By SAMANTHA HURST / Special to the Reporter

ALABASTER – If you count yourself amongst the Thompson High School Warrior faithful, you’ve seen him.
A familiar face that appears most any night taking up tickets at football, basketball, baseball and softball games.
JC Whitfield has been showing up to do his part for Alabaster kids for more than 48 years.
“It’s amazing how connected you can become to something like this,” Whitfield said. “You see a lot of people come and go that you wouldn’t see or get to know otherwise.”
The kids Whitfield has come in contact with throughout the years ­– many now adults – don’t forget him.
Whitfield has run into former Thompson students while on trips to Florida and even in an airport in Arizona.
“My wife says it is impossible for us to go anywhere without seeing someone who knows me,” Whitfield said.
After all, you can’t get to the action without going through Whitfield first.
Whitfield was just a teenager when he and his brother shared the duty of driving the school’s football team to and from away games for coaches James Martin and Larry Simmons.
Whitfield continued this side job for 11 years while working full-time in the cotton mills too. Once he stopped driving the bus, he started helping one of the football coaches with games on Friday nights.
Next thing he knew, the basketball coach asked him to do the same thing for him.
“I guess they trusted me,” Whitfield said.
And trusted him Thompson has done for almost 50 years.
Last summer, an illness caught up with Whitfield and doctors had to amputate his leg.
Soon thereafter came opening night of the new football season. At the request of coach Mark Freeman, Whitfield made his way to the field.
“Our kids, they knew what he had been through, so to see him there meant a lot,” Freeman said. “We need people in Alabaster to have pride and take ownership in our team and these kids. He’s done that – he didn’t turn his back on them at any point so we had to show we were there for him too.”
Whitfield said despite all the wonderful rehabilitation care he received following his surgery, it was the connection with the kids that willed him to get better.
“[Coach Freeman] thought it would give the boys a lift,” Whitfield said, “but those kids gave me an uplift. Right then that made up my mind that I wasn’t going to give up.”
In December, this lifelong Warrior made his way, by wheelchair, back to the gymnasium to take tickets up once again for the Thompson basketball team.