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98 pages

English

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Memoirs of a Tiger is a book about a player’s relationship with the game of football at the high school and college levels, which was written by Charles Byrum with introduction to the sport in childhood and carrying a love for the game through maturity and experiencing its impact on his character and values.

Sujets

Sports

Biography

Autobiography

Sport

Informations

Publié par	AuthorHouse
Date de parution	08 juin 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9798823009942
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0200€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

MEMOIRS
of a
TIGER

CHARLES L. BYRUM

AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: 833-262-8899

© 2023 Charles L. Byrum. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 07/27/2023

ISBN: 979-8-8230-0995-9 (sc)
ISBN: 979-8-8230-0994-2 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Cover Photo by Julie Leahy
CONTENTS
Chapter 1 Starters
Chapter 2 Freshman Football at Mamaroneck
Chapter 3 Football Opener at Mamaroneck versus Scarsdale
Chapter 4 Pelham
Chapter 5 Crossing the Sound
Chapter 6 Back to Chicago
Chapter 7 New Trier
Chapter 8 Pondering College Football
Chapter 9 Meeting with the DePauw Coaches
Chapter 10 The DePauw Freshman Team Convenes
Chapter 11 Potato Masher
Chapter 12 College Players Hit Hard
Chapter 13 The Chug Drill
Chapter 14 Indiana State Freshman Game
Chapter 15 Enjoy It While You Can
Chapter 16 Recuperation after Ball State
Chapter 17 Dad’s Day
Chapter 18 The Poster
Chapter 19 State Day
Chapter 20 Illinois Wesleyan
Chapter 21 The Small-College Football Coach
Chapter 22 Hanging Out with Phi Delta Theta Players
Chapter 23 Bus Trips
Chapter 24 Two-a-Day Practices
Chapter 25 Letter Jackets
Chapter 26 Alcott Backs into a Problem
Chapter 27 Playing in Blackstock Stadium
Chapter 28 Don’t Let Them Know When You Are Hurt
Chapter 29 The Red Shirts
Chapter 30 The PA Announcer Causes Some Excitement
Chapter 31 Disaster at Butler
Chapter 32 Young and Alcott Take the Medical Boards
Chapter 33 Helmets Tell the Story of a Season
Chapter 34 Presentation of the Psychology Project Report
Chapter 35 Coach Mont Runs for Congress
Chapter 36 Rene Breaks His Wrist
Chapter 37 Reuter’s Raiders
Chapter 38 Camp Lejeune
Chapter 39 I Get Knocked Out
Chapter 40 Monon Bell Game, 1964
This book is dedicated to the late Bill Fox, a teammate in high school and in college, and an excellent player and blocker.
CHAPTER 1

STARTERS
I showed up in this world in September of 1944 in San Antonio, Texas, where my father was stationed as a pilot in the US Air Force at Fort Sam Houston. He, just twenty-four, and my mother, twenty-two and pregnant, greeted me while my father recovered from a midair collision he’d experienced in training that had caused him to be released from active duty.
My folks proceeded to make the long drive home from Texas to Evanston, Illinois, where both of them had grown up. My father had no particular skills that had prepared him for employment, but he was a confident young man and was very persuasive. He soon decided to interview for a sales position with Conover-Mast Publications, publisher of a trade magazine that advertised construction equipment. It didn’t hurt that the owner of Conover-Mast was the father of his good friend from high school, Bud Mast. Dad got the sales job, and it was a perfect fit for him.
Upon their arrival in Evanston, my folks soon proceeded to increase the family to five kids and moved to the neighboring town of Wilmette, located on the shores of beautiful Lake Michigan. As a result of the move, their two boys and three girls were enrolled at Avoca School in Wilmette, where they began thriving.
I soon developed a fondness for sports—especially football, which I played pretty well. It was a very positive experience for me because of the social advantages and confidence it gave me. You could say that I blossomed at Avoca while playing football against teams from other schools.
My progress in football was not helped as much as it could have been by Avoca’s football coach, Irving Kuklin, who ran not only the football program but also the woodshop at Avoca for the period I was there. While surrounding schools regularly played each other, Kuklin’s program was limited to intramural games between teams from the seventh and eighth grades where there was no instruction in blocking, tackling, or running plays. Pads, helmets, and shoes were purchased by the players’ families at Sears, Roebuck, and Company, not at the higher-end local sporting goods stores servicing the other teams when they suited up for games.
As a result, a large percentage of the football players on the Avoca teams soon quit the sport, leaving only a handful to go out for the football team as freshmen at New Trier, the local high school. It included few players who had been trained in Kuklin’s grab-ass system, which had no skills, no playbook, and no coaching. I’d still enjoyed it and wanted more, so I looked forward to New Trier.
On one midsummer Sunday as my father grilled charburgers, a family favorite, he dropped a bombshell: his company had hired him to run its sales program from its New York City office. We would be moving to Larchmont, a town in New York, and I would be attending Mamaroneck High School (MHS), not New Trier, as I had looked forward to. The move had no effect on my sisters and was OK with my brother, but I was devastated. At this point in my life, it was the worst thing that could happen to me. I was leaving the kids I had gone to school with up to that point. No more neighborhood friends, and maybe , I thought, no more football . I didn’t know if they even played it there.
The remainder of the summer was tough for me to handle. Soon, our house was sold, the whole family jumped into our station wagon, and everyone waved their goodbyes to Wilmette with tears in their eyes. Looking back at the Chicago Skyway as we left town made me realize this was really happening.
At my first day of school in Mamaroneck as a new kid, I was the major point of interest for the members of my class. I could tell right away I wasn’t in Wilmette anymore. The kids in my new school did not understand my manner of speech, and I, in return, did not understand theirs. I was placed in a seat between two girls who spoke English well enough, but their thick New York accents completely threw me out of sync when we started to converse. I thought I was in another world when I first started talking to them, and at the same time, they laughed at everything I said.
It was all good-natured exchanges, but it was confusing for both sides. While they said they “sore” my history book and could “heah” what I had to say, they laughed at everything I said, which I thought was perfectly normal. I was glad that I continued to sit with them because I began to understand them, and they started to understand me. Eventually, we all thought the conversations between us were cordial and understandable.
A large number of my new classmates in Mamaroneck were immigrants and had trouble speaking English. This was easier for them than for me because no one was expected to understand one another, and everyone was spared embarrassment. After a while, the ability to communicate improved both ways. I was comfortable that I would fit in, and as it turned out, I did.
One of the things I enjoyed when I went to a bilingual classmate’s home was learning how to pronounce cuss words in English to the family’s native language. It wasn’t very cool, but it was fun to do. These weren’t common events in Chicago.
It was easier for me to succeed in football at Mamaroneck than I expected, since a large number of MHS students—and students in the schools we played—were more proficient in soccer than I was but were not so good at American football. The football advantage went to American-born players like me.
In football, Mamaroneck started out its freshman teams running the T formation since it was the easiest to learn and execute. The freshmen who were serious about learning it had practiced in advance.
CHAPTER 2

FRESHMAN FOOTBALL AT MAMARONECK
I couldn’t have been more thrilled when I registered as a freshman at Mamaroneck and was told that tryouts for football would take place during the first week of school. I had no idea what to expect since I didn’t know the players or how good they would be.
I soon received a flyer from the freshman football coach, Chick Talgo, stating that the team would practice every day after school from three to five o’clock until October 31. We’d play other freshmen teams in our league from Ossining, New Rochelle, Scarsdale, Rye, Portchester, Edison Tech, and Pelham during the months of September and October.
The flyer said that game uniforms and practice uniforms could be picked up on Mondays and returned to the locker room attendants on Thursdays for cleaning. The attendants would also fit the players at the first practice with jockstraps and mouthpieces. All in all, a total group of sixty anxious freshmen showed up on the first day. Ten players were trying out for quarterback, thirty for halfback or offensive end, and the rest for defense. No one tried out for the offensive line—not even the slow, overweight players. This was normal in freshman