From a narrow hollow in Pike County to college arenas up and down the East Coast, the story of Carl Johnson Slone begins in a place that barely shows up on most maps. Majestic, Kentucky is a coal town tucked against the Tug Fork, a run of houses, market, and post office strung along the highway in eastern Pike County. It is the kind of community where a boy with a basketball can see almost everything in his world from the front steps: the tipple, the church, the gym, and the road that leads out. Majestic is officially listed as an unincorporated coal town in Pike County, with its own post office and just a handful of buildings spread along the creek.
In a county where, as one local historian put it, public school basketball is a “mountain institution” and business deals and new friendships are just as likely to happen in a gym as at a funeral, a tall kid with a soft touch had a ready-made stage. From that world stepped Carl Slone, born in Majestic on February 6, 1937, who would go on to become a three year starter for the University of Richmond Spiders, an All Southern Conference forward, and a head coach at both George Washington and Richmond.
Playback.fm, a pop culture database that tracks birthplace and notoriety, now lists him as the single most famous person ever born in Majestic and one of hundreds of notable Kentuckians alongside Abraham Lincoln, Muhammad Ali, and Loretta Lynn. His journey from coal camp to college sidelines is a classic Appalachian story of leaving home while never quite leaving it behind.
Majestic to Richmond: A Pike County Forward
University and newspaper records agree that Slone left Pike County in the late 1950s to play basketball at the University of Richmond. The Richmond media guide lists him on the Spider roster from 1957 through 1960, and sports-reference data shows him as a six foot five junior averaging 10.3 points and 7.0 rebounds a game for the 1958–59 season. A later statistical summary describes his Richmond career as 9.3 points and 5.8 rebounds a game, solid numbers in a slower era of college basketball.
Contemporary coverage makes clear that he was more than a name in a table. The Richmond News Leader’s report on a 1958 game against George Washington singled him out, noting that Slone “gave the Spiders the kind of pivot play they have been looking for against a zone defense.” The University of Richmond Collegian, the student paper, called him a jump shot artist as it recapped a rout of VMI that winter.
By his senior season he had become a three year starter at forward under head coach H. Lester Hooker, and the record books credit him as leading Richmond in both scoring and rebounding while earning All Southern Conference honors in 1960. For a young man from a Pike County coal town, that meant not only athletic success but also a college degree and a foothold in a profession that still paid more in pride than in money: coaching.
High School Gyms and a Young Coach
When Slone finished at Richmond, he stayed in Virginia and moved almost immediately into teaching and coaching. Wikipedia’s summary, built from older media guides and school records, places him at Stafford High School from 1960 to 1962 and then at Varina High School, outside Richmond, from 1962 to 1967.
A small news item in the Richmond News Leader from December 1962 shows how serious he was about his craft. Writing about a standout Varina player, the paper quoted “Carl Slone, Varina coach,” who said the young man was “better than Rod Thorn was as a high school freshman,” a high compliment in an era when Thorn was becoming a legend in West Virginia basketball circles. The line shows Slone already working in the way mountain coaches often do, comparing one kid from a country gym to another who had made it big somewhere else and using that comparison to push him further.
Those years at Stafford and Varina were also a bridge between his playing days and the college sideline. They kept him on the court and in the gym, learning how to run practices, manage teenagers, and navigate local school politics. In a sense, it was not a long trip from a Pike County gym attached to a coal camp school to a Henrico County gym attached to a suburban high school. The accents changed, but the squeak of the floor and the pressure of Friday night stayed the same.
Climbing the College Ranks: William & Mary and George Washington
By the late 1960s Slone had moved into the college game. University records list him as an assistant coach at William & Mary from 1967 to 1969, then as an assistant at George Washington University during the 1969–70 season. The Atlantic 10 record book and a later television composite schedule confirm the next step: in 1970 he became head coach at George Washington.
At GW Slone guided the Colonials through four seasons of transition. Official conference and school records credit him with an 11–14 record in 1971–72, followed by 17–9 in 1972–73 and 15–11 in 1973–74. Combining those seasons with his first year, the coaching index at Sports Reference gives him a 54–48 mark at GW and a career college head coaching record of 97–111 over eight seasons.
Those numbers do not make him a household name in national basketball history. Yet they look very different when viewed through an Appalachian lens. Here was a man born in a Pike County coal town whose first big job in the game was leading a Division I program in Washington, D.C., navigating the early years of the modern recruiting era and scheduling the kind of opponents that could get a mid major noticed.
Coming Home to the Spiders
In 1974, Slone’s career turned back toward familiar ground when he was hired as head coach at the University of Richmond, the same program where he had worked the pivot a decade and a half earlier. Richmond’s own media guides and offseason record books list his seasons there in a tidy line: 10–16 in 1974–75, 14–14 in 1975–76, 15–11 in 1976–77, and 4–22 in 1977–78, for a four year Richmond record of 43–63.
Those mid 1970s Spider teams were not national powers, but they did represent a step up from some of the program’s leaner years. The 15–11 mark in 1976–77 gave Richmond a winning season and showed that a coach from Pike County could keep his alma mater competitive as the program moved toward a more ambitious schedule.
The record books also show how difficult that schedule could be. A Richmond media guide and an online version of the university’s Top 25 results note that Slone’s teams went winless against AP ranked opponents during his tenure, with entries such as an early season trip to play fourth ranked Maryland that ended in a lopsided loss. It is easy to look back and see only the losses. It is harder, but more important, to see a former coal camp kid willing to take his players into hostile arenas and measure them against the best in the country.
Primary sources from the time show him doing the things every college coach in the region did: working the media, shouldering the blame, praising his players. A 1976 Farmville Herald recap of a Richmond game in Southside Virginia quotes “coach Carl Slone” offering postgame comments, a reminder that his teams were part of the regular winter rhythm for small town fans across the state.
Rivalries and the City Game
One of the more revealing portraits of Slone as a coach comes from a later piece written not in Pike County or Richmond, but on VCU’s official athletics blog. In a 2015 article about the Richmond VCU series, former Spider head coach Slone is quoted remembering how the cross town rivalry began. He recalled that VCU coach Chuck Noe “browbeat [Richmond president] Bruce Heilman” into scheduling the Rams and explained that he initially resisted playing VCU because he felt he had “kids that just couldn’t play on the level that I needed to play on.”
Those remarks show a practical mountain coach at work in a city setting. Slone was honest about what his roster could handle, cautious about overreaching, and still willing to bend once the time was right. Once the series was set, his teams actually dominated the early meetings, winning the first five games against VCU, many of them by only a handful of points.
The same VCU piece notes that after leaving coaching in 1978, Slone went into marketing with Blue Cross Blue Shield, remained in the Richmond area, and kept a close eye on both programs. He appreciated VCU coach Shaka Smart’s decision to brand his pressure defense “Havoc,” understanding a good marketing hook when he saw one, and he watched games at the Siegel Center with his son, who became a VCU graduate and season ticket holder.
Life’s Fourth Quarter: Richmond and Remembrance
By the time his coaching record had settled into official tables and media guide lines, Slone’s life was centered far from Pike County in distance but not in memory. Bliley’s Funeral Home in Richmond recorded that “Slone, Carl Johnson, born February 6, 1937, passed away peacefully surrounded by his family, on February 26, 2020,” and Legacy.com’s reprint notes that he was a resident of Virginia at the time of his death and that his obituary appeared in the Richmond Times Dispatch in March 2020.
Wikipedia’s February 2020 deaths list briefly recorded him as “Carl Slone, 83, American college basketball coach (George Washington, Richmond),” a simple one line note among many others. It is a sparse way to remember someone whose life touched so many gyms, locker rooms, and classrooms over six decades.
Yet the Appalachian traces remain visible. He is the most famous person from Majestic according to one metric, and his story fits neatly alongside Pike County’s own narratives about basketball as a mountain institution. A local history essay on Pike County sports describes gymnasiums as gathering places where “business deals and new acquaintances” are made, right alongside funerals and revivals. Slone’s life sits inside that world: a boy who grew up along a narrow road in a coal camp, found a college home in Richmond, and became part of the regional basketball landscape from high school gyms to Atlantic 10 arenas.
Why Carl Slone Matters in Appalachian History
For AppalachianHistorian.org, the question is not whether Carl Slone belongs in the same pantheon as nationally known coaches. It is whether his life illuminates something important about the mountains and the people who leave, return, and carry the region with them.
First, his story underscores how deeply intertwined basketball and community life are in eastern Kentucky. From the Pike County Historical Society’s reminder that public school basketball is a mountain institution, to the long line of players and coaches who have left the mountains to chase the game, Slone’s trajectory is part of a larger pattern.
Second, his career shows how an Appalachian kid could ride that game into wider worlds without shedding his roots. As a player he ran Hooker’s offense at Richmond and learned how to handle himself under the lights. As a high school coach he learned to teach and to lead teenagers. As a college head coach he navigated schedules, rivalries, and the politics of athletic departments in Washington and Richmond. At every step, he carried forward the habits of a Pike County gym: straightforward speech, measured ambition, and a willingness to measure himself against stronger opponents even when the outcome was uncertain.
Finally, the way he is remembered tells us something about Appalachian memory itself. In Richmond, he is a line in the Spiders’ media guide and one of many coaches in a long program history. In Washington, he is a name attached to early 1970s records in an Atlantic 10 PDF. In Pike County, by contrast, he stands as the lone “most famous” son of a tiny coal town, a reminder that even places on the geographic fringe can shape the history of American sport.
For readers in the mountains, that may be the most important part of the story. A boy from Majestic took the bus out of the Tug Fork valley, learned to play and coach the city game, and spent a lifetime in gyms a long way from home. Yet every time his name is read in a media guide or a fan blog, Pike County and its coal towns travel with him, quietly written into the record.
Sources and further reading
Bliley’s Funeral Home and Legacy.com obituary entries for Carl Johnson Slone, confirming his full name, dates, and place of death in Richmond, Virginia. blileys.com+2Legacy.com+2
“Carl Slone,” Wikipedia and mirrored copies, synthesizing his biographical and coaching timeline and noting his All Southern Conference honor and overall record. Wikipedia+1
Sports Reference entries for the 1958–59 Richmond Spiders roster and for Carl Slone’s overall coaching record, providing season by season stats and his combined 97–111 college head coaching mark. Sports Reference+2Sports Reference+2
University of Richmond men’s basketball media guides and offseason record books, listing Slone as a player from 1957 to 1960 and as head coach from 1974 to 1978 with a 43–63 record and detailed year by year results. University of Richmond Athletics+2University of Richmond Athletics+2
Atlantic 10 Conference men’s basketball record book and composite schedule materials, which record George Washington’s early 1970s season records under Slone and summarize his GW coaching tenure. static.atlantic10.com+1
Virginia Chronicle search results for the Richmond News Leader and The Farmville Herald, including game stories that describe Slone’s contributions as a player and quote him as a college head coach. Virginia Chronicle+2Virginia Chronicle+2
Pike County Historical Society’s essay on Pike County basketball and local sports pages, which describe public school basketball as a “mountain institution” and situate the game within broader community life. Pike County Historical Society+1
“NOE LOBBIED FOR A ‘YES’, HELPED LAUNCH VCU–RICHMOND RIVALRY,” Around the Horns, the official VCU athletics blog, offering detailed narrative and quotations from Slone about the origins of the Richmond VCU series and his later life in Richmond. AROUND THE HORNS+1
Playback.fm entries for “Famous People from Majestic, Kentucky” and “Famous People from Kentucky,” which identify Slone as the most notable person from Majestic and place him within a larger list of Kentucky born figures. Playback.fm+1
Wikipedia and mapping sources on Majestic, Kentucky and Phelps, Kentucky, confirming that Majestic is an unincorporated coal town in Pike County with a small cluster of homes, a post office, and a market along the highway. Wikipedia+2Mapcarta+2