May 28, 2023
In the wake of an immeasurable loss felt throughout the Woodruff community, The Woodruff Times stands together, extending our deepest condolences to the grieving family of Dr. Randy Grant. Today we honor the memory of a truly extraordinary man whose presence touched the lives of many and left an indelible mark on our hearts. Garrett Mitchell, a Staff Writer for The Woodruff Times, has crafted a poignant tribute that beautifully captures the essence of a remarkable individual whose legacy will forever resonate within our community.
By: Garrett Mitchell, Staff Writer
Randy Grant and I had a running joke that we just could not get rid of one another. Of course, that was always said with a laugh at the end.
I first met Coach Grant when I was five years old, as a kindergartener at Woodruff Primary School, where he served as the assistant principal. When I moved on to the elementary school a few years later, we lost touch, but fate would bring us back together almost 10 years later.
As a high school student, I came under the wing of Coach Varner, who would become my mentor and one of my greatest friends. But what Coach Varner was to me, he was also to Randy. Best friends.
I attended my first Wolverine football game as a senior at Woodruff High. I soon learned that when Coach Varner would go to every away game, Randy Grant would drive him there. One Friday at school in September 2002, I asked Coach Varner at lunch if I could tag along with them.
Thus began my own friendship with Randy Grant.
Randy Grant graduated from Woodruff High School and came home to serve his alma mater in 1979. Coach Varner, never one to give people a choice of assignments, informed Randy that he would be the team’s official football statistician in 1982. Coach Grant would serve dutifully in that position for the next 14 years until Coach Varner was no longer on the sidelines. Randy was no longer able to work alongside his friend on Friday nights, so he stepped away to focus on life as an administrator and academic.
Fate also has a funny way of bringing things full circle, though.
When Freddie Brown was hired as the new head football coach for Woodruff in 2006, he asked Randy to return to the sideline and once again take up his title of team statistician, to which Coach Grant accepted. By that point, I was a member of the Wolverines’ chain crew but would always set up shop on the sideline during away games.
I always found myself beside Randy.
I kept my notes, but Coach Grant kept the official stats. We had a symbiotic relationship and would always confirm with one another if we had come up with the same amount of yardage on plays.
For 16 years, this was our refrain on Friday nights. For 16 years, our friendship grew. I suppose it was a statistical certainty that we would be joined at the hip. An educated and brilliantly smart man, Randy loved history. So did I. He would regale you about the glory days of Woodruff football long past, of the legend that was Willie Varner. His stories were captivating. Once he started talking, you never wanted him to stop.
Randy Grant was also a kind man—a man of God. Randy was not only a friend to me and Coach Varner but also to all who knew him. He was a loving and doting husband to his wife, Beth. He was the kind of man that you strove to be like.
Over the 33 years, we knew each other, our paths intersected in more ways than on the sidelines on Friday nights in the fall. Randy was also a history professor, and by happenstance, I wound up in one of his classes as a college student at Spartanburg Community College in the fall of 2010.
Good for us, but maybe not for the rest of the class.
It was football season, and when the class met on Friday mornings, the lesson of the day was always delayed by a few minutes because Coach Grant and I were already breaking down the who and what of that night’s match-up. We enjoyed being in each other’s company in an academic setting.
And yes, I made an ‘A’ in that class.
When I wrote a book about the history of Woodruff athletics in 2022, Randy Grant was one of my biggest supporters. He lent his incredible talents to my work, writing the forward and contributing his thoughts through multiple interviews that would make it onto the pages of several chapters.
But the number of pages in our friendship was not nearly long enough.
When I received news that Randy had passed away in a tragic accident on Friday, May 26, I did not want to allow myself to believe that he was gone. I had just talked to him earlier that day. Just an hour before his death, he handed out diplomas to Woodruff High School’s class of 2023.
And just like that, he was gone.
We had already talked about the upcoming football season and how excited we were to get started. It would have been his 33rd season as the Wolverines’ statistician. Now there will be a void on the sideline that nobody can fill. I will pray my numbers are as accurate as his were.
I would like to believe he taught me well. In fact, I am sure he did, just as everyone who knew Randy learned some invaluable lesson that made them a better person.
In his later years, Randy was elected to the District 4 school board, where he served our community and students with the same vigor and passion that he poured into keeping the stats on Friday nights. He earned his doctorate and continued to teach college history. He was the personification of no rest for the weary, but he would have it no other way.
Coach Grant stayed awake until the wee hours of Saturday mornings following games while he added up the stats from that week’s contest. He told me once that it was his alone time to reflect. His catharsis. His passion.
It is now up to the rest of us to carry his passion forward and keep his love for Woodruff, its children, and the Wolverines alive. While I am heartbroken that he is gone, I do take solace in two things:
The last thing Randy Grant did on this Earth was fight for and represent the students of Woodruff. And, I can only smile at what I know was a wonderful reunion in Heaven with Coach Varner. I must believe that it was Varner who was first to greet him when he took his first steps through those pearly gates.
I know they are sitting there talking about our Wolverines right now.
Randy Grant was Woodruff. He was a true Wolverine. He loved his town, its schools, his friends, and his family. He had a servant’s heart, loved God, and did his best to treat everyone around him with kindness and kinship. I know the first words he heard as he transitioned from his Earthly life to his eternal one was, ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.’
Let us take solace in that thought during our time of sorry.
Goodbye for now, my friend. We will leave the Friday Night Lights on for you.
Author: Tracy Sanders
