The most famous man in Hallsville starts each morning at Buchanan’s Hardware and Feed with a Coke Zero and crackers to keep him company.

Jimmy Hunt is 90 years old, and while never an outsized personality, he’s grown increasingly reserved in his old age. The longer he lives, the more time takes away from him. His hearing is shot. He doesn’t drive anymore, and he had to give up his herd of cattle about eight years ago.

But Hunt has a streak of attending every Hallsville football game since the 1958 season opener that he’ll never surrender. He’s been in the stands every Friday night since before John F. Kennedy was president. Before the Beatles released their first record. Before man landed on the moon.

Of course, there have been some close calls over the 66-year stretch. Hunt lowers his head and proudly points to four divots, two in the front and two in the back, on the top of his skull from the time doctors discovered water on his brain and had to place a shunt. Hunt scheduled the surgery for a Tuesday so he could make that Friday’s playoff game against Palestine and showed up for kickoff with gauze wrapped around his head.

“He came in right before the game started and everybody in the stands gave him a standing ovation,” said Mike Buchanan, owner of Buchanan’s Hardware and Feed.

Hunt never intended to break a record when he showed up to his first Hallsville game after he took a job as a high school science teacher. Sure, he had a lot of pride in the East Texas town as a 1951 graduate of the school. His family had lived on ranchland seven miles north of the area since the early 1890s, and Hunt had moved back home after a stint in the Army Reserves. He probably went to that first football game with his youngest brother, Bobby, a freshman.

“He was my teacher all four years, and he still lived at home,” Bobby said. “We shared a room!”

But over the decades, as his career elevated him within Hallsville ISD from science teacher to elementary school principal to high school principal to assistant superintendent, he kept showing up to the high school’s sporting events. Whether it was basketball, baseball or softball, if the team had ‘Hallsville’ across the chest, Hunt was there.

It wasn’t until about two decades in that people started noticing that Mr. Hunt didn’t miss football games, under any circumstances. Once, he was gravely ill and had the superintendent drive him to the game and park his car next to the field’s gate so he could watch from the passenger seat.

No one knew exactly what the streak was, they just knew it was one hell of a run. Dewayne McMeans, a Hallsville coach from 1982-94, used to meet Mr. Hunt for a postgame embrace even after he left for Sulphur Springs.

“Still got it going?” McMeans would ask.

“Still got it going,” Hunt would respond.

“Surely you’re going to miss a game because you’re sick or something,” McMeans said. “But no, not even brain surgery.”

Hunt is the leader of a small, dedicated band of Hallsville fans. Buchanan himself has only missed one game in 50 years, and his son Skip hasn’t missed one since 1988. Their commitment is remarkable given the otherwise unremarkable history of Hallsville’s football team. The Bobcats have not won 10 games in a year since 1965. Jimmy’s brother Bobby, who later played at Baylor, won two games in three varsity seasons. 

“Since 1937, we’re probably .500,” Skip said. “It’s not like we’re a powerhouse program.”

In a world where fan support is contingent on results, Hunt’s support has stayed regardless of whether the team is winning, losing or rebuilding. It’s not a reach to say his presence has elevated the pride people feel for this program. Hallsville has one of the state’s largest alumni clubs, the “H” association, which meets every year after the second football scrimmage for a fish fry and ceremony. A couple years ago, they elected Hunt to their Hall of Fame, albeit, not for his playing career.

“I was probably the worst football player Hallsville ever had,” Hunt said.

After hanging out at Buchanan’s until noon, Bobby drives Jimmy over to Miss Minnie’s Place for lunch. As the duo enter the diner, the waitress looks up from the table she’s bussing.

“Well, if it isn’t the Hunt brothers,” she says with a smile.

In the time since Hunt first started attending football games, Hallsville has boomed from a small rural town to a suburb of Longview. The city limits sign says the population is roughly 3,500, but the locals know that’s out of date. Hallsville is now a 5A school and has moved through three buildings to accommodate the growth. Most of the current students don’t know of Hunt’s past as an administrator. They know him as Mr. Hunt, the guy who's always there. He is the constant in the change.

“The last time I lived in Hallsville was around 2001,” Hallsville head coach and 2000 graduate Josh Strickland said. “I came back in 2021, so there’s a lot of faces that change. But as soon as they told me about Jimmy Hunt, I knew he hadn’t missed anything.”

Hunt orders a chicken-fried steak, which comes with two sides. The waitress patiently repeats the day’s options to Hunt several times because he can’t hear her. After half a minute of this, Bobby starts laughing. No matter how old these two are, Bobby is still the little brother.

“Don’t laugh at your brother,” the waitress says.

It was more command than a joke. Hunt looks far younger than he is and still has a sharp memory. He can spin the yarn about the Friday night game on Saturday morning in the feed store. But he does walk and talk much slower than he used to, and there are moments his lack of hearing makes it appear as if he’s slipping. The more he shows signs of aging, the more the community wraps its arms around him. In recent years since Hunt stopped driving, the Buchanans have alternated with others to drive him to all the games he wants to attend. Last year, every member of the football team signed a Hallsville helmet for his birthday with the number 90 decaled on the back.

“It’s gotten to the point where people will watch for him to show up on a Friday night,” Skip said. “Not only football, but baseball or wherever we’re going. People recognize him and know that he’s supposed to be there.”

Hunt has dedicated his entire life to the education system and to this town. You can count the years of his attendance streak, but you can’t possibly quantify the lives he’s touched along the way. 

“If everybody was like him, this world would be a whole lot better place to live in,” McMeans said.