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game on Friday. Then they headed to Cookeville, Tennessee, where Taylor, Bobby’s son, played at Tennessee Tech. Later on, the itinerary included Boone, N.C., where Hal’s son, Tre, was enrolled at Appalachian State.

As often as they could manage, they wound up in Greenville, S.C., for Bobby’s game while he was the Furman head coach. When Bobby moved on to Mercer, that made it easier. Now, the Lambs are down to a couple of attendance considerations, both extraordinarily convenient. Bobby is the new head coach at Anderson University in nearby Anderson, S.C., and granddaughter Lindi Rae Davis is the starting catcher for the UGA softball team. Talk about family togetherness. Nobody could top

the Lambs. The most recent gathering in honor of the Lambs was to celebrate a fundraising initiative to create a corpus which will fund a couple of annual scholarships named for Ray for deserving kids from Commerce. In the beginning, a former player, Brad Brown, who became the trail boss of the effort was hoping that the effort would bring $30,000 to the coffers.

He organized a blueribbon committee, which applied uncommon energy and unlimited passion to the effort. Money started accumulating rapidly. Some wrote checks, many bought tables and many underwrote costs of putting on the banquet. That allowed for a favorable bottom line. It was the ultimate pitch-in campaign. By the time the organizing committee gathered to host the banquet, they were doing the math and realized that their collective efforts with the eager support of the community that more than $86,000 was in the bank with more on the way.

Many of Ray’s friends in coaching came to honor him, including George and Mike Bobo, Sonny Smart, Ray Goff, Clay Hendrix, native son, who is the head coach at Furman, and many Lamb assistants over the years, including his successor, Steve Savage.

Georgia coach Kirby Smart was the keynote speaker and gave Lamb the highest of marks for his legacy as a high school coach. All speakers were in agreement that the popular coach was especial. His family was all smiles as “Poppa,” the sage of Commerce, was the focal point of a community’s magnanimity.