Wilson Hall's Wilson goes from coach to Easter bunny

Kurt Wilson suited up as a football player for the University of South Carolina from 1987 through 1990. He played in the trenches at defensive tackle and was one of the team captains in his final season.

He is a longtime high school football coach, the vast majority of it as an assistant at Wilson Hall. He can be as intense as a coach as he was as a player.

So what was such a tough guy doing traipsing around the perimeter of healthcare facilities in Sumter on Thursday in an Easter bunny suit.

"I think Kurt believes, 'Happy wife, happy life,' " his wife, Amy, said with a laugh.

Kurt was doing it to help out his wife, who is the sales representative for the Sumter branch of MSA Home Health and Hospice. She asked him to do it to help bring some joy and excitement to residents who have been isolated even more so than normal because of the mitigation and social distancing due to the coronavirus pandemic.

He said it was the least he could do for Amy.

"I get her full support during the football season," Kurt said. "She's taking care of kids, I'm never home, stuff like that. You know how it is. It's the least I could do for her."

Besides, it wasn't like it was the first time Kurt had been spotted in a bunny suit. The suit itself came from Wilson Hall, where he had sported it before in some school Easter programs.

Kurt admitted he was hesitant at first, not sure what to expect from the experience. He thinks he gained more from it than the others.

"I was the one who was blessed, to see the smiles on the faces of the people," he said. "It caught on little bit as we had a crowd going with us. It was just so good to see the individuals smiling, people inside the places smiling."

Not everyone was smiling though. Kurt said he got a few blank stares as if people were trying to figure out exactly why he was in a bunny suit.

"Sometimes it was like I was a comic who went in front of a crowd for the first time and bombed," Kurt said with a laugh.

The vast majority of the people who saw him though were happy.

"Just the smiles that you saw," he said. "You would go to windows and there were people like in big living rooms, and then some of the others were people in individual rooms by themselves. A lot of the people stopped what they were doing, get in their wheelchairs and come over to the window so we could get a better view of each other."

So how did Kurt portray a bunny?

"I think I more waddled," he said with a laugh. "I didn't hop."

And what would some of his old teammates at USC have to say about their former captain dressed in a white and pink bunny suit? Plenty.

"Mike Armstrong, he busted my chops a little bit," Kurt said. "Brendan McCormack said I was one ugly-looking bunny. Adam Holmes (who played at Manning High School) said I was a scary-looking bunny."

He had to agree.

"I was one scary-looking bunny."