Nearly 51 years to the day and location of his death, citizens of Hopkinsville and former players under legendary Attucks High School coach and Hopkinsville High School Assistant Coach William Falls gathered at the intersection of Lafayette Road and Dell Drive Wednesday afternoon — unveiling a sign naming the long-spanning Greenway Bridge in his honor.
This effort, according to Hopkinsville Mayor J.R. Knight, came together through the Pioneers — a group Falls helped found — as well as Parks & Recreation, city officials, and others who wanted the coach’s legacy preserved in permanent memory.
James Victor called Falls “his coach, his teacher, his mentor, his co-worker, and his friend,” and noted there were “100 stories to tell, and all good ones.”
And it was Falls, he said, that truly shaped his future.
Another of his former players, previous Hopkinsville Mayor and also of the Pioneers Wendell Lynch said Falls turned a fill-in position into a Hall-of-Fame career.
Never once, Lynch said, did Falls blink — as desegregation changed Christian County, and changed his personal path.
Jonathan White, a native of Crofton and historian for Genesis Express, played for Falls during his freshman and sophomore seasons — before eventually transferring to Christian County prior to desegregation.
He remembers a man “well-versed in his trade,” and someone who poured just as much into his younger players as he did the juniors and seniors — lessons like protecting the baseline, blocking with the correct hand without fouling, and to go hard on offensive drives.
But it was the stories he heard as a child, and then eventually going up against him — the Colonels vs. the Wolfpack — that strike him the most.
On December 13, 1973, near those railroad tracks at LaFayette Road and Country Club Lane, Falls was driving along — taking players home after practice.
Throughout his career, one filled with more than 660 wins and fewer than 230 losses, it’s what he had always done.
Tragedy struck, though, when Falls’ car was struck by a locomotive, killing him and another passenger: 16-year-old Samuel Johnson.
Said then Athletic Director and Tigers Football Coach Fleming Thornton, Jr., “That was his trademark — taking them home. Young kids didn’t have transportation…he’d do anything to help young people.”
George L. Atkins, Jr., then mayor for Hopkinsville, told the Associated Press that the crossing was scheduled to get some signals, and was marked only be a sign — no bells or lights — with trains so seldom on the track that “people got in the habit of crossing it without really looking.”
During Falls’ tenure, Attucks was a member of the Kentucky High School Athletic League — which dissolved in 1958 when all of the “black” schools were allowed in the KHSAA and the “white” Sweet 16 tournament.
In the Second Region, particularly, those schools were: Princeton Dotson, Earlington Million, Madisonville Rosenwald, Hopkinsville Attucks, and Todd County Training.
Attucks won two KHSAL state titles, and full racial integration came in 1958, when the KHSAA allowed “black” schools to play in region tournaments.
Attucks was a 7th District runner-up in 1960, losing to Christian County — which was in its first year after the county schools consolidated. Attucks won the school’s only region title that same year, though, defeating Madisonville 62-54 in the region championship.
In this only trip to the Sweet 16, Attucks beat Clinton County in the second round and Beaver Dam in the quarterfinals before losing to eventual state champion Flaget High in the state semifinals at Louisville’s Freedom Hall.
Attucks won the 1962 district title, but lost to Princeton Dotson in the region semifinals. The Wolfpack were also district runner-up in 1965, where they advanced to the region championship game and lost to Madisonville Rosenwald.
Attucks was absorbed by Hopkinsville and Christian County in 1968 in the integration consolidation.
Falls was posthumously inducted into the Kentucky High School Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019.
Your News and Your Sports Edge’s Scott Brown assisted with this story.
