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Donnie Wilkerson: Meet Mr. Altavista

by | Jul 2024

WITH A broken neck, fractured ribs, two collapsed lungs, and unconscious — that’s how a stricken community found a beloved 71-year-old man who had become a staple and role model for many. Some call him a legend. Others call him “Mr. Altavista.” 

Altavista, a small town just over 25 miles south of Lynchburg, is where Donnie Wilkerson was born in 1951, spending most of his life with his wife of 45 years, Nancy. Together, they have two daughters and three grandchildren. 

Growing up, Wilkerson attended Altavista High School, where he made sports a way of life, playing football in the fall and basketball in the winter. But he claimed running as his real love. Through sports, he met mentors who invested in him and instilled life-changing greatness. 

“I had some coaches that helped me believe in myself,” Wilkerson expressed. “And when I went to college, I knew that I wanted to return the same type of feeling that I got from my coaches.” 

Upon graduation, the Altavista native did just that, returning to his hometown to teach in 1973 and finding himself at Campbell County Technical Center. There, he helped kids obtain jobs through an apprenticeship program as a coordinator for Campbell County Public Schools. For 27 years, he registered students across the county and administered performance grades. He also met employers and developed programs. 

All the while, he adhered to his true calling of coaching. Aligning with his interests as a kid, Wilkerson has been coaching football, basketball, cross-country, and track at Altavista High School. He loves biking and running with the cross-country team during training sessions. 

“We — my head coach and I in cross-country — the question was asked over the 27 years that we’ve been coaching cross-country, how many runners have we had, and we totaled it up,” Wilkerson said. “In 27 years that we’ve been coaching, there was over a thousand runners that we have had on our cross-country team.” 

Wilkerson’s impact and love for people have been felt by those students and others, many of whom would simply describe the coach as “just a good person.” His character bleeds into volunteering, assisting with 5Ks, and many other running events in Altavista. 

Wilkerson also ran with a gang — no, not that kind of gang. He volunteered with others to move chained sideline markers during Altavista’s home football games. They called themselves the “chain gang.” 

Although he coached, Wilkerson never quit competing in sports as an athlete. Road races and triathlons were the norm. He even competed in ultra running. He has participated in all these events for over 35 years, and he retired from competition only a few years ago. He continues to pour into the community through sports and coaching. 

“There’s two ways that people sometimes look at it,” Wilkerson said. “Sometimes kids, when you’re growing up — ‘Oh, I can’t wait to get out of this community. I want to go and do this and that.’ But that was never what I wanted to do. I wanted to come back and be a part of the community and give back to what people gave to me. So here I am — going to be 73 years old and still helping out where I can and try to make a difference.” 

One day, though, his whole community helped him. The coach has always had a routine of mountain biking in the afternoon. June 21, 2022, was no different. He did not have brakes on his bike and told his wife, Nancy, he would bike downtown to order some. The trip was a success — except for one thing. 

“I didn’t make it home,” Wilkerson said. 

Unfortunately, Wilkerson never carried a cell phone. Nancy did not find him at the bike shop. Even worse, she discovered he never showed up for a scheduled sports practice. That’s when she knew something was seriously wrong. 

“My youngest daughter — we all go to the school, and the head coach’s wife said, ‘We need to call and report a missing person,’” Nancy recalled. 

The community responded. Friends were already looking, but the police placed Wilkerson’s missing status on Facebook. Suddenly, more people from the school, technical center, and community were filling the park, searching for Wilkerson. About seven hours later, they found him down a neighbor’s driveway into the woods, unconscious and severely injured, where he was airlifted to a hospital. To this day, the only thing Wilkerson remembers from the whole ordeal is the words, “We found him.” 

“That’s what the community means to me,” said Wilkerson, who continues to bike and has his still-bloodied, torn jersey framed on his back porch. 

And that’s what Wilkerson means to his community, who nicknamed him “Mr. Altavista.” GN 

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