The Shadow
The late Boschobel Cox Williams, II was known as B.C., “The Beast of the East;” as a Third-Team All-American football player who starred for the late Bobby Bowden’s West Virginia University’s Mountaineers.
Williams led Clifton Forge High School’s Mountaineers to a perfect 23-0 record during his junior and senior years in 1967 and 1968.
He drew praise from Boodie Albert, the legendary football coach at Covington High School whose name the school’s football stadium bears. Albert said that Williams was the best fullback in Virginia.
B.C.’s father, Boschobel Cox Williams, Sr. from Millboro, and Mary Ella Hickenbotham Williams, B.C.’s mother from Oriskney, settled in Clifton Forge, and B.C., as a high school student, was instrumental in achieving a smooth transition in the consolidation of Jefferson High School with Clifton Forge High School.
Roy Putnam, former CFHS principal and football coach of the linemen at CFHS prior to becoming the school’s principal, saw B.C. in a pickup game running as a fullback rather than playing the lineman position that B.C. had played during his sophomore year.
Putnam persuaded the head football coach to switch B.C. from lineman to fullback, and the rest is history.
After performing for WVU as a fullback his freshman year, however, B.C. was given the chance to start for the Mountaineers as a lineman his sophomore year, and as a lineman, B.C. earned his nickname as one of the nation’s best performers by the time he was a senior.
B.C. earned both his undergraduate degree and his M.A. degree at WVU before returning to the Alleghany Highlands where he became the first Black principal of the Jackson River Vocational School. He also served as the attendance supervisor for Alleghany County Public Schools.
David Shores of Clifton Forge was still in grade school when he became one of B.C.’s fans.
Shores recalled, “I was a kid, 11 or 12, when I first saw B.C. play football.”
B.C. impressed Shores so much that in recent years he wrote a poem titled “Tribute,” in honor of B.C.
“B.C. was a bull, man; he would have guys hanging on his back, and he’d still be grinding out yards,” Shores remembered.
Shores continued, “B.C. helped educate me too.”
He explained, “He helped me get into a trade school, and I’d work for half a day at my apprenticeship at Taylor Heating & Air and then go to the vocational school the rest of the day.”
“I’d attend night classes too, and B.C. made that possible for me,” he added.
Shores concluded, “I will be forever grateful to B.C. for what he did for me, and he was one of the best friends I had in this world.”
B.C., who was born in Clifton Forge on Dec. 2, 1949, passed away on Dec. 12, 2017 at the Lewis Gale Medical Center in Salem.
He left behind Brittany Cherie Williams, his daughter who alternates between living in Clifton Forge with residing in Las Vegas where she represented Las Vegas in winning the Miss United States title in 2008, and Boschobel Cox Williams, III, his son who goes by Bosco, who like his father, was a star football player in college. Bosco is currently employed as a technical consultant in the banking industry, and he lives in Clifton Forge.
Juneteenth was first celebrated in 1865 in Galveston, Texas, and on June 17, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Act to commemorate the emancipation of enslaved African-Americans.
B.C.’s sisters who cheered B.C. on during his football career are Marie Williams, who resides in Washington D.C., and Lola Williams, who lives in Woodbridge. His sister Madeline Brown passed away in Warrenton following B.C.’s death.
Juneteenth is also known as Juneteenth National Independence Day, Jubilee Day, Emancipation Day (Texas), Freedom Day and Black Independence Day.
