“When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me.’ ” — Erma Bombeck
Those words guide Kent Willis every day and, along with the teachings in the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. collected in “A Call to Conscience,” fueled him and his team to develop a pilot program called A Call to Columbus Action.
“I’m going to use my connections and willpower to make a difference in the community,” Willis said.
A Call to Columbus Action will be headquartered at the Sim Scott Community Center, housed in a new facility after the previous one was destroyed by a tornado in 2019. The center has long been a hub for the neighborhood, an area rich in history and culture which Willis knows very well.
The program brings Willis’ story full circle, as he was born and raised in Columbus with 12 siblings, watching the older ones play sports in high school. That, along with playing with his friends on Saturdays, led him to focus on baseball. After graduating from Lee High School, Willis went to the University of North Alabama and then the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg.
He thrived as a Golden Eagle. Playing on a team that finished 31-30, Willis went 9-7 as a right-handed pitcher, tossing 11 complete games, including a shutout, and striking out 140 in 140⅓ innings.
Scouts took notice, and in the 12th round of the 1986 draft the Cincinnati Reds, Willis’ favorite team, drafted him. Teammate Greg Conner was taken in the seventh round, making the duo the first pair of Southern Miss baseball teammates drafted since 1973.
Coming from a small city, just being drafted made him a hometown hero, but Willis went on to spend the next three seasons playing minor league baseball, reaching Triple-A in 1987 with the Nashville Sounds, appearing in 53 games and posting a 6-5 record.
Willis wound up pitching almost 400 innings in the minors, and finished with a winning record at 25-24 with 5 saves. But he wasn’t done with professional baseball, becoming a pitching coach in the Atlanta Braves organization. He bounced around the minors, coaching the Gulf Coast League Braves (1996, 1998), Danville Braves (1997), Macon Braves (1999-2002), Rome Braves (2003-04), Mississippi Braves (2005-2006) and Myrtle beach Pelicans (2010). Along the way, he was named the Braves minor league pitching coordinator in 2007 and performed in that role for three years.
Willis said teaching others gave him a feeling of satisfaction that he wanted to capture every day. This passion, along with the help of this best friend, Frank Turner, his mother and a few professional baseball players, led him to start his own baseball camp program back in 2004.
Each year, Willis and his organization would teach kids the fundamentals of not only baseball, but life as well.
But Willis saw his community clearly and felt he needed to do even more.
And that feeling led to A Call to Columbus Action. The name came from King, and ACTCA is rooted in his belief that, as King stated in “A Call to Conscience,” “Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.”
“I want to bring a sense of love back to this neighborhood,” Willis said.
Willis made it known that his new program would teach the passion and lessons he learned during his childhood. He vowed that he would bring back the level of integrity, passion and pride that his community instilled in him, offering young people safe, well-maintained parks in which not only baseball but exercise, activities and other programs can reach those who may feel displaced.
Partnered with Turner and local companies, specifically Sqwincher, a producer of hydration products founded in Columbus, Willis works daily to get his program off the ground. He sees a city in darkness caused by the pandemic and wants to be part of the process leading it forward.
Willis is looking for support from the community, and anyone wishing to help can email him at [email protected] with ACTCA Volunteer in the subject line.
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