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1966-2024 Bleeding Maize and Blue

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Michigan football and me. Continue reading →

I undertook this entry to explain what it was like to be a die-hard fan of a football team for fifty-eight years. I supposed that this might be of passing interest to some people (outside of New England, where no one gives a fig about college football), but, in fact I undertook it mostly to see if I could figure out to my own satisfaction why I have cared so much about an institution with no intrinsic value. Furthermore, over the years it has changed so dramatically. The only constants were the huge stadium, the winged helmets, and the school colors—maize and blue (mostly blue).

Before attending U-M: When I was still in grade school (not before—my family did not have a television set) my dad and I often watched professional football games on our black and white television set. This was remarkable for two reasons: 1) my dad seldom watched anything on television; 2) it was one of the few things that we did together. I distinctly remember that a white football was used for night games. Also, until the rule was changed, a runner was not considered “down” until his forward progress was completely stopped.

I knew Otto as #14, but in the days before face guards he must have been #60.

My dad was a fan of the Chicago Bears. My recollection was that his favorite player was Ralph Guglielmi, but he never played for the Bears. I must be wrong. My favorite team was the Cleveland Browns. In the early days my favorite player was #14,Otto Graham. Later, of course, I lionized the incomparable #32, Jim Brown.

Before I went to Rockhurst my dad also took me to one game in Atchison, KS. It involved my dad’s Alma Mater, Maur Hill. I don’t remember the opponent or result. However, Maur Hill was 2-6 in both 1960 and 1961, and so they probably lost.

The Dallas Texans moved to Kansas City in 1963, my sophomore year at Rockhurst, and were rechristened the Chiefs. Through his company, Business Men’s Assurance (BMA), my dad had two season tickets. He went to all the home games, and sometimes he brought me with him to the games at Municipal Stadium. I became a fan of Lenny Dawson1, Curtis McClinton2, Fred Arbanas3, the one-eyed tight end, and the rest of the players. I remained a big fan of the Chiefs while I was in the army and for a decade or so after that.

While I was in High School I attended every football home game. So did all of my friends and most of the other guys. My attitude was really more of a “be true to your school” thing than an appreciation of the game at the high school level. In fact, we all attended all of the basketball games as well. The guys at Rockhurst were proud that they were able to go to one of the very best schools in the area, and they supported all of the teams.

Before arriving in Ann Arbor I did not yet hate Woody or the color scarlet.

Undergrad at U-M:While I lived in Kansas City I did not follow college football very closely. Only three major colleges in Kansas and Missouri had football teams, and one of those—Kansas State—was perennially a doormat. I knew very little about Michigan football. I knew about the intense rivalry between Ohio State and Michigan. I had heard the song, “We don’t give a damn for the whole state of Michigan.” I had read about a few Michigan greats such as Tom Harmon and Germany Schulz. I knew that Michigan had the largest stadium in the country and usually won the Little Brown Jug. Woody Hayes (but not his counterpart Bump Elliott) was already famous.

The student section started on the 50-yard line and went around to the middle of the end zone.

However, it was not until I actually started living at U-M that I came to appreciate the importance of football at the university. Cazzie Russell had led the Wolverines to three consecutive Big Ten titles and to final four appearances in 1964 and 1965. Nevertheless, in the fall of 1966 when I arrived at my dorm absolutely no one talked about basketball even though the previous year’s football team had been a horrendous disappointment. The 1964 team had won the Big Ten and clobbered Oregon in the Rose Bowl. The 1965 team finished only 4-6 despite outscoring the opponents 185-161. Nevertheless, like nearly everyone else in Allen Rumsey House, I purchased season tickets in the student section of Michigan Stadium (no one ever called it The Big House) for a very low price and never gave a thought to going to basketball games.

I followed the marching band up

The Game in 1969.

to the stadium for almost every home football game4 during the four football season in which I lived in the dorm. I have recounted in some detail those experiences in the 1966 season here. The last two games of my senior year were ones for the ages. On November 27, 1969, Ohio State was 8-0 and widely considered the best collegiate team of all time. They were riding a twenty-two game winning streak.. Michigan was 7-2, but one of its losses was out of the conference. Since this was the last game of the season, if U-M won, they would be tied with OSU for the the Big Ten championship. The league’s rules dictated that if there was a tie, U-M would go to the Rose Bowl because OSU had been there more recently. Michigan, a huge underdog, won the game 24-12. Wikipedia devoted a very long entry to this historic game. It is posted here.

Who helped TD put on his helmet?

I knew two of the stars of that game fairly well. They were both sophomores who had spent their freshman year living on the second floor of A-R. At the time I was the president of the house and had some interactions with both Thom Darden, a defensive back who was an All-Pro with the Cleveland Browns, and Bill5 Taylor, who scored the most famous touchdown in that game.

Michigan had hired a new coach, Bo Schembechler, for the 1969 season. He had a heart attack just before the Rose Bowl6, and so he was unable to coach. The team lost to the University of Southern California 10-3. In retrospect it is hard to believe that one of the most famous Michigan teams of all time did not score a touchdown in its last six quarter.

I mostly fought in New Mexico.

1970-1973: During the next four years it was somewhat difficult for me to follow the team too closely. In 1970 I was at my parent’s house in Leawood, KS, for the first three games, all of which were won by the Wolverines. For the remaining games I was at Fort Polk, LA (introduced here), for basic training. I learned the scores of the games, but there was no television available, and so I missed the second game of the “Ten Year War” between Schembechler’s troops and those of Woody Hayes. OSU won in Columbus 20-9. The two teams again tied for the Big 10 title, but OSU went to the Rose Bowl because of the “no repeat” rule. In those days Big 10 teams were not allowed to participate in other bowls.

BT and TD were still at U-M in 1971.

In 1971 I was in the army at Sandia Base, NM (introduced here). The barracks had only one television, and none of the soldiers could afford to purchase one for their rooms. Michigan was 10-0 going into the OSU game in Ann Arbor, where they won a squeaker 10-7. I am pretty sure that I watched that one in the MP Company’s Rec Room. That team lost to Stanford in the Rose Bowl 13-12. Michigan was heavily favored and held the lead, but the team was done in by a fake punt by Stanford on a fourth and ten and a last second field goal. I must have watched that game in Leawood. A few days later I flew to upstate New York to finish my military career at Seneca Army Depot (described here).

In 1972 I was working as an actuarial student at the Hartford Life Insurance Company (introduced here). I watched the team on television whenever they appeared. I remember going to Jan Pollnow’s house for one of the regular-season games. I do not remember which one it was, but it was definitely not the season-ender (better known as The Game) at Ohio State. I am certain of that because Michigan won all of its first ten games, but they lost that one 14-11. This was a heart-breaker. Michigan had a first down at the OSU one-yard line and could not punch it in. The two teams tied for the conference championship, but OSU went to Pasadena, and U-M stayed home.

This man deserved to play inn the Rose Bowl.

In 1973 I was still at the Hartford. Once again the Wolverines won their first ten games. The Big Ten by then was known as the Big Two and the Little Eight. “The Game” was held in Ann Arbor. At the end of the third quarter the score was 10-0 in favor of OSU, but U-M tied it with a touchdown and a field goal. I am pretty sure that I watched that sister-kisser by myself in my apartment in East Hartford. I had a Zenith color portable with rabbit ears. The reception from the two ABC stations (New Haven and Springfield) was not great.

U-M’s quarterback, Dennis Franklin8, broke his collarbone in the fourth quarter. This was a decisive factor in the vote that sent the Buckeyes back to California. In two years U-M had lost only one game, but it did not get to go to a bowl game.

By this time Bo Schembechler had installed an option offense that emphasized running. For quite a few years U-M’s quarterbacks were better known for running and blocking than for throwing the pigskin.

Back in Ann Arbor for 1974-1976: In 1974 Sue and I moved to Plymouth, MI, and I enrolled at U-M as a graduate student in the speech department. I bought a season ticket in the student section. A few details about my personal involvement with the team during those years have been posted here.

Wide left.

A little more should be written about the 1974 season. The Wolverines breezed through the first ten games. They even had a 10-3 lead at halftime of The Game. However, OSU kicked three field goals and Mike Lantry9, who had earlier kicked a 37-yard field goal, pushed a shorter one very slightly to the left as time ran out. The miss cost U-M the conference championship and a berth in the the Rose Bowl.

Dennis Franklin, who lost only two games in his entire career as starting quarterback at U-M, never got to play in a Rose Bowl, or any other bowl for that matter. That was simply a travesty.

Bob Wood made 11 of 14.

Detroit 1976-1979: For the next three football seasons Sue and I lived and worked in Detroit. I watched every game that was shown on television, but my memories are not too distinct.

The 1976 team lost a conference game at Purdue when the kicker, Bob Wood, missed an attempted 37-yard field goal at the end of the game. It was the first conference loss to one of the Little Eight since my senior year seven years earlier.

However, this team pummeled Ohio State in Columbus two weeks later to win the conference championship and qualify for the Rose Bowl. They lost that game to USC (whom else?).

The story the next year was eerily similar. The Wolverines were shut out in the Little Brown Jug game, but they defeated Ohio State in Ann Arbor. They then lost to Washington in the Rose Bowl 27-20.

Rick Leach was the cover boy in 1976.

It sounds like a broken record, but the 1978 team led by Rick Leach10, Harlan Huckleby11, and a very stout defense, somehow lost to Michigan State before beating the Buckeyes again in the last game of the Ten Year War. USC then defeated the Wolverines in the Rose Bowl again thanks to a “Phantom Touchdown” awarded to Charles White12 by a Big 10 ref.

I have two very vivid memory of this period of Michigan football. I remember that I was on a debate trip for Wayne State. For some reason one Saturday afternoon I was absolved of the responsibility of judging for one round. I found a television set and watched Michigan beat up on one of the Little Eight.

The other memory, of course, was the dramatic touchdown pass from John Wangler to freshman Anthony Carter on the last play of the Indiana game in 1979. The game, which was crucial for Michigan’s title hopes, was not televised. But the film was shown on all the highlight shows.

It was a period of frustration. It appeared that Bo’s coaching style could easily produce very good teams. They were always in the top ten and often the top five/. However, they were never good enough to win the last game of the year. Nevertheless the players were heroes to me and to all of the other die-hard fans.

I later read Bo Schembechler’s autobiography, Bo, co-written by Mitch Albom. In its pages he speculated that he might have driven the guys too hard on their trips to Pasadena. They did little besides practice. Most Michigan fans just thought that the team needed a passing game.

Jim Brandstatter and Dan Dierdorf.

Michigan Replay: Most U-M football games were not telecast in the Detroit area while we lived there. However, every Sunday evening Bo Schembechler appeared on a half-hour interview show with Jim Brandstatter13, who had been an offensive tackle on some of his very early teams. Sue and I watched these programs every week. When we moved to Enfield, one of the few things that we missed about the Motor City was watching Michigan Replay on channel 4.

I recently discovered that the Michigan Replay shows have been archived by the university and posted on the Internet here. I recently watched the show about the 1980 version of The Game in which neither side scored a touchdown. The first thing that I noticed was that Brandstatter just dwarfed Schembechler, who was himself a lineman in college. The second thing that caught my eye was Bo’s outfit. He was decked out in plaid pants and a grey sports jacket with a Rose Bowl pin. It was 1980, but Bo;s wardrobe was still in the seventies. I wondered if his wife saw this outfit before he left the house.

On the show Bo was charming and gracious. He always credited the players. What was so attractive about his approach on the show was how clear it was that everyone on the team gave 100 percent, and Bo loved them for it even when they failed. When Brandstatter heaped praise on the team’s defense, Bo insisted that the offense, which did not score a touchdown, did its part by running twice as many plays as the Buckeyes. His slogan—”Those who stay will be champions”—never rang truer.

Butch Woolfolk.

Bo v. the world as seen from Enfield 1980-1989: The Wolverines finally found a passing game, or rather a receiving game, in #1, Anthony Carter14, who was by almost any measure the most amazing player in the history of college football. He was named a consensus first-team All-American three years running. During those three years Michigan was definitely a running team. In the first two Butch Woolfolk15 rushed for more than 1,000 yards. In 1981 he set the single-season U-M record with a total of 1,459 yards.

Nevertheless, the “go to guy” was Carter. He was always the first read on a pass attempt and the last read on most. The two quarterbacks who passed to him, John Wangler16 and Steve Smith17, are remembered mostly as footnotes in tales of Carter’s heroics.

The 1980 season was the most memorable one for me. Bo’s coaching staff had been depleted in the off-season. He had to hire many new coaches, including Gary Moeller, Lloyd Carr, and Jack Harbaugh17. The team had a very shaky start. It barely beat Northwestern in the opener and the lost two non-conference games. The fans were dejected, but the team—especially the defense—seemed to get better with each game. The three games before The Game were all shutouts, and the Wolverines racked up 86 point. The 9-3 win in Columbus was ugly, but the victory over Washington in the Rose Bowl was absolutely beautiful.

I have several vivid memories of the period. Most of them are disappointments. I can picture in my mind Cris Carter18 making a fabulous catch for a touchdown. My recollection is that it won the game for the Buckeyes, but this was not the case. Jim Harbaugh, my favorite Wolverine of all time, rewrite the record book in that game and threw a 77-yard touchdown pass shortly after Carter’s reception had brought the Buckeyes back to within a field goal.

The 1986 team fumbled away the Little Brown Jug that had been on display in the Michigan Union since 1977 and also lost decisively in the Rose Bowl. I do not remember either of those. I do remember that Jim Harbaugh guaranteed that U-M would beat OSU. They did, but only because of a missed field goal. I remember many field goals missed at crucial times, but this was the only one by an opponent that I can recall.

Michigan won the jug back in 1987, but that team won only seven other games. They did beat Alabama in the Hall of Fame Bowl.

Bo’s penultimate team might have been his best job as a coach. Without any great stars it lost its first two games and tied Iowa at Kinnick Stadium. It then won four straight decisively, edged Ohio State in Columbus, and then won the Rose Bowl by upsetting Southern Cal 22-14.

The first game of Bo’s last year was the worst. Rocket Ismail zoomed for two touchdowns on kick returns, and #1 Notre Dame defeated #2 U-M in Ann Arbor but won the remainder of its regular-season games. In the Rose Bowl the Wolverines lost to USC by a touchdown. Bo was incensed by a holding call on a fake punt that had gained twenty-four yards. After the game he resigned as head coach and took a job as president of the Detroit Tigers. He was fired from that job in 1992.

Bo had had heart problems for a long time before he died in 2006. His legacy was smudged by his son Matt’s claim that Bo knew about sexual shenanigans by long-time university doctor Robert Anderson.

Gary Moeller years 1990-94: I think that it was during Moeller’s five-year tenure at U-M that I stopped watching U-M games. His first team lost a close game to Notre Dame and two regular-season games. However, they closed out the season with five wins (tied for first in the Big 10) and handily defeated Ole Miss in the Gator Bowl. The team had developed a passing attack with Elvis Grbac19 and Desmond Howard20.

The next year the team lost to Florida State, but won its other ten regular-season games. The highlight was a completely horizontal 25-yard touchdown reception by Heisman-winner Howard on a 4th down against Notre Dame. However, the Wolverines were humiliated in the Rose Bowl by Washington.

Desmond Howard’s incredible catch.

The team had three ties but no losses in Grbac’s last year. It went to the Rose Bowl again and this time defeated Washington. Tyrone Wheatley was the star

Todd Collins took over at quarterback in 1993. The team lost four regular-season games, but they closed out the season with a 28-0 mauling of OSU and and equally decisive bowl victory over NC State.

Ty Law, one of the greatest defensive backs ever, could not prevent the miracle.

1994 was the last year in which I watched Michigan football live. The disastrous game at home against Colorado was followed by losses to Penn State, Wisconsin, and OSU.

I remember storming out of the house at the end of the OSU game. I went for a long walk, and I was still upset when I returned. The team’s victory over Colorado State in the bowl game did little to mollify me. The stress of these games was becoming too much for me.

Gary Moeller was allowed to resign after being arrested in May of 1995 for drunk and disorderly conduct at Excalibur, a restaurant in Detroit. He served as an assistant coach in the NFL until 2002. He died in 2022.

Lloyd Carr with four-year starter Chad Henne.

Lloyd Carr’s years 1995-2007: Lloyd Carr was named interim head coach after Moeller’s untimely exit. It was made official after the team won eight out of the first ten games. I expected U-M to lose the finale against #2 OSU, and I did not get to see the 31-23 upset in which Tim Biakabutuka rushed for an astounding 313 yards. That team ended the season at the Alamo Bowl, where lost to Texas A&M. The 1996 team also beat OSU and lost its bowl game.

During Carr’s thirteen years as U-M’s football coach I was extremely busy at work. If I was not traveling on a given Saturday, I was certainly in the office from dawn to dusk. I had a small TV on which I occasionally watched football, but I don’t think that I ever watched a Michigan game. I did not even check the scores until I was sure that the game was over. I told people that my favorite weekend was U-M’s bye week.

Woodson should have worn a cape.

The 1997 team featured perhaps the greatest defensive back of all time, Charles Woodson, who had been a freshman phenom in 1995 and a consensus All-American in 1996. He was also used—to great effect—as a kick returner and wide receiver. The team won all of its games, but in The Game it needed a tremendous effort from the defense and special teams to overcome a moribund offense. It faced a very good Washington State team in the Rose Bowl.

I watched the game with my friend Tom Corcoran. Woodson was Superman without the cape, but the rest of the team struggled. With a 21-16 lead U-M had the ball with 7:25 to play. Michigan got two first downs passing (once to Woodson) before Wazoo took over on its own seven yard line with sixteen seconds to play. After a hook and lateral play and the most egregious example of offensive pass interference that I have ever seen WSU moved the ball to the Michigan twenty-six. The clock ran out as the WSU quarterback tried to spike the ball. They should have had a play ready to run. I remember telling Tom that I could not believe that this was what I was hoping for. I never wanted to go through anything so nerve-wracking again.

So, U-M was named national champion by the Associated Press, but the coaches voted for Nebraska, which was also undefeated.

The GOAT and the third baseman.

The next three years were bizarre. Michigan turned into “quarterback U”. Tom Brady24 and Drew Henson25 battled for the starting job for two years. Brady eventually prevailed. Henson started for U-M in his junior year, which was typified by a 54-51 loss to Northwestern that must have made Bo rip his hair out (if he had any left). Nevertheless, those three teams won bowl games over Arkansas, Alabama, and Auburn.

The last seven years of Carr’s coaching career were drearily predictable. There were only two quarterbacks. U-M beat OSU in 2004, John Navarrre’s senior year. Henne lost four times in The Game. They were all good teams, but …

Yours on Ebay for $4.99.

I watched onlyone game. I was visiting my dad in Overland Park, KS, the weekend in 2004 when U-M played San Diego State (coached by Brady Hoke) in Ann Arbor. U-M, which had lost to Notre Dame the previous week, were behind at the half. The on-the-field female correspondent stuck a microphone in Coach Carr’s face and asked him what he expected in the second half. He said, “I expect a comeback.” U-M did win, but it was really ugly.

The worst and best games were in the last year, 2007. The loss to Appalachian State in Ann Arbor was, at the time, the low point of Michigan Football in my lifetime. The victory over Florida (coached by Urban Meyer and led by Tim Tebow) in the Capital One Bowl was a pleasant surprise. U-M had four turnovers, but Henne passed for 373 yards and was named MVP.

Coach Carr was living in Ann Arbor in 2024.

Rich Rodriguez and Brady Hoke 2008-2014: I felt strongly that after Carr retired U-M should have hired Jim Harbaugh. After a long career as a quarterback in the NFL he had coached the Raiders’ quarterbacks for two years and then transformed a horrible University of San Diego team into conference champions in only two years. Stanford hired him in 2007, but I suspected that he would have accepted any reasonable offer from U-M. Instead someone decided to pay West Virginia University $2.5 million to allow its coach, Rich Rodriguez, to forsake the Mountaineers and come to Ann Arbor.

I saw two of the games of the Richrod/Hoke era in person. Sue and I were in Ann Arbor in 2008 for the team’s home debut against Miami University. It was a horrendous game. I suspected that Miami would have won if its quarterback had not been injured.

It took a couple of years, but Rodriguez was able to field a pretty good offense built around Denard Robinson. The big problem was on defense. Richrod hired Greg Robinson to coach the defense, and the results were absolutely pathetic. U-M fans were not accustomed to teams running up the score on them, but it became commonplace.

The other game that I viewed in person was in Hoke’s regime, but it was also horrendous. It was a night game played at Rentschler Field in East Hartford in 2013. More than half the fans were wearing Michigan’s colors. It was very close up to the end. Michigan ended up with a 21-14 victory.

That game increased my appreciation of the alcohol-free atmosphere of Michigan Stadium. Some UConn fans were really obnoxious. However, the team’s play did not impress me at all.

Michigan somehow beat OSU in Brady Hoke’s first appearance in 2011. That team also defeated Virginia Tech 23-20 in the Orange Bowl. However, it was downhill from there. The 2014 team’s record was 5-7, which caused Hoke to be fired. The Athletic Director who had hired him, Dave Brandon, resigned.

Harbaugh was different.

Jim Harbaugh pre-Pandemic 2015-19: My career as a cowboy coder had just ended when Jim Harbaugh’s stint as U-M’s head coach began. He brought “an enthusiasm unknown to mankind” and a basket of new ideas. He took all of the players to Rome as part of Spring practice. He conducted coaching clinics in the southeastern U.S. These radical approaches to the job and the fact that he almost always spoke his mind engendered a lot of enmity against him in the community of coaches.

The 2015 team was much improved. After losing to Utah on the road to open the season the Wolverines won nine of the next ten games. The only blemish was a loss to MSU in Ann Arbor that was reminiscent of Keystone Kops, On the last play of the game the snap to the punter went astray leading to a 27-23 victory for Sparty. In The Game at the end of the season the team was clobbered by OSU, but the Wolverines delivered an even worse thrashing to the Florida Gators in the Capital One Bowl.

Harbaugh with Wilton Speight, who lost an entire season to a back injury.

The next four years were more of the same—one or two stumbles early, lots of very promising victories, and a blowout loss in The Game. In these years, however, the bowl games were also losses. Fans were becoming upset with Harbaugh, but those OSU teams were extremely good. Their teams were loaded with five-star recruits, and U-M’s quarterback always seemed to get hurt near the end of the season.

Brian Cook.

MGoBlog and BPONE: MGoBlog was founded by Brian Cook in 2004. I must have discovered the website that covered all of Michigan’s sports shortly after that because I am pretty sure that my dad told me that he was impressed by how much I knew about the U-M football team even before he moved to Enfield in 2005. The emphasis of the blogs was on football, of course. The most amazing aspect was that someone (Brian at first, later Seth Fisher) charted and analyzed every play of every U-M football game.

Brian and Seth also appear on the Michigan Insider radio show that was hosted weekly by Sam Webb on WTKA and was streamed on MGoBlog.com. Craig Ross, a lawyer who was born a year or two before I was, also appeared on the show. Ross was a super-fan of all of the U-M sports.

Top row: Sam and Seth. Bottom row: Craig and Brian.

I have spent an inordinate number of happy hours reading and listening to these guys and the other members of the MGoBlog crew. I especially appreciated the analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of U-M’s opponents that was provided by Alex Drain.

Brian, who was a very talented writer, often bared his soul about sports and his personal life. He invented the acronym BPONE, which stood for Bottomless Pit of Negative Expectations. It described a state of mind when one can no longer appreciate the positive aspects of viewing sports because he/she (hardly ever she) is convinced that they will be overwhelmed by negative aspect in the end. BPONE is precisely the reason that I gave up watching the Wolverines on television. Once you have seen Colorado’s “Miracle at Michigan” or the bungled punt attempts against MSU and Appy State it was difficult to keep them out of your mind.

Harbaugh’s glory years 2021-23: I should pass over without mentioning the monumentally stupid college football season of 2020. U-M won two of the six games in which it was able to field a team of players who did not have Covid-19. I blame Trump, who insisted that all the teams should play during the second wave of the most infectious disease anyone had seen.

Aidan Hutchinson was the best defensive player since Woodson.

In preparation for the 2021 season Harbaugh had dramatically reshuffled his assistant coaches. The primary goals were to design offenses and defenses that would be effective against the ones used by Ohio State. The players recruited for these new schemes were big, tough, and smart. Harbaugh promised that he would beat Ohio State or die trying.

McCarthy and Mc

Expectations for the 2021 season were not high in Ann Arbor, but there were some scraps of good news. Aidan Hutchinson30, the All-American defensive end, returned. Cade McNamara and five-star freshman J.J. McCarthy seemed promising as quarterbacks.

In fact, this was a very good team. It lost a heart-breaker to MSU in the middle of the season when Kenneth Walker III ran for 197 yards and five touchdowns, but the Wolverines still entered the Ohio State game with a surprising 10-1 record. The team played an inspired game and defeated the Buckeyes by a score of 42-27. They then annihilated Iowa in the conference championship 42-3. They were ceded #3 in U-M’s first appearance in the College Football Playoff. The team was outclassed by eventual champion, Georgia, 34-11. Nevertheless, this was was the most accomplished Michigan team since the 1997-98 team that was named national champion by the AP.

When Corum got hurt, Edwards stepped up.

Even Brian Cook was optimistic about the 2022 team. Hutchinson was gone, but this team had two legitimate quarterbacks, two outstanding running backs, Blake Corum and Donovan Edwards, outstanding receivers, and the best offensive line in the country. The questions were on defense were quickly answered. The team breezed through its first ten games. A stubborn Illinois defense nearly engineered an upset in Ann Arbor, but the team was still undefeated and ranked #3 for The The Wolverines prevailed in Columbus for the first time since 2000 by a score of 45-23. They then sleepwalked past Purdue in the Big Ten championship and entered the CFP ceded #2.

Sherrone Moore (left) and Jesse Minter were probably the best offensive and defensive coordinators in college football.

Their opponent in the semifinal was Texas Christian. Michigan was favored by almost everyone, but J.J. McCarthy had a terrible game, and Blake Corum had been severely injured late in the season. The defense also had trouble stopping TCU’s attack; it did not help that two or McCarthy’s early passes were intercepted and returned for touchdowns. In the end the Horned Frogs won 51-45. Perhaps it was just as well that U-M lost that game. Georgia overwhelmed TCU in the final.

The 2023 team had one goal: to win the national championship. Almost all of the important players and coaching staff returned. The team was ranked #2 behind Georgia for nearly the entire season in both polls.

Connor Stalions.

Two silly “scandals” were distractions. Because of allegations of recruiting violations in the Covid-19 year31 Harbaugh did not attend the first three games, which were blowouts of non-conference teams. Because of bizarre behavior of a low-level analyst with the unlikely name of Connor Stalions. He apparently bought tickets for people for games of prospective U-M opponents. Some of them allegedly took videos of the signs used to signal plays32 to the field. The Big Ten’s investigation resulted in the firing of one coach and the requirement that Harbaugh not be on the field for the team’s last three regular season games.

Corum was the star in overtime, but everyone contributed.

Those three very important games—were overseen by the Offensive Coordinator, Sherrone Moore. The results were decisive victories over Penn State, Maryland, and Ohio State. Michigan then shut out Iowa in the last conference championship game ever. After Seth Fisher analyzed each play of U-M’s semifinal overtime triumph over Alabama in the Rose Bowl he called it the greatest of Michigan’s 1,004 victories. The victory over Washington in the final game was less dramatic but equally satisfying.

In the end Michigan was the unanimous choice as #1, and the NCAA said that they had won the title fairly.

Denouement: Nick Saban, the long-time extremely successful coach at Alabama retired. Harbaugh resigned after agreeing to become the head coach for the Chargers, one of his old teams. Sherrone Moore was named U-M’s head coach. McCarthy, Corum, and quite a few others went pro. Some of the coaches accompanied Harbaugh to wherever the Chargers play these days.

In February of 2024 I watched the entire Rose Bowl game v. Alabama. I could not have watched it live. There were too many times in which Michigan committed unbelievable blunders that threatened to blow the game open. The FIRST PLAY was an interception that was overruled! BPONE would have overcome me. At least one vital organ would have failed.

How will Michigan do in the future? I sincerely doubt that the heroics of team #144 will ever be matched by any Michigan team in the future. College football has changed so drastically in the early twenties, and most of those changes do not bode well for the Wolverines.

I am quite happy that I got to experience this event even though I refused to make the kind of emotional investment in the team that others did. Their reward was no doubt greater.

1. Len Dawson, a Purdue graduate, led the Chiefs to victory in Super Bowl IV. He died in 2022.

2. Curtis McClinton, who went to the University of Kansas, was the AFL’s Rookie of the Year in 1962. He played nine years for the Chiefs. He was still alive and living in KC in 2024.

3. Fred Arbanas was a graduate of Michigan State. In January of 1965 he was assaulted in KC and lost vision in one eye. He nevertheless was an All-Star for the Chiefs for several years after that. He died in 2021.

4. The only one that I missed was one of the greatest U-M games of all time, the 1969 Ohio State game. I opted to attend a debate tournament in Chicago instead. This was one of the poorest choices that I ever made. I even gave away my ticket, which was on the 50-yard line halfway up.

5. I never heard anyone call him “Billy” in the year that he lived in A-R. He was generally known as BT, just as Darden was commonly called TD.

6. This game was attended by my parents while I watched on TV in Leawood! I was on my holiday break from classes.

7. Michigan easily won all ten games before the OSU game. The combined scores of it first three home games was 140-0.

8. Dennis Franklin had a cup of coffee with the New York Lions. He lived in Santa Monica, CA, in 2024.

9. Mike Lantry was my age. If he had gone to U-M after high school, he would have played when I was an undergrad. Instead he went to Vietnam. Although he held many records for kicking when he graduated, and he was a first team All-American, he is best remembered for three crucial kicks that he missed in the 1973 and 1974 OSU games. In 2024 he was living in Florida.

10. Rick Leach was still alive in 2024. His professional career was as a baseball player, mostly riding the pine with the Detroit Tigers.

11. Harlan Huckleby played six years for the Green Bay Packers. He was still alive in 2024.

12. Charles White played for the Cleveland Browns and the Los Angeles Rams. He led the NFL in rushing in 1987. He died in 2023.

13. Jim Brandstatter was in the same class as TD and BT. He tried out for the NFL but never played. He had a very long career in broadcasting. He was still alive in 2024.

14. Anthony Carter’s official height was 5’11”, and his weight was 168 lbs. I was two inches taller and 23 lbs. lighter when I entered the army. So, I was much skinnier than Carter. However, compared to nearly all football players, Carter was a midget. He set an incredible number of records. You can find them on his Wikipedia page, which is posted here. Carter was still alive in 2024.

15. Butch Woolfolk was a track star as well as one of the all-time great running backs at U-M. He also had an outstanding professional career. He was still alive in 2024.

16. John Wangler had to fight for the quarterback job his entire career at U-M, and he did not make the grade in the NFL. Nevertheless he will always be remembered for that pass in the Indiana game and his victories in The Game and the Rose Bowl. He was still alive in 2024.

16. Steve Smith started at quarterback for U-M for three years. He played for a couple of years in Canada. He was still alive in 2024.

17. Jack Harbaugh was the head coach at Western Michigan and then Western Kentucky, where his team won the Division I-AA national championship in 2002. The most important aspect of his career at U-M was probably the introduction of his son Jim to the nicest football town and best program in the country. Jim hired him as an assistant coach in 2023 (at the age of 84), and he was on the sideline coaching away when the Wolverines finally won it all in 2024.

18. Cris Carter was a phenomenal receiver, perhaps the best ever, but he had difficulty staying out of trouble. He was suspended for his senior year (1988) at OSU and then had a long and checkered NFL career. The high spots were lofty enough to get him into the Hall of Fame. Since his retirement after the 2002 season he has had had a few jobs in sports broadcasting.

19. Elvis Grbac had a reasonably successful, at least in financial terms, eight-year career in the NFL. He retired to become athletic director of his old high school in Cleveland. Believe it or not, he had a brother named Englebert.

20. Desmond Howard, who went to the same high school as Grbac, had a very successful NFL career and an even more successful career as an analyst at ESPN. I sat next to him on an airplane once during the early days of his career there.

21. I was astounded to learn that in 2023 Tyrone Wheatley had been hired as the head football coach at Wayne State in Detroit. He had a long and successful NFL career with the Giants and Raiders.

22. Todd Collins was never a big star at U-M, but his NFL career, which started in 1995 lasted until 2010, although on two different occasions he took a few years off. He was never a starter, but he evidently was widely considered a reliable backup.

23. Charles Woodson was just as good in the NFL as he had been in college. He played from 1998 to 2015, an astonishingly long career for a defensive back. The greatest interception of all time can be viewed here. In 2024 Woodson worked as an analyst for Fox.

24. Tom Brady became the greatest quarterback of all time in the NFL.

25. Drew Henson dropped out of school after his junior season and signed a contract with the New York Yankees. He bounced around in the minors before and played only eight games with the Yankees before retiring in 2004. He then tried the NFL, where he saw very limited action over a five year career. He was still alive in 2024, apparently working for a company that advised players on economic matters.

26. John Navarre was drafted by the NFL, but he played in only two games. In 2024 he lived in Elmhurst, IL.

27. Chad Henne played fifteen years in the NFL, mostly as a backup quarterback. His last few years were with the Chiefs. He retired in 2023.

28. This is my favorite figure of speech. It is called preterition.

29. Thankfully Walker played only one season for MSU. He was drafted by the Seahawks.

30. In 2024 Aidan Hutchinson was the cornerstone of the rebuilt Detroit Lions.

31. Brian Cook and the other MGoBloggers call this incident “hamburgergate”.

32. I was shocked to learn that it was illegal to go to other teams’ games to scout. I also assumed that everyone tried to “steal” signals and that teams took measures to make this nearly impossible. The NFL has installed technology that allows the coaches to talk to the players on the field. College coaches refuse to consider this arrangement.

1982 Jim Wavada’s Retirement from BMA

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I found an album with my dad’s name engraved in gold on the inside front cover. It contained thirty-five snapshots of celebrations at my dad’s employer, Business Men’s Assurance (BMA), an insurance company based in Kansas City1. This brought to … Continue reading →

I found an album with my dad’s name engraved in gold on the inside front cover. It contained thirty-five snapshots of celebrations at my dad’s employer, Business Men’s Assurance (BMA), an insurance company based in Kansas City1. This brought to mind the fact that I had written very little about my dad’s business career.

The original BMA Building was across the street from Union Station.

At some point in 1982 I received a very surprising telephone call from my dad. He had decided to retire—at the age of 58! His employer for over thirty years1 was downsizing by offering attractive severance packages to its employees. He helped to design the program, and when the president of the company learned that he was on the list of people taking early retirement, he protested, “But Jim, this wasn’t designed for people like you.”

My dad told me that he replied, “True, but it didn’t exclude me either.”

In March of 1951 my dad presented a birthday greeting to the president of the company.

When did my dad start working at BMA? I remember thinking at the time of his death in 2011 that his life was perfectly divisible into three units of twenty-nine years each. However, that would mean that he started work in 1953. That cannot be true. I have recently discovered proof that he was employed there in 1950. Furthermore, I know that I spent a lot of the time in the hospital in my first year of life. If he had not had a good insurance policy—and BMA employees had excellent policies—I doubt that my parents could have afforded the hospital bills. Finally, I doubt that John Cernech would have allowed his only daughter to marry a guy without a job. So, I think that Jim probably started working at BMA before September of 1947.

What did you do for a year and a half, Sergeant Wavada?

I have no idea what he did between the time of his discharge from the army as a sergeant in the 300th Infantry Regiment on February 18, 1946, and his wedding on December 1, 1947. He hinted to me once that my mom and her mom, Clara Cernech, saved him from going down a really bad path during this period.

What did my dad do at BMA? I have never been too certain. He probably started at the bottom. He finished high school in 1942, but, despite the fact that he certainly qualified for veterans’ benefits, to my knowledge he never took a college course.

In 1951 he was the president of the KEO (“Know Each Other”) Club at BMA. A photo of him presenting a birthday greeting to the president of the company appeared in the company’s newspaper in March. I think that he also told me that he played for one summer on the company’s baseball or soccer team. He had a first baseman’s mitt that he picked up somewhere.

In 1963 the company moved to the BMA Tower. No, it was never known as Grant’s Tomb.

Maybe he joined BMA’s Sales Department in 1953, and he told me that he had spent 29 years there. That would make more sense. The Sales Department managed the company’s salesmen. I think that what my dad mostly did was write materials used by the company. I know that at one time his title was Vice-president of Public Relations. I also know that during the last few years he spent most of his time writing speeches for the president of the company, Bill Grant. He hated this assignment. Mr. Grant often spoke against Medicare, and my dad understood what a good program it was.

I remember the quite a few names mentioned by my dad. Some of these people I probably met once or twice, but I have seen none of them since high school. Here is the list: John Saylor (his boss) and his son Bill, Bernie Johnson, C.R. Moreland, Lyle Hopkins, Kenny Higdon, Bill Purinton, Roy Uto. I remember that dad’s secretary—or at least one of his secretaries—was named Jeanette. I also remember a woman who attended his wake in 2011 and appeared in some of the photos below. I think that her name was Mary Jean or something like that. If I ever knew her last name, I have forgotten it.2

Here are the photos in the same order that they were in the album. There are two sets of photos. The first fifteen were taken at a banquet at a huge round table at BMA Tower. The second set of twenty were evidently shot on a different occasion in and around my dad’s office. I have added captions when I knew anything about them.

My mom is in white. My dad is to her right. His vision was almost as bad as mine, but he almost never wore glasses except to read and drive. He considered them effeminate.
The woman seated at the window came to Jim’s wake. The only other person whom I recognize is my dad in the foreground. No sign of his bald spot yet, and not a single grey hair. Bill Grant, the company’s president collected art depicting western scenes.
My mother was either convulsed in laughter or she spotted a huge spider on the ceiling. The man shown in profile is Bill Saylor.
I think that this was either Bill Grant of John Saylor.
No idea.

I think that this was either Bill Grant of John Saylor.

Bill Saylor.
Note the tie bar. By the time that I spent much time with him as an adult both of my dad’s eyebrows were white, but he still had no trace of grey hair. I was the opposite. He stopped smoking in the late eighties.
My mom would be upset that this photo showed the very slight bump on her nose.
This was the lady who came to the wake, Mary Jean.
Kenny Higdon?
I was surprised to see my dad reaching with his right hand. He was left-handed. The only thing that he did right-handed was playing golf. Maybe he had a cigarette in his left hand.
This is the last photo of the first set.
This is the first photo of the second set. The gag gift of the white paint might be a reference to a project that I worked on the summer before I went into the army. I was supposed to paint the house, but I did not finish. It is possible that they never got anyone else to finish it.
I think that this cake was for my dad’s retirement. If the golfer was meant to be my dad, his aim was to the right of the hole (with the red flag in it) because he was playing the horrendous slice that accompanied each of his swings. He learned to play golf (and smoke) in high school at Maur Hill. There were no left-handed clubs available.
No idea.
I think that my dad is holding some golf balls. I think that it is totally unfair that I had more grey hairs before I started working at TSI than he had when he retired from BMA.
No idea.
One wood and one iron?
I think that the big guy in the back with the plaid jacket might be John Bolin. I knew his son in the Boy Scouts.
My dad and Mary Jean.
A black guy?
Mom and somebody.
“So, a priest, a rabbi, and an insurance guy go into a bar …”

1. The insurance operations of BMA (the A originally stood for Accident Insurance), which included my dad’s pension and health insurance, was sold to Assicurazioni Generali in 1990. AG sold it to the Royal Bank of Canada in 2009;

2. I spent several hours on the Internet trying to discover what became of the people on this list, but I was unsuccessful.

1995 October: Mike and Cadie at Dolores Wavada’s 70th Birthday

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D is for … Continue reading →

I took notes on all of my business trips, and I often took photos. I did not, however, take any notes or photos in the course of this adventure. So, I needed to rely on my memory.

My dad had retired from his job at Business Men’s Assurance (BMA) in 1982 at the age of 58. For the first few years of his retirement my parents played a lot of golf and did some traveling together. They visited New England at least a couple of times, and they also took a few other trips. Sue and I made only one trip to KC during that period (described here). We were as poor as the proverbial church mice.

Throughout the early nineties I traveled a lot for business. Whenever I could, I stopped in Kansas City on the way to or from a client or prospect in order to pay them a visit. I always notified them that I was coming. I generally took the shuttle service1 that was available at the KCI airport. By 1995 I had stopped at their house in Leawood, KS, two or three times, and it was evident to me that both of them were going downhill. My dad had somehow2 lost vision in one eye. Mom was having a lot of trouble with her memory, and she no longer drove a car. She had been to see doctors about her condition, but they had been unable to diagnose the source of the problem. They assured her that she did not have Alzheimer’s Disease. Both mom and dad walked much more slowly than I remembered. In fact they walked more slowly than everyone.

In the late summer of 1995 my dad called me at TSI’s office to tell me that their friends were throwing a party for mom’s seventieth birthday. I am pretty sure that he must have invited Jamie and the rest of the Lisella family (introduced here) as well. Jamie said that she would not be able to attend, but her oldest daughter, Cadie Mapes, would go. I bought airline tickets for Cadie, who was about 17, and me, who was three decades older. My dad had said that we could stay at their house. I would sleep in my old bedroom, and Cadie would sleep in Jamie’s. My mom knew about the party, but she did not know that Cadie and I were coming.

My mom’s birthday was October 2, which was a Monday in 1995. I suspect that Cadie and I flew in on Sunday. Cadie was still in high school, of course. So, the party may not have been on the evening of October 2. I do not remember whether Cadie had to deal with being absent from any classes. Maybe the entire trip took place on a weekend.

The drive took about 45 minutes.

When we arrived at the airport I rented a car from Avis. We decided not to drive directly to the house. Instead we stopped somewhere for a late lunch or supper. I have a vague recollection that it was a Mexican restaurant.

When we arrived at 8800 Fairway, my mom was in the front yard with one of her friends, perhaps Rose Goral. The other lady asked mom who had arrived. She immediately said, “That’s my son!” I was somewhat relieved that she recognized me.

I do not remember what we did that evening. I think that the party was on the following evening. It might have been at the Blue Hills Country Club, where they had been members for many years. In any case I remember that my dad was driving, mom was riding shotgun, and Cadie and I were in the back. I think that we were on State Line Road, a fairly busy thoroughfare on the south side of Kansas City.

At some point we came across a dog that seemed to be lost or at least confused. He was on the side of the road, and he meandered onto the pavement near us. My mom insisted that my dad stop the car. He knew better than to argue. He eased the car off to the side of the road. My mom got out of the car and made sure that the dog was all right. I remember this incident up to that point as though it were yesterday. I do not, however, remember exactly what she did to assure herself that the dog would be all right. She finally got back into the car, and we drove to the party without further incident.

The reason for my faulty memory is probably traceable to the fact that I was mentally rehearsing the speech that I planned to give at the party. The speech had seven main points; each topic began with one or the letters of my mom’s name D-O-L-O-R-E-S. I no longer remember the topics, but I definitely worked the episode of the dog into my presentation. Who else would stop a car on a busy street to deal with an animal? I also remember that I truthfully recounted that in all of the years that I had spent with my mom I had never heard her say a bad word about anyone. The only other thing that I recall is that the topic that started with L was “Libraries”. I recounted how the two of us had taken the street car to the public library in Kansas City, KS, and how she later encouraged me to read copious amounts of all kinds of literature at an early age.

The only other thing that I recall about the party is that one of their friends said that I sounded just like my dad. I did not consider that a compliment, but I suppose that it was intended as one.

Did our trip to KC make my parents happy? I suppose so, but I cannot remember any details that would prove it. No one broke into tears of joy or agony.

Cadie did not say too much on the trip. I probably should have made a greater effort to get to know her. She was definitely nervous about being the family’s representative.

We flew back to New England on the next day. I don’t remember anything else of note before I returned Cadie to her family’s house in West Springfield.

1. Two or three passengers would travel together from KCI to Shawnee Mission, which was what the southern suburbs on the Kansas side were called.

2. He blamed his detached retina on cosmetic surgery that he had undertaken to improve the appearance of his eyelids. He never took any legal action, and he did not like to discuss it.

1967-1969 Part 4: Summer Jobs

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My introduction to the insurance workplace. Continue reading →

The BMA Tower in KC.

During my undergraduate years I worked all three summers at life insurance companies. I wore a suit every day. My dad had given me some ties that he no longer wore. Thus attired, I never acquired the valuable and character-building experience of flipping burgers or waiting tables.

My dad worked at Business Men’s Assurance (BMA) in Kansas City throughout his entire career. The company had a policy of offering summer jobs to the offspring of its executives who were attending college. My dad certainly did not start at BMA as an executive, but by the time that I was in college, he had risen to the level of vice-president. So, for a couple of years I took advantage of that situation.

1967: I think that I rode to BMA with my dad and his car pool.

I was assigned to work as a clerk in the company’s Policyholder Service Department. The area that I worked in dealt with policies that for one reason or another had been terminated. In some cases the amount of premiums paid in exceeded the benefit paid to the customer. Our group calculated this difference and initiated the refund or whatever other steps were indicated.

Our group consisted of about twenty women sitting in rows of desk and one female supervisor who had an office. I seem to remember that her name was Dorothy, but I could be wrong. My recollection is that she was BMA’s first female officer. She talked with me the first day, but we had few dealings thereafter.

The above is a programmer’s coding sheet. Our data sheets were similar.

The other twenty or so ladies in the section each had two items on their desks—a gigantic Friden (the first syllable is pronounced like “free”) mechanical calculator and a pad of eighty-column computer coding sheets. The work came to them in the shape of a policy folder with a small piece of paper clipped1 to indicate the current status. The ladies then calculated the amount of the monetary element using actuarial formulae and filled out a coding sheet. Someone else checked the work and then forwarded it to the keypunch area, where another group of ladies converted the sheets into IBM cards that represented transactions for the mainframe to process.

There were no available desks in our section. Therefore, I had the dubious distinction of sitting in a row of desks just outside of the offices. The other three people in this row were the officers’ secretaries. At night my desk was used by a young man who telephoned customers whose policy had either lapsed or was about to lapse. I never met this fellow, but we exchanged notes left on our common desk. He told me about the person who previously sat in our desk. I had seen her name plate. It was a Greek name that ended in “itis”. The night shift guy called her “Mrs. Disease”. I told him what my name was and added the appellation “Now a name…soon a legend”2. My communication with him was probably the most enjoyable aspect of the entire summer.

Friden

My role in the process described above involved calculating square roots, which I had learned how to do in Ms. Jancey’s math class at QHRS, as described here. Using the Friden this was a multi-step process. At least one of these steps required division, which was something to see and hear. The machine calculated each digit one at a time as its top section, which displayed the answer, chugged back and forth.

U

I had my own coding sheets. When I had filled one out I gave it to one of the ladies to check. She disliked the way that I made my U’s. To her they looked too much like V’s. She asked me to add a line to the right side of each U. I eventually made a habit, which I have perpetuated, of doing so. Subsequently, unfortunately, people have through the years often mistaken my U’s for Y’s.

Spoiler alert: E always won.

There was not much work for me. I seldom did as much as twenty hours of actual work per week. I was told in the first week that this would probably be the case. When I did not have any real work to do, I was enjoined to “look busy”. This was, it was emphasized, especially important because the big bosses often came down to see the department head, whose office was not far from my desk. I was not allowed to bring outside reading material. For a while I tried to pretend to read the insufferably boring manuals that were on or in my desk. When that became unbearable, I amused myself by marking twenty-six columns on a piece of paper and counting the distribution of the letters in an article or pamphlet. For each letter I placed a tick mark in the appropriate column and totaled each column at the end of the article. Computing the final results killed time, but seldom did it yield any surprises.

I must have eaten lunch in the company cafeteria. I did not know anyone. I am pretty sure that I did not eat with my coworkers. Maybe I ate alone. It would not have bothered me.

To make extra money I also stayed late one or two evenings per week. The summer students were put to work looking on desktops, countertops, and filing cabinets for missing policy folders. We worked in pairs. One of us would “read” policy numbers on the folders; the other would “check” against the list of the missing in numerical order. If we found one, the checker recorded on the list where the folder was.

Bouquet

A startling event occurred one evening. A girl who was working in my vicinity received a delivery of a bouquet of flowers from her boyfriend. She just broke down and cried. This startled me because she never struck me as the emotional type. She had once laughed at my pronunciation of “secreted”, meaning “hidden”. I accented the second syllable. I didn’t say anything at the time, but I looked it up and discovered that I was right. Check it out here.

Peter

1968: In my second year at BMA I think that I rode in to BMA with Peter Closius, who was a year older than I was.3 I had never met him before, but his parents were good friends of my parents, and I knew his younger brother Phil from Boy Scouts. Peter treated the drive to work, most of which was on the three lanes of Ward Parkway, as a race. He made liberal use of all the lanes. We had many close calls but no collisions; I was often terrified.

Because I had passed part 1 of the actuarial exams, I was assigned to work for Reuben Johnson, who was the #2 man in the Actuarial Department. He kept me pretty well occupied with projects, most of which were mostly pedestrian. The one that I enjoyed the most was when he asked me to write a summary of the recent sales history of one of the company’s products. I discovered that one of the salesmen had discovered a loophole and had been taking advantage of intricacies of the system. The result was that the product had become unprofitable for the company. I don’t remember the details, but Reuben liked my writing style.

Oscar Klein died in 2020. His obituary is here.

I ate lunch with some of the actuaries. We wolfed down our food so that we could play a few hands of bridge afterwards. Sid Peacock and Oscar Klein, VP and Actuary, also played. The fourth player rotated. They liked playing with me because I played as fast as they did.

Sid and Oscar also played golf in the morning before work. They teed off at the crack of dawn, shouldered their own clubs, and jogged between shots.

Sandy Finsilver, whom I had met in Detroit on the trip with my dad in 1966 (related here), also worked at BMA during that summer. I had seen him once or twice in Ann Arbor, where he was attending the University of Michigan.

Fish

Sandy invited me to come with him to a party at his apartment complex. I brought some of my albums, including I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die by Country Joe and the Fish. Quite a few of the guys there who were in the Army Reserve or National Guard did not appreciate the vocal stylings of Joe McDonald, an avowed communist.

In 1967 the A’s were still playing at Municipal Stadium in Kansas City. In 1969 the Kansas City Royals, an expansion team, were scheduled to play there. In the summer of 1968 the Kansas City Spurs of the North American Soccer League took advantage of the absence of sports entertainment in KC. They not only played their regular-season games in Municipal Stadium; they also scheduled three friendlies against international opponents. On July 4, 1968, the great Brazilian club team, Santos, came to KC and played against the Spurs. My dad and I were among the 19,296 people in attendance. I can therefore brag that I got to watch Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pelé, at the height of his career.

Pelé was named the Interational Player of the Century in 1999.
Pelé was named the Interational Player of the Century in 1999.

I do not remember much about the game, which Santos won 4-1. I don’t think that Pelé scored a goal. However, at one point he took a shot from near midfield. It took off like a bullet, went over the goalie’s outstretched arms, hit the crossbar so hard that it shook visibly, and rebounded back into the field of play. I could not believe that anyone could kick a ball that hard.

That was the only professional soccer game that I ever witnessed. Over the years I have watched portions of a few games on television, but I never sat all the way through one. I did attend several games played by my four nieces and my nephew. Soccer is a fun game to play, but football and basketball have so much more action. It is not surprising to me that it has never achieved the degree of popularity in North America that it has everywhere else.

Too few sold in 1970.
Too few sold in 1970.

The Spurs had moved to KC from Chicago. They played for three seasons, 1968-70. They won the league title in 1969, but they did not qualify for the playoffs in 1970. The attendance in 1970 was less that 2,400 per game, which meant that there were over 33,000 empty seats. The team folded after that season.

1969: I don’t remember exactly why, but I was not allowed to work at BMA for a third summer. I wrote to Kansas City Life to see if they had summer positions in the actuarial department, and they offered me one. I recall that my letter included a facetious remark about my secretary being on vacation, and the actuary with whom I communicated thought that I might be serious.

KC_Life

My work at KC Life also was mostly mundane, but a few interesting things happened. The actuarial department had purchased from Burroughs what I would call a semi-programmable calculator.4 It was enormous for a calculator—perhaps three feet on a side and at least six inches high. It had a keyboard similar to that of a calculator—digits plus arithmetic symbols and, I think, a few others. Its output section was similar to that of an adding machine—a roll of paper a few inches wide. It had a third section for input and output of a strip of magnetic tape about an inch wide and six inches long. The tape was for storing the program. There was no limit to how complicated the program could be, as long as you could fit it into 64 bytes. Not 64 gig or 64 meg or 64K; 64 bytes.

I don’t remember what the actuaries actually used this machine for. Some actuarial calculations might have been time-consuming on a Friden. If five or six steps could be combined using this beast, it might have been valuable.

Morley Safer quizzes George Finn On 60 Minutes.
Morley Safer quizzes George Finn On 60 Minutes.

I wrote a program that took as input a date in the form MMDDYY. It spat out something that indicated what day of the week it was. I don’t remember whether it took into account the ten dates that didn’t exist when countries adopted the standards specified by Pope Gregory XIII. Probably not.

I know; George Finn, Rain Man, and other savants can do this in their head, but I can’t.

I worked with and lunched with two actuarial students named Todd and Tom. Once while involved in some work project I lost track of time and almost missed an appointment for lunch with the two T’s. At the last minute I rushed to join them because I had read Chaucer and knew full well that “Tom and Todd wait for no man.” I hope that you laughed or at least groaned. I have related this incident many times over the years, and no one has appreciated it.

4F

Tom had played quarterback at Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, KS. He had injured his knee, but in no way did it limit his subsequent athletic activities. He informed us that his doctor had provided documentation of the injury and coached him on how to take the draft physical. He flunked it and was classified 4F, just like Trump.

Armstrong

On Monday morning, July 21, everyone in the actuarial department gathered around a portable television set and watched Neil Armstrong climb out of the capsule and take the first steps on the moon.

My time at the two life insurance companies did not excite me about the prospect of my putative actuarial career. The work was not awful, but there were other things that I would rather do.

Nevada_Smith

1. Post-it notes were invented in 1968.

2. The Steve McQueen movie Nevada Smith was heavily advertised with this catch-phrase. I have never actually seen this film, but I remember the ads.

3. It is quite possible that I rode with Peter in 1967, not in 1968. Peter later owned and operated several companies in Fairfield County, CT. He died in 2003. His obituary is here.

4. I searched carefully on the Internet, but I could not find an image of this device.

1966 Summer Between High School & College

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Transition. Continue reading →

In June of 1996 my dad and I made our first and only road trip together. The primary purpose was to help me decide between the University of Iowa and the University of Michigan.

Our first stop was in Detroit, where my dad introduced me to Howard Finsilver1, a sales agent for my dad’s employer, BMA, and his son, Sandy, who was my age and planned to attend U-M in the fall. I spent some time with Sandy and a group of his friends from (I think) Mumford High. At least one of them was also going to U-M. Then (as now) most good students in the state hoped to attend U-M. In some parts of the country many top students disparage state schools, but not in Michigan. Sandy and all of his friends were quite impressed that I had been admitted as an out-of-state student.

We shot some pool in the basement of the house of one of the friends. Someone then drove Sandy and me around Detroit to show me some of its highlights. I don’t remember details, but I doubt that the Chamber of Commerce would have agreed with the sites that they chose.

The diag and the bell tower at U-M.
The view from the steps of U-M’s graduate library: the diag and the bell tower.

On the next day dad and I drove the thirty-seven miles to Ann Arbor to talk with a professor from the math department. I don’t remember the specifics of the conversation, but I absolutely fell in love with the town, the campus, the entire atmosphere. And that was before I ever set foot in the football stadium. Just about everyone who visits the town in the spring or summer has this reaction.

On the way to Iowa, we stopped somewhere in Indiana to play some golf. I don’t think that either of us enjoyed the round much.

Corn

The last hundred or so miles before we got to Iowa City we saw almost nothing but corn on either side of the road. The professor we talked to at the university made a pretty good case, but I had already decided that I wanted to attend the University of Michigan.

Birdie
My dad was fairly often involved in providing entertainment for some of the company’s salesmen and regional sales managers when they came to the home office in KC. In the middle of July one of the salesmen had brought two of his sons with him on such a visit. One was close to my age and the other, who also worked as a BMA salesman, was in his twenties. I think that their last name was Roberson. BMA bought three primo tickets for me and the two sons for the Starlight Theater, an outdoor venue in Swope Park that showed musicals in the summer. The show was Bye-Bye Birdie, and it starred the rock group Gary Lewis2 and the Playboys. This occurred at the height of the group’s popularity. The group had one big hit, “This Diamond Ring”, and a number of other songs that did well on the charts.

I am sure that the newspaper’s caption was useful to those who thought that J.L. was a government figure. If the wife bent forward just a little or wore her hair down, I would be in this photo.

Gary Lewis’s father was the comic actor, Jerry Lewis. On Monday, July 11, Jerry and his wife and entourage were in KC for their son’s opening night. Believe it or not we were in the fifth row right in the middle. Jerry Lewis was seated in the fourth row between his wife, who did not utter a word all night, and another woman who must have been an agent or something. Jerry Lewis himself sat a few inches from my right knee.

As soon as Jerry Lewis arrived, he consulted privately with another staff member who was seated on the other side of Lewis’s wife. The staffer left for a few minutes and then returned with a large paper cup that was quite different from the kind available at the concession stand. Lewis sipped from it until intermission. Before the play started a few young people came up to ask for his autograph. No dice. The staffer who brought the drink did not let them get close to the star.

During the first few minutes of the performance J.L. tried to record the sound. He had great difficulty operating the recording device. The results of his efforts were a snake’s nest of tape around his feet and a torrent of blue language, the likes of which I would not hear again until I took part in basic training at Fort Polk in 1970. He abandoned the recording project somewhere before intermission.

At intermission J.L. and the staffer exited through a door that was not accessible to the public. They returned just before the play resumed. J.L. was fidgety and generally disruptive throughout the rest of the show. He downed another large paper cup of the mystery beverage during the second half. The Robersons told me that they could smell alcohol.

The play itself was OK. The rest of the actors were fine. I am not a big fan of musical comedy, but I had really liked the story when I saw the movie with Ann-Margret3. Gary Lewis was not believable as a teen dreamboat, and his rendition of “One Last Kiss” was almost laughable, IMHO. The group then played “This Diamond Ring”. They might have also played one or two other songs. There was no screaming from teenage girls in the audience.

I enjoyed Cinderfella, mostly because I was captivated by Anna Maria Alberghetti
I enjoyed Cinderfella, mostly because I was captivated by Anna Maria Alberghetti

At the end the Robersons asked the staff lady politely for autographs, but Jerry Lewis wanted only to get out of the theater immediately. He was in a very bad mood.

My opinion of Jerry Lewis did not change much. I thought that he was a self-centered obnoxious jerk both before and after this occasion. He pretty much ruined the event for everyone within fifteen feet of him.

I don’t remember what I did for the rest of the summer other than mow lawns and play golf. I don’t recall a job.

In late August my parents drove me and some of my belongings to Ann Arbor. Jamie probably came with us. I don’t remember much about the trip except my eagerness to get on with the next phase of my life. Of course, I was also a little nervous.

The University had notified me that I had been assigned to 315 Allen Rumsey4 House in West Quad. We drove there and met the third-floor RA, Jim Krogsrud, whom everyone called Gritty. Because classes did not begin until the following week, almost no one had moved in yet. Nearly all incoming freshmen had attended the week-long orientation period during the summer. I was allowed to stay in room 315 while I attended the orientation.

Gritty explained that all the rooms were doubles, but three people had been assigned temporarily to room 315. He said that he was sure that this would be promptly resolved. The family helped me carry my stuff up to the room. Then I said good-bye to them, and they drove off into the sunset.

Gritty asked me a few questions, one of which was whether I played bridge. He was very happy to hear that I did. He and Andy, the house’s RD, liked to play, and they were looking for opponents. He also explained how the laundry and other aspects of life in the dorm worked.

They must have served meals in the West Quad dining room for the few of us who were there that week. I don’t remember having to find restaurants or walk to another dorm.

After breakfast on the day after my parents left I met with my orientation group. Our group leader was a guy. I don’t remember his name. The members of our group were all enrolled in the college of Literature, Science, and the Arts. One of the first orders of business was taking language placement tests. LS&A had a two-year language requirement. I was preparing myself mentally for the Latin test when the group leader told me that he had received a note stating that I did not need to take the test. He said that he had never heard of such a thing. He advised me to take the test anyway.

Vergil or Marlon Brando?
Vergil or Marlon Brando?

I showed up for the Latin test. It consisted of a multiple choice grammar test and a sight translation of some lines from Vergil. It seemed pretty easy to me; I was the first person to leave the test room.

I later learned that my 790 on the SAT’s Latin achievement test was the reason why I did not need to take the test. However, I did not get any academic credits for skipping the four semesters of introductory Latin. I did, however get three credits for Advanced Placement English and eight for AP math.

A few days later I got to consult with my academic advisor, who was, of all things, a biology professor. I only met with him for a few minutes once per semester; I don’t recall his name. He told me that I should have been invited to the honors program. He made a few phone calls, after which he told me that I was now in it. He then penciled in a schedule of four classes for me:

  • Math 195. There were three math sequences, two for honors and one for others. 195 was the first class for the higher ranking of the two introductory honors math sequences.
  • Great Books, an honors class in the English department.
  • Chemistry 103, the introductory class for students who did not take chemistry in high school.
  • Russian 101, which would meet a requirement for math majors—two semesters of Russian or German.
  • Two semesters of phys ed were also required for freshmen. I picked the course in golf for the first semester.

However, when I got to the actual registration, I discovered that all sections of Great Books were closed. So, I added a 300-level Latin class that focused on Cicero’s orations. It was only a two-hour class, but I already had eleven credits under my belt from the AP tests.

I felt pretty good about this schedule. The subject that worried me the most was chemistry. I figured that I would need to work harder than I did in high school, but that was not really saying much.

While at registration I came across a girl distributing flyers for the U-M debate program. On Tuesday, the day before classes began, the team was holding an open house for anyone who was interested in debate. Based on my lackluster high school career, I had little expectation of debating at U-M, but I took the flyer anyway.

I was on my own in Ann Arbor. I knew almost no one. Only a handful of guys5 had moved into Allen Rumsey House yet. The only other person on the third floor of AR was Gritty. I probably should have made an effort to meet people in my orientation group—in all likelihood most were from other states with no friends in Ann Arbor. It never occurred to me. That’s the way I am.

Solitaire

I spent a great deal of time in my room that first week playing one-at-a-time, once-through-the-deck Klondike solitaire. I recorded all of my scores. I also read quite a bit. I had an AM-FM radio, but no other electronics.

In 1966 all freshman students were required to live in dorms. The residence halls were called “houses.” The men’s houses were in three groups. The houses in East Quad and West Quad had only males. South Quad had men’s houses and women’s houses. The remainder of the houses for girls were on the northeast side of central campus in the area known as “The Hill”.

ARSatHaving been constructed in the thirties, Allen Rumsey House (#1 in the above photo) was the oldest dorm on campus. Little had been done to modernize it in the ensuing decades. With approximately one hundred guys, it was also the smallest house.

On the east side was a corridor between AR and the International House (#3). Wenley House (2), which was almost as old as AR, shared a wall on the west. South Quad was to the south, on the other side of East Madison St. On the north side was a courtyard. Two doors on the other side of led to the central section of West Quad, which contained the cafeteria and a lounge area. A third door led to the bowling alley (#4) and a shortcut to the Michigan Union (#5) and the rest of the central campus, the site of all my classes.

I quickly found the lounge on the first floor of Allen Rumsey House. It had comfortable chairs, a trophy case, a rug, and a piano. The house subscribed to the Michigan Daily, the Ann Arbor News, and a few magazines, including, I later learned, Playboy.

Juke_Box

Downstairs was a game room with a small pool table, a ping pong table, and a free juke box! A section of this room and a separate room had televisions and chairs. Both TVs were 19″ black and whites. Next to the small TV room was a study hall that AR shared with Wenley House.

I eventually got up the nerve to shoot pool with another lonely guy named Dan Schuman. He had no hair anywhere on his body, and he was very cynical. We got along great. We played eight-ball. Although he was a better shot than I was, he was unaccustomed to an opponent who always left the cue ball pinned to a rail. The games were long and, for him, frustrating. I usually won.

Ulrichs

Used books for every class could be purchased at the two big bookstores, Ulrich’s and Follett’s. Ulrich’s was on South University; Follett’s was on State St. I bought the textbooks for Russian, Math, and Chemistry at one of them. The Latin class had no textbook.

Follett's

I think that classes started on the Wednesday after Labor Day, September 7. By Tuesday I knew that my roommates in 315 were Ed Agnew from Bloomfield, MI, and Paul Stoner from Adrian. Across the hall in 314 was Dave Zuk. His assigned roommate did not show up. So, Gritty had us draw straws or something to decide who would move across the hall. Paul was selected.

This was good news and bad news. I did not like Ed very much, but I did like his stereo. His taste in music did not accord with mine or anyone else’s that I have ever met. He loved “big band” music, and his all-time favorite recording was the soundtrack from Victory at Sea. However, he did let me use his stereo when he was not around, which, I soon discovered, was essentially every afternoon and evening.

I did not bring any of my records, but 1966 was an exceptional year for popular music. I spent most of my savings on albums. That is to say, I bought three or four records.

I didn't have any, but this is what they looked like.
I didn’t have any, but this is what razor blades looked like in the sixties.

Our room was on the north (courtyard) side. I claimed the bed on the west side, leaving the one on the east side for Ed. Two big windows on the north side were fronted by a large double desk with two chairs. The east wall was an external wall, but there were no windows. We each had a dresser. Maybe we shared a closet. There was a sink with a mirror over it on my side. There was also a slot over the sink for disposal of dull razor blades. I have never seen anything like it anywhere else. I wonder how many blades were inside the wall. I used an electric razor in college. Each room had a plain wall phone. I don’t remember whether they allowed us to make calls on it or not. To get mail you had to walk to the center part of West Quad next to the cafeteria.

I always just walked up State St. to the Frieze Bldg. I don't know why google maps advises avoiding it.
I always just walked up State St. to the Frieze Bldg. I don’t know why google maps advises avoiding it.

I attended the debate meeting in a room on the second floor of the Frieze Building, the headquarters of the speech department. About twenty people attended. We got to meet Dr. Bill Colburn and a couple of grad student coaches, including Jeff Sampson, who debated at Northwestern, a national power. Evidently there was no individual events program.

All of the new people filled out a form outlining our experience and interests, and then we watched a debate between two of the varsity teams. I thought that they were both horrible, and I was shocked to learn that they were U-M’s best teams.

I was paired with a fellow from Portland, ME, named Bob Hirshon. They told us that the topic was “Resolved that the United States should substantially reduce its foreign policy commitments.” Bill and Jeff privately made it clear that they were excited that Bob and I were interested in debate, and they wanted us to represent U-M at the Michigan Intercollegiate Speech League (MISL) novice tournament in October. We would be debating only on the negative. I was second negative.

I was shocked to be on the receiving end of all of this attention. I was uncertain whether I would be able to handle it, but I agreed to try. So did Bob.

1. Howard Finsilver died in 2005.

2. According to Wikipedia Gary Lewis was a better drummer than a singer. His voice was overdubbed on the recordings of his hits. I was surprised to learn that he was drafted the following January and served in Vietnam and Korea. After his hitch in the army he stayed on the fringes of show business with new incarnations of his band. In 2020 he was still performing at age 74.

Ann-Margret

3. Just to be clear, Ann-Margret appeared in the movie; she wasn’t my date.

4. Ann Arbor is named after Ann Allen and Ann Rumsey, early settlers of the town.

5. In 1966 there were no coed dorms at U-M. In fact, female students were not even allowed to enter Allen Rumsey House except under special circumstances.