Earlier this month, the decades-old fencing that bordered the southwest endzone at Choppy Wagner Stadium was removed, making way for building supplies and construction machinery. Once the ground was leveled, the first pieces to what will eventually be a brand new field house were laid, a first for Beaufort County’s largest high school.

The athletic department held a groundbreaking ceremony at halftime of the Pam Pack’s conference opener against Farmville Central on Oct. 19, a fitting 27-0 shutout, but the real groundwork — the behind the scenes nuts and bolts — had taken years to piece together. And if not for the diligence and hard work of Fred and Lynda Watkins, along with a handful of other Washington Athletic Club members, the project may have never even launched.

“The economy got bad and no one really wanted to ask the county commissioners, but it wasn’t right that we were the largest school in the county, close to 1,000 students, without a field house,” Fred Wakins said. “When the recession came (in 2008), we realized it was hard to ask people for money when they were struggling to meet their budget. Three guys — Jim Pagnani, Archie Jennings, Walker Lynch — put together a team to see what they can do. They went out, sought the right people and did a heck of a job. So we’re real excited about what we’re going to have.”

A graduate of Washington High School in 1967 and the current Washington Athletic Club president, the Pam Pack has been a family tradition for Watkins. Both of his brothers played football for J.G. Choppy Wagner, his sister graduated in 1963, he has a collection of nieces and nephews who cycled through and Fred and Lynda’s two sons — Freddy (’96) and Lee (’07) — were both heavily involved in athletics.

But despite having gone almost nine years without having a child enrolled at the high school, while many other members have moved on, Fred and Lynda have remained, navigating the club through the recession and eventually raising enough funds to finally construct the field house. Now, with Lynda’s logistical behind-the-scenes efforts as secretary, the club can adequately meet the demands and subsidize operating costs of the current Pam Pack teams.

“There was a good group that came through with my youngest son that graduated in ‘07 and we got busy and started getting things done,” Fred Watkins said. “As a result, we got back in decent shape to where we were able to do more and more for the athletes and kind of fill the void. When the athletic department needed something and the budget wasn’t there, that’s when we came in and took care of it. That’s been our policy ever since.”

For Fred, who played football under Wagner, it was his son Lee’s relationship with head football coach Sport Sawyer that originally inspired the family to become stay with the club for the long haul.

“There’s a couple others who have been there, doing it as long as I have,” he said. “Part of it had to do with Sport Sawyer. He was just a good guy and my son thought the world of him. I didn’t want to just bail out when my son graduated. We have just a great group of coaches — the soccer coaches, the volleyball coaches, the new baseball coach. It was sort of like no one was stepping up to replace some of us older guys, so we just kept on doing it.”