I find it hard to believe when I do the math that when I went to the Army-Navy games in 1960 and 1961, and maybe some other year, that it was more than 60 years ago. World War II was basically freshly over, and not some fly speck in the history books that it is today.
My father was a civilian employee of the Department of Navy, a naval engineer who worked at the Philadelphia and Brooklyn Navy yards, then in some office in Washington after those places were closed.
His brother was a career naval officer, eventually retiring as a Rear Admiral, the first Greek-American to graduate Annapolis in 1931. We didn't go to the games with Uncle George, because by then he was living in Greece, retiring in 1958. We did however always get good seats to the games, although it might be hard to call any seat at the Old Municipal Stadium in Philadelphia a "good seat" when it consisted of plopping your butt on a frigid, backless slap of concrete. How nice to see the game played in a state-of-the art stadium like MetLife.
We were not military family per se, but my father was in the Army as a Tech Sergeant in the Corps of Engineers during the war, basically stationed in Guam making maps from reconnaissance photos. He tried to get a commission in the Navy through his brother, but it didn't go through, so my assumption is he enlisted. His engineering degree got him placed in the Corps of Engineers. I still have his castle collar insignias.
The little he talked about his service, and the little we ever asked our parents, I got the impression he didn't like being a Non-Com. He particularly carried a grudge against the KP duty he had to serve. KP stood for Kitchen Police and was a rotating assignment of having to do work in the kitchen like cleaning massive pots and preparing food. It was a day's worth of drudgery, and enlisted men sometimes paid one of their fellow soldiers to take their place when their time the barrel came up.
My mother was in the Army as a nurse, a Lieutenant serving stateside in Thayer General Hospital in Nashville. It was there she and my father met. My father was never in combat, but was somehow wounded from the effects of a typhoon and a building collapse. That's the best I came to know. How a soldier serving in Guam wound up in Nashville, half a world away, is something that was never explained to me. It 's one of the many questions we didn't ask our parents. My parents married in Nashville during the war.
My father told me that while he was in the hospital they removed his pilonidal cyst. It was surgical practice time. There was nothing wrong with his pilonidal area, but the military wanted to keep their surgeons busy. When I told one of my gang from my racetrack coterie, The Assembled, Bobby G., a retired surgeon whose residency was interrupted by Vietnam-era Army service at Fort Dix about my father, he declared it was "Jeep riders disease," The Army loved taking out your pilonidal cyst when they had the chance.
NOTE:
The faithful reader Bobby G. has this to add about pilonidal cysts.
As a private practicing surgeon Bobby G. tells of removing lots of infected pilonidal cysts. The Army had a policy of removing them prophylactically. They figured as long as you were in the hospital anyway for something, they might as well get about to yanking that cyst that could get infected and would just require you to be back in the hospital anyway. After all, they weren't about to get rid of Jeeps, just your cyst.
My Uncle George's son graduated Annapolis as well, retiring as a Commander. He never was assigned sea duty, serving instead in ordnance depots and disposal duties, mostly in Hawaii. Not a bad assignment.
I think it was the 1961 game when we saw JFK at the game. We were seated fairly close to the president and watched him cross the field at halftime. I think he started on the Navy side, and then crossed over to the Army side. He was of course he Commander-in Chief of all servicemen. It is hard to reconcile that mental image with what would happen to the president on that November day in Dallas in 1963, just two years later..
It is hard to imagine the games we saw pre-dated Navy's Roger Staubach. But Joe Bellino was the star halfback and eventual Heisman trophy winner then who was tearing up the ground game. And a ground game is what you see most of in an Army-Navy game. And yesterday's Navy 17-13 upset win was won on a mistaken snap from center to halfback Diego Fagot who wasn't expecting the ball, but once he secured it, ran for the needed 4th down yardage and kept the time-consuming drive alive. The center thought an audible had been called, but it hadn't been.
A college game like the Army-Navy game lets you see a different brand of football than that played on Sunday by the pros. There is more rushing, less passing, and a variety of option, end-around plays and fake punts that you just don't see in a professional game.
Joe Drape on the NYT wrote a book about Army football some years ago and offered a piece in yesterday's online edition and today's print edition about how the players epitomize true student- athletes. Joe doesn't just do horse racing. He has a deep knowledge about college football.
When my cousin was slated to go to Annapolis we were able to take a tour of the Naval Academy. We ate lunch with the midshipman in the vast dinning hall. When someone at the table wanted more bread they held up the bread basket and a Filipino sailor came rushing over. The kitchen was staffed by regular enlisted Navy sailors.
We got to go through Bancroft Hall, the dormitory, and meet with one of the Midshipman in his room. The room was spacious, and afforded a large closet area for the various uniforms that were required to be worn. I think there was also a bathroom. The hallways were especially wide to accommodate drills and formations. When we toured in the '70s, the Academies had yet to admit women.
The Midshipman we met described an academic workload that approached 20 credits in a semester for an engineering degree. He wasn't a football player, but he certainly was in shape.
In the games we went to I don't remember the post-game singing of the Alma Mater songs. I do remember the mad swarm of people, Cadets and Midshipman alike, who rocked the goal posts and took them down and carted off pieces of wood.
Goal posts of that era were somewhat flimsy affairs, unpadded, that were anchored with two posts and rather short uprights at each end. Determining field goals and extra points was not always easy with the old arrangement.
But the demolishing of the goal posts at either end, no matter who won, was a tradition. I wanted to take part, but being probably 11 years old, it was considered a bit dangerous to get involved with the mob that was splintering wood with their bare hands. It pretty much would look like this year's January 6th riot at the Capitol without the headgear and painted faces.
I probably could haul out an Army-Navy program from a file cabinet in the garage. But I'll let it be for now. Too much in the way.
The Army-Navy game is always way more than a game for me.
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