On a hot summer in 1955 a young, gifted football and baseball player and his family took to the road traveling from the Jim Crow era south, twenty-six hundred miles, looking to plant new roots in the Pacific Northwest.
After settling in Seattle, the young man’s older brother suggested that since he was no longer playing football that he should take up coaching the game he loved. Out of that suggestion, a 58-year coaching career was born.
Charles Jackson, Mr. Jackson as he is known, has been coaching, mentoring and guiding young children through sports for almost 60 years and he has no intentions of quitting.
“I came to Seattle in 1955, I was a good football player in my younger years at Cobb Avenue High School in Anniston, Alabama,” Jackson recalled. “So, when I got here [to Seattle] football season started and my older brothers said, “why don’t you come and coach” so I started down there at Rainier.”
Jackson coached at Rainier from 1959 to 1990, when he left Rainier to coach at CAYA from 1990 to 1995. In 1995, he helped form the CD Panthers, where he still plays an active role.
Read the entire article at SeattleMedium.com.
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