Brian Curtis - Fields of Battle: Pearl Harbor, the Rose Bowl, and the Boys Who Went to War

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To Tamara, Emily, and Daryn, the loves of my life

To those who sacrificed for our freedom

Almost every man who played or coached in the 1942 Rose Bowl is no longer with us, including the main subjects of this story, and I relied on family recollections, military files, newspaper articles, research papers, and published works to tell their stories as accurately as possible. In the event that there are no firsthand confirmations or documentation of actual dialogue or events, I have attempted to re-create a likely exchange of dialogue or scene based on the research of the subjects.

Much of the information on the players military service was based on declassified United States military records from the National Archives and Records Administration in Saint Louis as part of the National Personnel Records Center. A devastating fire in 1973 destroyed many of the army personnel files up to that point, and where necessary, I have pieced together their service records through other sources. The military records include individual personnel and medical records, after-action reports for units, and unit histories.

The term Negro is used when verbatim in dialogue or documentation only, as it was commonly used in the era, despite its horrible connotations today.

Finally, so many of the men who played or coached in the 1942 Rose Bowl served their country valiantly. These are just some of their stories but I hope all of them will one day be told.

BC

March 2016

The bright colors of the flower centerpieces accentuated the remaining strands of gray hair on the heads of the guests seated around the tables. The silverware was polished to a reflection, the wineglasses filled with red or white. Conversations were loud, punctuated every few minutes by the roar of laughter. Many of the men wore blazers and tiessome mismatchedone wore his lettermans sweater that now could fit two; a few had their canes nearby. Every now and then during pauses in conversation, they looked around the room, still unsure of many of the unfamiliar faces, worn by war and life and the many moments that made them up. But if they looked hard enough, and if their minds could dig deep enough, it came back like a freight train.

It was Friday evening, October 18, 1991, and members of the 1942 Rose Bowl team from Oregon State had gathered in a banquet room in the Corvallis Country Club to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the historic season, joined by a handful of their opponents from Duke University. There were previous formal and informal team reunions in Corvallis dating back to 1961, but as the years went on, attendance dwindled. Teammates lost touch, others were too frail to travel, while still others had passed. But on this night, for the first time in fifty years, members of both teams gathered in the same room. It had been a half a century since this group of once-young men played out the greatest metaphor for American grit and determination that the country had ever seenat a time when the country needed it most.

Sixteen Oregon State players were in attendance, including Rose Bowl captain Martin Chaves, Stanley Czech, and George Zellick, along with a handful of their teammates widows, like Maxine Demoss Durdan, wife of the late Don Durdan, the 1942 Rose Bowl MVP. Lon Stiner, the son of the late Oregon State Rose Bowl coach, was popular at dinner. He was just seven years old when he boarded a train with his family and thirty players for a once-in-a-lifetime trip. As players swapped stories, there were laughs about the adventures aboard the Beaver Express and the practices held along the way in Chicago and Washington. But their journeys would take them well beyond America. Some would become heroes, some would never make it home, but all were forever changed by the experience.

The Greatest Generation, as some have labeled them, did not all live happily ever after. Many veterans ended up as patients in Veterans Administration hospitals suffering from psychological issues from the war, at a time when PTSD was referred to simply as battle fatigue. Many more vets became homeless or turned to alcohol to numb the memories of warwhich were compounded by regrets they had carried with them to the battlefields. The divorce rate was high among veterans, and many married multiple times. Some contemplated suicideothers did more than contemplate.

These were ordinary men who would do extraordinary things when called upon in football, in war, and in life; who were willing to be great when good would have been enough; who not only earned championships and Silver Stars but had the audacity to believe that their achievements were nothing more than duty. They were first-generation college students, farmers, trash truck drivers, fishermen, and boxers, and their coaches were men whose own stories of rising from the depths were examples for their charges.

That night at the country clubif only for a nightthe memories of a time before war changed everything ignited revelry and some historical embellishment.

Former Oregon State football coach and athletic director Dee Andros served as the master of ceremonies for the evening, and after dinner was concluded, he introduced Oregon State University president Dr. John Byrne and director of athletics Dutch Baughman, who welcomed perhaps the most famous team in Oregon State history and their visitors. The program included remarks from both Oregon State and Duke players and a taped phone conversation with former Duke quarterback and former Oregon State head coach Tommy Prothro, who remained in Memphis recovering from hip surgery. But the hum of conversations underneath the speakers ground to a halt when the names of deceased teammates were read solemnly one after another.

Charles Haynes Jr. felt his eyes moisten. He would have been on that list had it not been for the man who unknowingly compelled the seventy-year-old to make the nearly three-thousand-mile trip.

Haynes had been nervous for weeks in anticipation of this night, five decades in the making in his head. Haynes and his companion, Patsy Ashby, flew across the country from Durham, North Carolina, for the reunion, despite the fact that Duke would host a similar reception in a matter of weeks. Though the event in Durham wouldve required much less efforta car trip of one milewith so many of his living Duke compatriots unable to make it out to Corvallis for health reasons, he couldnt be sure the same would not be true for those on the Corvallis side, and he had to see themhim . Haynes had stayed in touch with some of his Duke teammates and was often the ringleader for informal gatherings at his restaurant, the Saddle & Fox, in Durham, but this would be the first time he would see any of his opponents in almost fifty yearsincluding the man who had saved his life.

As the names of the deceased were read, Haynes glanced over at Frank Parker.

The last time Haynes had seen Parker before the reunion was in the Bremer Pass in the Alps in Austria in May 1945. The war was coming to an end, yet the mens jubilance over victory was tempered by the innocence lost in the days of war. Haynes would share the story of a day in 1944 that changed his life with friends, family, and members of the media over the years; Parker never spoke of itnot even to his family.