith Richards’ autobiography titled Life. In the sports world, however, eyes often turn toward Fordyce High School’s Redbug football team. According to local records, Walton was the head coach of the program when it gained its unique nickname.
Fordyce’s mascot ties back to an unusual development that occurred during the construction of the school’s football field. As workers (including football players and local community members) tried to clear the land for the stadium, they found themselves being pestered relentlessly by trombicula: known informally as red bugs. Local sportswriter Willard Clary, according to Encyclopedia of Arkansas, suggested Redbugs as the team’s new name. The name stuck. The Redbug Alumni Foundation writes that when construction on the new field came to a close, Fordyce decided to name it Walton Field in Bill’s honor.
After opening his head coaching career with a 6-0 victory over Arkadelphia, Walton received the chance to face his alma mater, Benton, in his second game in 1924. The Redbugs blanked the Panthers in a 12-0 shutout. A week later, Fordyce faced another of its head coach’s former teams in the form of Bauxite. The Miners were no match for the Redbugs, and Coach Walton remained undefeated with a 26-0 win. Fordyce would not allow a single point until its fifth game (a 22-7 victory over DeWitt), with the defense holding opponents to seven points or less in nine of 10 games that season. The lone exception was a 32-0 loss to Pine Bluff: the Redbugs’ only defeat in Walton’s first season. This allowed Fordyce to play with a chip on its shoulder the following week, with the result being a 66-0 blowout of Stephens High School. According to the records of former Redbug and team historian, George A. Rogers, Sr., 66 points in a single game remained a school record more than seven decades later.
Following a year of growing pains in 1925 (2-5-2), Walton and his Redbugs bounced back with a 5-4-1 record in 1926. While Fordyce, in its fourth game of the season, once again bested Benton in a 12-0 victory, the Redbugs’ most compelling contest that year was arguably their first.
Bill Walton retained strong ties with Ouachita and Coach Jennings after his playing days. Hoping to provide his players with valuable experience, he scheduled an exhibition game with reserves from the Tigers’ program, with Rogers, Sr., referring to this squad with the unforgiving name of “Ouachita Scrubs.” The reserve Tigers eked out a 7-6 win over the Redbugs, though they could only manage a 0-0 tie when the teams met again the following season.
Walton coached at Fordyce High School through 1928, accumulating a 26–14-2 record in the process. Though the Redbugs of the 1920s enjoyed many triumphs, they are likely best known for introducing the game of football to a man that would become one of its most influential coaches.
Bill Walton (pictured top row, center) poses with his 1925 Redbug squad for a team photo. Walton dons a suit and tie: a sight that became increasingly rare during his later years in Fordyce. | Photo: Chase Hartsell/Dallas County Museum 
Bill Walton (still referred to as “William I. Walton” in this image) stands front and center in Fordyce’s 1927 team composite. He dons a coaching uniform similar to that of his players. | Photo: George Rogers, Sr./Dallas County Museum 
Bill Walton (pictured top row, center) joins the “regulars” (players with frequent playing time) on his 1927 Redbug team for a photo. While they did not known it then, members of this Fordyce squad would add a legendary figure to their ranks during this season. | Photo: George Rogers, Sr./Dallas County Museum
The Birth of the Bear
As the winner of six national championships and 323 games (both records in college football at the time of his retirement), Paul “Bear” Bryant is an individual requiring little introduction. Known for his time as head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide, his extensive track record of success, and his classic houndstooth hat, Bryant was born just outside of Fordyce in Moro Bottom, Arkansas, in 1913. He began his schooling in the nearby Kingsland community, which later gained fame as the birthplace of country music legend Johnny Cash.
When he was 11, Bryant and his family moved to a home within the Fordyce city limits. One year later, Paul Bryant earned his nickname, “Bear,” when he accepted the challenge of fighting a live bear for one minute on the stage of the local Lyric Theater. The prize if he succeeded? One dollar. Bryant, known for his size and tenacity, completed the minute-long fight but did not receive his reward. The tale of his fight with the bear, however, would stick with him for the rest of his life.
Today, the building that housed Bear’s christening fight remains standing, with the Benton Hardware store serving as its most recent resident. A Dallas County Museum plaque near the structure’s storefront on Main Street proudly declares the location the “Site of the LYRIC THEATER, where PAUL WILLIAM ‘BEAR’ BRYANT earned his famous nickname in 1927.” An additional banner hangs above a back counter in the modern store layout, designating it as the former site of the Lyric Theater stage: the exact location where the fight took place. It features caricatures of a bear and Bryant himself, with text reading in all caps: “PAUL ‘BEAR’ BRYANT WRESTLED THE BEAR HERE.”
A bust of Bear Bryant greets guests at the Bill Mays Annex at the Dallas County Museum in Fordyce. Bryant discovered and first played football at Fordyce High School. | Photo: Chase Hartsell 
A recreation of Paul “Bear” Bryant’s christening fight can be found in the Bill Mays Annex, which is located directly across the street from the location of the actual challenge at the Lyric Theater. | Photo: Chase Hartsell 
A plaque commemorating Paul Bryant’s fight with the bear is placed on the exterior of the former Lyric Theater on Main Street in Fordyce. | Photo: Chase Hartsell
A Local Legend and Historical Puzzle
Another influential story from Bear’s time in Fordyce is his introduction to the game of football. According to the legend, which has been documented in numerous biographies such as Keith Dunnavant’s Coach and S.C. Lee’s Young Bear, a 13-year-old Bear Bryant walked by Walton Field (now known as Paul “Bear” Bryant Stadium) as the high school team conducted practice. While he watched, a coach noticed him and his remarkable size. This coach walked over to Bryant and asked him if he would like to play football. The young man replied that he would like to play, but he didn’t know how. This question led to Bear’s first football lesson and, the following Friday, Bryant took the field with the Redbugs for the first time.
The identity of this influential coach remains unclear even today. Dunnavant’s biography suggests that the mystery coach was Bob Cowan, who led the Redbugs to an undefeated season and state championship as head coach in 1929. Lee’s Young Bear does not actively dispute this claim but omits the coach’s name altogether.
Writer Jennifer Horne, however, believes that this coach could have been her grandfather, Bill Walton. Horne, the poet laureate of Alabama from 2017 to 2021, revealed in a 2014 blog post that a cousin told her that “[her] grandfather was Bear Bryant’s first coach in Fordyce, Arkansas.” She conducted follow-up research and found that the years of Walton’s coaching stint at Fordyce matched up with Bryant’s junior high years. An organizer of the Dallas County Sports Hall of Fame also wrote Horne, stating that the organization “determined that Bill Walton did indeed coach Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant on the Fordyce Redbug football team.” The organizer went on to explain that “Bryant was rather large for his age, so as a ninth grader, he played on the senior high team, which was coached by Coach Walton.” Nonetheless, Horne noted that “the Bryant biographies [she’s] seen don’t mention [her] grandfather,” though she is “not sure why.”
One contributing factor to this confusion could be the lack of clarity surrounding Walton’s departure from Fordyce. While the collection of Rogers, Sr., credits Walton with the team’s results in 1928, he is noticeably absent from the team’s composite for the season (which was the first to feature Bryant as a Redbug). Coach Bob Cowan, Walton’s eventual replacement, does appear in the 1928 composite, but there is no decisive evidence or labeling to suggest that he served as the team’s head coach that year.
While the debate on who taught Bear to play football continues on, scholars agree that Bill Walton was the head man at Fordyce when the young Bryant first played for Fordyce in 1927. Though exact dates are unclear, multiple reports indicate that Walton took over the head coaching position at El Dorado after leaving the Redbugs. During his six years with the Wildcats, Walton led El Dorado to a 51-9-4 record and back-to-back state titles in 1932 and 1933. According to a 2018 article by the El Dorado News-Times, Walton’s win percentage remains the highest-ever by an El Dorado head coach.
A Call Home and a Call to Service
In 1934, Walton returned to his collegiate alma mater as the head coach of the Ouachita Tigers. Under his leadership, the team compiled a 49-30 record in nine seasons and won an Arkansas Intercollegiate Conference Championship in 1941. In 1942, the coach concluded his tenure with the Tigers in dominant fashion with back-to-back lopsided wins over Louisiana Monroe (62-0) and Peru State (64-0) in his final two games. The Tigers canceled their next two seasons due to World War II.
Bill Walton did not return to coach the Tigers, though Jennifer Horne believes that he could have. In the aforementioned 2014 post, she referenced Walton’s obituary, recounting a story where a Ouachita president explained that “if Coach Walton had waited to be called up [for the military], he could have saved his position.” Instead, “the coach decided to enlist, knowing his job would not be there when he returned.” Walton joined the United States Navy, where he rose to the rank of lieutenant commander. After the conclusion of World War II, he returned to Arkadelphia, where he served as an insurance salesman in the community and continued to be “a huge booster” for Ouachita until his death in 1963.
A Lasting Legacy
Throughout his career in football, Bill Walton earned respect from coaches across the southern United States. According to Horne, Bear Bryant, Arkansas Razorback legend Frank Broyles, and other football royalty paid their respects to Walton at his funeral.
Years after his death, appreciation of Walton’s work continued through local sports halls of fame. In 1973, he received a posthumous induction into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame for his time coaching Arkansas high school programs and the Ouachita Tigers.
Thirty-five years later, Walton received entry into the Ouachita Athletic Hall of Fame. Today, his portrait hangs alongside those of other inductees on the wall of the university’s Sturgis Physical Education Center (known by the acronym SPEC). The university also honored the coach with Bill Walton Gymnasium, a former athletic facility that stood “on the northwest corner of campus.” Originally housing varsity basketball games on campus, Walton Gymnasium also, according to a school handbook from the 1963-64 school year, “serve[d] as the center of the Physical Education department and the School of Military Science” at Ouachita. In her thesis for OBU’s Carl Goodson Honors Program, Victoria Utterback reports that the site continued to house women’s basketball practices and intramural events even after the construction of newer buildings such as Winthrop Rockefeller Field House in 1966 and SPEC in 1983. Ouachita demolished Walton Gymnasium in 1985 to make room for new projects. Utterback writes, “While the students would miss the old gym, they welcomed the new changes.”
Finally, in 2014, the Dallas County Sports Hall of Fame added Bill Walton to its ranks. Members of the group are honored in a photo gallery on the second floor of the Dallas County Sports Museum, which is located in the Bill Mays Annex of the Dallas County Museum in Fordyce.
“We have quite a sports history,” said Dallas County Museum staff member and Fordyce resident Melrose Bagwell.
The museum seeks to preserve said history through the Dallas County Sports Hall of Fame gallery (which also includes “Red” Parker and Bear Bryant himself, among others) as well a lower floor of exhibits that showcase the rich tradition of the Redbug football program and other notable teams and athletes in the county. A highlight is the football collection of 1949 Fordyce graduate George A. Rogers, Sr., which features materials on Bill Walton and fellow Redbugs that range from 1909 to the early 2000s.
In the back of a binder featured in the collection, Rogers writes, “There is no such thing as a complete history of anything, especially something as rich in tradition as Fordyce Redbug Football.” Perhaps the same can be said of Bill Walton himself: a coach who, in spite of his achievements, remains shrouded in mystery. Regardless, his name will be forever linked with Fordyce’s eight-time state champion football program. It will also be tied to a certain man from Moro Bottom, who discovered and learned to love the game of football under Walton’s Redbug regime.
Visitors can access the Bill Mays Annex upon request during Dallas County Museum hours. Admission to all of the museum’s exhibits is free, though the facility’s website ensures guests that “donations are welcomed and appreciated.”
On Saturday, October 21, Ouachita will celebrate all of its previous football team members with Football Alumni Day at Cliff Harris Stadium. That day, the Tigers will take on Great American Conference foe Arkansas Tech at 1 p.m.
Six days later, the Fordyce and Arkadelphia football communities will cross paths when the Redbugs host the Arkadelphia High School Badgers for a non conference bout. The game will take place at Paul “Bear” Bryant Stadium in Fordyce on Friday, October 27, with kickoff being slated for 7:00 p.m.
A metal sign, which features the likeness of Bear Bryant, welcomes guests to the Dallas County Sports Museum. Located in the Bill Mays Annex of the Dallas County Museum, the sports museum pays tribute to local athletic legends. | Photo: Chase Hartsell 
A small Fordyce Redbug sign sits in a planter outside the Bill Mays Annex. Similar Redbug imagery can be found all throughout Fordyce. | Photo: Chase Hartsell 
The Fordyce Redbugs will face the Arkadelphia Badgers on October 27 at Paul “Bear” Bryant Stadium: the same location where the facility’s namesake discovered the game of football under Bill Walton’s Redbug regime. | Photo: Chase Hartsell
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