Johnny Baldwin said there were three things you did growing up in the neighborhood around Sadie V. Thompson School in the 1960s.

&uot;You went to church, you worked, and you played,&uot; he said. &uot;And when we weren’t working, we played all night long.&uot;

Baldwin grew up with five sisters and two brothers. His brother Shead Baldwin Jr. died in 1968 of acute leukemia. His younger brother Jerry would follow in his older brother’s footsteps as a top-notch athlete.

Johnny, 49, was named most versatile in the final class at Thompson High in 1969.

Jerry was named most athletic in the North Natchez class of 1971 and is currently head football coach at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette.

&uot;When he was at Thompson, Jerry held the record for most rebounds with 35,&uot; Johnny said. &uot;The most I got was 31.&uot;

After a brief athletic career at Mississippi Valley because of an injury, Johnny joined the Natchez Police Department in 1974 and still works for the department today.

&uot;I love it,&uot; Baldwin said. &uot;Being a policeman is a lot like being an official. You have rules and regulations, and they have to be enforced.&uot;

Baldwin has been officiating for 10 years and was just recently named Official of the Year in basketball for the Southwest District in voting by his peers and coaches.

&uot;That’s a big honor and major accomplishment for me,&uot; Baldwin said.

There are eight districts with the Southwest District fielding 26 schools.

&uot;First of all you have to be in shape,&uot; Baldwin said of what it takes to be a good official. &uot;You have to know the rules. You can’t be out there for yourself. And the same call you make in the first quarter, you have to make in the fourth quarter.&uot;

But before officiating, there was the business of playing the game.

Baldwin said the Thompson team of 1968 averaged 105 points a game in 1968 when they finished 26-2. The Bucks lost to Temple High of Vicksburg in the finals of the Big Eight Conference which consisted of black schools.

&uot;They (Temple) had some guys who had been in Vietnam, and they came back and went back to school,&uot;&160;Baldwin said. &uot;They were much bigger than us.&uot;

But not many teams were quicker.

&uot;It wasn’t that we were tall, we just hustled,&uot; Baldwin said. &uot;We ran the fast break, and we got up and down the floor. The ball never hit the floor. We called it hot potato. And we played defense. We pressed the whole game from base line to base line. And we had some guys who could shoot. If you didn’t shoot, Coach Marshall would take you out.&uot;

Thompson played in the same district with teams from McComb, Magnolia, Prentiss, Hazlehurst, Laurel and Hattiesburg.

Nobody in district could touch any of the Thompson teams, especially the 1968 squad.

&uot;That team had Bubber West and Harry Mayberry, who was the best ever as far as I was concerned,&uot; Baldwin said. &uot;We also had Jessie Leonard, who we called ‘Ghost.’ And if you didn’t get here at six o’clock, you didn’t get a seat or the standing room only area.&uot;

Baldwin said the dunk was illegal, and there was no 3-point line then.

&uot;What we would do is what we called the ‘cup layup,’&uot;&160;he said. &uot;We would cup it in our hands just like we were dunking it, but then we would just push it in from over the goal.&uot;

Baldwin remembers one particular game where he had trouble getting going in the first half.

&uot;We were losing at halftime and Coach Smith told me I must be sleeping,&uot; Baldwin said. &uot;I scored four points in the first half, but after he got on me I had 42 in the second half and we won big. Clarence McQuarters just kept feeding the me the ball.&uot;

Baldwin said the Thompson team would be whittled down from 100 players down to 15.

&uot;And everybody played,&uot; he said. &uot;Coach would leave a list each day of who was cut so you knew if not to go to practice.&uot;

Baldwin said that discipline was not just limited to the athletic field.

&uot;T.M. Jennings, who was the principal, he would come to your home if you were not at school,&uot; Baldwin said. &uot;We had 1,500 students. And you walked to school here or at Anchorage Junior High (now Natchez Middle) if you didn’t live outside the city limits.&uot;

Baldwin played tight end and defensive end in football his junior and senior years. The Bucks went 7-3 his junior year and 7-2 Baldwin’s final year, losing to Brinkley High of Jackson in the Big Eight championship game.

&uot;My senior year we had a guy named Thomas Macket who was killed in practice before the season making a tackle,&uot; Baldwin said. &uot;He broke his neck. That really was tough for us to take. We had never seen anything like that before.&uot;

Baldwin said Thompson had two football fields.

&uot;You practiced on the bottom field and if you ever made it to the top field it meant you were a starters,&uot; he said.

Some personal problems kept Baldwin from getting a college scholarship. He attended Natchez Junior College before being offered a scholarship to Tarkio Junior College in Missouri.

&uot;I made the best of it,&uot; he said. &uot;The racial tensions were so high up there that it forced me back here. One night some people poured lighter fluid under our door and lit it. My roommate was a white guy and I grabbed the mattress he was sleeping on and smothered it out. We were on the third floor. I still stayed their for two semesters.&uot;

Baldwin made the basketball team at Mississippi Valley, but a slipped disc in his back kept him from playing and going out for football the next fall.

Baldwin even started a flag football league with Henry Harris and saw such athletes as Hugh Green, Robbin Harris and come through.

&uot;I loved doing it and put in a lot of time,&uot; he said. &uot;My wife Patricia (who died six years ago). I stopped when the middle men started using the money for the wrong things.&uot;

Baldwin said he will always have fond memories of Thompson.

&uot;We all got along real well and I think that’s what made our teams so special,&uot; he said.