Frank Alexander has been an Anderson man his whole life, born here in 1948 and a member of T.L. Hanna's class of 1966. He studied psychology, briefly taught high school math, and then spent 33 years in consumer products, which is not usually where a sideline career begins. His began in 1976 with a manual Minolta and a hobby. His first real break was a fill-in assignment at a Clemson and NC State game, shot through a borrowed lens that was scratched and warped. The one that launched everything came after he shot a Clemson and Georgia game from the stands and, on his way out of the stadium, happened to run into a newspaper editor who badly needed someone at the Falcons and 49ers the next day. Frank took the job, and it turned into 32 years shooting Clemson, 17 with the Atlanta Falcons, and 13 with the Carolina Panthers.
In 2016 he was back around Hanna football as a color analyst when the athletic director asked him to help build a history website for the program. Frank started digging and quickly realized how much of that history was missing, far more than a website could hold, so the website became a book. It took eight years, six of research and two of writing, roughly 6,000 hours in all, much of it spent working through 97 yearbooks and historical society records to verify details one at a time. The result is The History of Anderson Yellow Jacket Football 1921-2023, a self-published, 700-page coffee table book that runs from the Boys High years through T.L. Hanna and accounts for all 1,109 games the Yellow Jackets played across 103 seasons, with opponents, scores, rosters, coaches, cheerleaders, and homecoming queens included. It's where you'll find the state championships of 1942, 1950, and 1958, and it's where you'll learn that in the early 1960s the Jackets had not one but two barefoot punters, twins Larry and Terry Harbin. For a site that spends its weeks chasing old numbers, that kind of work earns a permanent spot on the desk.
To buy a copy, contact Frank Alexander at 864-367-8874 or afa729@bellsouth.net. Fair warning, if you love high school football or have any connection to T.L. Hanna, this book will pull you in and keep you turning pages long after you meant to put it down. It also makes a great gift for the Hanna grad in your life, or for anyone who wants to dig into the story of one of the state's most storied programs.