Standing on the Red Bank High School football field Saturday morning, with the 50th anniversary of the Lloyd Ray Smith Area 4 Special Olympics about to begin, Paul Rogers said of his wife Judy, the event's retiring director, "This has pretty much been her life for the last 46 years."
It hasn't been her whole life, of course. A wife, a mother, a teacher, the 75-year-old Rogers has accomplished far more than skillfully following the late Smith, the Area 4 Games' founder.
And Rogers - who's been the director since 2004 - insists she'll still be around next year to help her successor, Beth Webb.
"Oh, I'll keep volunteering," she said Saturday afternoon as 217 registered athletes from a wide range of ages and disability levels competed beneath a perfect blue sky in 70-degree temperatures.
"But while my mind tells me I could keep doing this, my body is telling me I'm too old to run the whole thing anymore."
It remains an event worth running largely because of the good work done by Smith and Rogers.
"These students are athletes," said 32-year-old Red Bank Middle School coach Grady Wilson, who only works with special needs athletes at the high school level. "They deserve a coach who's fully invested in their development. They work as hard as any other athlete at our school, and they're really fun to coach."
One of Wilson's athletes, 19-year-old La'Mya Muhammad, has been competing for at least 10 years in the Area 4 games.
"It's the one day where all these athletes can get together and share our stories and have a shot to win something," she said with a warm smile and twinkling eyes as she awaited the start of the 100-meter run and long jump competition. "I think about it all year."
Aaron "Bubba" Lewis, 49, says he thinks about the annual competition "all of the time." He's so passionate about it that he now helps coach the younger competitors, including Anna Frierson.
Said her father, Jim: "Aaron's her sports psychologist."
Andrew Williams, 28, has been competing in various Special Olympics competitions for the past 15 years, including volleyball, golf, basketball and bocce. He also works at Chick-fil-A in Hixson, where he grabbed a couple of chicken biscuits before heading to Saturday's competition, hopeful it would become his breakfast of champions.
"I'm just happy to be out here," said Williams, who also admitted, when prompted, "I probably have won a hundred of them (blue ribbons)."
Rogers believes her legacy will be that she opened the door for more athletes from more corners of southeast Tennessee to compete for more ribbons, but in terms of sports offered and venues to host the competition.
"Just that we expanded the programs," she said. "Bradley and Polk County have had bowling tournaments the last two years. The Central Time Zone counties Marion, Grundy, Bledsoe and Sequatchie have their own games now. We've embraced the idea that if they can't come to us because of the travel and such, we'll go to them."
Rogers isn't the only one who's contributed greatly to the success and enjoyment of the Area 4 Games over so many of these past 50 years.
Local attorney Jerry Summers has been there from the beginning. The ageless "Voice of the Mocs," Jim Reynolds, has meant as much to the Games as its longtime public address announcer as he has to University of Tennessee at Chattanooga fans.
Then there's Paul Blazek. His wife Lindy has taught probably half the Special Olympians who've ever come out of the Chattanooga public school system, but the appearance of Paul and the rest of the Choo Choo Chorus for the national anthem the past 31 years is always one of the Games' highlights.
"And if anyone asks for another song," he said, "we'll do that one, too."
Yet regardless of how many more Area 4 Games she volunteers for, this was the swan song for Rogers as the event's director - a fact not lost on Webb, the woman replacing her.
"Judy might be a small woman physically," Webb said, "but she's leaving me some really big shoes to fill."
Said Reynolds of Rogers before he headed up to the Red Bank press box to begin his P.A. duties: "She's been the glue that's held this whole thing together. No one else could have successfully followed Lloyd Ray Smith but Judy Rogers."
Contact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com.