By Mike London
Salisbury Post
HUNTERSVILLE —Ron Raper died on Jan. 6 at 76.
In a long career that touched every corner of Rowan County, Raper coached football, baseball, track and field and swimming.
He made friends at Salisbury, West Rowan, East Rowan, North Rowan, Carson and Catawba College. If he ever made any enemies, no one’s found one yet.
Somehow Raper never worked at South Rowan, although he almost did.
“Your life takes different turns based on one phone call,” Raper told the Post in a story published in 2013. “There was a time I was offered jobs at Salisbury, South Rowan and Lexington. I chose Salisbury. It would’ve been different if I hadn’t.”
A thick book could be written about Raper’s Forrest Gump-like trek through Rowan County sports. He played for Pete Stout, roomed in college with Leland Peacock, assisted W.A. Cline and Roger Secreast, and coached Scott Young.
Raper was born in Elizabeth City, but he grew up mostly in Salisbury.
When Stout arrived in Salisbury to coach Boyden High’s football team in 1966, Raper was a 205-pound senior lineman who played both ways and already had been elected team captain.
“Pete didn’t know whether to accept me or fire me,” Raper said. “He accepted me.”
That team shockingly made the state playoffs and Raper had a strong senior season. Boyden was still playing in a league with the big-city schools in 1966, and Raper was one of the four Boyden players to make all-conference. Raper also was Boyden’s Golden Helmet winner, an award that went to the player with the most team spirit. Raper was named to play in the North-South All-Star Game played at East Carolina.
Raper’s college career at Elon, where he roomed with Peacock, the captain for Boyden’s rival North Rowan, lasted only eight practices. He re-injured the knee that had cost him most of his junior season of high school football. When doctors started talking about removing the kneecap, Raper knew his playing career was over.
“I quit school,” Raper said. “There was a girl (Janice Casper) I’d been sweethearts with since eighth grade that I wanted to marry, so I went to work for Piedmont Natural Gas, and I was fine with that. I’d always wanted to be a coach, but I figured that wasn’t going to happen because I didn’t play in college. I thought you had to be a college player to coach.”
Stout talked him into getting back into football. Raper did some scouting for him. That experience led to Raper returning to the college classroom at Catawba. He earned a degree and became a student assistant for the football Indians in 1973.
In 1974, Raper joined Stout’s staff at Salisbury High.
“Charlie Hellard was wanting to give up baseball and Bobby Pharr was wanting to get out of football, so they offered me a position coaching the baseball team and as a football assistant coaching linebackers and defensive ends,” Raper said. “We were blessed. I coached James Wright, Tony Leach, David Gibson and Erwin Solomon. All four were all-conference. All I had to do was not mess them up.”
That would be a season in which the Hornets would win their second straight championship in the Western North Carolina High School Activities Association.
Stout’s teams were 83-20-10 during a 10-season run at Boyden/Salisbury that ended with the 1975-76 school year. His next challenge was to try to win at Walter Williams High. Some of his Salisbury staff, including Charlie Little and Raper, made the move to Burlington with him.
“People said Williams didn’t have the athletes to win,” Raper said. “But what we found at Williams were smart kids and great kids. Not a lot of college players, but good high school players. We’re playing Lexington one night and Joe McIntosh (who would star at N.C. State) is so tough that after the first four plays our best linebacker walks over to the sideline and his helmet is turned sideways on his head. I’m thinking it’s going to be a long night, but our kids hung in there and we beat Lexington.”
Basically, they beat everybody. Williams won 43 straight games at one point. There were 3A state titles in 1980 and 1981.
Raper coached baseball at Williams and learned a lot.
“My first year we had two good senior pitchers, we went 17-4, and I was coach of the year,” Raper said. “The pitchers graduated, and we went 4-17. I got the lesson early on that it’s players that make you a good coach.”
Stout’s overwhelming success in Burlington made people back in Salisbury certain he was the man who could rescue Catawba football. So Stout and his staff took charge at Catawba. That didn’t work out. Progress was made, but four years netted only 13 wins.
“That first year (1983) at Catawba we were 0-9-1, and that’s a tough pill to swallow after winning 43 straight,” Raper said.
Raper was the head coach for Catawba baseball in 1984 and 1985.
In 1987, Stout headed to Morganton for additional high-school coaching glory at Freedom. Raper stayed in Salisbury as the AD at Knox.
In 1988, Raper returned to the high school ranks at East Rowan, assisting Cline, the architect of the Mustangs’ legendary 13-0 1969 season. That was a 2-8 team, but one of the 1988 Mustangs who impressed Raper with his intelligence and work ethic was Young, who would become a major figure in county sports history.
Raper’s own football head-coaching opportunity finally came in 1989 when he was hired to lead West Rowan.
Raper guided the the Falcons for seven seasons. His best year produced a 9-4 record in 1994. That was a school record for wins at the time.
That 1994 season ended with an epic 34-30 second-round playoff loss against North Rowan, the school where Raper’s daughter, Kristina, was a cheerleader. Raper’s daughters Kristina and Kelly were growing up at North, and there came a point where Raper decided to put family ahead of football.
“I enjoyed my time at West immensely,” Raper said. “But I just felt like I was missing a lot of family things with my wife and the girls.”
In 1996, Raper joined Secreast’s staff at North. He helped the Cavaliers win a lot of football games.
“I had a chance to work with outstanding coaches,” Raper said. “Roger was a great innovator. W.A. was a great motivator. Pete was unbelievably well-organized. He knew where everything in his program was, down to the last shoestring.”
Just when Raper thought he’d done everything, he became Carson’s first athletics director. It was Raper who tabbed Mark Woody to be the Cougars’ first football coach. Woody coached Carson’s first seven seasons.
“Mark was the right coach to start that program,” Raper said. “To be able to lose as much as they did early — and for him to still not lose it — that took a special kind of patience.”
In retirement, Raper was able to spend a lot more family time with his wife, his daughters and four grandchildren. He sometimes could be spotted in the old grandstand at Newman Park, watching the Catawba Indians play baseball.
He was always “Coach” no matter where he went in the county. They knew him everywhere. He touched so many lives, all of them for the better.
A funeral service will be held for Raper on Thursday, Jan. 15 at 1 p.m. at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Salisbury.
