‘Left his mark’: Bluffton High School retires jersey number of student killed in 2021

The number 55 will be taken out of circulation from Bluffton’s high school football team after a ceremony Friday retiring the number in honor of Dwon “DJ” Fields Jr., a student who was shot and killed in March 2021.

“We’re doing this so kids 20 years from now can know who he is and live like DJ,” Hayden Gregory, the school’s head football coach said before the ceremony ahead of a scrimmage against Battery Creek High School on Friday. “He was such an unbelievable person and a special person to the community.”

Gregory never met Fields before moving to Bluffton this year from a high school in Georgia, but the stories he has heard about him have made Gregory want others to “model him.” The coach has been in touch with Fields’ father, Dwon Fields Sr., and said he was one of the first people he had met when he made the move to Bluffton. The ceremony was a necessary part of honoring the 18-year-old who was shot and killed in a case of mistaken identity in March 2021, Gregory said. The framed jersey, along with an inscription and photo of Fields, will be on display in the school’s hallway.

“We want people to remember how he lived, not how he died,” Gregory said.

Fields’ parents held the frame at the ceremony on the 50-yard line of the football field while Fields’ former coach, John Houpt, spoke over the stadium speakers.

“Days have gone by with the same words — loving, caring, funny, honorable, respectful and hard-working — all kept coming back in my mind,” Houpt said. “It wasn’t until last night when I realized the words we had all associated with DJ don’t need to be replaced with something new. They are words that will always reflect the kind of soul he was.”

‘An honor’

Outside the football field, a banner with Fields’ photo and the words “live like DJ” had been tied to a chain-link fence. Dozens of friends and family gathered in black t-shirts with angel wings in the school’s signature colors across the front and the words “Team 55” in green across the back. They embraced one another, mostly in tears.

The ceremony “means a lot” and “was a big deal” to Fields’ parents, they said after the ceremony. Fields chose the number 55 in honor of his grandmother’s birth year and always told his family that he started his football career with that number and wanted to end it that way, his mother, Keema Bryant told the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.

“It was an honor because you don’t hear schools retiring high school jerseys,” Bryant said.

For them, the memories people have of their son and his kindness are a source of pride amid the excruciating loss.

“He left his mark not only on the field but this community,” Fields said. “He was always willing to help people and I feel very proud and honored that this has happened.”