Gene Raines was 'Historian-At-Large' of Butler County, Alabama

Sports historian Gene Raines of Georgiana.

I sure hated to hear this week that Gene Raines of Georgiana passed away on Friday.

I first met Gene almost 20 years ago, not long after I started working as a reporter at The Monroe Journal newspaper in Monroeville. As a hobby, Gene would travel around collecting information on old high school football teams. Like me, he loved to dig through old newspapers, looking up scores and other details from games played years and years ago.

Gene, who was known as the “Historian-At-Large” of Butler County, was the first person I’d ever met who also had this unique hobby, and he shared a lot of information with me, especially information about Evergreen High School’s old teams from the late 60s and early 70s when my dad played there. Gene gave me several good pointers on how to organize the research and information I already had at that point, and I basically use those same methods today.

Gene, who graduated from Georgiana High School in 1953 before going on to Auburn University, pretty much knew every librarian and high school administrator in Southwest Alabama, and he had a number of interesting tales from his days of high school football history research. He once told me about a visit he made to W.S. Neal High School in East Brewton, where he asked school officials if they had any copies of old yearbooks and annuals. Gene was hoping that those old books contained football scores that he didn’t have, and he wasn’t disappointed.

Gene said that the school at that time had a huge vault in the office, and it contained an almost complete collection of old yearbooks. School officials allowed him into the vault with the understanding that he couldn’t take anything out, and he had to make all of his notes while inside the vault. To hear him tell the story was like hearing Indiana Jones talk about exploring an abandoned temple in the Amazon jungle.

Gene kept most of his research in binders and he did most of his research in the days before the internet. He wasn’t a big fan of putting his information online because he’d gone to great effort and expense to gather the information. He saw it as giving it away for free, and it didn’t sit well with him.

I sort of lost touch with Gene over the years, and around 2005 I got involved with the Alabama High School Football Historical Society, which is run by Dave Parker in Baldwin County. My feeling is that Gene contributed some information to the AHSFHS, but I’m not sure how much. Again, he was not a huge fan of putting it all out there online.

I know that Gene will be missed by his many friends and family. He was 84 years old when he passed away on Friday. Funeral services were scheduled to be held today (Thursday) at 10 a.m. at the Johnson Funeral Home Chapel in Georgiana with burial to follow in Greenville’s Magnolia Cemetery.