Tragedy draws town of Milan, rivals

MILAN – The sun was setting as dusk was settling in over Johnnie Hale Stadium on Friday.

Football season was about to officially begin with the neighbors from across Gibson County, the Trenton Peabody Golden Tide, coming to town.

But among the hoopla and enthusiasm surrounding the atmosphere in the stadium as kickoff approached, those who needed reminding were given a sobering recollection about the previous week in Milan.

Two members of Milan’s band, Zakary Yarbrough and Katie Taylor, were in a car wreck on Wednesday. Yarbrough died at the scene. Taylor is in Memphis recovering from injuries.

The moment on Wednesday night when people found out as word spread about the tragedy was the sobering moment for most in the town.

“Football has been its right perspective this week when maybe it’s a little difficult to keep it in perspective in opening week against a big rival,” said Milan head coach Jeff Morris. “A lot of times, we might think it’s the end of the world if we’d lost this game, but it’s not.”

Yarbrough had just started his junior year at Milan High, and Taylor is a senior. There are plenty of friends of both on the football team.

“We came in [Thursday] and had a walk-through scheduled, but we told them if they’d rather take the day off they could,” said Morris about the football team the day after the wreck. “But everybody wanted to go through the walk-through, so that’s what we did.”

Letting the students do what they want was a theme of the week. Milan’s band chose not to play during the game on Friday. They gathered as a group in the section on the end of the home stands where they typically play and hung out and enjoyed each other’s company. They sang “Happy Birthday” for their director, John Scruggs. They dealt with the loss in their family as a family would.

“I talked with [Scruggs on Thursday] and told him it was their call on what they wanted to do [Friday],” said Milan High assistant principal and athletic director Greg Scott. “Should they play? Should they not play?

“I told him that whether the kids wanted to play or not, to do what they wanted to do was the right decision. I think what they’re doing at the game is what they need to do, and it’s the right thing to do because it’s their decision.”

A student-led prayer was prayed over the stadium’s public address system asking peace for the Yarbrough family and a speedy recovery for Taylor, and there was a balloon release in honor of both.

Moments later, the Bulldog football team took the field with “ZY” printed on the back of their helmets and the fight song playing, but it wasn’t coming from the normal place in the stadium where it usually originates.

Peabody’s band was playing Milan’s fight song.

Steven Westbrook is the band director at Peabody, and the Golden Tide band program has been through what Milan’s band is going through right now.

“It was before my time here, but we’ve lost band members to wrecks and have an understanding of what that feels like,” Westbrook said. “So I talked to some of our parents about what we should do and called over here and asked what we could do as a band to help.

“We were told the band wasn’t playing tonight, so we offered to play their fight song when the team came out if they were OK with it.”

Milan appreciated the gesture as the football team entered to the fight song that the Golden Tide band learned in one day.

“We’d never played it before, but we got the music yesterday and worked on it yesterday afternoon and some more today before coming over,” Westbrook said.

He said it’s not typical for the band to pick up on a song that quickly.

“I was glad we were able to do it, and our prayers are with the entire town as they deal with this tragedy,” Westbrook said.

Milan won the game 56-14, and everyone in purple seemed to walk away happy. But the reminder of the week kept the win in perspective as well.

“As a coach, I’m happy we started the season with this win,” Jeff Morris said. “But I’m a parent, and to think of the situation both of those families are going through right now … my heart goes out to them.”

Brandon Shields, 425-9751