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Going downtown to buy the early edition of the Sunday Knoxville News Sentinel from a man named P.H. Carter was an essential part of the Tennessee football experience in the 1970s and 1980s

There are times that sports stories evolve into stories about sports. This is one of them, transcending scores and statistics to tell an inspiring personal story.

There are people who - with no apparent connection to the University of Tennessee - help make the experience following UT athletics more memorable. Sometimes it takes extra effort to find these folks, but the ultimate destination is worth the trip.

"I was struck with the notion that those who never dwell in fanfare usually end up generating the most of it," wrote Sam Venable, the News Sentinel columnist who intuitively says the right thing at the right time about the area's people and events and who penned that line about a friend named Charlie Browder on Oct. 24, 1986.

One of the great joys of living in Knoxville and following Tennessee football fortunes in the 1970s and into the 1980s was knowing a man named Pierce Hamilton Carter, known to some as "P.H." and to me (and many others) simply as "Mr. Carter." He didn't say a lot, but perceptive people listened intently when he spoke.

There were those who might not have given him a second glance, but that was their loss. He was something special, a pearl of great price. A great many people knew him, even without knowing his name.

He commandeered a stage late on a Saturday evening after a Tennessee football game, home or away, win or lose. You could find him near the old KUB building at the corner of Gay Street and Church Avenue, selling the next day's paper, hot off the presses. Sometimes the line of cars stretched westward from the Coliseum, as his friends waited to share a word before getting an early look at the Sentinel's event coverage.

He was, in newspaper parlance, a "single-copy salesman."

That description only scratches the surface in defining who this man was.

Some men just deserve the appellation "Mr." One was the late Ackron Parris Porter, a long-time staffer at the University of Tennessee Gibbs Hall training table. He was always "Mr. Porter."

Another is "Mr. Carter." Even in these uncertain days proper name etiquette is honored more in the breach than in the observance, you couldn't imagine calling him anything else.

He and Mr. Porter deserve to be discussed in the same breath, given their character and influence on everybody around them.

After Mr. Carter retired, Venable discussed his pedigree in Knoxville newspaper history in a May 5, 2006, article. Nine days later, Sam penned his obituary.

"P.H., 77, says he started carrying the Journal on Nov. 15, 1959," wrote Venable. "We'll take his word for it. He predates most of our senior circulation staff.

"Although plagued by poor eyesight throughout his life, P.H. put in many a 12-hour day. He and his wife, Francis (she died last year, shortly after their 49th wedding anniversary), raised five children on a news carrier's earnings."

That wasn't all there was to Mr. Carter's story, Sam wrote. He was a downtown folk hero, similar to the late Bobby Langston, performing his daily delivery duties on a bicycle. Mr. Carter had a regular route he followed in those halcyon days Knoxville had two newspapers and beyond. Drive downtown most any time of day, and you'd see him making his appointed rounds, person-by-person, office-by-office, block-by-block.

He didn't say, "Extra, Extra, Read All About It," as they did in the old Hollywood movies, but he didn't have to. He developed a loyal following over the years. "His friends were all the people he ever met," as Lindsey Nelson said of Jimmy Walls.

"Despite the vision problems, the result of a freak industrial accident at his job as a baker," Venable wrote, Mr. Carter was undaunted. No one could hold him back. He was definitely old school. "There weren't too many (jobs) to choose from," he said in a 1972 interview, "but I didn't want to go on welfare."

When you think about Mr. Carter's influence and character, think back to the time Opie Taylor accidentally killed the mother bird with his slingshot. Opie raised the three baby birds by himself, but finally had to set them free, albeit with much reluctance.

When he did, he told Andy, "The cage seems empty."

"Yes, but don't the trees seem nice and full?" Andy replied.

Mr. Carter never had a byline, never wrote an op-ed piece, never chased a story, but he was as much the "face" of the News Sentinel as anybody on staff.

What he did accomplish, however, was to make life fuller, more memorable, on Saturday nights, and nearly any other time in downtown Knoxville.

If newspapers are sold on the streets of heaven, Mr. Carter will be no doubt be standing on a prominent corner, greeting his regular customers as they come by.

A regular customer of Mr. Carter, Tom Mattingly authored "The Tennessee Football Vault: The Story of the Tennessee Volunteers, 1891-2006" (2006), to be published in second edition in 2008, and "Tennessee Football: The Peyton Manning Years" (1998). He may be reached at tjmshm@comcast.net tjmshm@comcast.net. His News Sentinel blog on govolsxtra.com is called The Vol Historian.

© 2008, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.