Empire Knights: The Legendary Aubrey Durrell

The Legendary Aubrey Durrell is a book about a young man who grew up in Empire, Georgia, a small community in central Georgia. While Empire is a real place, it is vastly different from the place described in this book. It is a very small community with no more than 400 residents and one lonely caution light that lets you know you are there. At one time, many years ago, Empire had its own school, as did other communities such as Union Hill, Roddy, Chester, Chauncey, and other communities about the same size as Empire, and it was this thought that what if those communities had developed differently and still had their schools today. This story tells how life would have been through the eyes of Aubrey Durrell, a talented young athlete and musician who loves his hometown and takes the values of hard work, faith, and loyalty to family and friends with him wherever he goes in his life. The story follows the life of Aubrey and his teammates, who fight for athletic supremacy with other small communities-especially Union Hill, their biggest rival. We follow him through his college career and his marriage to a girl he met in college. Along the way, he falls in love with his high school sweetheart, who ends up breaking his heart, and deals with life’s struggles and temptations, all while staying true to the values taught by his parents in Empire, Georgia.

Tony Byram was raised in the small community of Empire, Georgia, in the 1970s and left in the fall of 1979 to attend college at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. Upon graduating from Mercer in 1983, he began a teaching and coaching career that lasted for 36 years. He was a successful high school football and baseball coach for three different high schools in Georgia. No matter where he worked or lived, he never forgot the values of hard work and honesty that were instilled in him in Empire.
He is married and is the father of two grown children and a proud grandfather to one, so far. It is his sincerest hope that by writing ‘EMPIRE KNIGHTS: THE LEGENDARY AUBREY DURRELL’ he can relate to small towns everywhere and pay tribute to his own upbringing and sense of belonging to someplace special.