By Terry Mosher
Editor, Sports Paper
Phil Pugh, who is in Hall of Fames for coaching football and track and field at North Mason, which named its stadium after him, is along with wife Ingrid touring Mississippi, which has a lot of history related to the Civil War.
When we talked Thursday night he was in Natchez, Miss getting set to relax in the hotel for the trip Friday down to Baton Rouge and then on to New Orleans. But, don’t fear, Pugh, who spends some of his time in Nevada at Henderson, has scheduled his traveling so he will be available as a track and field referee for the important post-season meets – Olympic League, sub-district at Sumner High School for class 2A, the West-Central District, and then the small school state meet at Cheney.
“My responsibility has to do with violations and mistakes that occur on the track and deal with the protests of those violations and mistakes,” says Pugh.
Before reaching Natchez, Pugh and Ingrid spent some time at Vicksburg, the site of one of the decisive Civil War battles.
“There is a lot of Civil War history there,” said Pugh. “The Union Army (led by eventual U.S President Ulysses Grant) surrounded the Confederate Army at Vicksburg. The siege lasted for 40 days, and finally the Confederate Army surrendered. It was a terrible blood bath. That opened the Mississippi River to the Union Army and really was a huge turning point in the outcome of the war.”