Longtime area hospital executive and civic leader Leonard Fant will receive the Greater Chattanooga Sports Hall of Fame’s prestigious Fred Gregg Jr. Memorial Award at the organization’s Feb. 28 induction banquet, and Catherine Neely and Buck Johnson will receive lifetime achievement awards named for Betty Probasco and Walt Lauter.
Area high school seniors Courtnee Hall from Ridgeland and Tommy Howard from Sequatchie County will be dual recipients of the Allan Morris/Jim Morgan Award for overcoming adversity. Hall returned impressively to the softball field after a paralyzing brain virus and later a back cyst that required surgery, and Howard fought through stomach cancer and chemotherapy treatments to play soccer and help the Sequatchie football team reach the second round of the 2010 state playoffs.
They will be honored along with male and female athletes of the year and 23 Hall of Fame inductees that Monday night at the Chattanooga Convention Center. The dinner starts at 6 p.m. Tickets cost $35 and are available by calling Dr. John Farr at 423-875-9282.
Neely, the East Ridge athletic director for 20 years and third-winningest high school volleyball coach in the nation with 1,362 victories in 47 years, also coached basketball for 43 years, and the ERHS gymnasium is named for her.
She is in the National High School Hall of Fame, among others, and is a board member of the Greater Chattanooga hall. She has been honored by USA Volleyball and the American Volleyball Coaches Association.
Johnson, retired sports editor of the Chattanooga Times, was in the Tennessee Sports Writers Hall of Fame’s inaugural class that also included Grantland Rice and other giants of the profession. He also is in the National Softball Hall of Fame, was the AAU’s national media man of the year in 1976 and ’77 and was honored by the Golf Writers Association of America for the best column of 1995.
Even while still teaching and coaching several sports at Soddy-Daisy Junior High School, Johnson earned national softball writing awards from his summer work with the newspaper. He won seven of those in all, and he was the National Softball Federation’s chief press officer and worked at the Olympic games in 1996, 2000 and 2004.
The Gregg Award is for years of service to athletics, and Fant has fulfilled that in a variety of ways. He has been a chairman and remains on the board of the Classic 150 Club, which has been the principal revenue source for a host of high-profile athletic events in the area, including the Chattanooga Classic professional golf tournament, and he has been a founder or organizer of several charity golf events. As a bicyclist, he has helped raise nearly $100,000 for fighting multiple sclerosis and diabetes.
Fant has been a top executive at Hutcheson Medical Center, North Park Hospital and Erlanger and was one of the founders and a president of Blood Assurance. He also is a former mayor and city judge in Fort Oglethorpe.