SUPER BOWL XXII : WASHINGTON vs. DENVER BRONCOS : TOUGH ACT TO FOLLOW : Sheriff J.C. Gibbs, Joe’s Dad, a Celebrity in No. Carolina

Joe Gibbs, coach of the Redskins, gets his fiery interior and mellow exterior from his father, a colorful former North Carolina sheriff named J. C. Gibbs.

Now retired in California after a long career as a lawman--sheriff’s department, highway patrol, district attorney’s office--Sheriff Gibbs was out chasing bootleggers the night Joe was born, Nov. 25, 1940.

“Fortunately, I never had to shoot anyone,” said J. C., who moved several years ago from his home in Mocksville, N.C., to Sun City. “But I’ve had my car shot up so bad that it stopped dead and wouldn’t start.”

That and other exploits made J. C. a celebrity in North Carolina. Joe caught up with him in 1983 when his team won the Super Bowl. Not till recently, though, did Joe top J. C., by being named the No. 1 football coach of all time.

The ratings--Vince Lombardi was second--were made by the Elias Sports Bureau, a reputable organization that does the official statistics for baseball, pro football and other sports. The results were printed in Sport magazine in a story by Peter Hirdt, an Elias vice president.

Head of Elias is Seymour Siwoff, perhaps the most respected statistician in the country.

So the National Football League considers this an important honor for Gibbs--even though some NFL people are sure that Elias was slightly misled by some of the subjective data it fed into the computer.

“Lombardi was obviously the greatest we’ve had,” one NFL coach said. “The Packers were nothing before he got there, and they’ve been nothing since he left.

“What more evidence do you need? How many NFL titles did he win? The answer is five--including the first two Super Bowls.”

Even if Gibbs is only the second- or third-greatest coach of all time, so what? That isn’t bad, and, among other things, Gibbs is No. 1 in his generation. He has won 72% of his games--the record for active NFL coaches.

The Gibbs family is understandably proud of father and son. For in addition to Joe’s record, J. C. set one that still stands. In 1942, when Joe was 2, J. C. confiscated 2,800 gallons of illegal moonshine--the all-time state record in North Carolina.

“It was all choice mountain corn liquor,” said Joe’s mother, Winnie, who has never regretted that she didn’t get a drop of it. Like Joe, she is a teetotaler.

J. C. had a career that would excite any scriptwriter.

“I was kind of reckless, I guess,” he said in a Times interview several years ago. “But I’ve got to admit it, I enjoyed chasing those moonshiners down the road. Some were children, just kids.

“One night I spotted a boy and a girl in a car that roared like a race car. That’s how you could tell. A bootlegger’s car was always faster than ours, so the trick was to shoot out their tires before they got too far ahead.

“That night I leaned out the window quick and got both back tires. I had him running on the rims.”

That slowed the youngster down, but didn’t stop him.

“I ran him 25 miles on the rims,” J. C. said. “Then he jumped out of the car and ran through the woods. We had the liquor and the girl--she was about 17--but the boy got away to Pearl Harbor.”

Enlisted in the Army, J. C. meant.

“The FBI followed him over there, and kept track of the kid for four years,” he said. “And when he got out, they stepped in and arrested him.

“When they asked me to identify him, I said no. A serviceman? No way. We had the liquor.”

In the years when Joe was developing into a young athlete, J. C. was developing a special relationship with Southern bootleggers.

“(They) contributed to all our churches and were big givers to charity,” J. C. said. “And whenever I was laid up after an auto accident, I always heard from them.

“The year I was in a body cast all year, they sent me $50 a week in a plain white envelope. There was never a note in there, but I knew who it was from.

“When I got out, I went back to chasing them, and they respected that. They knew I had to.”