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Five seasons of Panthers Football,

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a celebration of the players, coaches,

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and other people who have contributed to the

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organizational success. Now to

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mcmixon, the

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Panthers two thousand nineteen Hall of Honor Clapp,

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Wesley Wallas, Jordan Gross, Jake de

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Loman, Steve Smith is as diverse as

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it is decorated. The Loman Gross

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are farm boys. In fact, the Loan was spraying

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weeds on his property in Arizona when

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he got the call from Panther's owner, David

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Tepper. A couple of weeks prior, Stephen

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Drummond had said, Hey, are you gonna be around at

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this time? Owner might want to call you

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or whatever. And I was like, yeah, And

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I didn't know what. Honestly, I really truly

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had no idea what it was entailing. Um,

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but I knew, you know, he wanted to reach out. It's

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kind of like create his own, I

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guess, um way of doing

0:52

things here and so, but I really didn't

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know. And then when Drummond text you, hey, to be ready for a

0:56

FaceTime call, Uh,

0:58

this is odd, you know, like there's something

1:00

going on. I just I just didn't know what it was. You

1:03

know that chills probably sent through my body. It

1:05

doesn't. I'm very rarely

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speechless. I can kind of come up with something

1:10

pretty quick. And I just I kind

1:12

of was like taking aback. I was floored,

1:15

um, honored. I guess

1:17

the you know, the emotions are the memories

1:19

that started just going through my head. It was all the good time,

1:21

you know, you just you just think of that, and like I

1:23

hold this place really close

1:26

to my heart, you know what I mean. And so

1:28

it was just kind of you

1:30

know, here I am. I'm sitting in this field,

1:33

you know, by myself. Uh and

1:35

Tepper. Mr Tepper asked, he goes, well,

1:37

yeah, playing golf, because I had on like a

1:39

windbreaker and a and a and a golf

1:41

hat. I said, no, I'm spraying a field

1:44

and due what you know. It was just kind

1:46

of and so um yeah, it was.

1:48

It was great. It was There's no other words

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to describe it. Gross was also somewhere

1:53

on his back forty on his little buddy

1:55

farm in fruitlind Idaho. He was touched

1:58

and humbled to learn of his inclue. I

2:00

was in my barn at the farm,

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and he interrupted, I was doing some really

2:05

good tomato starts, and

2:07

I was halfway through. My hands were all dirty

2:10

and potting soil, and the darn

2:12

owner called me, so then I to stop

2:14

everything. And if those tomatoes don't turn

2:16

out, I'm blaming it all on him. But it

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was, it was awesome. I was very, very

2:21

excited. I don't ever feel

2:23

like I've tried to be a

2:26

me guy as a you know, as a player and

2:28

in this building, but I'll be honest, it felt

2:30

awesome to get some recognition.

2:32

And the coolest thing is that I

2:35

think as a player and I was in this building for

2:38

a long time and afterwards working

2:40

with all you guys and just loving it. And then the

2:42

decision to move back home, the fear

2:44

is kind of just losing connection

2:47

with all the people and the team

2:49

and the stadium. And this

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just makes me feel so good about kind

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of solidifying that relationship, you

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know, kind of forever essentially for

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my family, you know. Now coming back to

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games and being able to

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say that I left an impact here. It's

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really really awesome. And I you know, I there's

3:09

been accolades in football over the years, but this one's

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the best. It's just really it means

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a lot because I care so much about the people

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here, and to think that everybody thinks good

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enough of me to include me. Man, it's awesome.

3:20

Steve smith was traveling when his phone

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rang, and Smithy wasn't at all sure

3:25

he even wanted to take that call. The

3:27

first call I got when he called me on my cell phone,

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UM, I was on the I

3:32

was in Utah in a vehicle heading

3:34

to sevent eleven to get a coffee. Um.

3:38

And then I have a Android

3:40

and he has an iPhone um,

3:43

And so I had to call him from someone else's

3:47

uh phone because he wanted

3:49

to face time me. And first of all, I

3:51

thought that was very um interesting

3:54

that another grown man wanted to face time

3:56

me. But um, after he

3:58

convinced me to FaceTime, because I

4:00

really wasn't gonna FaceTime. Uh.

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I didn't really. I don't really know Mr Tepper

4:05

that well. UM at that moment

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um to experience a FaceTime,

4:10

Um, you know, forty years old, but

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stranger danger still exists in

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the world. UM. I'm

4:16

really just jokay. I just want to give Tepper a

4:18

hard time. UM. But so

4:20

when I called him, I was actually in

4:23

seventy eleven. When we started to actually FaceTime,

4:25

I was putting sugar in um

4:27

non dairy powder cream Uh in my

4:29

coffee at seventy eleven, UM,

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trying to wake up because I was on the West coast. UM

4:36

and UH, total shock, surprise

4:39

UM. And then when I got home, even

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bigger shock and surprise of all the

4:43

steps that was put uh in the

4:45

effort that he put in, the Carolina pethers

4:47

put into making this happen. UM.

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I was told to me the different

4:52

scenarios UH one.

4:55

UM. I've gotten a great opportunity

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to meet Mr Tepper and speak to him several

4:59

times with about a wide range of things.

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And one of the things that he's discovered, UM

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is you don't pop up on me at my home. And

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that was one of the ideas he thought. UM.

5:10

We didn't think that was gonna be a great idea.

5:13

UM, but it was pretty funny because

5:15

he is very adamant when he gets

5:17

something in his head uh to execute

5:19

it, and the people around him he is

5:22

um. UM

5:24

he's expecting them to execute it with the

5:26

same level um urgency

5:28

that he likes to do things. So UM.

5:31

It's been very very interesting to get to

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meet and know him and how he operates, and

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it's been interesting for him to get to meet

5:38

me and know how to operate as well. So it's been fun.

5:41

Still trying to wrap my head around

5:43

it, trying to figure out to

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accept the honor and not try to

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overthink things. Uh really

5:52

just try to relax, which is um

5:55

for a guy who's always going and going and going like

5:58

myself, it's kind of hard

6:00

to do. So trying to figure it out. And

6:02

then the other part is, um,

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it's really cool, is um

6:07

Mr Tapper again another staff piece.

6:10

Um, Um,

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you know he sent some clothes to my kids and

6:15

stuff. Uh, just because

6:17

honestly, the last team I was, the

6:19

last team I was with was the Ravens,

6:21

so a lot of are lots of stuff that

6:24

my kids have is Raven stuff. So Um,

6:27

when we came here in November, Deuce Um,

6:30

our youngest, he had never been

6:33

in the stadium, so he was trying to wrap his

6:35

head around it and figure out why

6:38

aren't we going through uh

6:40

the Mhenry Tunnel in Baltimore to

6:43

go to the to the stadium. So, I

6:45

mean that's just part of it. And so it's a great opportunity

6:47

for my last child, who's not

6:50

experienced as much football as the other three,

6:53

um, to him to start to associate

6:55

h Carolina with

6:57

the Carolina Panthers and experienced that, so it's

6:59

been really good for him as well. The Wesley

7:01

Wallace story is quite different. Wallace

7:04

was with his mom in the hospital when

7:06

the call came in about a month or so

7:08

ago. Uh. David Monroe

7:10

had had told me that that he

7:13

was trying to arrange a meeting with Mr

7:15

Tepper or a phone call with Mr

7:17

Tepper, and

7:20

he said, look for a number that you wouldn't recognize.

7:22

So fast forward about

7:24

five or six weeks and I hadn't gotten this call,

7:27

and I'm my mom had um

7:29

she had some surgery down in Mississippi, and

7:31

we were I was in the hospital with her, visiting

7:35

her, and I get this call that an

7:37

unrecognized number, and you know nowadays,

7:40

no, I just let him go away, but I

7:42

said, I'm gonna take this one and and uh

7:45

and it was Mr Tepper popped up on a FaceTime

7:47

video and I'm like, wow, you know, hey, Mr

7:49

Tepper, how are you doing? And uh

7:52

uh And I had no idea what he was calling about

7:55

other than maybe schedule at a time, and

7:57

uh, he won't know what I was doing. I told him about

8:00

my mom. The surgery and everything like that,

8:02

and he says, I got some exciting news

8:04

for you, and uh, and then he broke

8:06

the news and I was gonna be in the Hall of Honor. So that

8:09

that was that was a special moment.

8:12

I mean to to hear those words

8:14

and and and and the first time I met

8:16

Mr Tepper, So you know, that's pretty gonna

8:18

be hard to talk every time I see him,

8:21

think about that forever. And

8:24

and to share it with my mom, I asked

8:27

him. I says, okay, I tell my mom, you

8:29

know, and uh he said absolutely.

8:31

He said, we're gonna try to keep it quiet. So to

8:34

go through that call on him, um, and

8:37

and I was just and

8:40

then to share the news my mom. And then immediately

8:43

after that, I just got emotional.

8:45

I started thinking about all

8:48

the all the years

8:50

here and all the people of teammates,

8:52

the organization of people I knew, and

8:55

um, the city, what

8:58

this meant, what this meant, what it's gonna

9:00

mean to me and my family, and how much it meant

9:02

to me and my family. I'll

9:04

be honest with I felt part of the team again. Um.

9:08

It's so when you get

9:11

out of the game and you transition

9:13

from being a football player to whatever

9:16

a normal person working in the community, living

9:18

in community. It's tough and you feel separated

9:20

from the team. But all these

9:22

memories and all these emotions came in,

9:25

and knowing that I'm gonna

9:27

be in the Hall of our Honor obviously

9:29

felt like I was part of the team again and it was a

9:32

very emotional. Brand new permanent signs

9:34

on the upper rim of Bank of America Stadium

9:36

will help forever commemorate the accomplishments

9:39

of the two thousand nineteen Hall of

9:41

Honor Class Wesley Walls, Jordan

9:43

Gross, Jake Glone, and Steveson.

9:46

We'll continue our historical perspective

9:49

of the first quarter century of Panther football

9:51

next time right here on the podcast.

9:54

Listen to the full interview and the entire

9:56

Family of Panthers podcast visit

9:58

Panthers dot com. Were subscribed through

10:01

iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and

10:03

Google playm