LeRoy Franklin Abernethy (September 27, 1885 – November 9, 1959) was an American

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

player from North Carolina. He played for North Carolina A&M from 1902–04 before transferring to the

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sy ...

for 1905.

NC State

1902–1904

Abernethy played first for North Carolina A&M, selected All-Southern by W. S. Kimberly in 1904.

University of North Carolina

Abernethy was a prominent

fullback Fullback or Full back may refer to: Sports * A position in various kinds of football, including: ** Full-back (association football), in association football (soccer), a defender playing in a wide position ** Fullback (gridiron football), in Americ ...

for the

North Carolina Tar Heels football The North Carolina Tar Heels football team represents the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the sport of American football or Gridiron Football. The Tar Heels play in the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) of the National Collegiate ...

team of the

. He was selected for the position on an all-time Carolina football team of Dr. R. B. Lawson in 1934. On the all time team of Joel Whitaker he was noted as the "probably the best line plunger that has ever been."

1905

He was selected All-Southern by coach

R. R. Brown Robert Roswell "Buster" Brown (November 28, 1879 – December 24, 1950) was an American football player, coach of football, basketball, and baseball, and college athletics administrator. After playing college football at Dartmouth College, he coac ...

Washington and Lee University , mottoeng = "Not Unmindful of the Future" , established = , type = Private liberal arts university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.092 billion (2021) , president = William C. Dudley , provost = Lena Hill , city = Lexingto ...

. A fullback did not score three touchdowns again for UNC until Mike Faulkerson in 1992.

Later life

By 1910, Abernethy was engaged in the hardware business in his hometown of

Hickory Hickory is a common name for trees composing the genus ''Carya'', which includes around 18 species. Five or six species are native to China, Indochina, and India (Assam), as many as twelve are native to the United States, four are found in Mexi ...

. He later moved to

Asheville Asheville ( ) is a city in, and the county seat of, Buncombe County, North Carolina. Located at the confluence of the French Broad and Swannanoa rivers, it is the largest city in Western North Carolina, and the state's 11th-most populous cit ...

, where he was a PurÖl distributor and then owner of the Hall-Sell Petroleum Carrier company. During World War II, he helped organize Petroleum Carriers Associates, an emergency oil transport unit, originally named the War Emergency Cooperative Association. In 1941, he married Frieda Burnett Russell in 1941.''North Carolina, Marriage Records, 1741-2011'' He died in an Asheville hospital in 1959 after suffering a heart attack at home.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abernethy, LeRoy 1885 births 1959 deaths North Carolina Tar Heels football players American football fullbacks NC State Wolfpack football players All-Southern college football players Players of American football from Asheville, North Carolina People from Hickory, North Carolina