By Lenox Rawlings
Winston-Salem Journal Columnist
Skeeter Francis stood out in the crowd. From the gleam in his eyes to the sheen on his shoes, everything about him sparkled. From his olive tan to his mustard shirt, everything about him conveyed a love of sunlight and color and the fresh air of life itself.
Skeeter smiled, and the world smiled back. He opened his arms, and the world hugged him back.
This was always true, from his days growing up in Durham until his death yesterday at 82 in Winston-Salem. This was always true, from his sportswriter days through his long tenures as the publicist for Wake Forest and the ACC.
John Justus worked his first job for Skeeter as the ACC's original media intern in 1976-77 and later sat in Skeeter's old chair as the Deacons' sports information director.
"The thing about him was that it seemed like he never met a stranger," Justus said. "Just being around him, he'd brighten up a room by the way he'd greet people and act like he was glad to see them. Maybe it was somebody that wasn't an important person to others, but Skeeter made them feel really important and glad to be in his presence. It was a quality I really admired in him, how he could work a room and make everybody feel special."
Some people have a genius for business. Skeeter had a genius for people, a genuine genius that served his employers in ways accountants could never figure.
During those years when the ACC moved from a regional conference to a national basketball power, Skeeter managed the signature tournament. In February, he divided up the tickets in his cramped office, loaded them into the back of a station wagon and drove to every school, distributing the prized paper that greased the treasury. On opening Thursday in March, he stood at the front door, welcoming teams and television movers and college shakers.
He greeted reporters from Sports Illustrated and the Charlottesville Daily Progress. He stepped inside the arena and ran the event. After the last horn sounded and the last camera shot faded and the last story reached a copy desk somewhere, Skeeter opened his hotel suite and threw a party, which sometimes lasted until the horizon turned faintly pink.
The big cheese
He attended every game of all 51 ACC tournaments. The first time I noticed him was as a spectator, distracted by his whirlwind. Skeeter walked down the sideline during a first-round game at the Greensboro Coliseum, a master sheet in one hand and a large cigar in the other.
He wore an array of pastel clothes, a sporting Music Man anyone could locate with a problem, and did. In this particular scene, he stepped between photographers on the baseline and sorted out a turf war, waving the cigar for emphasis.
He gave the ACC a personality unlike any other major conference.
"So good to see you," he said through the decades.
"Thanks, pal," he said until the pals numbered in the thousands.
He was short and thin, disproportionately so in the company of basketball players he promoted. He was also warm and embracing, which contrasted radically with many self-absorbed athletic powers he handled adroitly during the past half century.
Timeout coordinator
In a rare confrontation, at least for Skeeter, Coach Dean Smith once accused him of using the role of TV timeouts coordinator to hurt North Carolina. Francis raised a fist whenever the network needed a commercial break. After a one-point loss to N.C. State in 1976, Smith cited Skeeter's background.
"We have the worst guy in the world calling TV timeouts, and his name is Skeeter Francis," Smith said. "We had an eight-point run over at Duke on Saturday afternoon and then got a TV timeout. Today, we had a good stretch going and then got another TV timeout. He used to be affiliated with Wake Forest and always wanted to beat Carolina."
Smith eventually apologized on his TV show and in a letter. Skeeter reported that he and Smith became friends.
Mark Whicker, now a columnist for the Orange County Register in California, wrote for the Journal in the 1970s and represented the paper on the ACC's football tour bus. The travelers roused themselves each morning for another leg of the long August journey around the league, vaguely aware that Skeeter lived by one rule: "The times are the times." Since there was only one bus, the writers made their bus deadlines.
"He pretended to be all crotchety every now and then, but that was just part of his act," Whicker said. "I remember that he just enjoyed it so much, enjoyed being around us and being around the coaches. He had a zest for it that's not prevalent any more. He realized that college sports are something to be enjoyed. It didn't matter what the scale of it was. Back then, they didn't think about national championships so much, or bowl games.
You did it because you enjoyed it."
Skeeter worked among other publicists with extroverted personalities and extended hands, such as Barney Cooke of Virginia, Bob Bradley and Jerry Arp of Clemson, Ed Seaman of N.C. State.
"They were not the faceless technocrats we have now, people who don't have any feel for it and don't enjoy it but look at is as something to get through and punch the clock," Whicker said. "It would be inconceivable for him not to know who all the writers were. The hospitality room fellowship was a part of it. He was kind of the ringleader of all that. Because of who he was, everything sort of revolved around him. He just had fun. He just had a real generous type of spirit around people. He had a gift for that."
Getting his start
Marvin "Skeeter" Francis was born in 1922, during the supposed Golden Age of American sports. He played ball and shot marbles in Durham's streets, where a friend applied the nickname. As a student at Durham High, Skeeter labored as manager and unofficial publicist for a basketball team that won 73 consecutive games. The key elements: Coach Paul G. Sykes, Bob Gantt, Gordon Carver and star Horace "Bones" McKinney, who later became Wake Forest's basketball coach. All five belong to the N.C. Sports Hall of Fame.
As a teen, Skeeter started his newspaper career in the city's most famous venue, the Duke football stadium. The job: photographer's assistant. In those days, Durham Morning Herald photographers used a boxy press camera with bulky, 4-inch by 5-inch film holders. After shooting a dozen pictures, the photographers would send their assistants scurrying off with the holders for processing.
Skeeter ran the film holders back and forth through the grandstand tunnel where the Duke team entered and left the field. "One day," Skeeter said, "a photographer called me over, and I had my first drink of liquor in that tunnel."
He loved retelling the story, and although he loved a party, he drank lightly and soaked up the conversation instead.
Skeeter attended Wake Forest and joined the U.S. Army, serving as an aerial gunnery instructor in World War II and Korea. He returned as an assistant sports editor with a fancy for baseball, especially Wake Forest's outstanding teams of the early 1950s.
Bill Hensley, who owns a public-relations firm in Charlotte, then served as sports publicist for Wake Forest. When he moved to N.C. State, he recommended Skeeter for the Wake Forest job.
"We've known each other for 50 years," Hensley said. "He was one of my favorite people. God knows, I'll sure miss him. He was an institution. Everybody in the world knew him and loved him. If he had any enemies in the world, I sure don't know who they are."
Traveling man
At one time or another, Skeeter traveled almost everywhere in the country. During a Final Four at Indianapolis, he toured a famous zoo with Hugh Morton, a member of the N.C. Zoo's board and owner of Grandfather Mountain, where Mildred the bear was once a big attraction. Morton was interested in seeing a polar bear.
"Well, Hugh," Skeeter said, "why don't you just pour some white paint on Mildred and then you'd have your polar bear."
After retiring from the ACC, Skeeter kept promoting the conference and taking on other duties, such as running the press room at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.'s senior tour event. That's where he became close friends with Nat Walker, director of public relations for the sports marketing division. In recent years, they often traveled together to golf outings, with Skeeter driving an SUV packed in back like a golf shop.
Although his health declined, Skeeter continued playing or at least attending events, just to see people.
"He and I played the Heritage at Wake Forest when it opened a couple of years ago, and he had a slight heart attack," Walker said. "From then on, he never did get his strength back, although he kept trying. He had awful headaches, one thing after another. To me, he was an inspiration. I just admired him. He had open-heart surgery years ago, then something with his leg.
"He just kept going. I guess his thought was that as long as he was going to live, he was going to live. There was none of that sitting around. He was always ready to go."
He stopped going yesterday, but he will live on in the memories of his family and friends and those thousands of pals.
"He was never anybody but Skeeter," Walker said.
And, nobody else could ever be Skeeter.