Bill Brasky eat your heart out

The infamous Brasky, a 10 foot tall 734 pound bear of a man, would tremble in fear at the very thought of rolling with Dan Magill and his buddies.

Image: Dan Magill

Magill is the legendary former Bulldog sports information director, hall of fame tennis coach, inventor of the Bulldog Club, and all-around Georgia historian. In his two most recent articles for the Athens Banner Herald, he discusses two long time friends and Athens Legends. The fictional Bill Brasky has nothing on these guys.

On Fred Birchmore, age 96 and current Athens resident:

He's well known for walking on his hands down the stairway of the Washington Monument in the nation's capital. And, I well recall him walking on his hands down the steps of Sanford Stadium on the north side, then across the field (before the hedges grew) and up the south side. He never stopped until he reached the top.

Once rode his bicycle 25,000 miles from Germany across the Alps and later to Thailand and from California across America. His bicycle is in the Smithsonian.

All-American caliber gymnast...as a hobby.

1930 Southern Conference champion boxer.

And all of that is nothing compared to the nine million pound wall in his yard that he built by hand. According to the UGA Alumni Association he built the Great Wall of Happy Hollow, "a five and a half-year project he undertook at age 75 that involved his moving 12 train boxcar loads of large rocks to his residence in Athens. He built the wall surrounding his 2 acre compound that reaches 18 feet high in places."

Also holds a law degree from Georgia,

On his friend Herschel Carithers:

Once co-hosted a Snake Fight with Magill in Athens that drew 200 people.

And, in 1963, when Georgia's basketball coliseum was just a skeleton (only the big concrete roof had been built), he flew a small airplane smack through the building - a tremendous feat which he never admitted because it was against the law. I know he did it because I saw it.

The Snake Fight is particularly bizarre because it involves a young Magill and Carithers both independently capturing 5 to 6 foot snakes (King Snake and a Rattlesnake) and then carrying them into a bar...the same bar...as a matter of coincidence.

As an homage to Birchmore and Carithers, I present you with three clips from SNL's Brasky stories. They start to sound like Magill's friends the more you listen to them. Both stories are must reads on the ABH's web site.



See Also:
-- Magill on Birchmore - ABH
-- Magill on the Snake Fight and Carithers - ABH
-- Around the world on a Bicycle - Amazon.com
-- The Birchmore Family - UGA Alumni Association
-- Dan Magill -- Wikipedia

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