Maurice Jackson

Obituary – MAURICE JACKSON DIES AT 84 , Lexington Herald-Leader (August 12, 1995) by JENNIFER HEWLETT

Maurice Jackson was a veteran at winning. He coached the Lafayette High School Generals to their first boys’ state basketball championship in 1942. In 1969, he was elected to a term as Fayette County sheriff.

Mr. Jackson died of a heart attack yesterday at Central Baptist Hospital. He was 84. He was involved in many community organizations and was a familiar figure in the Lexington area for decades.

Mr. Jackson was born in Franklin County but lived in Lexington for 80 years. He was a member of the first football and basketball teams fielded by Lexington’s Henry Clay High School, from which he graduated in 1930. He also was on the first University of Kentucky basketball team coached by the legendary Adolph Rupp.

Mr. Jackson, who graduated from UK in 1935, began his coaching career at Cropper High School in the 1930s. He coached at Lexington’s Bryan Station High School beginning in 1936. His Bryan Station team won 32 of 33 games that school year and gave eventual state champion Midway its only loss.

Mr. Jackson became Lafayette’s first basketball coach in 1939, when the school first opened. The Generals’ 1942 state championship was the first for a Fayette County school since 1924, when the old Lexington High School won it. He also was Lafayette’s athletic director.

“He was a great coach, but more than that, he was a great, great man, very sincere with everyone he knew,” said John “Mitch” Alcorn, who played basketball for Mr. Jackson at Bryan Station and Lafayette. “He was one of these people, if he told you something, his word was his bond.”

Alcorn, who said Mr. Jackson was like a second father to him, said his former coach also was a good public speaker who “had all these jokes he could tell and keep people loose.”

Soon after the Lafayette state championship, Mr. Jackson joined the Army Air Corps. He left the military as a captain in 1946. Later he was a training officer, working with disabled veterans, for the Veterans Administration. During this time he also coached basketball and baseball at the old University High School. Later would come a stint as head basketball coach at Clark County High School.

Mr. Jackson’s term as sheriff came after he had worked for 12 years as a local deputy sheriff. He defended his office against charges of nepotism in 1973 — his wife, Elizabeth Montague Jackson, who died in 1987, and several other relatives worked in the sheriff’s office during his term.

“If hiring my grandmother could make us the number one office in the state, I would do it,” he told a reporter at the time.

Over the years Mr. Jackson was secretary of the board of managers of the Central YMCA, served on committees of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and was treasurer of the Burley Kiwanis Club. He also coached in Little League baseball and in an independent basketball league.

Survivors include three nieces, Mona Hensley and Joy Campbell, both of Lexington, and Juanita Adams of Punta Gorda, Fla.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete at Kerr Brothers Funeral Home.