David Wyant

David Wyant was born in Charlottesville in 1947. He explains how as a teenager he played football, baseball, basketball, and ran track, all at Albemarle High School. Growing up in the County of Albemarle he learned how to help on the family farm while ignoring the skin color of those working next to him. He played fast-pitch softball for Stacy’s Music Shop and Black players recruited him to play on Sundays in the Black baseball league. An engineering graduate of the University of Virginia, his day job was with the state highway department, and he turned “hobby” refereeing of football games into membership in the elite referee corps for National Football League games, including a Super Bowl. He recalled in his interview that the one Black player on the football team during his senior year at Albemarle was cut from the team while white players with lesser skills remained. In all his years in high school, that Black player was the only person cut from a team.