LITTLE ROCK — Graceland-bound, the vehicle was stuffed with Arkansas football coaches and their wives.
Tooling through Memphis, Tenn., Ken Hatfield’s party happened upon a disabled car, the perplexed female driver nearby. Hatfield pulled over and asked how they could help.
Come to find out, the trunk of the woman’s car was loaded with Christmas presents. Hatfield and his group never saw Elvis Presley’s home that day; they squeezed the woman and the gifts into the vehicle and spent the day delivering the packages.
That story would have been picked up by every media outlet hungry for fresh Liberty Bowl material in late December of 1984, but nobody heard about it, not even the University of Arkansas sports information director, until years later.
That’s so Hatfield, never one to promote himself. He does for others because he believes that’s the right thing to do. For the same reason, he doesn’t talk about those good deeds.
While he was the Arkansas coach, there was a fan in Lubbock who often professed his hog loyalty in letters to Hatfield.
One year, when Arkansas was playing at Texas Tech, Hatfield drove to the man’s house, introduced himself, and handed him tickets to the Razorbacks vs. Red Raiders.
Those stories are secondhand. Personally, there are others.
During his six years as the Razorback head coach, Hatfield was accessible to a point that may not be possible today. At one of the Razorbacks’ two Cotton Bowl games, he invited a reporter onto the floor of the stadium for a close look at the way Arkansas used a board to encourage the quarterback to take the proper steps on the option.
Another year, he had lunch in a Fayetteville restaurant with an Associated Press reporter in town to double-dip Arkansas basketball and Razorback bowl preparations.
It may have been during that face-to-face meeting that I told him about a friend whose mother was dying. A member of the “Road Hogs,” she loved the Razorbacks; maybe a perfunctory note would brighten her day.
He took down the woman’s name and the hospital. A few weeks later, I found out he had called the woman’s hospital room, and talked for almost 15 minutes. For days, she told visitors, doctors and nurses about her conversation with the Arkansas football coach.
Each year since Paul Eells was killed in a car crash, there has been a golf tournament in Cabot to fund scholarships in his name.
For three years, Hatfield made the 350-mile round-trip from Springdale to say a few words to the 100-plus players who signed up for the 8 a.m. shotgun start, then hung around to do the same for those who teed off at 1 p.m.
Hatfield is going to receive a lifetime achievement award Saturday night — ironically, the fourth anniversary of Eells’ death — from the Arkansas Sportscasters and Sportswriters Hall of Fame in Conway.
Normally, the criteria for such an award is vague. The news release says Hatfield will be honored for lifelong service to college football. Hopefully, the person doing the introducing won’t get bogged down in Hatfield’s many on-field accomplishments as a coach and player.
Hatfield is much more than that.
Former Arkansas coach and athletic director Frank Broyles is to be the master of ceremonies. The inductees are Pat Summerall and Jerry McConnell.
HARRY KING IS SPORTS COLUMNIST FOR THE ARKANSAS NEWS BUREAU.