The Standard received an email April 10 about Stewart County Deputy Justin Bolden. The story and email was from a Josh Bean, who wrote the story for the Alabama High School Athletic Association (AHSAA). The headline read, “Justin Bolden’s 2016 Bryant-Jordan Scholarship Recognition helped turn Struggle into Success.” The Standard spoke to Bolden and he said when he came to APSU, he worked as a jailer in Dickson for money and then he worked with the Clarksville PD for 4.5 years. He said he met Gannon Gray, Sheriff Frankie Gray’s nephew, who told him he should apply in Stewart Co. He ended up here and said he and his family want to move to Stewart Co. They currently live in Woodlawn.
This is the original story we were sent. Travis Janssen doesn’t remember exactly how the online story about Justin Bolden found its way to his Facebook feed. Back in 2016, Janssen, then the head baseball coach at Austin Peay University in Clarksville, TN, kept going back to the story, published by AL.com in April, 2016, about Bolden, a three-sport athlete at tiny Southeastern High School in Remlap, a small community in Blount County, (Alabama). He remembered reading that Justin worked two fast-food jobs to help his grandfather pay the bills, following a couch-surfing childhood in which both parents battled drug addiction.
Bolden’s persistence landed him a Bryant-Jordan Scholarship, (Named after two Alabama sports legends – Paul “Bear” Bryant and Ralph “Shug” Jordan), which led to the online profile that Janssen found irresistible. “It was one of those stories that worked out to be just too good to be true,” said Janssen, now the baseball coach at Oxford High School. “If he doesn’t win that award, I never see this kid. To this day, I can’t remember what his hometown or his high school was. I never heard of it. I didn’t have a relationship with the principal or high school coach or anybody…