Oct. 6, 2005
A chartered bus unloaded part of Boston College's football entourage behind Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium on a Friday in mid-September of 1966. A few minutes later, the group dutifully trooped into the stadium's north end zone to watch the Eagles work out prior to helping Navy open its season the following day.
It was the first visit to Navy's home field for all of them. D. Leo Monahan, a sports writer for the Boston Record-American, looked around and seeing the names of the battles emblazoned on the façade of the stadium's upper decks, began to read them aloud. When he reached "Iwo Jima," he stopped.
"Whatta a tremendous schedule," he cracked.
Without a doubt, and one that was involuntarily foisted upon the brave men whose exploits as members of the Navy and Marine Corps are honored and memorialized in a site that happens also to be a football stadium and which is the nation's only living memorial to the Navy and Marine Corps.
It also has been a constant reminder of the legacy of the Navy and Marine Corps to everyone who has worn the Navy Blue and Gold football uniforms; or who have been among the tens of thousands of Midshipmen who have marched onto its field during the last 46 years; or any of the 4.6 million fans who have watched Navy football. Time and again it has provided an emotional lift to the young men who play on its Jack Stephens Field, sufficient to snatch some of the 109 victories produced on its gridiron from almost certain defeats. Many of those the young men who experienced that lift and who helped to produce those victories have also participated in battles that are now honored on those facades.
Saturday, it officially begins a new life some 46 years after it first was opened on September 26, 1959 when the Mids played and defeated William & Mary, 29-2. Like it was nearly a half century ago, the stadium is bright and spiffy after a 10 million dollar face lift and renovation program; and as happened during its original construction, it was accomplished without the use of any tax dollars.
While the place has been redone, and much has been added in the way of Navy and Marine Corps history, it still echoes with the feats of football games past, and the men who played them with the fervor and vigor that has always marked Navy Football.
And why not? It is meant to honor heroes and one of the men most responsible for its being was Rear Admiral Gene Fluckey who won the Medal of Honor and four Navy Crosses as the storied commander of the submarine, USS Barb during World War II. His boat sank 17 Japanese ships, totaling 96,000 tons. So daring was his crew that during his last combat patrol, he sent eight of them onto one of Japan's main islands, Hokkaido, to blow up a railroad bridge. His combat report noted that before blowing the bridge, the men hid near a race track from which they could watch the day's racing card.
Capt. Slade Cutter, one of Navy's great football heroes, a member of College Football's Hall of Fame and the athletic director when the stadium opened in 1958, also was a storied submarine commander during World War II. He always marveled at Fluckey's colorful combat action reports. "They were written like a thriller novel," he once said.
Fluckey didn't play football at the Naval Academy but he had long earned a reputation as a get-it-done leader. In the mid-fifties, as a captain, he was head of the Electrical Engineering Department at the Naval Academy. When it was decided to build the stadium on land originally purchased for that purpose back in 1938, he was directed by Academy superintendent, Rear Admiral William Smedberg, to head the fund-raising effort. Smedberg himself had waged a difficult campaign to convince the Secretary of the Navy, Thomas Gates, that such a project was not only feasible, but also very necessary. This was no easy task because there would be no federal funds, only private and public sources.
It was just another mission for Fluckey who was a natural salesman, flamboyant and persuasive. He raised two million of the three million dollars needed for the project, and even used Hollywood where some of the profits from the movie, Run Silent, Run Deep, starring Clark Gable and Burt Lancaster, and on which he was the technical advisor, were donated. He filmed a "trailer" film with Gable and Lancaster as part of a national fund raising campaign and it elicited donations from every part of the nation.
Other funds came from Navy's athletic association, including some realized from post-season bowl appearances in the Sugar (1955) and Cotton (1958) bowls as well as from donations of all sizes from alumni and fans, young and old.
"I knew that if he took the fund-raising job, he would succeed," said Capt. Elliot Laughlin, Navy's athletic director in the mid-fifties when the project got underway, and himself a storied World War II submarine commander. "He had a wealth of good, innovative ideas, including memorial chairs, and he instituted competition within the various fleets, ships and even classes, to see which could raise the most money."
Background: Navy had played many of its home games for most of the first half of the twentieth century at Thompson Stadium, whose site is now occupied by the Lejeune Hall. But in the late thirties, it was recognized that the school needed a modern stadium because home games against major opponents, other than Army and Notre Dame, were being played in Baltimore's Venable Stadium (later Memorial Stadium).
Yet, there was no provision for such a facility within the Yard so the Athletic Association bought the land in the Admiral Heights area of Annapolis, within sight of the Naval Academy, on which the stadium ultimately was built.
At first, the onset of World War II interrupted the project because it was felt that the steel for a stadium would be better used to build badly needed warships. The plans lay dormant until the mid-forties when athletic director, Capt. Tom Hamilton made a new stadium part of an overall plan that totally revised the manner in which Navy's football program was structured. It took another ten years for them to become reality, when the Athletic Association had accumulated enough money to start construction.
In its football life, the stadium has been the home to a pair of Heisman Trophy winners and future Hall of Fame players, Joe Bellino (1960), who scored Navy's first TD there; and Roger Staubach (1963). It has played host to Presidents and potentates; and it has been the place where some of Navy's finest players have performed some of their greatest feats, beginning with Bellino in its very first game in 1959.
New coach Wayne Hardin had designed his running offense that season to feature Bellino, and Joe didn't disappoint the opening day crowd of 25,000 who had come to see the Mids play William & Mary, a traditional home season-opening foe. He scored his only touchdown on a long run.
"Everyone on the team was excited to be moving into a brand new stadium from what was really a glorified high school field," Bellino recalls. "It also was Homecoming Day so the place was just electric with excitement. But the thing I remember most about the game was Joe Matalavage, our fullback who had a great day with a couple of TDs. We only played one more game that season (16-8 victory over George Washington) at Navy-Marine Corps Stadium."
Bellino said the best game he ever played in the stadium was his record-setting four-touchdown performance against Virginia in 1960. It really was a five-TD day because he also returned a punt 85 yards for an apparent touchdown. But in bending down to catch the ball, the officials said his knee had touched the turf and the play was dead at that spot, nullifying the scoring run. No matter, on the next play, he ran for "another" touchdown.
L. Budd Thalman became Navy sports information director in 1962 and held the post until 1973, witnessing several superb performances by Navy players, including the emergence of Staubach as only the second junior ever to win the Heisman Trophy in 1963.
"One of the games that really helped him nail down the Heisman was leading Navy to 24-14 victory over Pitt in late October, '63 at Navy-Marine Corps Stadium," Thalman recalled. "Both teams were unbeaten and nationally ranked. Pitt was the nation's No. 3 team at the time and Roger had begun to attract attention for the Heisman after a gritty winning performance at Michigan earlier that month. The game was televised throughout the eastern part of the nation, we had a full press box of writers from every major eastern newspaper and the stadium was sold out. So, there was plenty of attention on his performance."
Staubach ran for a touchdown and gave a "complete" Staubachian performance. He completed 14 of 19 passes, but seven of the completions went to end Jim Campbell. "Certainly, Roger was sensational but Jim was out of his mind and I think I recall his performance even more vividly than what Roger did because Jim had what was normally about a season's worth of catches in that game.
"But Roger became a top Heisman Trophy contender that day and nailed down the award with great games in victories the next three weeks against Notre Dame, Maryland and Duke."
Thalman had an outstanding career as a sports publicist working for the Buffalo Bills and Penn State, but the years he worked at Navy-Marine Corps Stadium still carry vivid memories, even though Navy only played there two or three times a season.
"Roger and I started together in 1962, and his coming out game was against Cornell at our place that season when he led Navy to a 41-0 victory. We had been struggling to that time but he just turned us on and from that time, everyone began to watch him. It carried right through that almost fairy-tale '63 season when everything that he did had a touch of magic, including a momentous 42-7 home victory over Maryland.
"Roger also had that special aura about him in which he did great things at precise moments, and one of those was in his final home game against Duke in 1964. He had suffered through an injury-plagued season that probably cost him a second straight Heisman. But in that last game, it was vintage Roger. He broke his own single game yardage record with 308 yards but he almost didn't get it."
Thalman said that Hardin had removed Staubach from the game in the final minutes so that Roger could get one last ovation from the fans. Thalman had been tracking his numbers and realized that he needed just ten yards to break his own record. He told the assistant coaches in the spotting booth, and they relayed the word to Hardin who immediately put him back in the game. Roger set the record, and then was removed again as the crowd just shook the stadium with their cheers.
Thalman also has vivid memories of the 1967 season exploits of wide receiver Rob Taylor, the best pass receiver in Navy's history. He started the season at the stadium against Penn State with a ten-catch, 140-yard day that included the winning TD with 57 seconds to play in a 23-22 victory; and he ended his home season with another ten-catch day in a 35-35 tie against Vanderbilt, including a tie-making TD with 44 second left.
There were other vivid Navy moments: * Navy defeated Georgia Tech 20-12 in 1976 as Academy alumnus President Jimmy Carter fought back home state ties and rooted for his alma mater.
* Navy opened the 1981 season by defeating The Citadel for its 500th victory. In its final home game that year, running back Eddie Meyers set a single game rushing record with 298 yards against Syracuse.
* On Nov. 17, 1984, Navy upset second-ranked South Carolina 38-21, only the third time a Navy team had ever beaten an opponent so highly ranked.
* On Nov. 9, 1985, QB Bill Byrne set a single game record for passing yardage (399); pass attempts (52) and completions (37) in a 24-20 loss to Syracuse. Six years later, plebe Jim Kubiak broke the yardage (406) and attempts (47) marks, and tied the completion record against Wake Forest.
* Sept. 22, 1990, Alton Grizzard became Navy's all-time career total offense leader in a 23-21 win against Villanova.
* In 1997, Gerald Wilson's 95-yard interception TD return against VMI and Pat McGrew's 91-yard scrimmage run against Kent State were the longest in Navy-Marine Corps Stadium history.
* Nov. 20, 2004, Navy finished its home season unbeaten, thus fully complying with the spirit of excellence that is engendered by those to whom the stadium is dedicated.
During its lifetime, Navy-Marine Corps Stadium also has seen the addition of the Rear Adm. Thomas J. Hamilton Locker Room Complex and the Terwilliger Family Scoreboard as well other superlative game day performances of a non-football nature.
Tom Bates, who succeeded Thalman as sports information director in 1973, always insisted that the breath-taking pre-game fly-by performances by Navy jet fighters from Oceana NAS in Virginia were as hair-raising as any last-minute victories.
"From my vantage point in the press box at the top of the stadium, I often could look down into the cockpits of some of those planes," he once declared. "I found out later that those pilots had a little thing between them to see who could fly the lowest, and there were times when it there didn't appear hardly any space between the planes and the top of the goal posts when they did their fly-bys."
Daring to be the best--in the true Navy-Marine Corps tradition.
(Jack Clary has written extensively on the history of Navy football, including his book: Navy Football: Gridiron Legends and Fighting Heroes; and is a regular contributor to Army-Navy game programs.)
