The best of my football career all happened in the side yard. Maybe it should have stayed right there. In the yard, we five children played endless games from tag and red-light to kick-the-can and football. Because Mother liked her summer flowers, Father relished his vegetables, and we all liked picnic suppers on the lawn, our ground rules were intricate to say the least. In season, we played touch football. Large trees shaded most of the area, but their canopies were high enough for young legs to practice punts and drop-kicks. I was the youngest child, and when my turn came, I had a dependable gang of eight or nine boys to see how many touch-

downs we could loft through the tree branches or scoot around the hummocks. In the limited space, we ruled out blocking, but we did lots of running and dodging, with passes galore. At one point per touchdown, a typical afternoon’s score might be 39 to 37. As I grew, I thought I was pretty good at our game—don't forget my kicking practice.

I never tried out for school teams, feeling much too shy, but then I got a scholarship to the local boys’ prep school and found out that everyone there played on all the teams. Suddenly, as a high school junior in September 1940, I was the left tackle! At 160 pounds, I was the biggest kid on the team. I was scared when we traveled across the Hudson River to New York City to play the Riverdale School in my first real game. We had heard rumors of Kasprzak, a postgraduate ringer, being groomed for Columbia University. Kasprzak played, all right. He was strong, ran hard, scored several touchdowns, probably shaved frequently, and—I did survive. We improved a little over the season, but we never won a game.

Other sports went off better, and I remember the joy of our first win after about four games of basketball. In my senior year, there was no football team, but we did well in both basketball and baseball. At graduation, our coach, Luke Ward, urged me to go right after the football team at college. He said, “Swarthmore is small, Dickie. You’ll be on the team as soon as you get there. Make ’em see what you can do."

That summer, I worked on a dairy farm in New Hampshire, replacing hands who had gone in the draft. I pitched hay, lugged grain, and cleaned stables. I felt strong—190 pounds—and, when Swarthmore invited me to preseason football camp at Avalon on the Jersey shore, I puffed up a little more, thinking they must need me.

Fall 1942 was a strange time—blackouts after sunset all along the Atlantic coast, pitch dark without the moon, not a soul playing on the beach all day, empty cottages and shops everywhere. All was barrenness. I was young, balmy, and not yet aware of my liability to the draft. The gloomy scene and the girlfriend I had left behind in New Hampshire made me homesick. I watched the easy friendships of the older guys and felt shy among the freshman prospects. I brooded: These blustery guys? This Philadelphia accent? Is this the only music? Davy and Joe jitterbugging together—best I’ve ever seen. Do I have to do that? What made me think I can play football anyway? I hurt my shoulder in the very first scrimmage.

College opened, and I continued to work out with the team. Half the season went by before I could play, and I joined the leftovers of the football squad. Avery Blake—excellent as the regular lacrosse coach and world-class as a forgiving mentor—assisted with junior varsity football in his off season. Now, I was playing at the right level. We had our own high morale as the duffers of the squad. We all loved Ave and called ourselves “Blake’s Bearcats" in his honor. Our schedule came from challenges by secondary schools in the area. We were always the visiting team, usually on their Homecoming Days.

Ave got results quietly by reminding us of the real importance of our work. On game days, he would say blandly, “Nobody will be hoping you’ll win, there won’t be any reporters, no scouts watching you. These kids are excited. They want to beat you. They think you are a college team. You’ll probably just mess it up the way we’ve done all week, but you can pull together some of what you know. Well, go ahead out there, and have some fun."

At halftime, he was sure to say, still gently, “Well, you really didn’t do much, did you? Nobody cares, but I think you could go out and win it if you want to." And we did win—often—the only victorious football games I ever played in. We all wanted to give him our very best.

One of our most memorable games was against the National Farm School up in Bucks County, Pa. A year had gone by, and now, in early December 1943, I had joined the Navy V-12 program at Swarthmore. By then, I loved the College and a much more important girlfriend on the campus, but I was having a hard time continuing my engineering major and accepting the duties of an apprentice seaman. And I worried about me and the war. It was a cold day. We rode the Reading Railroad from Philadelphia to Doylestown, where we boarded a white school bus. Somebody had painted it all over with big green hearts like an eighth-grade project. Inside, we saw a big green sign in scrawly letters: “Fighting hearts—we can’t be beat!"

We got off at a bunkhouse sort of building, where we dressed for the game. In the bare, cold room we saw more green posters. Some said, “Fighting hearts"; some, “We can't be beat"; or both. We scoffed, “What is this? Intimidation?" And the theme continued on every maple tree as we hiked up a long road to the field—hearts, slogans, even a couple of green skull and crossbones. We laughed, “This is going to be a circus." The home team ran out on the field doing a lot of yelling—getting up their courage, we supposed. They looked small but well fed. One of the guys said, “They look like a bunch of Porky Pigs!" We decided maybe we should go easy on them.

What a shock! They ran my good kickoff back to our 45-yard line. Jumping quickly into position still standing, the quarterback called out, “Fighting hearts!" The team roared back, “We can’t be beat!"; then, they squatted down and yelled, “One-two, one-two, one-two," smacking us back a good 12 yards, straight on. Back into formation, the quarterback gave a few code numbers. “Ready!" he yelled, and with a few more “one-two, one-twos" they plunged into us again. About four more of these, and they had a touchdown.

Well, it kept on with the farm boys always hitting fast and hard. They varied the attack with open signal calling, usually in unison, and often repeating their “Fighting hearts" exchange. At the half, we were behind 14-0 and adjourned to the back of the little grandstand for a frigid rest. Someone said it was below 20 degrees. We struggled back with a touchdown, but I missed the extra point (did you forget my kicking practice?). We needed two more scores to win, but we never even got the first one. Near the end of the game, I took a terrible kick from somebody’s cleats in the back of my right calf. In the cold, it stiffened immediately into the worst cramp I ever had. I couldn't stay in the game.

At last it was over. With “Fighting hearts—we can’t be beat!" still ringing in our ears, we put our Navy blues back on, stuffed our gear back into our duffles, and by bus and train rode back to Philadelphia. I was hobbling badly on the dark streets as I tried to keep up with my teammates on the walk from Reading Terminal down to Broad Street Station. The lights were dim, and the neon signs still off, somber at best. People noticed me limping. “They suppose I’m a veteran, back home from somewhere," I thought. I imagined a false little war of my own. Soon two motherly women came on all dressed in black, with Christmas scarves against the cold. They stopped me, and one put her hand on my arm saying, “Oh, you poor dear boy!"

I was ready. I groaned a patronizing, “Oh, I'll be all right, lady," and, with hardly a look at them, I hobbled on. As they drifted away, I flattered myself with my cavalier fake disregard for them; applause to a bruised football chump. But, as I write this, I wonder: Was that a real grief those women were trying to share?

Class secretary Dick Burrowes and wife Jean recently moved from Bothell, Washington, to Evanston, Ill., to share more time with their grandchildren.