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[MUSIC PLAYING]
[CHEERING]
[MARCHING BAND MUSIC]
Summerville was definitely not known for basketball.
This is sort of like football country.
That's what we do.
We play football here.
MELISSA CAMPBELL: Boys' basketball
had never seen success.
The mascot was a Green Wave.
But in the beginning, there was no wave.
It was just flat.
AJ GREEN: Coach Louis always had a motto about football players
who play basketball, because we're tough.
And we always want to bring that toughness
to the basketball court.
ANNOUNCER: Pass to AJ Green.
Touchdown.
[INAUDIBLE]
Louis was the underdog.
Like most firefighters, he roots for the little man.
He roots for the person who hadn't always had everything.
Mulkey saw something in us, because we were a wild bunch,
you know.
I yell a lot and I cuss a lot and I stay on you.
It's because I love you and I want you to do right in life.
AJ GREEN: Coach, teacher, dad-- he filled all those for a lot
of guys, especially myself.
We're not going to quit on defense, you understand that?
Yes, sir.
We're going to keep boxing out.
And we're going to have a lot of this tonight.
It ain't about me.
It's about us tonight.
You got it? - Yes, sir.
Let's go. Win on 3.
- Come on, man. - 1, 2, 3.
ALL: Win.
When he would make speeches like that,
he would make anyone want to run through a brick wall for him.
He had greatness on his mind.
He told our young guys that they
had a chance to go on and be the best team
around and win a state title.
I clearly remember Coach Mulkey
once the practice was over, he told us we would win the state
championship the next year.
A lot of us looked around, like,
what was he talking about?
We thought he was crazy.
And then all of a sudden, we started to win at the JV level
and win a lot.
As we actually started to see how things actually could be
and how good we actually could be,
it made us push even harder.
MARLON PRYOR: That championship game, it
went back and forth pretty much from the opening
tip-off all game long.
The gym was going crazy.
BUSTER SEABROOK: Everybody was cheering,
Louis Mulkey, Louis Mulkey.
Louis Mulkey!
In that moment, it kind of really,
really, really became clear that Mulkey had become the wave.
Like, he was the wave.
I remember looking at his seat with the firefighter helmet,
and I felt something that said "let's go" in my head.
THOMAS NEWMAN: We had a small lead, a couple of seconds
left, we thought, man, this thing is in the bag.
We were kind of looking around.
[WHISTLE]
And then Bruce missed the free throw.
Guy gets the rebound, takes a step or two and throws it up.
All the air left my lungs.
It was just absolute disbelief.
ANNOUNCER: A long 3 goes.
MELISSA CAMPBELL: No way that shot went in.
We were all shattered.
There's no way.
There's no way possible that this
is how this is going to end.
Boy, it's been a while since we've been here.
Yeah, man.
Good memories, man.
All right.
Good memories.
Green and gold.
Yes, sir.
Look it here.
It still smells the same.
Yeah, man.
Green.
[INAUDIBLE]
Look a little different.
Every time we ran in this gym, whether it was practice, games,
he made sure to always have us look up in these rafters,
knowing that there's no banners up here.
And if we kept pushing--
You see these fans over here.
And you see the opposing team warming up.
It just make you want to go harder and just
give it all you got to the end.
No quit-- as he say, no quit.
Give it all you got.
It's crazy he predicted two years
beforehand that we would actually go out
and win a state championship.
And he sat there and told us, you know, stay out there.
Get on it.
I see this team winning a state championship.
We would always reiterate the fact
that we were going to be the first ones to put one up there.
So it was constant motivation.
And it was constant focus.
And it never left our brains that every time we
came in this gym, he would always
tell us to look up at the banners that we don't see.
And if we work hard, when we look back up,
the banners will be there.
Not a lot of people see that, or speak it into existence.
My first year here I coached JV football here.
And it just happened that one of the assistant
coaches out there with us was a guy named Louis Mulkey.
He was an excellent football coach.
I knew that he was going to be a big--
a big plus in us getting started.
We were basically starting over here with basketball.
I knew he was a very fiery coach and very emotional.
Oh yeah, it would get heated, especially if you weren't doing
what you were supposed to do.
MARLON PRYOR: He'd get in your face
with no problem, no hesitation.
Don't care if your parents are watching.
Right there, all up in your face.
THOMAS NEWMAN: Early on, myself and the players,
we all had to adapt to Louis and his ways.
It was hard at first.
It was very hard.
There were some people that would try to walk away,
and he wouldn't let them.
Louis Mulkey is one of the few people in life
I ever met that could get under my skin
and crawl and live there for a while.
He definitely knew which buttons to push on me.
He always told me.
He was just like, I'm not doing this to be bad at you.
But he was like, you know, long term I
see something in you that you might not
be able to see in yourself yet.
[SHOUTING]
MELISSA CAMPBELL: He would see a lot of times an anger
that he felt like he could challenge,
that he could channel.
I really don't think when he looked
at them he was always thinking about their athletic talent.
They knew that he was their school dad,
but they knew that he wanted what was best for them.
He just knew who had heart.
He wanted people pretty much came
to give it-- with a fight, integrity, family,
he wanted us to have it.
I'd say there was plenty of coaches around our high school
that didn't think we had a chance, because he took
a lot of kids that they passed over
because they were delinquents.
They didn't want anything to do with them.
He brought them over to the basketball team
and gave them a chance.
MELISSA CAMPBELL: Some of these boys on the team, especially
the early years, were some rough boys, rough around the edges.
They came from very difficult home lives.
Some didn't have power all the time
but would still make it here and practice
and be here for school.
And he knew their back stories.
He would meet them where they were.
He always said, I understand what you're going through.
But here's what we need to do if you're going to make it.
Because you do want to make it out of here.
THOMAS NEWMAN: He dated Summerville high school.
The players and the kids, you know, they were his kids.
His hours that he had to spend firefighting,
that was his profession.
But any time he was free to be here, that's
the time he enjoyed the most.
MELISSA CAMPBELL: I don't remember ever meeting him,
but I do remember this crazy man in the hallways.
I thought, who is this man bouncing
around and yelling at students and joking with students?
And I had no idea who he was at first.
I thought maybe we just had found a substitute that
had this next-level energy.
And then I realized he was a firefighter,
and it was even more confusing.
I know that firemen work 24 on, 48 off.
But how is he here as often as he is and full of life
and energy all the time?
He was very intense and very excitable and he was so wild.
[SHOUTING]
JOSEPH GILES: He came from the fire department
where if you don't follow policy,
if you don't follow regulations, people can literally die.
He brought that same mentality to basketball.
He was in school business, checking on grades,
coming in classrooms.
I remember him busting in--
I did bad one time on some schoolwork.
And he came in.
I'm sitting there thinking, like,
how does he even know this?
Like, who's telling him?
RALPHIE MOSTELLER: If he found out you did something in school
and he got wind of it, before we got home,
when he was a substitute teacher,
coach used to come to your classroom.
Like, hey, can I have a word with the student athlete?
First thing coach going to do is--
slap you in the back of your head.
Like, man, what's wrong with you, knucklehead?
You know you shouldn't have been doing that.
He's going to let you know, man.
BUSTER SEABROOK: Say you was talking to a teacher.
Right then and there, say he had just popped up and went,
did he turn in his homework today?
Oh, he was short a couple.
So, Buster, you didn't do what you were supposed to do?
Coach, I was just--
give me 50 push-ups. Coach!
Give me 50 push-ups.
AJ GREEN: Coach Louis could touch anybody.
I think BJ was probably the biggest one for me,
because I seen BJ grow from a hard head to having real anger
problems and wanting to fight everybody into when Coach
Louis walked in that room and BJ did something,
he'd know it was going to be on.
And he understood that.
But Coach Louis had a way to get into him to like nobody--
nobody could make him calm down the way Coach Louis did.
Everybody would not have been able to pull off his style.
You know, I would say at the least it was unconventional.
MARLON PRYOR: If you weren't doing anything in the classroom
the right way, he'd definitely take that desk,
put it out in the hallway, bell rings,
all the kids walking by to see you.
Make you sit right there and do your work
in front of everybody.
To him, grades were very important.
And if you weren't getting your grades
or getting your schoolwork done, you wasn't practicing.
He was going to pull a desk out of the classroom,
sit it in the gym, and you were going
to sit there right at that desk, do your schoolwork,
study, get everything you needed,
while everybody-- watch your teammates
practice on the court.
MARQUEL WILLIS: I think six people practiced.
They were like, how are we going to practice?
He didn't care.
That was his way of showing you, like, you
don't just get to play sports.
He knew that most of our players
would not be college athletes, but that all of them
should be college students.
A lot of people expected him just to be a coach.
You know, you're a fireman who's volunteering to coach.
You should just be coming in and showing up for the games
and taking care of the locker room.
But that was never Coach Mulkey.
He was always more than that.
JOSEPH JILES: He was a fireman.
He was a coach.
He wore a lot of hats-- coming off a shift
and coming straight to school, no sleep.
It was something that he loved to do, and he gave it his all.
I found that Louis loved people.
And that's one reason he wanted to be in emergency services.
He always told me that if anything happened,
he decided he wanted to be there.
And he wanted to make a difference in someone's life.
MARK DAVIS: Not all firemen start out as little kids
wanting to be firefighters.
I think he'd always wanted to be an educator.
WAYNE MULKEY: You could see in his eyes the fire
and the passion that he had for firefighting
that he did for coaching and teaching.
And I think growing up with that and growing up
within sports really helped formed Louis's, I
guess, ideas of how things should be
and the way people should be.
He told us that he wanted us to go out
and be successful because he told us
that he never finished school.
ANN MULKEY: Louis was a mediocre student in school.
He wasn't an A student.
He did not graduate from college.
Over time, when he was working with these kids
and grooming them, he realized the importance
of a college education.
And he stressed that to them.
You've got to get an education.
I think he had seen the mistakes that he had made,
and he tried to impart that information on these kids.
He had something to finish, something to prove,
something left undone.
So he funneled that into coaching.
He said an education is something that nobody
can ever take away from you.
And I think that was really what he was trying to instill
in the boys, aside from bringing them up and making
them believe in themselves.
You know, they can become whatever they wanted to become.
Hey!
Come in!
When I got to high school, I was a bit of a troublemaker
somewhat, until one day [INAUDIBLE]
sat me down in the office, had a long talk with me.
It was tough to hear him and Coach Newman tell me, you know,
if you don't change, we're kicking you out, off the team.
You won't be no longer a part of this team.
We won't have you around.
It definitely woke me up, made me change myself around
and focus on the bigger task at hand when I was playing ball.
So you're coaching now?
Yeah.
That's what I thought.
MARLON PRYOR: I know, right?
MELISSA CAMPBELL: Coach Mulkey would be proud.
I enjoy it.
I love it.
It's fun.
Do you all of a sudden open your mouth
and you hear him coming out?
All the time.
Probably every practice, game days on Saturday.
I say stuff at practice all the time.
I just gotta catch myself, like, ah.
I sound exactly like him.
The first time in 10 years that a Summerville
basketball team will be 4 and 0 if you win tonight.
You understand that?
Yes, sir.
And you get after it.
You got it?
Yes, sir.
- Everybody, you got it? - Yes, sir.
Let's go.
After having those talks with him
and watching how hard he coached us
and how much he cared for us, it all--
it all turned out, he was a good guy.
And when I met him, I thought he was great,
because he was ready to go to war to fight for me
so I could play--
so I could play basketball and softball.
Well, I'm glad after that talk that Coach Mulkey did believe
in you and got you on the right track,
because we wouldn't have been together for sure.
[CHUCKLING]
[INAUDIBLE] worked out.
When he met Marlon, Marlon was kind of tough.
He was hanging out with a group.
He was thinking that he was tough.
PORTIA PRYOR: He was rough around the edges,
always fighting, getting in trouble.
He was always hanging with the wrong crowd, the bad kids
who just was always in trouble, always
in the principal's office.
THOMAS NEWMAN: He reached a point
that he even crossed Coach Mulkey a little bit
with not doing right.
And we finally got to the point that we had to have a sit-down.
And it was back against the wall time for him.
He was on his last strike.
It finally hit him.
Coach, man, I was thinking about him lately.
He coached me hard.
He was there to teach me stuff and guide me.
You know, as I got older, now I'm looking back,
you know, he was preparing me for life, to become a man,
young man.
And he definitely was the perfect father figure.
I think he was drawn to the kids
who needed him the most, just like the kids were
drawn to him.
The ones who needed him the most found him.
I'm from a region of South Carolina,
a small country town, no stoplights, no stores around.
Very humble beginning.
DORA GREEN: AJ was in Gregg Middle School
when Coach Mulkey met him.
And they had, like, a basketball game,
the students against the staff.
AJ Green.
[CHEERING]
I dunked on a teacher.
And it took off from there.
He was like, hey, you want to come on and play basketball?
DORA GREEN: And that's how it began.
He played both sports during that time,
basketball and football.
He saw something special, and he pushed AJ to the limit.
You know, you can do this.
You can be anything you want to be.
I struggled a lot in school with,
like, reading comprehension.
And when I met Coach Louis, he saw something that was wrong.
So I got tested, and they found out I was dyslexic.
I remember, you know, going to different rival high schools.
They would say, AJ can't read.
He's a dummy.
You know, I made the best of that, all right,
because Coach Louis pushed me every day.
You know, you don't have to be embarrassed about that.
They can't do what you do on the field.
So that's why they're chanting these things.
And then from there on, he preached
to me, AJ, treat this schoolwork just like you do on the field.
And that's when everything-- like,
the switch flipped for me.
And Coach Louis helped me overcome all that growing up.
Louis went to school and sat there
all week with him in his class to make
sure he was doing his work.
THOMAS NEWMAN: If he was going to make it,
he had to get the ship righted in a hurry.
He'd sit right there with him and make sure he's
getting the work done.
And I know that AJ appreciated that.
AJ GREEN: You know, at first it was embarrassing.
But he always preached to me, AJ,
you have a God-given talent, athletic-wise.
You know, everybody's not blessed with you.
But you have to work hard in the classroom.
If it wasn't for him, I probably wouldn't make it.
In a lot of ways AJ saw Coach Mulkey as a father
figure, a friend, a coach.
DORA GREEN: Like the big brother he never had.
When I was younger I lost my older
brother in a car accident.
They were on their way to a carnival
at Beech Hill Elementary, and somebody ran them off the road.
My aunt was driving, lost control of the car, hit a tree.
You know, my brother got killed.
My aunt got paralyzed from the waist down.
My two older cousins had plates in their legs.
And I didn't have one scratch.
Having AJ losing his brother at an early age,
it kept him humble and it made him a better person
and try to always do the right things.
AJ GREEN: When I met Coach Louis, told him the story.
And he was like, you're blessed.
And you know, my parents told me from day one, you're blessed.
You're here for a reason.
And Coach Louis made me understand
that in the bigger picture.
I think losing his brother at that young age
was really difficult for him.
And in a way it opened up a spot for Coach Mulkey to step in.
Me and Coach Louis had an unbelievable bond together.
He-- if it wasn't for him, I wouldn't be where I'm at today.
[SNIFFLING]
I never had a father in my life and a guy,
like, as someone you could talk to on a personal level,
somebody you can call, you can talk to,
somebody you can just sit on with,
like he really cared and talked to you as a father.
So I mean, that guy put a big impact on my life.
ANTWON PENDARVIS: My mother, she worked two jobs
and wasn't able to pick me up one night.
And he actually drove me home.
When he did that, I was like, yeah,
he really cares about us-- not just me, but us as kids.
You don't get a lot like him.
You don't get--
You don't get that.
You don't get people like him.
Sorry.
Just to have somebody who gives that much god
damn care about you--
I lived in the projects.
He the only coach who ever came to get
me from out the projects.
He would come to my house and get me for practice.
He would do those things.
And none of them other coaches did that stuff.
This the old infamous Haven Oaks, where I grew up at.
They were no projects.
It ain't the same as it used to be.
But that's my building right there.
If I stayed on the other side--
[INAUDIBLE] stay over there.
Oh, ain't none of this was here when I grew up.
THOMAS NEWMAN: Ralphie and Courtland
were part of the team, very talented players.
But man, it was a struggle to keep them right.
And as a matter of fact, there was times
we had to let both of them go.
And Louis was like, well, let's give them another chance.
And I said, I don't know.
And Louis went to bat for them.
I'm on the stairs of the project.
I'm in the projects.
I'm on the stairs, chilling with [INAUDIBLE]..
And he gets out and comes up there.
And the whole time you're walking down, what's going on?
What's going on?
You're not going to come?
You're part of this team still, man.
I know you can't play stuff like this.
And I'm telling him, Coach, man, you know,
I'm not with it right now.
Like, I don't get to play, man.
Like-- and he sat down with me on the project steps.
And all the boys left or whatever.
And it's just me and Coach.
And it's like, man, listen.
Don't worry about none of that.
These boys love you.
They love that you still come out here
even though you can't play.
You come out here every day.
You at practice every day.
You-- whatever, you're here.
When he got done talking to you.
That shit resonated with you.
And all that stuff, man, like, you just feel--
it's like he just gave you all his energy.
Ain't none of them come out there in the projects
to come and get me.
That man did.
THOMAS NEWMAN: I know they appreciate that.
Because both of those guys, you know, just looking back at it
now, they were little rascals in high school.
And they know that.
They were very lovable as players,
and they were good players.
But there were some nights and some practice
issues and things, you just said, listen,
man, we're done with you.
And Louis wouldn't let them go.
He was going to continue to punish them and give them
another chance but let them know that, you know,
they were right at the edge of not getting
to be a part of this anymore.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
And right here this boy get locked up.
I'm running down the street.
They bucking him.
Somebody would come to the classroom.
Hey, man, Ralphie, Ralphie getting locked up.
Ralphie what?
RALPHIE MOSTELLER: One of my worst things
just period, before the game, man,
I was going to make a sale.
I was doing some things I shouldn't have did.
And Coach already warned me, man, like,
yo, you in hot water.
I've seen your name on the narcotics list.
You need to chill out.
And me, I didn't listen to nobody.
I still wanted to do what I wanted to do.
Trying to make money.
I wanted to buy nice clothes, a TV, a Playstation.
I didn't have that.
So that's what I wanted.
And before the game, I think it was Hilton Head we was playing,
man, I went and was handling my business,
and unfortunately got pulled over.
Yeah, that's where that shit happened at, man.
I remember when I pulled out of Somerset that day,
right before that game, man, I got
pulled over with all that bud and money in my pocket.
RALPHIE MOSTELLER: This is literally right before the bus
was about to load.
I seen the rest of the team at the store
getting candy and drinks and all to go for the ride.
And there I was in the car.
I saw Coach Newman ride past, man.
Coach T Newman, man.
I seen him, oh, that's--
I'm like, oh, man.
I done messed up now.
Yeah, police came.
They pulled us over.
I had a half a pound of stuff in my pants.
Pretty bad.
He shouldn't have been there.
If maybe we would have been like,
hey, man, you don't need to make that move.
Or hey, Ralph, man, you don't think that's not a good idea?
Right before the game.
I don't know what I was thinking, man.
Ralphie's arrest was definitely
a tipping point for him.
And it took away the positive thing that he had
and the positive influence that Louis was on him every day.
That's Coach Mulkey.
You've got to learn from this.
But not only he--
he never bashed him one time.
Any other coach in that situation--
He would have gave up on you, man.
--any of that, that man was kicked off the team.
He would have let you go, man.
I promise you.
He was trying to save us, man, keep us on track.
Going crazy and stuff.
He saw that potential in us, man.
That was an angel, boy.
We had an angel walking on this earth like many others.
But that was our angel.
Like, that was our man.
Coach still fought for me and gave me a chance.
Don't give up on this kid.
And I came back that year, and they still--
I tried out again.
They still let me came back.
Louis was like his own guidance counselor.
You know, not just punishing people.
He knew how to talk to kids the right way
to help them out with issues they were having too.
He took kids that had had terrible backgrounds
and were heading nowhere and had already been into some trouble
in either middle school or early high school
and still got them turned around.
Summerville was a diverse school.
But when Louis started coaching, he never saw color in the kids.
Louis didn't care about skin color or where you came from.
It was based off of your character and your talent.
THOMAS NEWMAN: White kids, Black kids-- that
didn't make any difference.
He wanted everybody to get along.
We would go to basketball camp, and it
was time for room assignments.
And the kids would say, well, I'm staying with so-and-so.
And Louis said, no, you're not.
And Louis would put the Black kids and the white kids
in rooms together.
We would sit at tables.
And this is football season or basketball season.
But we would sit at tables for pregame meals.
He'd make the kids mix it up and make
the Black kids get in right--
he did all that stuff the right way.
BRANDEN MILLHOUSE: I remember a time he sat us down
to teach us love and respect, because it was actually
Martin Luther King's birthday.
And text message was going around school, kind of
like an African-American joke.
And he got wind of it and absolutely
just went irate, because he did not stand with that at all.
He kind of really wanted to let us know, like, you know,
we're better than that.
He knew that with what was going on and some of the things
that were being said, showing the actual speech and sitting
in the room had to be a lead-in to a way to alleviate
the problem that was being had.
And it's just another one of those--
I mean, if there was a book written,
it would be "100 Ways of How to Deal
With Issues" by Louis Mulkey.
RALPHIE MOSTELLER: It was an uphill battle for Coach, man.
A lot of people didn't really care for him.
They didn't understand him.
I don't think they understood why
he was doing what he was doing.
JAKE JENKINS: He was the first coach that really fought
for putting a Black quarterback on the field
because he saw greatness in the kids.
He knew that, you know, the Black athletes who
were talented enough and smart enough to lead Summerville
in not only academics but also in athletics, on the field
and on the court.
One in particular, he knew that this guy could
be the great quarterback that Summerville
needs to take this to the next level
and win the state championship.
But he couldn't play quarterback on varsity because
of the racial divide of a Black kid
shouldn't be in that position playing quarterback.
Back to the politics.
There's Summerville.
THOMAS NEWMAN: Summerville is a very old school and
traditional town and school.
Some of the administration and just some
of the teachers in general, sometimes they would not
understand Louis's ways, thought that Louis
was showing preferential treatment to people
that didn't deserve it.
I won't say exile, but sometimes he
was exiled from coaching football because
of his personal beliefs that the playing field was equal,
no matter what your race was.
So he got a lot of pushback from that.
And I think that drove him to do more.
Regardless of what all they tell you,
they didn't like this man, because that man
liked Black people.
There were a lot of things that shouldn't have been going
on over there at that school.
And he knew it.
And he was determined to turn it around.
Back in my days at Summerville,
there was a lot of scholarship offers or letters to intended
school for multiple sports, various sports-- soccer,
basketball, baseball, football, just for being African-American
in Summerville.
You wasn't given that opportunity.
And you were very lucky if you had somebody
to go to bat for you and go beyond
to find out what was going on.
Coach found letters himself in the trashcan
of his student athletes.
And he's wondering what the hell is going on.
He would take it upon himself to take those letters to them
and make sure they got those letters, make sure they took
their college visits, make sure their parents knew
what was going on.
So that alone just identified his character as a person.
Coach was a unique individual, man.
He knew how to get on that level with you and talk to you
and vibe with you and make you feel like he's one of you.
You know what I'm saying?
He wasn't above you.
He didn't act like he was high and mighty
because he's a captain in the fire department.
He's going to talk to you, and he's going to treat you
and give you what you give him.
He was rough and rugged like that.
I love that man.
I respect that man to death.
PATRICIA TOLIVER: I think that Coach Mulkey approached
people for who they were.
You know, he saw their heart and he saw their needs.
He didn't look at them like, this is a Black kid,
this is a Hispanic kid, this is a white kid,
this is an Asian kid.
And he responded to them in that kind of way.
So they never felt judged by him.
And he was able to confront them in a way
that they would accept.
We got [INAUDIBLE].
His thing was about being tough--
mentally tough, physically tough,
listening to your coaches.
He coached the way that he knew he was.
AJ GREEN: We had a lot of rough kids, no dad.
And you get that Black male to respect you,
you're doing something right, because that's
not going to happen every day.
We believed that Coach was preaching the right things.
A lot of good stories on these buses, man.
He had a vision of what he saw and how he saw it.
It was definitely something that he talked about from day one,
is just being the men that he wanted us to be.
And there was a step-by-step program
that came along with it.
So definitely it was something that he believed.
And before other people can believe something,
you gotta believe it.
And he believed it first.
And we all bought into the system.
He saw the bigger picture.
He understood.
You know, he saw it before anybody else did.
Before we even saw it ourselves, he knew.
So he would always try to prepare us for the next level,
because he knew that we were going to the next level.
He really cared about us as kids, not just as basketball
players, which is a lot different than most coaches
that you run into.
He knew that you had to depend on each other.
It wasn't a one-man show.
Coach Mulkey's expectations of them
sort of drove them in a way, because they knew, they
did not want to disappoint him.
MELISSA CAMPBELL: Sometimes I wonder if they knew how hard it
must have been for him to manage the full-time firefighting
job and all the demands of that, and then to come in here
and be so energetic and so ready to tackle them,
so focused on taking care of his kids.
You know, Coach Louis was taking me to the fire station
sometimes and, you know, preached to me about being
a brotherhood and the life-and-death situation that
he puts himself in each and every week,
that he's relying on his brother to protect him,
and then doing that vise versa.
The fire service is a lot like sports.
And that's why Louis was drawn towards the fire department.
And that's why he loved sports also.
And that's why he succeeded in both--
because he knew both of them were team building.
MARCUS MORRIS: Plenty of times when we got to practice,
he was coming in and he was still in his fire gear,
still in his blue suit.
I still remember him now just coming
in and getting ready to go get changed to come to practice.
I know for me, it made me want to care
more about what we were doing.
If these buses could talk, the stuff
they could tell on us, man.
The stuff they could tell.
The bus ride was the way we build, you know, you laugh,
you have some of your good times.
It brought us together.
It showed us how on those distances we really got close
and we really talked.
You got to learn people as an individual.
You know, you had to learn your family.
Nobody ever sat just with the same person on bus rides.
It was always a switch-up.
But those bus rides were times where, you know,
we got to know each other even closer.
BRANDEN MILLHOUSE: You could feel it, that we were actually
a real family, a real brotherhood,
and still to this day, I would do anything for those guys.
We left it all on the bus.
Of course, do you remember how many times we came
up here after practice, man?
Boy, too many times, bud.
Good old Tastee Freez.
Too many times, bud.
Yeah.
For Coach.
One more time for Coach.
One of our favorite places to go
because of the school being so close to it
was the Tastee Freez.
MARLON PRYOR: He'd bring us lunch,
bring us food from Tastee Freez across the street,
bring it to the classroom, have a meet-up,
say everybody sit down, and eat in the classroom.
MELISSA CAMPBELL: But while we were eating,
he was also forging relationships.
It was a down time.
And, of course, I always say that boys,
you feed them and love them.
They're very easy.
MARLON PRYOR: Beat about what's going on with our lives,
how everyone is doing, how are you doing.
It wouldn't be so much of what's going on on the field, court,
classroom.
We'd sit down and just have heart-to-hearts.
Man, you've been a killer on the streets, man.
You know our parents was gone.
A long time.
We've been pretty much raising ourselves.
So then he'll grab us, grab hold of us.
Do this.
Yeah.
And like any other coach would have gave up on you, man.
Would have kicked us off the team,
would have did this and that.
He gave me countless chances, boy.
I know that.
I've been talking to them boys.
Were you telling me you're coaching now?
Everybody is coaching now.
That man done made thousands of coaches,
and he don't even know.
Man, I got pictures of them boys, man.
Word.
Original.
Original number 10.
Original number 14.
That's classic Mulkey right there.
COURTLAND MORRISSETTE: I've never
met a man like him, never.
There is no one that I could compare to him.
Like, I get chills when I talk about him.
Big ups to Coach, man.
One time for one time.
One time for the big guy.
A lot of things we did was off the basketball court,
and I think that's what helped us grow so much,
was just the fact that we did things away from basketball.
Man, check this out, man.
This damn-- old shoes.
This boy got them?
They dusted off.
He got them.
[CHUCKLING]
The old Summerville Nike--
Blood, sweat, and tears in these.
Blood, sweat, and tears in these right here.
We went and put our names on them.
We went [INAUDIBLE].
Coach got tired of us trying to be different, man.
Everybody wearing different--
Everybody wearing different Nikes and Reeboks.
I can't believe I still got these, man.
Man, you got to clean them up and put them on one time, man.
Yeah.
Green Wave.
Green Wave, baby.
Green and yellow.
THOMAS NEWMAN: A lot of times with teachers and coaches,
they try so hard to gain the affection of the young people
they're teaching or coaching that a lot of times they
lose their respect.
But Louis had their respect but also their affection
because they knew what he would do for them.
They knew he would go the extra mile,
and he would do whatever they needed from him.
He would provide that if he was able to.
DWAYNE SIMMONS: He was something special.
He had-- you know, to be able to do everything he was doing
and make everybody feel special.
MARLON PRYOR: A lot of people definitely
didn't realize how great of a person Mulkey was
and how much he touched the souls of not just
the athletes but the community.
DWAYNE SIMMONS: He believed in us more
than we believed in ourselves.
Like, he knew we had what it takes
to win state championship.
We still didn't even believe it.
People was not thinking about basketball here in Summerville.
The hallway, the infamous hallway before we went
out them doors right there.
This is the infamous hallway right here.
This hallway-- we get to look at the opponent over there,
walk out that way, and then that's when we war ready
when we get out there, man.
This locker room, oh.
Somebody gets a game ball [INAUDIBLE]..
BRANDEN MILLHOUSE: Everything he said actually moved people.
And a lot of coaches, when they they'll talk to you
or have a speech to a team, you can't really feel it.
But he'd make you want to go out there.
And I remember at times we would dive for a basketball
and hit the brick wall and somebody would
have a knot on their head.
They'll get up and get right back to it because he
made us so tough and want to succeed
and made you realize that there's four other people
on the court depending on you.
Man, I remember, our JV tournament, man.
We lost the night before.
Man, we played so hard.
But he didn't come down hard on us.
He just let us know, we've got to come back tomorrow,
you know what I'm saying.
Bring it even more, you know what I'm saying?
Don't be too hard on yourself, but tomorrow bring it.
He said that there's something special about you guys.
And I do believe that you will win state championship.
My guys.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
There's that camera.
Hey, ain't no smiling going on today.
We got bills to take care of.
You understand that? - Yes, sir.
Let's go.
ANN MULKEY: Two weeks before Louis died,
he said, Mom, I never want to leave Summerville.
He said, I want to eat, sleep, and die here.
And that was very strange to me.
It gives me chills every time I think about it, almost
like a premonition.
In fact, one of the guys that worked with him
on the basketball team said, I just
had that feeling that Louis had that premonition.
And that was Tillman Millhouse who said that.
He said, I'm going to be a fireman.
I'm going to be the best fireman.
He said, but Mr. Millhouse, when I go out,
I'm going out with a bang.
MAN (ON RADIO): Dispatch at Engine 11 [INAUDIBLE]
ANN MULKEY: About 6:30 that night,
I asked him if he was coming home in the morning
or going straight to the school from the fire station.
He said, no, I'm coming home.
I'll see you in the morning.
And that was his last words to me, because shortly after they
went over to the fire.
MAN (ON RADIO): Engine 12 [INAUDIBLE]
HOWARD ARMSTRONG: I arrived on the scene.
I was the [INAUDIBLE] on the scene.
During the fire, I saw the firemen going in,
which confused me.
The dispatch came back over and said
they had a call that someone was trapped in the building.
When I got the call that Louis was missing,
I immediately got in my car and raced to the incident.
I saw a column of smoke in the sky, and I knew this was bad.
And this is where the fire, I think, starts to make the jump.
Is everybody out where you are?
No, sir.
We still have guys in there.
I did get a call.
And he said, we want you to know that Louis, Louis is in there.
And it's hard seeing the flames and knowing what was going on.
BILLY PEREZ: Once we got to the scene,
they said it was very chaotic.
By that time, it was just an inferno.
I've covered hundreds of fires.
But I began to feel something different.
There was something different about this fire.
CHRIS DIGBY: As soon as I saw how serious the fire was
and how big of a deal it was, I knew in my heart
that Louis was going to be there.
Any time something like that happened,
I was always a little bit nervous
because he was like that.
But he always came out on the other side of it.
I could chance.
[INAUDIBLE] anybody from 15?
We went in that building not knowing how outgunned we were.
The day before the fire, we had basketball camp.
I think we won three or four games that night.
We came back.
Everybody was in a good mood.
We're flying high.
Everybody is at 100 right now.
Everything had seemed like a big fairy tale.
Good evening.
We have some breaking news to tell you.
That fire is burning at the Sofa Super Store
on Savannah Highway.
Massive fire, West Ashley, at a furniture
store with intense heat threatening a neighborhood.
You can only imagine when it's the real deal
and the amount of smoke and heat and just the maze.
This is telling all the firemen inside to get out.
I thought I was going to die in the building.
And I ran out of there.
And you know, for me, it became a sense of,
I'm just going to fight until the end.
And I was lucky enough to fall on a fireman,
and he helped get me out.
REPORTER: Tragedy in Charleston.
Right now, emergency workers are searching the rubble
for firefighters who were last seen fighting a monstrous blaze
at a West Ashley business.
ANN MULKEY: I was sitting here all night watching the fire
and listening.
And I saw Louis.
He was standing looking at the fire, in his T-shirt,
and he's holding on to his coat.
People were calling.
And I said, he's fine.
I've seen him.
He's OK.
But they knew that he was not OK.
ELAINE LEWIS: I clearly remember the day of the fire.
A co-worker and I were standing on the hallway.
I was getting ready to lock up the school.
I clearly heard Louis' voice down in the gym
just yelling and yelling.
And I said, why is Louis yelling at those kids like that?
So I proceeded to come down the hallway to look into the gym,
and no one was in there.
And my coworker, she told me, she said,
Ms. Lewis, Louis is not here.
So all of a sudden when we left out the gym,
I happened to look up.
And I saw two white shadows go out the side door of the gym.
When I saw the news, I knew that Louis was in that fire.
RUSTY THOMAS: Get everybody out of the building.
We still can't find the Captain of 15.
While I was watching the news, I
got a call from one of our coaches
that they were unfortunately very,
very certain that Louis is one of the guys missing
at the fire.
I remember getting out of class and pulling it out,
and I had missed phone calls and text messages from everybody.
I opened up one from one of my friends.
And he was like, bro, you've got to come over to the house.
Like, just come over.
Like, what's going on?
Like, what's up?
He's like, yo, Smokey.
They can't find him.
I'm like, what are you talking about, can't find him?
Reports first came that Louis was missing.
He was the first one over time.
Other voices started coming over the radio.
MELVIN CHAMPAIGN: In Jesus' name, amen.
HOWARD ARMSTRONG: This is what you're
seeing-- the fire tornado, I call it, where
it's really whirling around.
It's nothing but flames and smoke.
And everything is so intense.
Everything is on fire.
MELVIN CHAMPAIGN: Which way out?
I need some help out!
MICHAEL FRENCH: Mayday.
RUSTY THOMAS: Everybody out.
Everybody out of the building.
We still can't find the Captain of 15.
JONATHAN TYRELL: I'm inside.
Can you help, please?
DISPATCH: You're inside?
Whereabouts?
JONATHAN TYRELL: At the back.
DISPATCH: Oh, at the back?
HOWARD ARMSTRONG: And this was the actual last two
firemen that actually made it out of the structure.
ANN MULKEY: The chief and the coroner
came in and said, write your dentist, his name,
and the dentist's name down.
And the chief was saying, well, they've
been transported to different hospitals,
making us think that maybe there were alive.
And that's the way you took it, the way he put it out there.
And then my husband just yelled, for God's sake,
tell us if they're alive or gone.
TILLMAN MILLHOUSE: And it came back
to me that Mr. Millhouse, when I go out,
I'm going out with a bang.
And when I heard the tape, I could hear Louie's voice say--
I think he said, mayday, mayday.
LOUIS MULKEY: Mayday!
Car 1.
Tell my wife I said--
CHIEF: Go ahead.
LOUIS MULKEY: I love you.
Well, nine of America's bravest
losing their lives on a single night
in Charleston, South Carolina.
An inferno at a furniture warehouse
described by one witness as a tornado of flames.
JAKE JENKINS: Carrying him outside from the building,
it was painful.
It was a sense of, this is unreal.
I couldn't believe this has happened.
MARK DAVIS: I ask myself every day, how did I make it out when
Louis was a better firefighter?
He was stronger, probably smarter,
and he had so much to live for
[SOBBING]
COURTLAND MORRISSETTE: Like, what
do you mean Coach Mulkey gone?
I'm like-- I'm hysterical now, because we
knew something was going on.
And, like, I'm shaking.
It's like-- it's crazy.
So we just kind of all sat there.
We're just, like, waiting-- like, waiting for his name
to pop up across the screen.
Like, yeah, they found him.
I could not console him.
He just kept screaming and saying no, no.
Louis can't be gone.
But you know, I told him.
If Louis had been in that fire, I said, you know that was him.
He was going to be first in, last out.
And all we could do was just sit on the phone and just pray
and cry and just think about why did it happen
and how did it happen.
I just hung up the phone, and I immediately called his phone.
And he didn't answer.
He always answered for me, no matter what he was doing.
And I remember calling his phone again and just
listening to his voicemail.
I was-- I was shocked.
I feel like a person like Coach Mulkey,
with people like that in this world,
they don't come around often.
Losing a person like that, it just shook up the atmosphere.
I was crushed.
I had just seen this man.
I had just seen him at my graduation.
I had just seen his big smile.
I just hugged this man.
I just-- and just like that.
DWAYNE SIMMONS: I lost a piece of me.
I bawled my eyes out.
The last thing I was thinking about
was playing basketball or sports.
It was-- it was devastating.
MARCUS MORRIS: I could just remember just going--
going to my bed, putting my head on my pillow,
and just kind of letting out for a while, you know, crying.
I just didn't have any words.
It just-- it was too real for me, the fact
that he wasn't going to be there anymore.
And it was probably one of my most emotional days of my life,
I could say.
They were just devastated.
They were in tears.
They could not function.
They were just devastated.
It was like every one of them seemed to feel like they had
lost, like, a piece of them.
WAYNE MULKEY: The largest loss of firefighters since 9/11.
So it impacted not only the local community,
but across the US, all the fire departments,
even internationally.
We were getting calls and messages from fire
departments across the world.
I think that was the point where he became my hero.
Listening to the radio calls and talking to the firefighters
afterwards and the stories from the guys
that were there with him and knowing what he did.
BILLY PEREZ: He was always trying to think ahead.
And I think that was probably went in the directions
and think, once you guys got inside.
You know, he was managing.
He was coaching.
He was he was trying to flank to the left and cut the fire off.
You realize how special that person was, even
if you didn't see it before.
ANN MULKEY: The funeral was on a Sunday.
It was the hottest day we'd ever had.
And it was amazing to ride down the road
and see people standing alongside the road and flags
when we got to the cemetery.
People couldn't believe the number
of people that were there.
MARK DAVIS: Whenever Louis' body was brought,
that was the closest I came to breaking down,
that realization that I would never see him again,
I would never pick on him again, you know,
that we would never have those friendly rivalries.
It's like losing nine of your best friends.
MELISSA CAMPBELL: And we all met, and we all walked
in holding hands together.
And it was a powerful time.
Just hearing multiple different people just giving
their stories about how Mulkey touched their life, for me,
it just kind of made me sit back and really
think about how much this one person really meant to my life.
For a long time, just not really
believing it, questioning, you know, faith and life and why.
THOMAS NEWMAN: I think any time, no matter
how strong your faith is, I think sometimes
you can be tested a little bit.
He was so young, and he was doing so much good
for our young men and for our community and extreme grieving
period of a solid week we didn't go to basketball camp.
We stayed away from basketball for a week.
When he was gone, there was some fear for them
that they might not be able to create
his intensity, his energy without him being there.
That person you knew who always had your back
and looked out for you is not here no more.
So what do you do?
MARLON PRYOR: These first couple of days, it's like, we were
pretty much bodies in the gym.
We were here, but we weren't physically--
I mean, we weren't mentally here.
Physically we were here doing it.
But we could tell the way the atmosphere
was, everyone missed him.
Without having Mulkey was almost like not
having part of your heartbeat.
I remember the first day we got back on and practiced,
it was bad.
Because, like, we were missing something.
We were missing our spark.
We lost some games, and everyone were
not sure how to continue the season
and how to finish strong.
And it was tough.
You had mixed emotions.
We were having basketball practice a couple of months
after he passed.
And we weren't playing good at all.
And I remember Coach Newman yelling
at us, my dad yelling at us.
And it's just a bad day.
Out of nowhere, the fire alarm comes on,
and a basketball comes from the back hallway.
That's weird.
And then the ball comes.
And you're like, man.
Everybody just looked up and like-- this is Coach Louis.
BRANDEN MILLHOUSE: Right then we knew
that it was Coach Mulkey telling us, like, hey,
you guys need to get it together.
And he held onto that ball.
He didn't put it back on the rack.
And we kept the ball throughout the whole season.
MARLON PRYOR: It was a lot of emotion.
And the fire department, they saw the emotion in us.
They saw the emotion in the guys and how they were out there
knowing that when you looked at that bench,
he was no longer sitting there.
Then they brought out the helmet, the helmet
with his number, the helmet that symbolized him to bring
to our games so we could put on that bench
and not just knowing that, oh, he's no longer here
but his spirit is here with us.
Seeing the helmet in his seat that he always sat in,
it was always a sense of confidence boosting.
When times got tough sometimes on the court,
you know you could always look up and glance at that helmet
and just know-- you could see him there,
and you can hear him what he would
be telling you in your head.
MELISSA CAMPBELL: As they began to play,
as they tried to pick up and create
a new normal for themselves, the family came back together.
We never weren't a family.
We were always a family, but so much
stronger now because we'd been through this tragedy together.
We all felt that each and every day
we stepped on that court that he was there.
He was right there with us every step of the way.
THOMAS NEWMAN: The team remembered
that there was a mission involved from Coach Mulkey.
And that mission was you were going to win the state
championship your senior years.
Leading up to the playoff run, I mean,
we would have team meetings, you know,
film study trying to prepare us for each and every week.
We were still the underdogs.
And we were still not picked to win.
And then, you know, we started hitting our strides each
and every week.
It ain't about me.
It's about us now.
Fight.
I clearly remember the game against Sumter.
It was at the Citadel, and it was one game
before the championship game.
MARLON PRYOR: That semi-final game was definitely a dogfight.
It went back and forth pretty much from the opening
tip-off all game long.
The gym was going crazy.
AJ GREEN: Buckets after buckets after buckets.
You know, he calls a timeout.
And like, you know, guys, we need some stops.
And everybody looked at the helmet.
The whole arena was decked out with Louis Mulkey hats.
And they just started chanting his name, Louis Mulkey.
[CHANTING]
And I remember talking in the middle of a sentence--
you know, what we're doing, offense,
defense, whatever it was.
And I just stopped.
And they stopped.
And we just listened to it.
I didn't say anything else.
That still gives me chills.
MARCUS MORRIS: That moment, it kind of really, really,
really became clear that Mulkey had become the Wave.
Like, he was the Wave.
MELISSA CAMPBELL: We went from an atmosphere
where we weren't a basketball school
to really the whole school.
Because he impacted so many students,
the whole school bought in.
And we had gone from "there's no way they can do it"
to "look at us, we're winning."
CHRIS DIGBY: Momentum was building,
and we were having success again.
And a wave of excitement throughout our community
was building.
And it showed up when there were butts in the seats with people
there to watch our games.
And the gym was packed night in and night out.
DEONTE RUSSIAN: Leading up to the state championship,
it was hectic, man.
Entering South Carolina Gamecock Stadium, it was unreal.
Like, we're here again.
ANNOUNCER: The class 4A boys match-up
has Spartanburg squaring off against Summerville.
And Coach Newman just wanted to remind
us what we was doing it for.
We had one goal, and that was to win.
Win it for Coach Mulkey.
ANNOUNCER: The Summerville Green Wave [INAUDIBLE]..
BRANDEN MILLHOUSE: It's definitely an energy I've never
felt before playing basketball.
There was a magical feeling.
It felt like, wow, we were here, this moment.
DEONTE RUSSIAN: When you're in the state championship game,
everything is magnified.
The lights are on you.
It's bright, shining bright.
Kind of looking at you in the face, like
it's-- what you going to do?
I remember before that game, there was no speech.
We all cried like babies, and we all touched his helmet.
It was on after that.
ANNOUNCER: Number 22, senior forward, AJ Green.
And the remainder of the Green Wave.
The energy the people brought was amazing.
And I'm getting numb and chills just thinking about it.
The atmosphere was crazy.
Every possession counted.
Turnover, fouls, everything counted.
MARCUS MORRIS: I remember one play,
Branden passed a bounce pass to me.
And I caught it on the baseline, went up and laid
it up to put us up, I think.
As soon as I hit the basket, the crowd
erupted, just because we needed anything to kind of pull
us away at that point in time to give
us a little bit of cushion.
BRANDEN MILLHOUSE: I turned over the ball twice.
I made two bad passes, and I never really did that before.
And I got down on myself.
I remember looking over at his seat
with the firefighter helmet.
And I felt something that said "let's go" in my head.
But we couldn't put them away.
We were going buckets for buckets,
and we did start to panic a little bit.
It was like, you know, this game is a super-close game.
Anybody can take it.
ANNOUNCER: Oh, nice move by Robinson.
Now gets it inside.
Perfect pass.
It's off the mark.
Second follow by [INAUDIBLE] goes, though.
And Spartanburg takes the one-point lead.
MELISSA CAMPBELL: And then it got really tight at the end.
The pressure was overwhelming at times.
ANNOUNCER: Quick pass up the floor.
Shot.
[INAUDIBLE]
We had to come back.
We had to take the lead.
And it came down to, we're up one.
ANNOUNCER: Number 18, passing outside.
Quentin Miller passes up the 3.
A 2 now.
It's off the mark.
No good.
Had a small lead, a couple of seconds left.
We thought, man, this thing is in the bag.
We're kind of looking around.
ANNOUNCER: But now with a chance of scoring
the final points for the Green Wave here tonight.
And then Bruce missed the free throw.
ANNOUNCER: 0.7 seconds left.
Vikings, desperation 3.
And it goes in.
Can you believe it?
No way he just made that shot, right at the buzzer.
And I just fell to my knees--
we didn't finish.
We didn't finish like Coach Louis wanted us to finish.
MELISSA CAMPBELL: I thought we had this.
I thought we won the game.
And then this happened.
THOMAS NEWMAN: I felt a tremendous amount of guilt,
not only to lose it that way--
I feel like we let some people down.
We let the kids down.
We let Louis down.
MELISSA CAMPBELL: We already lost Coach Mulkey.
How can I possibly console them?
ANNOUNCER: All kinds of crowd control
problems here, as everyone is running onto the floor.
People crying, just tears-- like, no way we didn't just
lose to a buzzer beater.
ANTWON PENDARVIS: You know, coming so far and then
something so important to us, you know,
fall out your fingertips, you know, it hurts.
MARCUS MORRIS: I have my hands on my head just saying no.
Like, there's no way.
There's no way possible that this
is how this is going to end.
THOMAS NEWMAN: They didn't know what to think
at first, completely let down.
They thought that they didn't do enough.
I'm standing like, man, this ain't real, man.
Like, they can't lose like that.
I did not notice the referees at all.
ANNOUNCER: There is no mistaking the fact a long 3 goes.
The question is, was it in time?
I want to say that I blacked out in that moment.
THOMAS NEWMAN: I was trying to get
as close to them as I could.
Because even though the other team was jumping around,
there was still the situation at hand--
for the kid to catch the rebound, take a dribble or two,
and then launch the ball, it was going
to be darn near impossible that it was going to be good.
It just-- the emotion of the moment
made it seem like it wasn't good.
But I also had a pretty strong feeling that it
was after the light went off.
ANNOUNCER: The officials talking.
Huge crowd.
It does not go.
It does not count.
Summerville wins the 4A state title.
And there is disappointment all around.
BRANDEN MILLHOUSE: And our crowd went from crying to cheering,
and their crowd went from cheering to crying.
It's just a flip-flop.
It was just like the whole game.
You couldn't have scripted it any better.
VAUGHN PENDARVIS: Then the celebration began.
You know, the goal was accomplished.
It was like-- that was like, golly.
Like, the writing was on the wall.
Like, some things is destiny.
Like, you can't compete with that.
I was playing for Coach Mulkey and God.
That wasn't going in.
But it did.
Coach Mulkey came through.
And I wasn't good.
And I just looked to the sky.
Like, thank you.
Thank you, Coach Louis.
And we all knew that was him.
ANNOUNCER: The Green Wave win the 4A
boys' title in a [INAUDIBLE].
THOMAS NEWMAN: Greatest state championships ever.
The trophy was huge, of course.
You know, that solidified us winning the championship.
But just as important to us was being able to raise up
the actual fire helmet and just to say, you know, Mulkey,
we did it.
It was surreal in even all the way down to how it ended.
It was like a fairy tale ending.
ANN MULKEY: Basically a miracle.
Here was my son Louis predicting that this
is not your year this year.
But next year is going to be your year.
And it was their year.
It was just amazing to know that he knew that.
In his heart, he knew that.
And he told them.
That wave became a tidal wave.
I'd say that coach Mulkey's legacy
and what he left behind definitely
taught us many things through life.
And the fact that no matter what's going on,
there's always good that comes out of it.
When we got back to Summerville, instead of going
right to the school, we took a detour to the grave site
where Louis was buried.
MARLON PRYOR: Everyone got there,
gathered around in silence.
Since we sat our medals onto the grave and let him know,
hey, we won this championship for you.
We got the job done.
AJ GREEN: He saw this in us.
We didn't see this in ourselves.
He made us a believer, and that's all because of him.
THOMAS NEWMAN: And it was just a very
powerful moment to see young men handling their emotions
so well.
ANN MULKEY: 2016 I got a call one
afternoon from Miss Campbell.
And she says, can you come to the school?
And I said, yeah.
What's wrong?
She said, nothing.
Can you come over now?
And I said, sure.
That's awesome.
And she took me in the gym.
The minute that she walked in, she just covered her mouth.
ANN MULKEY: And I saw this beautiful picture of Louis
all over the wall.
And I just-- it touched me.
It really made warm my heart.
They called the gym the Firehouse.
That's awesome.
Oh, my god.
When you get a gym named after you,
you've got to have some kind of major impact.
And that's major.
That is major.
This is the house he built. [INAUDIBLE]..
THOMAS NEWMAN: The firehouse couldn't be a better name
for a guy that-- you know, Louis was a captain
in the fire department.
I mean, that was a big part of his life.
And he spent a lot of hours in this gym.
AJ GREEN: In that gym, we did the right thing.
You know, we might not be perfect men once we leave
there, but we understood that once we hit that gym,
we are a brotherhood.
And we're going to put everything
on the line for each other.
I know he knew the boys loved him.
But I don't think he understood the power, yeah, of it.
Perfect ending, yes.
And I was just so proud of it.
And I'm sure he would be so proud.
He would be.
So many kids are watching and learning.
For sure.
And looking up to him.
For sure.
I just-- oh, god.
So many memories.
Good, bad, and indifferent.
No matter what people are going to remember how jovial he
was and cutting up with, you know,
his friends and his students.
But I really hope that they will eventually understand what he
was trying to achieve in getting the students to believe
that they can go on and go to college
and get the education that they want to get and get
the jobs they want to get.
JAKE JENKINS: He was one of those people that helped
the kids be able to have the right GPA and pass, you know,
the SAT test or ACT to be eligible to get into college.
So that's where his influence was greater than just being
on the basketball court or the football field,
was the academic side of it.
An education is something that they can never take from you.
But sometimes you've got to push to get it.
And hopefully the students will always remember that
and continue to strive to try to achieve
those things for themselves.
MARCUS MORRIS: I go occasionally just to talk to him,
let him know, you know, I'm still thinking about him.
I still think about all the times
that we had, still think about all the joy, really.
That's mainly-- when I do go is what I talk to him
about all the good times.
MARLON PRYOR: I go to his grave site a lot.
I just sit there and have conversations
with him about him helping me, the great things he did
and getting me out of the life--
the route I was headed.
AJ GREEN: I feel like he's still watching me.
People don't understand what he meant to me.
But to have him saw what he saw in me at that early age--
and it just kills me because I'm here because of him,
and he's not here to share this with me.
BRANDEN MILLHOUSE: Every time I come home, first thing I would
do is go by his grave site, just to see how he
was and actually bring flowers.
And I'd spend time just talking to him,
letting him know what's going on.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
THOMAS NEWMAN: We decided that every four
years, that'd be a good time to check in with everybody.
DWAYNE SIMMONS: So we remember, you know, the good times.
It's a good remembrance to come every leap year that we
get together and just kind of get to sit back and talk,
you know, about the past, about what everybody's doing now.
THOMAS NEWMAN: Really enjoyed watching
them grow into young men.
Seeing a lot of my peers that he's touched actually
get into coaching.
And I see their coaching style is similar to his.
And how they raise their kids is similar to the way
that he was hard on them.
And every time I see the green and gold
and his football number, that number 4,
it always brings back memories.
BUSTER SEABROOK: Because of his character and his morals
and what he instilled in us, he still lives on.
He lives on every day.
A lot of his characteristics are in many of us-- the work ethic,
the determination, the wisdom, the strength physically,
mentally, pride, the humility.
There's thousands of people who live on through him,
and especially me.
MARLON PRYOR: He inspired me to do--
I would just look--
I would look to him and say, what would he do?
How would he get through this situation?
You know, just look to him for advice,
see if I could get answers.
He would push me.
I'm doing great.
I'm doing wonderful now.
Yeah, I got three kids.
A value I take from Coach, you instill in them,
do anything, do everything you can.
You're going to be the best you can.
Give your effort, put your values out, have heart, fight,
and you're going to come out on top.
It's destiny.
That's just what it is.
What I took from him was giving it your passion,
being passionate about something,
you know what I'm saying?
Just really being me, because I was
somebody who needed discipline.
And I tried to really instill that as a father to my kid.
THOMAS NEWMAN: Louis, his legacy is definitely
living on in our community.
And it's showing up.
For me still, to spend time with the players
that played for him, they'll say things and do things.
And it's the same words that Louis
used when he would talk to them and send them messages
and had a big impact on all of us.
It still does.
Everybody that came from our program
is still passing on the Green Wave torch, creating waves.
I feel like I'm a part of the legacy because of Coach Louis.
I am the man who I am today.
He taught me to the dedication, the hard work, the sacrifices
that I had to make just to get where I am.
I remember we used to have these conversations--
like, AJ, one day when you make it,
all I want, we just want to ride in the sports car together.
AJ Green is definitely a part of his legacy.
And the higher he goes, the more Mulkey's name follows.
He's the first person I think of when I score a touchdown.
That's the first person.
I'm like, what'd Coach do?
CHRIS DIGBY: The ripple effect is real.
And Louis was making waves back then.
And the ripples of those waves are
still seen today in a big way.
BUSTER SEABROOK: I think that pertains just
to all of us moving forward.
Like I said, us as adults now, just keep hitting
them with different waves.
THOMAS NEWMAN: His legacy people still talk about.
So it's not something that when we lost Louis and those guys
graduated and went on their way that people stopped
talking about Louis Mulkey.
That never happened.
RALPHIE MOSTELLER: His legacy goes
on to families and generations and generations.
Right now in Charlotte, LA--
I know people everywhere he touched.
If he could only see what his impact
was, I know he'd be happy, man.
I know he's smiling right now.
He got to be.
MARCUS MORRIS: I definitely think that he still watches us.
He's still proud of what we do.
And I still think he gets his laughs out now.
He's still a big kid up there.
THOMAS NEWMAN: His name will be in infamy around here forever.
[MUSIC PLAYING]