Class of Five Announced for Marshall Patterson Hall of Fame

A class of five has been announced as the latest group to be inducted to the Marshall Patterson Hall of Fame at Fort Campbell High School. The names were recently announced by the Hall of Fame committee.

Those to be inducted will be Mickey Fisher, Darrell Wallace, Ken Killebrew, Jim Yost, and former long-time Fort Campbell principal Bill Perry.

Mickey Fisher served as head boys basketball coach at Fort Campbell High School from 1987-1998, posting a record of 120-167. His 1989-90 team posted a 16-6 record. His teams won 10 or more games nine times in his 12 seasons as head coach.

He also had a short stint as head baseball coach for the Falcons.

Fisher attended Austin Peay, where he played college basketball under Coach Lake Kelly. Fisher played for the Governors during the time period that the team featured the one and only “Fly” Williams.

Fisher coached and taught at Fort Campbell for a total 33 years. Two months after retiring from the Fort Campbell School System, Fisher died of a heart attack in 2009 at the age of 55.

Darrell Wallace, a 1983 Fort Campbell grad, was a star running back and defensive back for the Fort Campbell Falcons football team in 1980, 1981, and 1982. During his senior year at FCHS, he was named to the All-Western Kentucky Conference Class 2A football team as a running back and was heavily recruited by several major colleges, including Missouri, Nebraska, Kentucky and Louisville.

After a great football career at the University of Missouri, was inducted into that school’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 1997. His bio on the Mizzou Hall of Fame page notes “Wallace overcame personal tragedies during his career from 1984-87 to become the school’s all-time leading rusher with 2,607 yards. He broke James Wilder’s record despite standing 5-foot-7 and weighing 168 pounds. He was 2nd team All-Big Eight Conference and honorable mention All-America in 1985 and ‘86 and was named a sophomore All-American by Football News in 1985. Wallace led the Big Eight in rushing in 1985 when he gained 1,120 yards.”

He would go on to play professional football in Canada and in the NFL for the Detroit Lions. Playing for the British Columbia Lions of the CFL in 1989, he had a great rookie season, being second in the league in total offensive yardage. He led the team with a new club record of 1225 kickoff return yards, added a team-high 780 punt return yards, and had a season-high 189 yards rushing versus the Saskatchewan Roughriders on August 24, 1989. Wallace played parts of the 1990 season with the Lions and the Calgary Stampeders. He was signed by the Detroit Lions of the National Football League and spent 1991 and 1992 on their practice squad. He returned to the CFL to play for the Saskatchewan Roughriders from 1993 to 1994 and the Birmingham Barracudas in 1995.

Wallace currently lives in Texas and is the owner of Hall of Fame Ind.

Ken Killebrew, who retired from the Fort Campbell Schools in 2005, had a long and distinguished career as a coach and educator. He began his career at Fort Campbell with a tenure at Fort Campbell Junior High that began in 1975, after a short stint in the Christian County School System.

Killebrew was involved in coaching football, girls basketball, and track and field. His tenure saw some of the best Fort Campbell teams in each of those sports.

Late in his career at Fort Campbell, he would go on to serve as assistant principal and then principal at Wassam Middle School and Fort Campbell High School. Both schools would receive “Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence” recognition during his time in administration.

Jim Yost is among the best runners to compete for Fort Campbell High School. Yost was the 1962 MVP for cross country and the 1963 MVP for track and field. He dominated dual meets, winning each event in which he participated.

Yost would take 7th place in the state cross country meet. He won the 1/2-mile and the mile runs at the KHSAA state track and field meet, becoming the first-ever state champion for Fort Campbell High School. At one time, Yost held the record for the best time in the two-mile run in both Kentucky and Tennessee.

He would run at the collegiate level for Murray State University. Yost also took part in the Paris-Brest-Paris run, which covered 750 miles.

Rounding out the Hall of Fame class is Bill Perry. Among his list of accomplishments is serving as principal at Fort Campbell for 28 years.