Sportswriting has been in my blood since I was a teen-ager, and I’ve never regretted making it a career.

Counting high school and college, I’ve been writing about sports since I was a 16-year-old junior at Frankfurt American High School in Germany.

Now, at the age of 60, it’s time to hang it up.

I’ll retire from the Post on July 6 after 35 years and five months as a full-time sportswriter in Salisbury. Counting other jobs at Morganton, High Point and Thomasville, I’ve followed the North Carolina high school, American Legion, college and pro sports scene for almost 38 years.

I’m writing this column about a week before what would have been the 88th birthday of my late father, Edwin H. Dupree, who got me interested in sports when I was about 12.

It was after I got my first job that Dad, a career military man, told me he had often wished he had become a sportswriter.

I came to the Post on Feb. 5, 1966, thanks to Jimmy Hurley, George Raynor and Horace Billings.

I watched the county’s four consolidated high schools — North, East, West and South — grow from their infancy, covering every possible sport. I watched Boyden and Price combine to form Salisbury, a merger that brought together students and athletes from schools with rich sports traditions.

I remember when Catawba College played its basketball games at Boyden High, prior to the construction of an outstanding athletic facility that included Goodman Gymnasium.

I watched high school athletes play in the late 1960s who are now grandfathers, but I’m still waiting for that first grandchild.

I’ve been close to many now retired coaches — some of them legendary — like South Rowan’s Lope Linder, my teacher and coach as a freshman at China Grove High School, Reid Bradshaw and Bob Parker; Joe Ferebee and Jim DeHart with the Rowan County American Legion; North Rowan’s Walt Baker, Larry Thomason and Bob Hundley; East Rowan’s W.A. Cline, Jesse Watson, Gilbert Sprinkle, Jim Barringer and Phil Harbinson; West Rowan’s Jack Lytton and Charles Hellard; Salisbury’s Bobby Pharr, Pete Stout and Sam Gealy; Catawba’s Sam Moir; and many other former and present coaches.

I am especially thankful to those who coached my son Brett and daughter Allison. The late Joe Corl of East Rowan helped get my son off to a solid start in golf and had talked to me about coaching my daughter in basketball before his shocking death at the age of 41. Lu Gamewell, Starr Forney, Rick Roseman and Jim Brooks were coaches at East Rowan who treated my daughter fairly, helping her become all-state twice, a South Piedmont Conference individual champion several times and the school’s senior athlete of the year and a college athletic scholarship recipient.

Jeff Childress, Nathan Smith, Michelle Karlon and Gealy, who has never really retired, continued to give her every opportunity to excel in athletics at Catawba College, where she became a South Atlantic Conference individual cross country champion and the school’s senior athlete of the year.

Being a sportswriter and watching my children compete in high school and college sports were special thrills. Had I been egotistical, I could have written countless columns about the sports achievements of Brett and Allison, but I chose not to. Or I could have written about one of Rowan’s best teachers for 30 years, my wife Bitsy, who sacrificed a lot of weekends because of my job.

Most of my years with the Post were as assistant sports editor to legendary sports editor Horace Billings.

Later, I became sports editor for five years with Billings working under me. It didn’t matter which of us was in charge, because no one could have been better to work with than Horace.

I’ve had the pleasure of working under sports editors Billings, Mark Wineka and Steve Phillips, three men who understood how important it was to cover every sport fairly. They gave the readers what they wanted, not what they wanted the readers to see. I can’t say enough about the character and honesty of Billings, Wineka and Phillips — all fine men in addition to doing their jobs well.

I’ve had the pleasure of working over writers like Billings, Phillips, Tim Peeler and John Workman, and will always have a strong relationship with each of them. And I’ve enjoyed working side by side with talented writers like Mike London and Steve Hanf.

I will not be totally disappearing from the sportswriting scene. In retirement I will become a free-lance writer, so I might be showing up from time to time at local events, but not as a representative of the Post.

Most of all I want to thank all the readers who have let me know throughout the years that they have enjoyed my writing. And to anyone who has ever read even one of my stories, thanks.

I’ve never considered myself a great sportswriter.I’ve just tried to write stories that simply told what happened and to write columns about people in sports.

I’ve won, I think, five North Carolina Press Association sportswriting awards over four different decades, but have probably written at least a hundred stories and columns that I thought were better than the award-winners.

I’ll look back on my 35 years with the Post with fond memories and no regrets. It’s been great being one of your sportswriters.

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