Jerry Will: Grill Master for 19 Years

By Megan Phelps
Jerry Will has been with the Clover Hill Bucks for over 30 years now. He has been on the board since the late 1980s and acts as treasurer. Jerry has been grilling at Clover Hill for the past 19 years. If fans go to the ballpark, they will see a long grill that Jerry has built himself. After the first year of grilling, he went to Walmart and customized his grill to be made long, so he did not have to reach behind burgers and accidently burn himself. The slab in the front part of the grill, is made from an old scrap of metal that was originally made for an elevator. That piece works perfectly as a workstation right in front of the grill. He also customized it to do other meats, besides just burgers. It is tall enough to do beer can chicken and has grates that can cook pork loin.

 Jerry has been grilling for Clover Hill for 19 years, and in that time, he calculated that he has made about 60,000 burgers. He averages that he has made 3,200 burgers a year. He is especially proud of the people he works with, his family. His wife, daughter, and grandsons help run the concession stand. He says that contributes to the family atmosphere they like to promote. He enjoys going out of his way to meet the new players for Clover Hill, whether that be after game fist bumps, or picnics.

 Clover Hill’s field was made in a span of two months in 1954. The first meeting was May 1st, 1954 where the board had agreed to build the park. Jerry jokes that nowadays it would take 6 months to get Rockingham County to even approve of building a ballpark. Jerry says that most of the poles seen around the stadium were dug and put up by family members of the community of Clover Hill.

 We had to ask… who has the better burger, Montezuma’s McNett Burger or Clover Hill’s Buck Burger? His response was, “I don’t like to compete, we’ve been doing the same burger for years. When you do 60,000 burgers you don’t want to change. But you know what? They have a darn good burger at Montezuma, and we have a good burger too.” Jerry wraps up the interview by saying, “Family is represented by us, the board, and the community of Clover Hill.”

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