Do you know the first Wake Forest football team to win a state championship?
It was the DuBois Lions who brought home the championship trophy in the fall of 1968. And Tuesday night the team was honored on the 50th anniversary of that win.
Jolene Woods and Ray Hartsfield, president and treasurer of the National DuBois Alumni Association, stood next to Mayor Vivian Jones as she read the proclamation. The audience, a full house, stood to applaud when she finished.
Terry Lucas, the team captain, lives out of town and could not attend, but Woods and Jones were quick to point out that there is a close relationship to the next state championships in 2016 and 2017. Terry Lucas is uncle to Reggie Lucas, coach of the Wake Forest High School Cougars who won those two championships. Only one team member from 1968 was present, Gregory Grant, who sat in the first row in a wheelchair.
For those who moved here more recently, DuBois was the county-operated black school, serving children from first grade through high school, until 1970 when the county school system (Raleigh had a separate school system) integrated its schools. For DuBois, that meant losing an important community center and source of pride. The campus with several buildings was renamed the Wake Forest-Rolesville Junior High – changed to middle school a few years later – without renovations or changes. The Wake County and Raleigh school system merged in 1976.
There was another first in the round of proclamations. Reginald Rogers, a captain in the Wake Forest Fire Department, is the first department employment to reach retirement status. “It’s been a great ride and I would love to do it all over again,” Rogers said after the mayor read the proclamation and the audience gave him a standing round of applause. September 27 of this year is named Reginald Rogers Day.
His career began 38 years ago when he was a volunteer with the Fairgrounds department. He moved on as a volunteer with the Cary Fire Department while also working part-time at the Six Forks, Stony Hill and Bayleaf departments. Rogers joined the Wake Forest Fire Department in July 1997.
