Hawkins, who spent two seasons at UT, dies at 51

Ray Hawkins

Ray Hawkins, who signed to play football for Tennessee in 1976 and spent two seasons with the Vols, died Monday at the University of Toledo Medical Center after a lengthy illness. He was 51.

Hawkins played under head coaches Bill Battle and Johnny Majors after coming to UT from his hometown of Columbia, where he earned All-State and prep All-America honors as a tackle for Columbia Central High School.

A three-year starter for the Columbia Lions under late head coach Jim Cartwright, Hawkins was rated the top defensive tackle in the state playing alongside teammate and close friend John Pointer at both Central High and Whitthorne Junior High School.

“Ray was ahead of his time as a defensive tackle,” said Pointer, the state’s No. 1-rated linebacker who played at Vanderbilt and later in the NFL and Canadian Football League. “He had the rare combination of size, quickness and speed. He could take on a double-team, go through it and use his speed to catch opposing quarterbacks and linebackers.”

Pointer said Hawkins was more than just a talented football player and a close friend.

“Ray could dominate a football game, but more than that he was a very good friend who will greatly be missed.”

While playing for Columbia, Hawkins was under the guidance of line coach Joe Graham, himself a former UT offensive guard and letterman in the mid-1960s.

“(Ray) was the most talented lineman and the best defensive tackle I coached,” Graham said. “He could dominate a game on defense. We didn’t give up many points the three years he played, hardly any the last two years.”

Graham said Hawkins was a joy to coach and to be around.

“Coach Cartwright and I could be around Ray and a couple of other players and he would get us all laughing. He was certainly a pleasure to coach.”

Andrea Bullock, a former Middle Tennessee State defensive starter and now head coach at Whitthorne Middle School, was a senior at Columbia Central when Hawkins came over from Whitthorne for his sophomore year.

“Ray and John (Pointer) came right over and became starters,” Bullock said. “Being a senior, I knew I had to mentor them and Ray stepped right in there and started.”

Bullock said that Hawkins was “always smiling and good for a laugh. Ray was a tremendous talent. I went to see him play his freshman year for Tennessee at Vanderbilt and he looked bigger than anybody else out there.”

The defensive lineman appeared in five games during the 1976 campaign.

Born March 23, 1957, in Columbia, Hawkins was the son of Loutisia Hawkins and the late James B. Hawkins Sr. Ray Hawkins was a former employee at Union Carbide in Columbia and also worked for his father in the concrete business. For the past few years, Hawkins lived in Ohio where two of his brothers resided, working in the trucking industry.

Visitation is Saturday from noon-1 p.m. at the Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Columbia, with services to follow. Columbia’s Baxter Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.