Newberry volunteers build field lights for football

By Sterling McGinn

Until 1966, Newberry High School home football games were played on Saturday afternoons – in broad daylight. There were no lights at the former field and none at the current field established in 1951, so “Friday night lights,” (high school football games on Friday evenings) didn’t happen here.

Community members knew that had to change.

The Newberry Booster Club and local residents united 60 years ago to install lights on the football field. It could have cost $20,000 to $35,000 back then, but like many projects in Newberry, donations of time and materials made the project about $20,000 cheaper.

At the time, schools with lighted football fields had higher attendance at Friday night games as opposed to Saturday afternoon games.

Wanting increased attendance at Newberry’s home football games, attorney John Shimmens and Water and Light foreman Keith Sleeper, both with the Booster Club, developed a plan. They approached the Board of Education in March of 1966 to share their concept.

The Newberry News report of the March 1966 meeting said, “According to Shimmens, the Boosters will secure individual backers of notes to cover the initial cost of the lights so that there will be no risk involved on the part of the school. To pay back the loan, the Booster Club will sell adult season football tickets. Ofå all gate receipts, the first $1,300 will be turned over each year to the school athletic department, and the rest will be taken by the Booster Club to pay back the loan.”

Keith Sleeper became the chairman of the project, and he and Tom Brennan oversaw the engineering details with a representative from the General Electric Company.

Cloverland Electric secured the four 65-foot-tall poles and the cross arms. That’s on the taller end for high school field lights; most are between 50 to 70 feet tall. Newberry Water and Light installed the service transformer for the project.

Ten men – Keith Sleeper, Doug McMullen, Gus Swanson, Sid Labron. Jack Stimac, Dale Nantell, Dave Taylor, Dr. F. K. Bradley, Charles Ott, and Gus Van Houdt – volunteered more than 680 hours of their free time to assemble and install the lights and hook up the control panel.

The crew had three of the lights up for the first couple of home games and had the whole job done in October of 1966.

Many others volunteered and contributed to the project. Eino Sainio performed the necessary survey work. George and Albert Stephenson and Matt Green did the trenching for running underground wires, and Ken Gerou donated the use of his crane and labor to set up the poles. Newberry Redi-Mix furnished the concrete and Neil Maki and Stan Ketvirtis donated refreshments for the workers.

Those are the same lights that most recently lit up our football field for the annual Patriot Game, held this year on September 11. Sixty years later, this community is still cheering on our hometown athletes thanks to a group of caring locals who made it their job to enhance Newberry.