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If you know where the Cotton Clayton Country Club was located, chances are you’re from “around here,” as folks like to say. And it’s just as likely that you were saddened to learn of the passing of Lawrence Howard “Cotton” Clayton, who died Wednesday evening at the age of 82.
Clayton, a native of Vance County, was an outstanding athlete who excelled at the high school, college and professional levels. His North Carolina high school basketball scoring record stood for more than four decades and he played both basketball and baseball at East Carolina University in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s.
“He was one of Vance County’s greatest athletes,” said George Hoyle, who remembered Clayton and his family on Thursday’s SportsTalk. “He was a great athlete, but an even better person.”
He was named an All America in both basketball and baseball between 1959 and 1961; he led the ’61 Pirates baseball team in the NAIA national championship in hitting and played third base and outfielder. That same year on the basketball court, he averaged 14.9 points per game, 9.9 rebounds and shot 61 percent from the field. In 1984, he was inducted into the ECU Sports Hall of Fame.
Clayton spent seven years playing pro baseball in the Baltimore Orioles organization.
Anyone who spent time at his tire shops on Chestnut Street or in Bearpond at the “country club” no doubt heard about sports.
“Those were great times spent with Cotton and Alton, his brother, and the whole Bearpond “crew,” Hoyle said. “Cotton was a wealth of knowledge about sports…if you wanted to know (something), he knew.”
When a high school junior named JamesOn Curry was closing in on Clayton’s long-standing scoring record, Clayton was at the Southern Vance High School gym to witness it.
Not to take anything away from the young man who did break the previous points record, but Hoyle did note that Clayton managed his feat playing in a shorter season and without benefit of a 3-point line.
Wilson Hoyle shared his memories of visiting the Chestnut Street shop when he was home during college breaks. “One of the very first things I did,” he said, was head down to that shop where a group of regulars gathered in the mornings, “smoking cigarettes, hanging out and talking junk,” he said.
Clayton had a huge impact, Wilson said. “The first one that gave me belief that I could do just about anything was Cotton,” he said.
“When you think about community, you think about people and places,” he continued. “Cotton was always there.”
Hoyle said he loved to be able to add to the timeless argument about which player was the best in North Carolina. “I loved when I’d hear a Jordan-David Thompson argument break out,” he recalled. “I’d say, well, who’s the all-time leading scorer in North Carolina high school basketball history, and they’d throw out Jordan and Thompson…Sleepy Floyd and James Worthy. And the answer was ‘no, no, no – it’s Cotton Clayton.”