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He was as quiet as a mouse, unless you forget to include French fries with his plate of pork barbecue.

He loved Mustangs…not those with four legs that are saddled and ridden, but rather those with four tires that go really, really fast.

He loved sports. Like me, I guess he didn’t excel as an athlete, but he loved watching and dissecting the x’s and o’s of sporting events.

And if those games involved the Bears of Hertford County, the Redbirds of Post 102, the “baby blue” uniforms of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the crimson and gold of the Washington Commanders, and the famed pinstripes of the New York Yankees, then he loved it even more.

Although he was of average appearance, Billy Harrell was anything but average. He could answer almost any sports trivia question without much delay. Ditto when it came to statistics….especially those associated with HCHS, UNC, Washington, and the Yankees.

His mind was sharp; his eyes were like those of an eagle searching for prey; and even though he was a bit on the bashful side, that never stopped him from engaging in conversation, particularly when a discussion centered on athletics.

William Lee “Billy” Harrell passed away on Friday of last week. If he had lived another six days, Billy would have been 70 years old.

Billy first stepped foot in the News-Herald office in March of 1991. I was the Sports Editor back in those days. He came to my desk and asked if I needed any help covering high school athletics. I remember thinking to myself, ‘where were you during basketball season….I could have really used some help trying to cover all our local teams single handedly.’

I asked Billy if he had any sports writing experience, to which he answered no. I came mighty close to shooing him away, but there was something inside me that said to give this guy a shot. I didn’t have much writing experience either when I first got started in this business, but someone took a chance on me and now it was my turn to pay that forward.

It just so happened that Hertford County High School was playing a baseball game at Plymouth High School the very next day. I asked Billy if he knew how to get to Plymouth. He said yes. I gave him a press pass and a notepad and told him to come back to me with a story.

He did just that. His first story, published March 22, 1991, shared that Chris Warrick hit a two-run homer in the sixth inning to get the Bears to within 7-6 and then Terrence Spruill smashed a pinch-hit, two-run homer in the top of the 7^th inning to rally HCHS to an 8-7 win.

The rest, as they say, is history.

From then until his health began to decline in 2021, Billy was a mainstay here at the News-Herald. He worked as a “stringer”, meaning he wasn’t a full-time or even a part-time employee. Rather, he was paid “by the piece” (for each story he wrote). He covered whatever athletic event he was assigned….football, boys/girls basketball, baseball, and softball. If it was an away game he couldn’t get to, Billy would either go meet in person with the local coach the next day, getting stats from the scorebook, or calling them when he got to the newspaper office.

For several years, Billy kept the results of Pigskin Prognosticators, a weekly poll we conducted among newspaper staff, local coaches, and a guest picker during the high school football season. Also during the high school football season, Billy would call all of our head coaches for comments about their upcoming opponent and would write a weekly preview story.

Over the summer months he was the main man when it came to reporting on games (home and away) of local American Legion baseball.

Even after I moved on from duties as Sports Editor and focused more on news, Billy remained as a sports writer, working for our subsequent sports editors Stephen Dunn, Thadd White, and Gene Motley.

And on those occasions when there was nothing for him to cover, Billy would simply spend his day with us. He had his own desk and phone. He arrived whenever the notion struck him to do so, and left the office the same way.

Billy Harrell wasn’t just a newspaper colleague, he was our friend.

Road trips with Billy were unique. Sometimes we would ride for miles and not say a word, although I would attempt to initiate conversation on a news-related matter. But if the topic moved to sports, Billy became a chatterbox.

There was one particular road trip that stands out in my mind. Billy rode with me to Tarboro for a football game. If I’m covering any sort of athletic event anywhere in eastern North Carolina, I’m eating at a barbecue joint.

On this trip, we stopped at Abrams Barbecue in Tarboro. We walked in, found a table and sat down. The waitress comes and takes our order, which was the same: a plate of minced barbecue with slaw and French fries. A couple of minutes later, the waitress returns with our food. However, Billy’s plate was void of French fries. I pointed that out to the waitress and she said she would be back in a minute or so with that missing item.

Five minutes went by….ten minutes went by. Finally, when the waitress got close enough to our table, Billy hollered: “where’s my French fries!” That shocked me because Billy was always so meek and mild, but I guess all bets are off when he’s without French fries.

About the only thing that bothers me about Billy’s death, other than losing a friend, is the fact that he never had the chance to cover Hertford County winning a state championship. The 1992 boys basketball team got close, as did the 2004 football team…both made it to the Eastern finals before seeing their respective seasons come to an end.

While I stress to all my writers not to show any sort of partiality to their subject matter, Billy loved the Hertford County Bears. He was a graduate of Ahoskie High School and even before he became a sports writer, he attended numerous high school games. If I told him that Hertford County was playing another school (no matter the sport) on the moon, Billy would hop in his Mustang, head to Cape Kennedy in Florida, and board the space shuttle.

But you better bring his French fries as an in-flight meal!

Rest in peace, buddy, and I hope there’s sports for you to cover in Heaven.

Cal Bryant is the Editor of Roanoke-Chowan Publications. Contact him at cal.bryant@r-cnews.com or 252-332-7207.