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153. Atmore's First Female Varsity Football Player 1939

Gary Libman 1985

Updated: Mar 31, 2022


"As the 1939 Escambia County, Alabama High School football team opened practice, several girls watching on the sideline grumbled that the school spent lavishly for boy’s athletics, but nothing for girls. Coach Andrew Edington told the girls that there was nothing in the rules prevented them from playing and four decided to try out. He handed them a football to kick and told them he would put them in a scrimmage. Edington figured that would run the girls off, but when he noticed Luverne Wise kick with fluidity, he got an idea: He would teach her to kick extra points and she would pack the stadium. "It was the end of the Great Depression, so packing the stadium was a real big plus," Edington, 71, recalled from Kerrville, Tex., where he recently retired as president of Schreiner College. "We dressed her in a cute little ballet skirt. The only requirement in the rule book about equipment pertained to head gear, so we got a helmet and cut holes in it so her curls would come out." He also fitted her specially for a pair of women's Size 6 football shoes. "Then we had only one problem. I had a boy that just didn't miss extra points. She would miss now and then. What we agreed to do was that every time we would be 20 points ahead, she would go in. So our team went wild to make points to get the girl into the huddle."


Life magazine, movie newsreels and newspapers across the nation carried stories on the smiling, bare-legged kicker who wore a white blouse, a blue skirt and no pads. Escambia High, located in Atmore, Ala., promoted her appearances on posters and in flyers, and busloads of fans came from as far as New Orleans, 180 miles away, to see her. "It packed the stadium and paid the stadium debt and made the team twice as good as it was (Escambia went 17-1 over the two seasons)," Edington recalled, "because they wanted to get her into the game. "The players and fans all loved it. That was what fooled me. I expected to be lynched. . . . I think it was so unusual that it was no threat to the male ego." Luverne would marry Anthony "Tony" Edward Albert, the son of a Syrian immigrate Joseph Albert and Katherine "Katie" McEvoy.


Following high school, he went to work at the Reid Drug Company. He enlisted in the Army in 1942 and fought in WWII with a discharge in 1945. He and Luverne married in 1946 shortly after his return from the war. Luverne was "an excellent golfer, but seldom participated in sports after high school, said her husband Tony Albert, who was widowed two years ago (1982) when she died from a heart attack at age 60. The couple ran an Atmore sporting goods store for 39 years until her death. On the wall of the store hangs a 36 x 36-inch color photo of a smiling Wise, her leg high, following through after a kick. Her holder, J. F. (Red) Vickery is also smiling. Vickery played on the University of Georgia team that defeated UCLA 9-0 in the 1943 Rose Bowl. He lost his right leg on an island near Saipan (Tinian) during World War II." Luverne's husband Tony would pass away in 2000 and both are buried in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Atmore. Tony's brother in law was Atmorian US Army Colonel James Woodrow Ward, son of James Oscar and Carrie Otis Majors Ward of Wardville.


Luverne "Toad" Wise Albert and J. F. "Red" Vickery

Escambia County High School Alabama








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