THE SILVER ALL-AMERICA 1962
Some of this year's Silver All-Americas were superb football players whose feats moved spectators to hysteria; others set no records, scored no points, just played on the team and got their letters and their knocks. All, nonetheless, enjoyed playing football, and found—later, if not while nursing bruises after practice—that they profited from its discipline, anguish and hard work. Their achievements in college and, more important, their achievements since—in the community, in business, in law, in medicine, in the military, in sports, in good works—were the basis for the selection of these 25 men. All earned their football letters in college, all graduated in 1938 and all eminently deserve the silver goalposts symbolizing the award. If a phrase can be used to describe the postcollege careers of the award winners, it is that they have done and continue to do their chosen work quietly and well.
Sixty college and university presidents, among them the superintendents of the U.S. Military Academy and the U.S. Naval Academy, were each asked to nominate a single football letterman of outstanding leadership both during and after his athletic career. From these, a panel of 12 judges, having studied the citations, selected the 25 who had most distinguished themselves in their fields and who best represented "the human values in which athletics and education are joined."
Award winner Brigadier General James B. Tipton, now commander of the Washington Air Defense Sector, finds this link between athletics and postgraduate achievement: "Competition in sport develops a spirit that drives you to do the best you can, in any field, within the rules." His teammates on the Silver Anniversary All-America, one is certain, would agree.
Vignettes of the winners appear on pages 78 and 79, while their recollections of their most memorable feats (or disasters) on collegiate football fields are graphically depicted on pages 80-83. (A quality all 25 share is an admirable sense of perspective.)
Two of the elected men were the best football players of 1937: Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Byron (Whizzer) White, unstoppable Colorado halfback, Rhodes scholar and professional player with Pittsburgh and Detroit; and Clinton Frank, Yale captain, pinpoint passer, Heisman Trophy winner and, later, founder of a highly successful Chicago advertising agency.
Justice White (whose views are set forth in some detail beginning on page 84) and Adman Frank, along with the doctors, lawyers, military people, college administrators, industrialists, businessmen, the minister and the coach who comprise their 23 teammates, acknowledge that the fall of 1937 was a period that seems to grow more placid on reflection. For most of them it is a happily remembered time. It was, however, a year of "recession" (but not, praise God, Depression). The long foreshadow of World War II perhaps was visible, but there were only a few who saw it. "Today," says Dr. Franklin Lynch, pediatrician and former Dartmouth quarterback, "we're more aware of what's happening in the world, are more uneasy and more easily frightened." Yes and no. Dr. Lynch may have forgotten that the following year millions of Americans were scared out of their pajamas by Orson Welles's broadcast about an invasion of Martians.
It was a time of romance, too. The former Edward VIII married Mrs. Wallis Simpson, and clucking readers wondered if, given the opportunity, they would have made a similar sacrifice. Dancers weren't twisting then, but they did go truckin' on down to the Big Apple. President Roosevelt was accused of trying to pack the Supreme Court. Gershwin and Ravel died. So did Erich Ludendorff, German strategist of the World War (as it was then called). The Hindenburg, filled with inflammable hydrogen, caught fire at Lakehurst, N.J., and everybody suddenly lost interest in rigid airships.
The Japanese began a serious war in China, but even when the U.S. gunboat Panay was sunk in the Yangtze by Japanese naval planes there wasn't much American reaction. The Spanish Civil War, begun in 1936, dragged on, with General Francisco Franco getting increased aid from Germany and Italy.
Amelia Earhart Putnam disappeared in the Pacific. Spectacular dust storms continued to hit the northern and southern Great Plains, Montana and Oklahoma suffering most. Floods in the Allegheny, Ohio and Mississippi river valleys drowned 900 and left 300,000 homeless. Despite the New Deal, eight million Americans were unemployed. Sit-down strikes, notably against the auto and steel industries, became rougher. It was the year of President Roosevelt's "a plague on both your houses" remark. Americans laughed at the movie Nothing Sacred, pondered the Townsend Plan, ruminated over the play You Can't Take It With You and were shocked at Of Mice and Men.
Jake Kilrain, last of the bareknuckle fighters, died. Joe Louis beat the Cinderella Man, Jim Braddock, for the heavyweight championship. Pittsburgh had the best college football team, Colorado was Rocky Mountain champion, Alabama was best in the Southeast, Fordham in the East. Slingin' Sammy Baugh flung the Washington Redskins to the professional title, the center jump was eliminated after goals in basketball and Don Budge beat Baron Gottfried von Cramm in a Davis Cup match, agonizing Hitler. The Yankees beat the Giants in the World Series. War Admiral was Horse of the Year.
The world of 1937, seen from here, looks small and placid. But the Silver Anniversary All-Americas were tempered by the challenges of that era for the greater demands of the space age.
THE TWENTY-FIVE WHO MADE IT
"As midshipmen," recalls U.S. Naval Captain James G. Andrews, winner of two Silver Stars during World War II, "we were told we'd never become wealthy on Navy pay, but there were other compensations." Captain Andrews, former Navy center, father of two, has found this to be so. His main one: he is about to take command of the Guided Missile Cruiser U.S.S. Boston.
The greatest all-round athlete the University of Nebraska ever produced, Elmer Dohrmann, football end and senior class president, now lives in Darien, Conn. with his wife and three children (one son plays football at Yale) and bears the imposing title of Director of Personnel of the Data Processing Division of IBM—his job being to interpret company policy for 25,000 employees "so they can educate our customers."
Urologist Dr. Robert E. Fitzgerald of Vancouver, Wash., who captained Chicago's football team, is still extremely active in sports, as is his entire family. His approach is cerebral. Soon after son Dennis fanned all the batters he faced (18) in the Washington State Little League semifinals, Dr. Fitzgerald wrote a treatise telling young pitchers how to avoid sore arms.
While at Yale, Clint Frank placed learning first (though it would be hard to convince Harvard and Princeton of this) and football second. "The thing people were paying off on then was brains," he says. Now, besides being president of Clinton E. Frank, Inc., a Chicago advertising firm with billings of $20 million a year, Frank is deeply involved in charitable work and is a trustee of the Brain Research Foundation.
"Ours was the uncertain generation," says Frank Gaines Jr. "We were products of the Depression. After we settled down the war came and disrupted our lives. Some of us were a long time putting together the pieces." Former end on the Michigan State team as well as heavyweight boxer, Chemical Engineer Gaines became a lieutenant colonel during the war and is now an executive with the Humble Oil Co. in Houston.
Texas-born Dr. Weldon Gibson, former center on the Washington State team, now holds the yardage marker at Stanford home games and makes two trips a season with the varsity. "I like the feel of competition," he says. He is otherwise engaged as executive vice-president of the Stanford Research Institute and specializes in economic surveys. One of his sons, no footballer, climbed the Matterhorn at 14.
Although he is a vice-president of the S.A. Camp Companies, a vast farming and industrial corporation in the San Joaquin Valley in California, the consuming interest of Donald Hart, former University of California (Santa Barbara) center and winner of 16 major letters, is helping the handicapped—including paying for several college educations. Probably his greatest honor was being appointed by President Kennedy to his Committee on Employment of the Handicapped.
William C. Hartman must be Georgia's most loyal alumnus. He was a speedy Georgia fullback, coached the backfield for 13 years after military service, has twice been elected president of the U. of Georgia Alumni Society and has served as mayor pro tern of Athens, Ga., where he lives with his wife (an alumna) and three children. His main work is now insurance and he is amazingly successful; who could refuse to buy insurance from the man who taught Georgia's Frank Sinkwich to pass?
Advised by a Kenyon College English professor never to take up law, David Jasper persisted and is now General Counsel for the Carrier Corporation in Syracuse, N.Y., which makes air-conditioning equipment. Former End Jasper, father of four, plays tennis, skis and shoots partridge. Both Jasper and his wife spend their spare time at painting.
As president of the Vitro Corporation of America, a vital defense company, Frank B. Jewett Jr. is concerned mainly with the integration of the enormously complicated weapon systems for the Navy's Polaris Fleet ballistic missile. Vitro is also interested in processing uranium for peaceful purposes. As a change from electronics, Jewett, who played fullback for the California Institute of Technology, sails his 35-foot yawl, Crest, with his family.
Frank Kelker, first Negro to be selected to the Silver Anniversary All-America, might have had a career in pro football or basketball but chose teaching after graduation from Western Reserve, where he was a star end. He's now executive director of the Cedar branch of the Cleveland YMCA and lives in that city with his wife and 11-year-old son. He went into Y work "so I could try to enrich the lives of other people."
Choosing pediatrics because of his fondness for children, Dr. Franklin Lynch, who played quarterback as a premed student at Dartmouth, practices in Westport, Conn., still skis with his wife and five children despite a wartime leg injury. Son Chris, 6, takes a Dartmouth football program to bed with him every night.
John Michelosen, who played single-wing quarterback for Jock Sutherland at Pittsburgh, has been head coach there since 1955. All of his teams have been dangerous and two have gone to bowls. His social activities include two banquets or luncheons a week and—"I dance once a year with my wife."
Like many another award winner, James Nance is grateful for the chance football gave him to attend college. His father's business failed and "I came to Rice without a suit of clothes." He once butted heads against Whizzer White in the Cotton Bowl. "We were both kind of dazed and time had to be called." Thoroughly recovered, Nance, still at his ball-playing weight (195), is now a partner in Baker, Botts, Shepherd and Coates, a leading law firm in Houston, his specialty being maritime law.
"Oil," declares Maurice L. Nee, who used to play a great deal of end for Georgetown University, "is an absolutely fascinating subject because it has so many vital, worldwide implications." Nee is the secretary of the huge Texaco Company and enjoys keeping abreast of everything that happens in oil, though he finds time for golf (he is the longest hitter at Apawamis in Rye, N.Y.) and admiring his wife's work in sculpture.
In World War II, as a Marine battle surgeon in the Pacific, former Trinity Quarterback Dr. Robert D. O'Malley earned two Unit Citations, a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart on Tinian. His current honors and titles are numberless, but they include the vice-presidency of the medical staff of Holyoke Hospital and serving on the council of the Massachusetts Medical Society. In his spare time, he golfs and helps the Ski Patrol.
Consultant for the National Science Foundation as well as friendly campus administrator and professor of plant pathology at the University of California in Berkeley, Dr. John Oswald finds he has plenty of opportunity to fire up the zeal of young scientists—his main preoccupation these days. A former guard at De Pauw, he thinks today's football is too scientific: "Too many stopwatches, too many plays, too many drills."
After smashing opposition as guard at Oregon State and serving with the Marines, Frank Ramsey played a year with the Chicago Bears, then quit because his business investments were turning out so well. A large, energetic man, Ramsey is now owner of Oregon's biggest independent logging firm. Father of two, Ramsey's main interest is working with young people.
Upon graduation from West Point, where he played fullback, Lieutenant General John Dale Ryan transferred to the Army Air Corps, got his wings at Randolph Field, Texas, commanded bomber groups in Italy during World War II and took an active part in the atomic bomb tests at Bikini. He is now commander of the Second Air Force, SAC, in Barksdale, La. and has two sons at the Air Force Academy.
At Alabama, where he played mostly tackle, Brigadier General James B. Tipton studied aeronautical engineering so he could fly—and fly he did. General Tipton flew 93 combat missions in World War II and 38 in the Korean war. He now commands the Washington Air Defense Sector and, when he can get away, plays golf.
Dr. Miller Upton is part of the Silver Anniversary's first brother act—Eldon Claggett (Tick) Upton Jr. was selected six years ago. Dr. Upton, ex-tackle for Tulane, used to be very gung-ho on football, now "reorients emphasis" on the game in his capacity as president of Beloit College in Wisconsin. Dr. Upton is now very gung-ho about education—"the most important human enterprise"—and relaxes by tending his beehives.
"What football taught me," says the Rev. John Vruwink, Episcopal minister in Tulsa, Okla., where he lives with his wife and four children, "is that it is quite possible to absorb a certain amount of physical punishment and survive it." A former end at Princeton, Father Vruwink has written a book interpreting Christian truth to the layman—The Lively Tradition. Not surprisingly, it contains a great many references to football.
Two miles a night of walking, isometric exercises and yoga keep Barth Walker 11 pounds under his college playing weight of 168 pounds. A fiery left guard at Oklahoma, Walker credits much of his subsequent success to the fame he encountered and friends he made as a football player. Today he writes and lectures on oil and gas subjects and recently helped organize a company that acquired a 12-million-acre concession in Australia and sold it at a good profit.
(The story of Associate Justice Byron White is told in detail on pages 84 to 98.)
"I almost got a contract with the Giants," reflects Walter J. Zable, former end at William and Mary. "But every time the team had a game I had to take a trip to do electronic research." Zable was moonlighting by working for the Sperry Gyroscope Co. on Long Island. It paid off. Now a millionaire, Zable has his own plant in San Diego, sponsors sports for young people.
MEMORIES THAT BLESS—AND BURN
Bob O'Malley (1) of Trinity ran for three TDs in 10 hot minutes against Connecticut State....
Miller Upton (2), Tulane tackle, smeared Colgate passer for handsome loss....
Absorbed with clock and anxiously grasping his own lineman, Frank Ramsey (3), Oregon State guard, vividly remembers saving a five-yard offside penalty by calling time out at a critical moment in game with Southern Cal....
Nautically dressed center in stormy weather is Jim Andrews (4) of Navy, who snapped slippery ball back too low for punter—giving Notre Dame a vital, alas, safety....
In scoring spree against Utah, Whizzer White (5) kicked three-pointer....
Told to intercept and hang onto an Idaho pass, Weldon Gibson (6) of Washington State did precisely that, was stampeded out of bounds....
Leaping catch of high-flung aerial giving Western Reserve Red Cats unexpected victory over tough West Virginia marked pleasantest football afternoon for Reserve End Frank Kelker (7)....
Shown digging his way after Harvard fumble, Army Fullback John Dale Ryan (8) retrieved ball. A few plays later he bucked over tying TD, then kicked winning extra point....
Lightest tackle, probably, ever to play for Alabama, James Tipton (9) recalls being shifted to end, center and linebacker and, when not learning new sets of signals, snaring enemy passes....
Elmer Dohrmann (10), Nebraska end, still chuckles about time he was used as decoy to bewilder mighty Minnesota, allowing Cornhusker fullback to romp in different direction for decisive TD....
Big stretch was made by John Michelosen (11), single-wing, single-minded Pitt quarterback, returning kick off to midfield in 1937 Rose Bowl game vs. Washington....
Dave Jasper (12), Kenyon end, playing with a broken rib, made another big stretch (see next page) to bring down hapless Rochester back. Kenyon, with only 15 men on squad, triumphed 18-6. At bottom of pyramidal pileup is Frank Lynch (13), blocking quarterback for Dartmouth. One of biggest pileups, he recalls, came after he banged into Sid Luckman of Columbia in winning cause....
Whizzer White (14), the year's best player, also remembers 95-yard punt return and TD vs. Utah. (His scoring for that day: 2 TDs, 2 conversions, one field goal—all of Colorado's 17 points.)
...Santa Barbara's unyielding Center Donald Hart (15) clutches game ball he was awarded after Christmas Day benefit game with U. of New Mexico....
In melodramatic play Maurice Nee (16), Georgetown end, charged fast to block Maryland punt, picked up ball while in full gallop, kept his head and ran 12 yards for decisive TD in 7-6 win....
In battle of determined Phi Beta Kappas, Jim Nance (17), Rice end, succeeded in outstepping Whizzer White in Cotton Bowl, permitting completion of long TD pass and helping Rice win 28-14....
Yale Quarterback Clint Frank (18) well remembers passing to his favorite receiver, Larry Kelley, in cliffhanger vs. Princeton, captured by Yale on Frank's last-moment TD....
Having faked out Rutgers blocker, John Vruwink (19) creamed Rutgers passer for disheartening 12-yard loss in game won by Princeton 7-0....
On tricky end-around play against Michigan, End Frank Gaines Jr. (20) of Michigan State found he had no blockers but didn't need them as misguided foes swarmed to stop State fullback, allowing Gaines to tiptoe to TD....
As fullback for California Institute of Technology, Frank B. Jewett Jr. (21) recalls a nighttime punt vs. burly San Diego Marines that vanished and magically reappeared 70 yards away....
Two minutes before the end of a 32-0 rout of Wabash, John Oswald (22), DePauw guard, persuaded quarterback to let him carry ball, was hit by 11 or more opponents....
Barth Walker (23), Oklahoma guard, smeared three Colorado backs in as many plays inside Oklahoma's 7....
In VPI game, Walter Zable (24), William and Mary end, caught pass, lateralled it to teammate, but TD was disallowed for 0-0 tie....
Against Butler, U. of Chicago End Bob Fitzgerald (25) popped up in end zone, grabbed TD pass....
Evading Ga. Tech tacklers, Georgia Fullback Bill Hartman (26) ran back kickoff for tying TD.
THIRTEEN PHOTOS
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THE JUDGES
This distinguished panel undertook the difficult assignment of choosing, from an impressive roster of 60 nominees, the 25 football lettermen who merited this year's Silver All-America award. The winners were selected because of conspicuous achievement in both professional and community life in the years since their last season of collegiate football a quarter century ago.
Charles H. Bell
Chairman
General Mills, Inc.
George Champion
Chairman
The Chase Manhattan Bank
Edward N. Cole
Vice-President
General Motors Corp.
Fairfax M. Cone
Chairman, Exec. Committee
Foote, Cone & Belding, Inc.
Joseph F. Cullman III
President
Philip Morris, Inc.
Arthur A. Houghton Jr.
President
Steuben Glass, Inc.
Chester J. LaRoche
Chairman
C. J. LaRoche Co.
Edward H. Litchfield
Chancellor
University of Pittsburgh
William G. Mennen Jr.
Vice-President
The Mennen Co.
William A. Patterson
President
United Air Lines, Inc.
Bernard A. Schriever
General, USAF
Air Force Systems Command
Lee Talley
Chairman
The Coca-Cola Co.