JIM DENT

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Luckily, Jim Dent was watching TV at the right time almost 20 years ago to catch a sports feature story about a rag-tag football team of Fort Worth, Tx teenage orphans who rose to dominate Texas high school football in the 1930’s and 1940’s.

 

“I shot up from my chair.  My God, how am I just now hearing about this?” thought Dent, the award-winning sports journalist who wrote sports in D/FW for decades, including eleven years covering the Dallas Cowboys.

 

Following his instincts just as he did with his New York Times Best-seller, The Junction Boys, Dent immediately knew this was a book-worth story of epic proportions.

 

That same evening, Dent left his Houston home and made a beeline to Fort Worth, all the while, the story was playing out in his mind. Somewhere near Corsicana, the title for the soon-to-be book popped into his head, 12 Mighty Orphans. 

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That night, he slept in his car in front of the Masonic Home. When the sun rose, he began his work to tell this intriguing story. In another stroke of luck, the Masonic Home, which had been in operation since 1899, was in the process of being closed.  The Home’s administration welcomed Jim in, showed him the museum which chronicled the success and fame of the Mighty Mites football program and provided him with sources which would help frame the facts and details of telling the story.

 

With the help of Fort Worthian Russell Morton, whose grandfather ran the Masonic Home in the ‘30s and ‘40s, Dent was off to the races.   In 2007, Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football by Jim Dent was selling in book stores nationwide and online. It was Dent’s 10th sports book to author.