Thursday, October 22, 2015
Kenneth Tate is proud to say that he built his sports reputation in Youngstown and made his athletic footprint here, but, when it came to finding a job, his only option was to punt.
Youngstown was also a blessing for Tate, a former North High standout who met his wife here before he moved to Lithonia, Ga. in 1987.
“Everything was closing and I was having a hard time finding a job,” Tate said of the reason for his move to the community outside Atlanta, where he has worked 26 years for UPS.
Tate was recognized among the Who’s Who of High School Students nationally while at North.
“I wasn’t valedictorian, but I carried a 3.4-to-3.5 GPA,” Tate said. “I had all the credits and could have come out early, but I liked school.”
Tate was a member of North’s final graduating class in June 1980.
“After us, they shut down and kids had to go to East, South, Wilson or Rayen. There was no more North; they made it a junior high,” he said.
Tate was also rare in that he was a chess champion — only after a bumpy beginning.
“Chess was just starting, like the first or second year. I enjoyed it because they’d play in the lunchroom my ninth-grade year. You had to sign up, so the wait was long. When I finally got a chance to play and sat down, it was over,” he said of his debut that lasted about 30 seconds. “I waited weeks to play, then three moves and it was over,” he said of losing to a kid named Edward. “How embarrassing.”
“I forget his last name, but I remember that he wore glasses and was kind of chubby. He gave me a book [on learning chess] and said, ‘You need to study.’ It’s a good mental game. My favorite piece is the Knight. I love the Knight.”
Kenneth eventually became North’s chess club president and a Youngstown City Schools champion in 1980. Tate also participated in a state chess tournament in Columbus.
“I was a very good athlete,” Tate says, rather presumptuously, but true. In the Uptown Kiwanis Little League, Tate and Kenny Smith and Jesse Owens were the only black players on the United Vets team.
Kenny Tate was also on an Uptown all-star team with Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini.
Also in the league at the time were Sherman Smith and his brother, Kenny.
After college, Sherman was a running back with the Seattle Seahawks during its formative years and is now the team’s running backs coach.
Sherman graduated from North High, but a cousin — also Kenny Smith — came out of East after North’s closing. The cousin of the Smith brothers was a first baseman in the Atlanta Braves’ minor league system, including a brief stint with its major league team during the 1981 season.
The East High Kenny Smith was the same age as Kenny Tate’s brother, Davanzo Tate.
Kenny Tate was a freshman at North when A.J. Jones was a record-setting senior, who then played at Texas before being drafted by the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams in 1982.
Tate recalls being quarterback and Garcia Lane the running back on the Buckeye Elks team in the youth football league at Volney Rogers Field.
“We were teammates and Elks won the league that year,” he said.
Later, when Tate was a senior, the two were on opposite sides when North lost to a powerhouse South High team of which Lane was quarterback, 52-7. Lane went on to play at Ohio State and in the CFL. Tate was tight end, punter and defensive end. “I never came off the field,” he said of the North-South match.
North’s basketball squad came one win short of a state Class A semifinal appearance during the 1979-80 season. “We had a big run at the end of the season and won 10 in row before tournament time,” he said.
After high school, Tate played for New Bethel Baptist Church in a city-wide church league with most games at the McGuffey Center.
“We was bad,” Tate said of the Kenny Simon-coached team that wiped up on the competition every Sunday. “We played all the churches and nobody beat us,” he said of a team that included Marvin and Anthony Woodberry and Kenny Ivy.
Tate also remembers practicing basketball at the upstairs half-gym of the Boys and Girls Club on Oakhill and Earle.
When Tate was younger, he’d sneak away late at night across town on his bicycle to a donut shop that was near the Boys and Girls Club.
“It opened at 11:30 p.m., so we’d get hot donuts and cookies late at night. When we’d stand in a line out to the street, the smell of the donuts came out of a grate by the curb. It was like Belleria Pizza — you had to get it. Then I’d peddle back home.”
Kenny Tate, now 52, met his wife, Elisa Clinkscale, when he worked as a Dollar Bank messenger.
“While on my route to pick up receipts, I’d see her at lunch time when she worked at the Red Cross on Fifth Ave., plus, we both went to YSU. I didn’t know her but I went to school with her brother. Tate eventually married Clinkscale in 1990.
Today, Tate still pounds the pavement for UPS.
“I’m your delivery man,” he said. “I’m out there driving that truck and I’m going to be Santa Claus pretty soon — a nickname kids give us when we come with that wrapped gift and they be all happy. That’s our busiest time of season.