Summers a chip off the old blocker

There are times when Tyson Summers wanders into an old photograph and finds his father there.

Some are snapshots from the faded gridiron years of Lanier High School, where Andy Summers was part of the most famous backfield in Macon football history.

Others are Kodak moments from his dad’s playing days at the University of Florida and as a member of Gene Brodie’s coaching staff at Tift County High School.

Tyson treasures a home video of himself as a toddler, going swimming with his father.

If only the rest of the pages in the scrapbooks and photo albums were filled with memories.

Andy Summers was killed in a car accident on March 31, 1983. It was the Thursday night before Good Friday and 12 days before his son’s third birthday.

“I have four or five memories of my father,’’ Tyson said. “I remember holding his hand on the way to day care in the morning. And I remember being with him a couple of times when he stopped to help people. That’s the kind of person he was. He was always helping people.’’

Andy was a skilled carpenter. He was good with his hands. He was always building, sawing and hammering away on some project.

The night he died, he had been helping a local physician get his new doctor’s office ready to open. Andy was driving them home in the doctor’s sports car. It was raining. The car hydroplaned on Highway 41 near Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College and slammed into a pole.

Both men were killed. Andy was 30 years old.

That fall, Tift County High won its first and only state football championship.

Being a Gator

Andy Summers never got to see his son follow in his footsteps. Tyson Summers is in his first year as the head football coach at Georgia Southern. His Eagles will play Georgia Tech on Oct. 15.

Tyson now has three sons of his own. The oldest, 8-year-old Jacob (Jake) and youngest, 3-year-old Anderson, are named after their grandfather, Jacob Anderson Summers.

For those who knew Andy, they look at Tyson as a chip off the old blocker.

“I see it in his mannerisms,’’ said Tyson’s mother, Mary Ann Summers. “He will throw back his head and laugh, just like his dad did. Even their handwriting is identical … things like that you wouldn’t think would be inherited.’’

In the late 1960s, Andy Summers was half of Lanier’s famed backfield duo. Isaac Jackson, one of the first black football players to integrate Bibb County public schools, wore No. 25. Summers wore No. 31.

They were affectionately called “Salt and Pepper.’’

During Jackson’s junior year under Goot Steiner, the coaching staff put together a 20-minute human highlight film that was shown on CBS News. By his senior year, Jackson was one of the top-recruited running backs in the country.

Jackson signed with South Carolina, and ended up at Kansas State. Summers earned a scholarship to Florida, where he played running back before being switched to defensive back. His collegiate career was as modest, but he finally got his moment in the Florida sunshine his senior year in 1974. He recovered a pair of fumbled punts on special teams in a Gator victory over LSU.

Although Mary Ann grew up in Bartow, Florida, she had met Andy when she was a junior in high school. He was a year older, and his brother was married to the sister of one of her friends.

Andy and Mary Ann reconnected on campus at Florida and began dating. They married in 1976, the year Andy was hired at Tift County.

Back to Georgia

He had been working construction in Tallahassee, Florida, when Brodie, one of his former coaches at Lanier/Central, called to offer him a job. It was Brodie’s first season at Tift after winning the state title at Central High the year before — Macon’s only public school state championship in football.

“When I got to Tifton in August, he and Brodie had spent the summer filling a whole freezer chest full of vegetables and fruits,’’ Mary Ann said, laughing. “That was when I was introduced to the world of ‘putting up vegetables.’ I was a Florida girl, and we always had fresh fruit and vegetables, so we never put them in the freezer. There must have been 300 bags of butter beans.’’

Tyson was born in 1980, the year before the legendary Erk Russell left as Georgia’s beloved defensive coordinator to start the football program at Georgia Southern.

His parents named him after Tyson Sever, who was Andy’s roommate at Florida and one of the Gators’ top all-time punt returners.

“Andy always said if he ever had a son, he would name him after Tyson,’’ Mary Ann said. “They were best friends. Tyson was always a crowd favorite.’’

Tyson Summers grew up honoring the father he barely knew but always believed was watching over him. He wore a Gator football uniform to school. His mother would take him to Gainesville to see Florida games.

There were other qualities in her son that reminded her of her husband.

“He has a good heart,’’ she said. “In college, Andy was so kind to people, even before it was cool to be kind to people with disabilities. He always took time with older people, too. As a young child, I saw that in Tyson. I noticed it right away when there was a little girl in his kindergarten class who was in a wheelchair, and he always wanted to help her.’’

The coaches at Tift County gave him steady, father-figure role models. Tommy Seward was one of those coaches. A Macon native who played and coached at Lanier and Central, he followed Brodie to Tift County.

His son, Tom, who is now on the coaching staff at top-ranked Houston County High School, was a year younger than Tyson. Worth Bowers, the son of assistant coach Emmett Bowers, was the same age as Tyson, and the two have remained friends.

The son, the coach

When he was in middle school, Tyson announced he wanted to be a football coach.

“That was fine with me,’’ his mother said. “I just wanted him to be happy. The coaches here were a good influence on him. They all worked hard and were great husbands who loved their wives … all the things that really count in life.’’

Seward was named head coach at Tift in 2001. The following year, he gave Tyson his first coaching job. Tyson had just graduated from Presbyterian College, where he played football.

He returned to his hometown, where his mother still lives, and where the local tennis and handball complex is named in honor of his father. He bought a small, fixer-upper house and went to work.

He was assigned to coach defensive backs.

Just like his dad.

Gene Brodie died of cancer that same spring. Tyson was a pallbearer at the funeral.

He paid his dues and climbed the coaching ladder. He married his childhood sweetheart, Beth King. He bounced like a squib kick to from Tift to Presbyterian, Troy State, Georgia, Georgia Southern, Alabama-Birmingham, Central Florida and Colorado State before being named Georgia Southern’s new head coach last December. He worked under the guidance of a coaching circle that included Mark Richt, Brian VanGorder, George O’Leary, Mike Bobo and Neil Callaway.

Callaway drove Tyson around Macon a few years ago. They rode through the Hillcrest neighborhood, where you once could smell the bread from the old Colonial Bakery in the breeze every morning.

“Where are we?’’ Tyson asked.

Callaway, now the offensive line coach at Southern Cal, was talking on his cellphone to former Auburn coach Pat Dye.

“He said to Coach Dye that he would call him back,’’ Tyson said. “Then he told me this was where my dad grew up.’’

This story was originally published October 7, 2016 at 2:28 PM with the headline "Summers a chip off the old blocker."