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None of us fortunate enough to be at Cawood High School in the late summer of 1979 knew we’d still be telling Jim Cullivan stories 40 years later when we first encountered him after he arrived as an assistant football coach.
Photos posted on Facebook earlier this week showed a 98-year-old Cullivan being honored on the 50th anniversary of the Henry County (Tenn.) High School program in Paris, Tenn., where Cullivan returned to after leaving Harlan. He was the school’s first coach in 1969 after coaching before that at one of the schools involved in the merger.
Cullivan told me the story once how he saw a job posting for an assistant at Cawood while at a football camp and was immediately intrigued because he said he’d heard about Harlan, Kentucky most of his life. He applied and was hired as an assistant under Roger Caudill in Caudill’s one and only season at Cawood. Cullivan was in his late 50s at the time but seemed older to most of us, at least he did to me, and he certainly didn’t strike me at the time as the football savant we’d all eventually agree he was in his nine-year tenure as head coach.
Cullivan went on to post a 66-28 record in nine seasons, leading the Trojans to undefeated regular seasons in both 1981 and 1985. Both squads were ranked, at one point during the season, as the No. 1 3A team in Kentucky.

The remainder of the story can be read on harlancountysports.com

Cully’s impact on Trojans from the 80s still felt after his death at 103