He knew every football stat and every baseball hit record and he could tell you who should be on the all time Gryphon team for any sports. He was the unofficial Sports Information Director for Rocky Mount High school. Charles Alton who everyone in North Carolina high school sports knew from somewhere and some time died today at age 54.
He helped get North Carolina Ihigh.com rolling for North Carolina High Schools as well as the care taker of the Rocky Mount High Web site. This website as you see it today was set up by Charles as I have no idea how to get all of this off the ground other than where to go and what to do to type a story. The Gryphon Grapevine was Charles personal account of Rocky Mount High. He had not kept that up to date this fall with his new work schedule.
Details are not known at this time but Alston who worked at Sears until it closed earlier this year and just this fall he was working at the new smaller Sears store. He failed to show up for work this morning and they went to check up on him.
If you wanted to know anything about Rocky Mount High School athletics Charles was the man if you wanted an answer. You would find him on his days off in Braswell library looking at old copies of newspapers to get more stats from the past. I don't know whether he ever played any varsity sports at Rocky Mount Senior High, I know he was in the band but there has never been anyone more dedicated to one place as Charles was to Rocky Mount High.
I had heard of Charles even before I moved to Rocky Mount and never met him until I started covering Rocky Mount basketball on the radio in the winter of 2001. Mike Gainey had told me if I wanted to know any thing about Gryphon basketball see Charles so I had him as a halftime guest and from then on Charles rode with me to every game for the next couple of years and even helped do color commentary when we only did the Gryphon Games.
Charles has two surviving brothers who live out of the area. We will let you know when details of the arrangements are made.
It's A sad day in Gryphonland
Monday, December 10, 2012
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