NATCHEZ — It only took one time for the former Washington High School gang to eat lunch together before it became a regular occurrence.

A group of former Washington High School football players — Dick Dollar, Ronnie Smith, Jerry Herring, Milton Smith, Earl Cox and Ronnie Rushing — started meeting for lunch last summer. Barry Dillard, a former coach at Washington High School, joined the group Wednesday at Dollar’s house on Pecanwood Drive for the first time.

After doing it the first time, the group started meeting every four to six weeks. Dollar’s wife, Cynthia, said her husband thought it’d be a good idea to get the old group together.

“I said, why don’t we invite them to lunch, and I’ll get it all set up,” Cynthia said. “I did it, and they had a ball, and I said, ‘Why don’t you consider doing it regularly?’”

So the group started meeting regularly, usually at one of their houses. Dillard was the most recent invite, and between the coach and his former players, there was no shortage of stories to tell.

“I was 21, fresh out of college, and they were 16- and 17-year-olds,” Dillard said.

Since teachers and coaches could whip children for misbehaving back then, Smith said Dillard didn’t spare the rod, even if Dillard only was a few years older than the rest of them.

“He had a Ph.D. in leather whips,” Smith said.

Dillard insisted, though, that Smith was exaggerating.

“I didn’t whip them that much,” Dillard said.

Dollar begged to differ.

“He whipped us all the time,” Dollar said. “I probably deserved it. In fact, I probably deserved it more than I got it.”

Herring said while his teammates were out on the field, his time was usually spent watching the others in action.

“I was the bench-warmer,” Herring said. “They used me as the practice dummy. I weighed 125 pounds, and when they put the equipment on me, I weighed 5 pounds more.”

Cox said though that he wasn’t much bigger.

“I didn’t weigh that much, only about 155,” Cox said.

While all of the others graduated from Washington High School in 1960 — a year before the school closed — Cox transferred to Wesson High School in 1959.

There’s always a funny story or two with so many memories, and Rushing said one in particular stands out.

“Dick was our quarterback, and he came in the huddle when we were seniors,” Rushing said. “I said, ‘What’s the play, Dick? Give me the number.’ If he had the number, he could run the play perfectly, but he could not think of the number.”

Herring chimed in, saying that Dollar had to compensate.

“I remember him writing it on the palm of his hand,” Herring said.

Not everyone from the original group still attends. Wayne Smith, a fellow 1960 graduate of Old Washington, worked overseas in Iraq and died of a heart attack last year the day before he was scheduled to come home.

“He was with us the first time we did this,” Milton Smith said. “It’s like losing a member of your family. We graduated together, went to school together and worked together. All of a sudden, he left, and he didn’t get to come back.”

Ronnie Smith said he’s grateful the group is able to meet as often as it does.

“It’s pretty special to be alive at this age,” Ronnie Smith said. “We meet up, tell old stories and enjoy each other’s company.”