Judith Bragg was a mainstay around Allen Community College baseball for three decades. If there was a Red Devil baseball game, she was there.
David Proctor came to Allen as a “raw” talent and became one of the Red Devils’ All-America selections. Proctor was the Red Devils’ right-handed ace on the pitchers mound in 1988.
Bragg, who died in 2001, of Iola, and David Proctor of Topeka are among the inaugural class of the Red Devil Diamond Club Baseball Hall of Fame. They join Michael Whipps, Elliott Bass and the Allen Community College’s 1983 team, which took third in the JUCO World Series.
On Monday, the Register published a story on Whipps and Elliott and mistakenly referred to the hall of fame as the ACC Baseball Hall of Fame. The Red Devil Diamond Club, an ACC baseball alumni organization, not the college, established the hall of fame.
“We are an alumni organization formed to give back to the college baseball program. We also have our own hall of fame to recognize players and others involved with the Allen Community College baseball program,” said Tom Price (1980-81), president of the Red Devil Diamond Club.
“Miss Bragg was a great womam. She would take care of us out-of-state players, and the in-staters too,” said Duane Wells, who played on the 1983 team. “She was so much a part of Allen baseball and we loved her.”
Bragg was a teacher at Allen. She sponsored cheerleading and dance/pom pon squads, coached volleyball and volunteered to tutor students. She was a baseball fan through and through and very rarely missed a Red Devil ballgame.
She was born in North Lewisburg, Ohio. Her family moved to Iola when she was 10 and she graduated from Iola High School and Iola Junior College (ACC).
Bragg’s teaching career spanned 40 years including teaching at Iola’s Jefferson Elementary School. She received her bachelor’s degree from Pittsburg State in 1951.
Bragg became a full-time instructor at the community college in 1965 and retired in 1983.
Bragg handed out oranges and apples to the ACC baseball teams throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
“She would feed us and be at games to support us. She was a grand lady,” Wells said, who is also from Ohio.
Upon Bragg’s death, she was laid to rest in Highland Cemetery, across the street from the college. At her request her gravesite was selected so you can look to the east and see Red Devil Field, allowing her to continue to watch over her “baseball boys.”
Proctor was an outstanding athlete at Topeka High School in the late 1980s. He was a member of the Topeka High 1986 Class 6A state championship basketball team.
“But Topeka High didn’t have baseball as a sport then. I played in the summers but I had two brothers (John and Tony) who played at Allen before me so I knew of its baseball program,” Proctor told the Register this week.
