AROUND TOWN: For Fisher DeBerry, it's coming up turtles

It’s Fisher DeBerry’s time and he’s “a happy turtle.” Read more happy turtle later.
Leading up to his Dec. 6 induction into the College Football Hall of Fame, the legendary Air Force Academy coach was saluted on his home turf during the AFA/Wyoming Nov. 12 game and it was just part of a special week.

More than 100 friends, many from the world of sports, were invited to a Fisher DeBerry Foundation evening Nov. 10 at the Kissing Camels home of George Garro. 

Bedecked with Falcon helmets and jerseys, the celebratory site rocked with laughter and lively conversation. Colorado Rockies co-founder and former owner Jerry McMorris talked with Mountain West Commissioner Craig Thompson, former Denver Nuggets player and coach Bill Hanzlik visited  with AFA supporter Dan Cronin and wife Barb, and Sky Sox President/ General Manager Tony Ensor wrote out a check to foundation Executive Director Bert Trembly. Football All-American Brock Strom smiled for photos. Former Denver Broncos GM Ted Sundquist spent time catching up with DeBerry.

 Bronco great Ed McCaffrey had plans to be there but his son was in the high-school football playoffs. The team won and this weekend Valor Christian was in the semis.

Coaches and former players, representatives of the AFA Athletic Department and longtime friends were there to support the coach and wife LuAnn and their foundation’s work, which helps the children in single-parent homes as well as supporting single mothers.

It’s “out of tribute to my mother, a single parent,”  said DeBerry. ”This year we want to send 600 kids to camp: football and soccer camps, music camps …” He and LuAnn and the foundation help in other ways, too, and they vividly remember one of their first grants. A young woman had carefully planned out a grant request of $486 to travel to Chicago with her mother on a scholarship-seeking trip. The women had never traveled anywhere before. That first grant led to a $100,000 scholarship.

The quiet, self-effacing DeBerrys, 46 years married, have many of those stories they love to share with y'all.

The foundation celebration also offered a perfect platform for the coach’s delightful, folksy southern Fisherisms.

How he’ll feel when he’s inducted into the hall? “A happy turtle,” he said. “If you see a turtle on a fencepost, he didn’t get there by himself. Someone put him there. You don’t do anything by yourself.”

To be near family they’re spending time in Oklahoma and, he drawled, “I never never dreamed we’d live in … Ok la ho ma.” Laughter from football fans picturing him in Boomer Sooner land.

And, as he thanked the guests, “How ‘bout them Falcons!!” Followed by "how 'bout our troops!"

This week the awards just kept coming as DeBerry was named the 2012 recipient of the American Football Coaches Association’s Amos Alonzo Stagg Award for “advancement of the best interests of football.” He’ll receive it Jan. 10 in San Antonio.

MORE PHOTOS: http://gazettephoto.mycapture.com