LUFKIN — Former Lufkin head basketball coach Jesse Walker, who led the Panthers to the 1979 Class 4A state basketball championship, passed away early Sunday.

Walker, who had coaching stops at Athens, Lufkin, Sweetwater, Van Horn and Zavalla, won 506 games as head coach at Lufkin and was inducted into the Texas High School Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000.

Ronnie Blake, who hit the game-winning shot with two seconds left to give the Panthers a 75-74 win over Fort Worth Dunbar in the state championship game, talked about the impact Walker had on him as a player and later in life as a coach.

”Coach Walker helped me understand how to be a winner and how if you want something you’ve got to be all in and you’ve got to be ready to go and love what you do,” Blake said. “He made sure we were family and he would tell us to tell our family that we loved them. He taught me that if you work for something, that you can get it.

“He always made you want to believe in stuff we were doing. When I started coaching, I wanted my team to be a family like we were. He wanted us to make the community proud and be good young men and do the right things, and to always make your family and community proud.”

Former Panther Joel Davis talked about how Walker cared for him and his teammates.

“Coach Walker was just more than a coach to his players. And he wanted us all to be successful off the court. He loved his family, and the great part of it all was that me and (Walker’s daughter) Shannon were classmates,” Joel Davis said. “My daddy died my junior year, and for sure Coach Walker played a big role in my life, after the passing of my daddy. He is the reason I picked Angelina College.”

Joel’s older brother Larry Davis, who was a sophomore on the ’79 squad and led the team in scoring in the championship game, also recalled his fondness for his former coach.

“My condolences to the Walker family,” Larry Davis said. “Coach Walker was one of the high school basketball coaching legends who meant a lot to many of his former players, and some stayed in touch up until his transition. He was a great coach that I respected and listened and learned a lot from during my playing days. He will be missed.”

Former Angelina College and Lufkin High School coach Guy Davis was a teammate of Walker’s at Lon Morris and the coach at Lufkin before Walker took over when Davis became the men’s head basketball coach at AC.

“We were very close, and even though we didn’t see each other every day, if we needed something and the other knew it, we made sure they had it,” Guy Davis said. “Lufkin lost a great person who cared a lot about Angelina County. He cared about things that were more important than winning games, but he was very successful at winning games.”

Coaching so close in proximity to each other, Davis saw firsthand what Walker meant to the players who came through his program, some of which played at AC.

“They had great respect for Coach Walker and I hope they did for me, too. He was a great coach and he cared about his kids. They were important to him and their lives after basketball were more important than winning a basketball game,” Davis said. “If it came down to that he would give up a game to help a kid be successful in life.”

Walker, who played at Huntington, and Davis met when they both played at Lon Morris.

“I used to go home with Jesse when we were at Lon Morris and when Huntington would play Central or Hudson or Diboll, we’d drive from Jacksonville to watch the game,” Davis said. “We hung around together, went to the state tournament together. He put me on to a lot of players that he saw during the year, when he was playing and we were playing and I was recruiting.”

When Davis was coaching at Lufkin, Walker was the head coach at Athens.

“We played against each other when I was at Lufkin and he was at Athens. We both wanted to win, but it was never worth losing a friendship over winning,” Davis said. “I remember a game we were playing at Athens and it was the first game that year. We went over there and he’d put the basketball in the ice machine all day and then turned the temperature up in the gym because we were big and they were little. The more the basketball heated up, the farther away the rebound would go.

“So when he came here, we worked out in sweats and kept the thermostat up to 90 in the gym and when they came here his guys melted.”

Davis said he got the coaching job in Lufkin because Walker recommended him.

“I got to Lufkin because they called Jesse and he told them he wasn’t leaving and they ought to call me,” Davis said. “When I got hired at AC I told the athletic director that they should call Jesse and I think they hired him the same day he came in. We were friends and even though we didn’t run around together all the time, we had great respect for each other.”

Former player J.J. Montgomery, who holds the career scoring record at Lufkin and is now the head men’s coach at Angelina College, talked about what a big role Walker played in his life.

“I was in junior high and we had Junior High East and West and freshmen weren’t allowed to play for high school yet,” Montgomery said. “I was in eighth grade and Coach Walker would come and watch my games and I’ll always remember that.

”My sophomore year, he just wrapped his arms around me and he was more than a coach to me. I didn’t see my father much and he was a father figure to me. He was my coach, but it was always bigger than that. He was special to me and he worked with me. He told me I couldn’t let myself get comfortable and he put in a lot of work with me.”

When Montgomery graduated from Lufkin, he stayed nearby and went to play for Coach Davis at Angelina College.

“After high school Coach Walker handed me off to Coach Davis (at AC), he’d show up at all my games. He was coaching in Zavalla but he was always there,” Montgomery said. “I never had someone believe in me like he did and he’d tell me how proud he was of me. Our communication continued and our relationship was bigger than basketball, bigger than just player and coach. He did a lot of stuff for me that he didn’t have to do. Anything I needed he was always there. I’m going to miss him.”