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BY C.Y. Peters

Elizabethton High Football

Randall Birchfield was a  three-year varsity performer (1964-66) for the Cyclones and started for two seasons at right guard. He was one of just two Elizabethton players to make the All-Big Seven Conference team his senior season, and the only one to achieve first-team status.

Going on to become a three-time letter-winner at East Tennessee State, Birchfield served as a starter or top reserve — again at right guard — from 1968-70. He was a member of the Buccaneers’ 1969 squad that finished 10-0-1, won the Ohio Valley Conference and defeated Louisiana Tech 34-14 in the Grantland Rice Bowl.

Birchfield was born on January 30, 1949, to the late Robert Howard and Mabel Kathleen Ellis Birchfield.  He was a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the “T” Club. He graduated from ETSU in 1973 with a B.S. in Business Administration and received his Master’s in Business Management in 1976. After graduating from ETSU, he was a supervisor at Beaunit Corporation and attended the First United Methodist Church in Elizabethton.

Birchfield began his real estate career in 1974 as an affiliate real estate broker when he earned his broker’s license in 1977 and began his own business, Randall Birchfield Real Estate, in 1977. He was named Who’s Who by the National Board of Realtors and was selected Outstanding Young Men of America. He was a past President of the Jaycees, a founding member of the Elizabethton Board of Realtors, where he served as Secretary and later as President, a member of the Design and Review Board of Urban Renewal, and a member of the Northeast Tennessee, Tennessee and National Association of Realtors. He was a licensed realtor and auctioneer in both Tennessee and North Carolina, a certified and licensed residential real estate appraiser and completed real estate appraisals and testimony in most of the area’s court systems. Randall Birchfield passed away on Saturday, March 22, 2014.