JOHNSON BLAIR CHERRY was born at Kerens, Navarro
County, TX on August 7, 1901.
He began his coaching career at Ranger after graduating
from Texas Christian University in 1924. After three
years at Ranger, TX, he moved to Northside High School
in Fort Worth. In 1930 he was named head coach markable
career that saw his fabled Sandies win eighty-six of ninety-
one games and four state championships in seven years. In
1936 he married Florence Snodgrass of Amarillo; they had
two children. Cherry was hired at the University of Texas
in 1937 by Dana X. Bible, and served as first assistant
on the Longhorn staff for ten years.
When Bible retired after the 1946 season, Cherry was named
head coach. He accepted the challenge of following Bible
and gambled on a new formation, the "T". In Cherry's four
years at Texas, he had one Southwest Conference Championship,
three postseason bowl games, and an overall record of 32-10-
1. He resigned after the 1950 season, in which his Longhorns
ranked number two nationally and became the school's first
team to win all of its Southwest Conference games, to enter
the oil business in Lubbock. Cherry was voted into the Texas
Sports Hall of Fame shortly before his death in Lubbock on
Sept. 10, 1966. He was buried in Llano Cemetery, Amarillo.