W.T. Barrett Stadium is gone but not forgotten

Before fans traveled north of town to watch the Bronchos and Panthers, before the lights glowed along Grandview Avenue, before the faithful headed toward Ratliff — there was W.T. Barrett Stadium.
   Odessan Ed Williams said the games he played at W.T. Barrett Stadium will never be forgotten. Those are the games that pushed his career all the way to the University of Texas and the NFL.
   “For me, growing up here in Odessa, that signified where you played when you were a real football player,” Williams said. “Back then, it just didn’t get any better than ‘W.T.’ — that was it.”
   Built in 1947, W.T. Barrett Stadium was erected at the corner of Golder Avenue and Kermit Highway, now the site of Odessa College’s outdoor sports facilities.
   It was reportedly a gift to the city following Odessa High School’s state football championship the previous season.
   No one knew that this was going to be the place where dreams began. No one knew that under those Friday night lights not only OHS and Ector would see glory, but eventually Permian would play there as well.
   “When you got to ‘W.T.’, you could hear the fans actually cheering,” Williams said, “and the band was playing; just a totally different atmosphere there.”
   For Williams and the thousands of others who played on the natural grass and cheered from the metal bleachers, W.T. Barrett Stadium was a palace.
   “You always looked at it to see if they changed anything,” Williams said. “It had a little mystique about it … it was like a little monument.”
   Williams was drafted by the New England Patriots in the second round (43rd overall) in 1984 by the New England Patriots.
   On a trip home, he stopped in at the Dairy Queen across the street from his old Barrett stomping grounds, but there was just one problem. The stadium was gone.
   A sparkling new Ratliff Stadium had been built set to host games starting in the fall of 1982.
   Barrett was sold to the Leander Independent School District for $61,000. Dismantled piece by piece, it took 57 tractor-trailer rigs to move more than 1 million tons of steel across the state.
   Back in Odessa, the only thing left was an open field and memories.
   “I kept thinking what used to be,” Williams said. “The cars, the people, what we used to do after the games, the congestion in traffic. It made you really think back and concentrate on things that had happened … the talking, the kiddin’ around you did and things that happened there that are all gone.”
   W.T. Barrett Stadium, or A.C. Bible Junior Memorial Stadium as it became known in Leander, hosted its last football game last season. A complete renovation was planned but lead was discovered in the stadium’s primer and cost estimates proved it would be easier to build a new facility.
   The metal was scrapped and the new A.C. Bible Stadium opened this season.
   “To play (at W.T. Barrett Stadium), there was nothing else left to be wanted,” Williams said. “It was what it was.”

Did you know?
   >> W.T. Barrett Stadium was built as a gift to Odessa High winning the state championship.
   >> Odessa had three high schools when Barrett was built; Ector, Blackshear and Odessa.