Stories: The First Man Down

            With a world war starting across the ocean in Europe in 1914, it would come as no surprise that the first ever Guntersville football player to later die would be relatively young. Furthermore, since America enters that war three years later, there is no doubt in my mind that there are quite a few young men from Marshall County who did die in the Great War.

            However, the first player to die did not die of a war casualty at all.

            Isaac Satterfield was the starting left end on the 1914 football team. By all accounts that can be found, he was a gregarious, fun-loving guy. In fact, at the end of the season banquet, even though he was only 18, he was the master of ceremonies and from newspaper accounts of the dinner, was very good at it.

            Unfortunately, his demeanor could not overcome his lungs. At the end of December, he was forced to leave school for health reasons and return home near Arab.

            Once at home, his health quickly deteriorated to the point where he was confined to bed, and yet, even then, people flocked to him. There were several accounts in the social section (the main section of 1910s Guntersville newspapers) of students visiting him. Even his sweetheart kept her promise, marrying him three weeks before he died.

            In early May of 1915, Isaac Satterfield succumbed to an undisclosed lung disease, and his funeral was attended by many students and teachers.

            His young bride, Stacy Corbin Satterfield, would later go on to get a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College and a master’s degree in English from the University of Illinois in the early 1920s. That is the last trace I have been able to find of her for nearly thirty years, but she pops back up in Texas in the early 1950s remarried.