Grove Hill's new mayor is one of the top journalists in all of Alabama

I was happy to read in last week’s Clarke County Democrat that my old friend Ross Wood had won the mayor’s election in Grove Hill.

Ross has worked at The Democrat for as long as I can remember, and he is currently that newspaper’s General Manager. Over the years, he has done a little bit of everything at the newspaper, including time as a reporter and sportswriter. Like a lot of newspaper “lifers,” he’s probably worn all types of hats over the years.

Ross is widely known among the state’s sportswriters, and it is no exaggeration to say that he is one of the top sportswriters in the state. For years, he has been one of the Alabama Sports Writers Association’s most active members, and he has also held a variety of leadership positions in that organization. For a number of years, he coordinated the ASWA’s weekly high school football poll, and there is no telling how many countless athletes he has nominated for all-state and other such honors over the years.

Ross is also the biggest Notre Dame football fan that I know. Twenty years ago, way back in the fall of 2000, when I started my very first newspaper job as a sports reporter at The Monroe Journal newspaper in Monroeville, I was assigned to cover a high school football game between Frisco City High School and Coffeeville High School. The game was to be played in Coffeeville, which is on the east side of the Tombigbee River in Clarke County.

My then-boss Mike Qualls, another veteran newspaperman who is currently the Managing Editor at the Monroeville paper, asked me to meet Ross at the Coffeeville game and to hand-deliver a package to him. For the life of me, I don’t remember exactly what it was that I had to deliver, but it was small, and I think it was a piece of camera equipment, maybe a camera flash of some type.

Keep in mind that I had been to Coffeeville before, but I had never met Ross Wood. This was in the dark ages before Facebook, so I couldn’t look him up to see what he looked like.

“How will I know him when I see him?” I asked Mike.

Mike, who is a huge Alabama fan, just smiled and said, “He’ll be the only guy in Coffeeville wearing a Notre Dame t-shirt.”

Sure enough, that Friday night when I got to Coffeeville, I made my way onto the field and was standing there trying to get my bearings. Both teams were doing their pre-game warm-ups and when I looked towards the press box, I could see a man wearing a t-shirt and toting a camera headed my way. Turns out it was Ross, and just like Mike said, he was wearing a Notre Dame t-shirt that featured a cartoon leprechaun with his fists raised.

In the end, I’d like to congratulate Ross on his mayoral victory. He is a class act, and I am sure he will serve Grove Hill well over the next four years. His campaign slogan was “Wood Is Good,” and there’s no doubt in my mind that ol’ Ross will do more than a good job for the citizens of Grove Hill in the years to come.