AN ERA SHAPED BY WAR
The weather was exceptionally pleasant in late September 1939. Cincinnati and St. Louis were struggling for the National League pennant, the Yankees had already won in the American League and there was a midsummer languor in the air. Resorts were still crowded, the New York World's Fair cut admissions to 40¢ to attract returning vacationers to Flushing Meadow, and on September 22, while Bob Feller was winning his 22nd game for Cleveland, there was the rare phenomenon of blue skies being reported over the entire U.S. The East's big racetracks reported weather clear, track fast, as they had for nearly a month, and at Belmont a South American import named Sorteado was winning the Manhattan Handicap by taking a fifth of a second off Man o' War's record for the mile and a half.
In Europe the climate in late September was considerably less benign. A cold rain fell on Warsaw, causing steam to rise from still-smoldering ruins. The exultant leaders of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia were meeting to divide up Poland, and it was noted that no major nation in history had ever been conquered more swiftly. The dikes were opened in Holland, a forlorn and wistful defensive move smacking of castle moats and breastworks. A nuisance of mud and water would not hold back a German tide. REICH AND SOVIET JOIN FOR PEACE—OR WAR ran an uncertain headline in The New York Times. The Poles, at least, were not in any doubt. But in the fall of 1939, as World War II was beginning, uncertainty was the prevailing mood. When old enemies like Hitler and Stalin were suddenly revealed to be allies, when entire nations were conquered in a few hours, nothing seemed infallible, nothing incredible.
Reality could only be found close to home. Here things were still credible. Goldfish, accustomed enough to being swallowed alive by bass, were now being swallowed alive by college students. A Harvard youth got down 89, and claimed a world's championship. There were other entertainments, ones easier to stomach. Badminton was the most popular game, Superman the most popular comic strip, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the most popular movie. David O. Selznick announced his two-and-a-half-year search for a heroine was over: Vivien Leigh would play Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind. In the publishing field a renegade—ignoring the sincere warnings of all his friends—put out the first small paperback editions of bestsellers. He called them Pocket Books. Television sets had been placed on sale in May in New York, and by August 500 had been sold. They cost from $160 to $1,000, and screens were from five to 14 inches wide. Columbia and Princeton played the first baseball game ever televised. "Players are like flies," wrote an irritated sportswriter, but technical improvements came fast. By midsummer you could plainly see Leo Durocher leaping and pivoting at shortstop when Brooklyn played Cincinnati in the first televised major league game, inaugurating a new era in baseball and perhaps a new era in ham acting as well.
Admiral Richard E. Byrd set out for Antarctica with 125 men, three tanks, two planes, a snowmobile and some prefabricated houses. Brave admiral, brave man, they said, little thinking that bravery would soon be a common commodity, common to admirals and common to grocery boys. Six hundred tried to buy tickets for Pan American's first transatlantic commercial flight. The one-way fare was $375, the trip required 24 hours to Lisbon, and there was a plane each week. Joe Louis defended his heavyweight title by knocking out John Henry Lewis in one round, Jack Roper in one and then Tony Galento in four—which led the picky to ask if his powers were fading. The Baseball Hall of Fame was opened in Cooperstown, supposedly on the 100th anniversary of the invention of the game by Abner Double-day, who, of course, did not invent baseball at all. Football, not to be outdone, announced this was its 70th anniversary, and duly celebrated. Oddities tended to attract an undue share of public attention: there was amusement over the King and Queen of England eating hot dogs while visiting President Roosevelt at Hyde Park; outrage when the President changed the date of Thanksgiving from November 30 to November 23; excitement when Al Capone was released from a federal penitentiary after serving more than seven years for income tax evasion.
Summer lingered as a record 1,494,000 enrolled in college. They were headed into a football-happy autumn that was to see Texas A&M, never nationally prominent before, end Villanova's 22-game unbeaten streak and become the nation's No. 1 team. Tennessee was a powerful rival, until it lost in the Rose Bowl to Southern Cal, and Georgia Tech, Cornell and Princeton were surprise powers. It was to be a season of long-remembered stars—Tom Harmon (still a junior) and Forest Evashevski at Michigan, Kenny Washington at UCLA, Paul Christman at Missouri, John Kimbrough and Joe Boyd at Texas A&M, Nick Drahos at Cornell, Frank Ivy at Oklahoma. And, above them all, Nile Kinnick of Iowa. He was 5 feet 8, he was Phi Beta Kappa, grandson of an Iowa governor, and he was three and a half years away from crashing his Navy fighter plane into the Caribbean.
These were the teams and the times of the Silver Anniversary Award winners. One of them, Charles Boswell, blinded in the war, recalls that the campus at the University of Alabama was particularly attractive that fall, with its white-columned houses and the famous Gorgas Oak that was a favorite meeting place for students, a part of the campus spared when the Yankees burned Tuscaloosa 74 years before. Another, John Winterholler, later crippled in a Japanese prison camp, was back at Laramie for his final year at the University of Wyoming, where the old officers' quarters from Fort Saunders had been converted to a clubhouse and a chapter house for Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority. Howard Ector was among the returning Georgia Tech students. He was quarterback of the Tech team that lost only to Notre Dame (17-14) and to Duke (7-6). Thirty-two members of his team went to World War II, and 11 were killed. Among the 14,000 students at busy Minnesota was Harold Van Every, later to be shot down over Germany, injured and imprisoned, thus ending his professional football career with the Green Bay Packers. And among the 800 at Grinnell, on that placid campus in the hollow between the Skunk and Iowa rivers, was Howard Grimes, a linebacker then, an insurance man now.
The winners of this year's Silver Anniversary Awards—awards that honor them for their significant contributions to their times—come from a wide range of country and from remarkably different fields of endeavor, but in 1939 they were alike in one respect. War was going to deflect their lives in ways that no one could understand and no one could have presumed. Albin Irzyk was clerking in Dan Donahue's clothing store in Salem, Mass. to put himself through college; Seymour Shwiller was a waiter and radio repairman working his way through William & Mary. Brigadier General Irzyk is now an assistant chief of staff in Europe, Colonel Shwiller an administrator with the Atomic Energy Commission. Sometimes, as with Charles Boswell or John Winterholler, the winners have worked heroically to rebuild their lives from the wreckage left by war. In the fine fall of 1939 the future was too indistinct to be faced—just war in the distance, and at home the sunlight bright over everything.
THE 1964 AWARD WINNERS
REPRESENTATIVE BRUCE R. ALGER, PRINCETON
He was a center at Princeton, but in World War II Bruce Alger learned to straighten up and fly right. After 23 combat missions in the Pacific, which earned him a Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal with clusters, Alger returned to Dallas, where he became a successful real estate man, thriving on what he calls his "workhorse" attitude toward life. In 1954 he became the first Republican ever to represent Dallas County in Congress, winning on an ultraconservative platform, and has served five straight terms. He built a powerful political organization by "clearly stating my principles, then never deviating," a technique that he says attracts "people of real principle, dedication and belief." His followers, he adds, "work for me like their lives depend on it." A strong Goldwater backer, Alger was expected to beat Democrat Earle Cabell, former Dallas mayor, this fall but went down to a surprising 44,719-vote defeat. "I'm flabbergasted," he said. "Losing is new to me."
COLONEL RICHARD R. AMERINE, KANSAS
Forced to bail out of his fighter 30 miles behind the Japanese lines on Guadalcanal in 1942, Marine Lieut. Richard Amerine made his way through the jungle and the enemy to rejoin his squadron seven days later. For this endeavor he received the Silver Star. Subsequently he commanded fighter squadrons in the Pacific, then decided to make the service a career. He became Chief of Staff of Operations for the Third Marine Aircraft Wing at El Toro, Calif. and is now Deputy Director of the Sixth Marine Corps in Atlanta. An orphan himself, he has made a hobby of helping similarly deprived children, including the launching of a campaign that led to many donations for Korean orphanages. Now 47, the ex-halfback still flies (he has qualified as a jet pilot), and he has just taken up golf. Those who know him predict he will be no time at all breaking 80 and a long time flying jets.
DR. MAX D. BARTLEY, DEPAUW
Care and treatment of the eyes have been the chief concern of Max Bartley since he gave up his role of fullback for DePauw. For the past nine years he has been chief of the ophthalmology staff at Marion County General Hospital, and is now also head of the same department at St. Vincent's Hospital both in Indianapolis. Through his efforts at General Hospital the eye clinic was modernized and an eye disease diagnosis service established. He teaches at the Indiana School of Medicine and instructs residents in ophthalmology at the university's medical center.
DR. WILLIAM BLISS, IOWA STATE
"I can't remember a time when I wasn't set on becoming a doctor," says genial William Bliss—perhaps because his parents so often told him of the dedication of the family physician who saved his life when he had an attack of spinal meningitis. Dr. Bliss, who played end at Iowa State, is now a general surgeon at the McFarland Clinic in Ames, Iowa, which serves that city and surrounding communities, and was a leader in the drive to get the $1.5 million clinic built. He has been chairman of the Iowa State athletic council, and he sometimes serves as physician for his old high school team. "Athletics is my only hobby," he says.
CHARLES A. BOSWELL, ALABAMA
He is, simply, a man of immense courage. At Alabama he was a fine punter and a halfback who also called signals. A captain just before the Battle of the Bulge, he was able to get safely away when his tank was shot out from under him, but he went back to rescue a man trapped inside. He was hit by a shell and blinded. Sent to Valley Forgo Hospital, he tried to learn the games they teach the blind as therapy. He had been a good bowler. Now he was awful. He tried horseback riding, and got knocked to the ground by a low-hanging limb. Finally an instructor got him to try golf, which he had never played, and he found he enjoyed it. In 1946 he was invited to a tournament for blind golfers in Los Angeles and finished second. He got a job with a sporting-goods store in Birmingham, and when Alabama played a spring-practice game for his benefit 30,000 people paid a dollar to watch, thus financing a home for him and his family. He now runs his own insurance firm, and both it and his golf are a success. He has won the National Blind Golf Championship 13 times. He once shot a 78 on a par-71 course, and another time took only 29 putts in 18 holes. In 1957 a newspaper editorial said of a speech he made to high school football players: "Boswell delivered an inspirational address which the youngsters were fortunate to hear, for it is doubtful that they ever again will see a more remarkable example of what a man with a healthy background of athletics can do in the face of prohibitive odds." Such a man can even keep his sense of humor. Asked once about a defeat in a blind tournament, Charley Boswell said, "Maybe my opponent peeked."
THE REV. JOSEPH M. BOYD, TEXAS A&M
When he was a tackle on the national championship Texas Aggies, his teammates called him Boo Hoo Boyd because his temper was so short he sometimes would burst into tears of frustration during a game. He not only could outplay much of his team, it was generally conceded that he could outfight, outdrink and outswear everybody on it. "I was," he says, "pretty fast and pretty wild." The son of a Baptist minister, he was years slowing down, but in 1948 he enrolled at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, and went on to get a master's degree in theology. He has been preaching ever since. An evangelist, he prefers to work under a tent, but this summer he established a permanent church in Houston. He still calls it a tent, but it is actually an aluminum Quonset hut. "My type of evangelism draws the fellow that needs it," he says, "the one who shies away from a fancy church with ornate fixtures. When I tell those old Aggies I'm preaching," Joe Boyd adds with delight, "their eyeballs roll and their false teeth fall out."
DR. JOHN T. DICKINSON, PITTSBURGH
Turning down numerous scholarship offers from other schools, John Dickinson went to Pittsburgh to play right end for a coach he much admired, Jock Sutherland. Against Duke in 1939 he made a play the coach understandably admired, catching what amounted to a $100,000 lateral pass. Dickinson recalls George McAfee of Duke coming around end on a reverse. "I stayed outside," says Dickinson, "and McAfee cut inside of me. I couldn't get to him, but I yelled, 'Hey!' Pitt was wearing white jerseys, the color Duke usually wore, and I think that confused him. He lateraled the ball right to me, and I ran it 70 yards the other way. We scored, and won 14-13." Duke was thus deprived of a trip to the Rose Bowl—a trip worth $100,000. Dickinson graduated from medical school at Pitt and became a specialist in ear and throat surgery. Now a department chairman at Mercy Hospital in Pittsburgh, he set up the first clinical bone bank in the nation, pioneered work in new types of ear operations and founded a clinic for deaf children, using his own funds to start it.
W. HOWARD ECTOR, GEORGIA TECH
Gifted with an extraordinary memory, Howard Ector is said to know more Georgia citizens on a first-name basis than any other businessman in the state. One of the deftest quarterbacks in his school's history (in a game against Missouri in the Orange Bowl he was tackled on 32 plays although he actually carried the ball only 11 times), he became a coast artillery officer and, later in the war, a bomber pilot, then returned to Tech to handle the delicate job of distributing season tickets to alumni. He is now an estate planner with the Trust Company of Georgia and involved in many Atlanta civic activities. "I learned one great lesson when I was handling tickets at Tech," Ector says. "We never had enough to meet the demand. I went to work every morning knowing there was no solution to the problem facing me. I learned the only way to do business was to be consistent in all my actions."
ROBERT C. GOOD JR., LEHIGH
Robert Good got a good deal out of Lehigh. He won Phi Beta Kappa honors there, earned his Master of Science and his doctor's degree there and learned there that a strong, athletically minded man could find himself working as both a varsity tackle and a varsity fullback. He was a submariner during the war, and since then has been involved in a career of scientific research that has ranged from the production of gold leaf on Bibles to helping du Pont uncover impurities in nylon, where "a break in the miles of thread is a disaster." He also has written a handbook on proximity fuses for shells. Now living in Swarthmore, Pa. and employed at General Electric's Space Sciences Laboratories, he is developing techniques for testing space-vehicle materials.
ARTHUR M. GRIFFIN, TUFTS
For three years he was a tailback at Tufts, and he likes to remember football as a game uncomplicated by split T formations and blitzing linebackers. He scored two touchdowns and passed for a third in one impressive win over Massachusetts but relishes most the four extra points he kicked that day, because he had never even tried one before. Griffin became a squadron commander of the 5th Air Sea Rescue Unit during the war, a pilot for Eastern Air Lines and a training consultant to the Department of the Air Force. Three years ago he was named vice-president and treasurer of the National Educational Television and Radio Center, which he describes as "not a series of classroom presentations but a growing cultural force." The New York organization is programming headquarters for nearly 90 educational television stations. He has developed considerable distaste for the self-important. "I like to remind myself," he says, "of the time I was flying a DC-4 from New York to Miami. About halfway along I walked back to talk to the passengers. It was soon after the war, and we pilots felt like pretty hot stuff. As I was striding down the aisle an elderly man touched my arm and asked, 'Driver, where are we?' I never forgot that, and never intend to."
HOWARD R. GRIMES, GRINNELL
As one of football's first roving linebackers, Center Howard Grimes made the Liberty Magazine All-America team, but he was shocked nonetheless when Tim Mara of the New York Giants offered him a professional contract calling for $125 a game. It was "a tremendous amount of money in those days," he recalls, but he passed it up for a $100-a-month job with the Aetna Life Insurance Co. in Hartford, Conn. He felt there was a more stable future in insurance, and he must have been right; he would not still be playing football with the Giants, but he is still with Aetna. An Army pilot during the war, he settled in Wellesley, Mass. and is now the northeast manager of Aetna's Affiliated Companies' Group and Pension Department. He is engaged in a multitude of community affairs, including service as president of Wellesley's nationally known mental health organization.
GENERAL ALBIN F. IRZYK, MASSACHUSETTS
In football Albin F. Irzyk played quarterback. He made up for his slight size (5 feet 8, 149 pounds) by aggressiveness, and the bigger the foe he hit, the more he glowed. The son of Polish immigrants, he worked his way through school by holding numerous jobs and "sleeping very little." He joined the Army immediately after graduation, earned a battlefield promotion to lieutenant colonel at 28 and received many medals—including the DSC and two Croix de Guerre—mainly for his exploits as a commander of tanks in General George Patton's Third Army, where his feats earned him the nickname "Risky." Now stationed at NATO headquarters in France, General Irzyk remains a formidable figure. He does not drink, smoke or enjoy small talk. "I am not," he says, "an amusing man." But he is—as ever—a competitive man, one who savors combat, be it on a football field or the battlefield.
FRANK L. IVY, OKLAHOMA
To the spectators in the stands Frank Ivy was a helmeted and formidable All-America end, but to his teammates he was a balding boy and so they called him "Pop." After college he played with the Chicago Cardinals, fought in Europe as an infantryman, rejoined the Cardinals (in his last season they were champions of the NFL) and then went into coaching. As an assistant under Bud Wilkinson at Oklahoma, he helped develop four All-America ends. Moving to the Canadian Football League, he made three-time champions out of the Edmonton Eskimos, and then spent four years as head coach of the Cardinals. In 1962 he went to the Houston Oilers in the American Football League. The Oilers won the Eastern Division title his first year but were 6-8 last season, a record that cost Ivy his job. Now a scout for the New York Giants, he is living in Norman, Okla. and is happy to be there. "I enjoyed coaching," he says. "But there were a lot of headaches that went with it. Even if you won, you didn't have time to think about it. You had to get ready for the next game."
EDWIN B. KRAUSE, WESTERN RESERVE
The capacity for labor of Edwin B. Krause showed early. At college he carried a full academic load, won six varsity letters (in football as an end and in basketball as a center), worked in a copper mill, tutored English and held a janitorial job. He managed, meanwhile, to make Phi Beta Kappa, and at graduation received one trophy for being the outstanding senior scholar and another for being the outstanding all-round student. He did not slow down later. From a start pushing a handcart and operating a machine in a Cleveland auto-part supply house, Krause persevered to become president of Madison Industries in Pawtucket, R.I., which makes metal-cutting tools, and the director, as well, of three other companies. His community services include directorships in nearly a dozen organizations.
DR. ROBERT M. McCORMACK, SWARTHMORE
Some acts of heroism are active, some passive. Halfback Robert McCormack's most memorable football moment was not a vicious tackle or a twisting run but a fair catch. Playing safety for Swarthmore, he waited under a Johns Hopkins punt, lifted his arm in the fair-catch signal, caught the ball and then, to his utter dismay, was slammed to the ground by an overenthusiastic Johns Hopkins end—one who was sporting a vividly remembered mustache. Johns Hopkins drew a 15-yard penalty and Swarthmore scored the only TD, to win its biggest game of an undefeated season. That over, it was left for the Germans to shape his career. In two years at an El Paso hospital he worked on 2,000 cases involving hand injuries, most of them caused by German mines. He became not only a distinguished plastic surgeon, but a specialist in hand surgery. Now chief plastic surgeon at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester, N.Y., he is also a professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and president of the American Society for Surgery of the Hand.
DR. HAROLD L. METHOD, NORTHWESTERN
"We were playing Minnesota," recalls former Guard Harold Method. "I hadn't done much of anything, and near the end of the game there I was, flat on my back, when Minnesota fumbled on its own six-yard line. The ball rolled right into my arms. We scored and won the game. But recovering the fumble was pure luck." Luck or no, lying down on the job helped Method get selected for the College All-Star team that played the Green Bay Packers in Soldier Field (the All-Stars lost 45-28). At Northwestern he combined football with a premedical course. Now a general surgeon specializing in diseases of the pancreas, he is staff president of Passavant Memorial Hospital in Chicago, assistant professor of surgery at the Northwestern medical school and a private practitioner on the city's North Side. A doctor who advises his patients to stay in shape, he does so himself. He weighed 195 as a Northwestern guard and weighs 190 today.
RICHARD C. POTTER, PURDUE
A 195-pound tackle for three years at Purdue, Richard Potter had no athletic scholarship and "played football for the fun and challenge of it." He has always been willing to assume risks. For 10 years the associate dean of the school of engineering and architecture at Kansas State, he recently took a hefty pay cut and left a West Coast space laboratory to become director of the University of Louisville Institute of Industrial Research. The Institute is a nonprofit organization that primarily works on engineering problems taken to it by manufacturers. Potter sets two objectives for the Institute: "We want to help educate some of the best engineers of the future and we want to prove that an industrial research organization can be successful without a preponderance of government support."
JOSEPH C. SHELL, USC
Joe Shell loves to fly airplanes, is a conservative Republican and has a clean-cut jaw that would break brass knuckles. If that sounds like a description of Barry Goldwater, it figures. The two men have been friends for 20 years. Himself a candidate for governor of California in 1962 (he lost in a primary to Richard Nixon), Shell worked this year as the state's finance chairman for the Goldwater presidential campaign and ran interference for the GOP just as resolutely as he did when he was captain and a valuable blocking back for the undefeated USC team that shut out Tennessee 14-0 in the 1940 Rose Bowl game. After serving as a Navy pilot in World War II, he sold "everything we owned ["we" being a wife and three children], including the house and car" to buy California oil leases. His first well hit. He and a partner eventually brought in 42 more, and Shell is now executive vice-president of the West American Oil Company. Back in the oil business full time as of November 3, Joe Shell is still confident about his own political future and is not discounting the possibility that he might run for governor again in 1966.
COLONEL SEYMOUR SHWILLER, WILLIAM & MARY
A 5-foot-7 170-pounder, Seymour Shwiller played a stout game of running guard at William & Mary, where, on his best afternoon, he made life so miserable for a much vaunted and much larger Richmond lineman that the latter failed to receive expected all-conference honors. Shwiller's own honors turned out to be scholastic—Phi Beta Kappa. Drafted, he earned an Army Air Corps commission and flew B-17 bombers. After the war he became a nuclear weapons expert for the Air Force, and in 1950 he received a special citation for a study on defense against nuclear attack. He is now a military assistant to the general manager of the Atomic Energy Commission.
ALBERT D. SIMPSON, MUHLENBERG
The football moment Albert Simpson best remembers was when a hard-pressed Muhlenberg back suddenly threw him a lateral in a game against St. Lawrence. "I didn't want the ball," says Simpson, who played every line position during his varsity career, "so I threw it to a fellow even farther back. He was tackled for a tremendous loss." Simpson has hardly made a backward move since. During the war he developed an invaluable radio proximity fuse, later invented a superaccurate time-measurement standard for the Navy and has since patented numerous other devices. In 1951 he started his own firm—Lehigh Valley Electronics—in a basement, and has seen it expand into a major plant near Allentown, Pa. One of the most respected men in the area, Simpson is active, but quietly active, in civic affairs. "The things he gets involved in benefit everyone but himself," says an Allentown businessman. "He's a big wheel around here, though he doesn't hold a lot of titles to prove it."
HAROLD VAN EVERY, MINNESOTA
A close friend says Harold Van Every is "the kind of man who, if you called for help, wouldn't say, 'What's the trouble?' He would say, 'Where are you? I'm coming.' " An all-conference halfback, Van Every played two years with the Green Bay Packers, then flew B-17s until he crashed over Germany, suffering a back injury that still causes him pain. A remarkably successful insurance salesman who avoids high-pressure tactics, he lives in Minneapolis, where one of his major outside interests for the past 17 years has been the Big Brother Organization. He credits his Minnesota coach, Bernie Bierman, with teaching him a philosophy of success. "He made us do things we didn't want to in practice," says Van Every, "and later made us see how they paid dividends. The common denominator of success is making a habit of doing what unsuccessful men don't like to do." A man of deep ideals and religious conviction, he has said: "If you help your brother's boat across the river, you'll get across too."
DON L. WALTER, CAL TECH
Playing end for the California Institute of Technology—then 600 students strong and granting no athletic scholarships—Don Walter recalls that "the scores against us escalated so fast we were lucky to have so many mathematicians in uniform." Surviving his athletic debacle, he earned a Master of Science degree in aeronautics, and is now vice-president and a member of the board of the Marquardt Corporation, a company that develops and produces such sophisticated hardware as ramjet engines, electronic trainer simulator systems and attitude-control rocket systems. His description of himself: "ambitious."
JOHN WINTERHOLLER, WYOMING
One of the best athletes ever to attend the University of Wyoming—he won 12 varsity letters, including four as a halfback in football—John Winterholler turned down offers to play professional baseball after graduation and went instead to Marine officer-training school. Stationed in Manila when the Japanese attacked, he won two battlefield decorations, the Silver Star and the Bronze Star, before Corregidor fell. He survived the Bataan Death March, but by the time he was liberated from a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in 1945 his weight had fallen from 170 to 125, he was paralyzed from the waist down and was near death from malnutrition. He was returned to Corona Naval Hospital, where he helped organize a wheelchair basketball team called the Rolling Devils. Discharged from the hospital after four years, he earned a public-accounting degree and now works in Oakland, Calif. as an administrative assistant for a doctor who first treated him at the hospital. And he is still a sportsman. When the 1963 deer season opened, he went out with eight medical men to hunt on a ranch near Santa Cruz. They stationed him on a promontory, hoping something would come his way. Four hours later the party came back, empty-handed. But Winterholler had his buck.
COLONEL FREDERICK S. YEAGER, U.S. MILITARY ACADEMY
When candidates for the 1936 plebe football team assembled, Frederick Yeager was there. He remembers an inspirational address by the head coach and then an order for ends to go to one part of the field, backs to another, etc. "Guys rushed off in all directions," he says, "until the coach and I were standing alone. He asked me what position I played and I said, 'Sir, I've never played football." He looked at me as if I was crazy. Then he picked the smallest group, which was the ends, and he said, 'O.K. You look like an end to me.' " An end he became, and a good enough one to play three years with the varsity. Like John Winterholler, he was on the Bataan Death March. When he reached the prison camp he found a man who spoke Russian, and three and a half years later Yeager had learned enough Russian to become a linguist. After teaching Russian at West Point for three years, he served at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in the early '50s. "It was a fascinating experience," says Yeager. "I was there for the death of Stalin and the rise and fall of Beria. I guess I saw the turning point in Soviet life." He was later sent by the Army to Princeton, where his abilities eventually earned him two master's degrees and a Ph.D., and he is now in England attending the Imperial Defense College, Britain's top school for staff officers. He is as brilliant, intense and dedicated as ever, and as lean and fit as when he entered West Point. There has been one change. When he took his annual physical this year he listed the color of his hair as black. "Well, sir," said the clerk, "I'll let it go this time, but next year we'd better say gray."
DR. WALTER ZIMDAHL, SYRACUSE
"They called me 'the opportunist,' " recalls Walter Zimdahl, who made his way through medical school, after three seasons as a Syracuse fullback, by washing dishes, sweeping out the gym, helping in the county morgue and scouring test tubes. Summers he worked in a drugstore, where he learned to hold eight ice cream cones in one hand, yet he was not too busy to be named president of his class four straight years. While in the Army he became chief of the Cardiovascular Section of the Disease Research Institute of the Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. Now a heart specialist in Buffalo, he helped develop a polio unit capable of handling a greatly increased number of respiratory cases, assisted in establishing a hearing and speech center and set up a "heart kitchen" for disabled patients. He has published many papers on cardiovascular diseases and is extremely active in medical association projects. "He is a man," says a friend, "who likes to run things."
PHOTO
ILLUSTRATION
SILVER ANNIVERSARY JUDGES
CARL J. GILBERT, Chairman, The Gillette Company
FRED L. HARTLEY, Executive Vice-President, Union Oil Company of California
MARK O. HATFIELD, Governor of Oregon
VICTOR HOLT JR., President, Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company
R. STANLEY LAING, President, National Cash Register Company
LEWIS B. MAYTAG JR., President, National Airlines
CLINTON W. MURCHISON JR., Murchison Brothers
HERBERT V. PROCHNOW, President, First National Bank of Chicago
R. SARGENT SHRIVER, Director of the Peace Corps
NORMAN H. STROUSE, President, J. Walter Thompson Company
SIDNEY N. TOWLE, Headmaster, Kent School
WILLIAM S. VAUGHN, President, Eastman Kodak Company