Over a one-week span during the first nine days of 2019, the Navy football community was saddened by the passing of two pillars in the program's proud history.

On January 2, George Welsh died at age 85 at his home in Charlottesville, Va., where he spent his final 18 years near and on the UVA campus after retiring from coaching. By the time Welsh left Annapolis to revive a dormant program at UVA, he had become the winningest coach in Navy history with 55 victories over eight seasons with the Midshipmen. That record now belongs to current head coach Ken Niumatalolo (87 wins).

Then, on January 9, at age 90, Rick Forzano passed away at his home in Orlando, Fla. Forzano was a coaching and recruiting force as an assistant at Navy from 1959-63 under legendary head coach Wayne Hardin, before serving as head coach for four seasons (1969-72). His final coaching stop was with the NFL's Detroit Lions, where Forzano was an assistant coach in 1973 and head coach over the next three years.

Among Forzano's notable hires in Detroit was the then-23-year-old son of longtime Navy assistant Steve Belichick. The late Belichick's son, Bill, now 67, is beginning his 20^th season as head coach of the New England Patriots, who have won a record six Super Bowl titles and have appeared in nine Super Bowls under Belichick.

The memories of Forzano and Welsh are being celebrated and honored during Navy's regular-season opening weekend with a sold out dinner at Akerson Tower on Friday night and a video recognition at halftime on Saturday. 

Here are some thoughts and insights from some of the Navy football family.

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Nearly 60 years have passed since a teenaged Roger Staubach answered the call that would alter the course of his life – and would change the path of football history at the U.S. Naval Academy.

That day, early in Staubach's senior year at Purcell High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, a young, charismatic assistant football coach from Navy – Rick Forzano – was canvassing the state of Ohio and had come to Purcell to recruit a center/linebacker named Jerry Momper.

While watching film of Momper, who was a definite, high-level college prospect, Forzano also could not miss the skinny, athletic quarterback making plays with his right arm and his feet. Forzano asked Purcell head coach Jim McCarthy if he could speak with his signal-caller, whom Forzano had never heard of.

Staubach, who was playing his first season behind center after starting at cornerback for Purcell, was called out of class and sent to Coach McCarthy's office, where this curious stranger from a school Staubach knew nothing about wanted to chat with him.

"So I meet Rick Forzano, this really nice guy who tells me that he really likes the way I play, and why don't I come up to visit Navy with Jerry?" Staubach says, still fascinated by the random circumstances that set his future in motion.

"I didn't have any kind of military goal in my life, but I liked everything about my visit. I liked the idea of getting a great education and playing sports," adds Staubach, who would attend New Mexico Military Institute for a prep school year, before reporting to Annapolis for plebe summer in 1961 and would play football and baseball at the school.

While Momper decided to play football at the University of Cincinnati, Staubach, of course, became the lightning rod for a historic chapter in Navy football history. In his first full season as a starter in 1963, Staubach, then a junior, led the Midshipmen to a 9-1 regular season and he was named the winner of the Heisman Trophy.  The Mids, ranked #2 in the country, lost to #1 Texas in the Cotton Bowl, which served as the de facto National Championship game.

Staubach would go on after his service as a U.S. Navy officer to achieve NFL greatness as a two-time Super Bowl champion and Hall of Famer with the Dallas Cowboys. He would also become a very successful businessman in the real estate world.

"I don't know if any of that would have happened if I didn't meet Rick Forzano that day," Staubach says. "Going to Navy was the best thing I've ever done."

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As a plebe experiencing his first Navy spring football camp in 1973, Chet Moeller was a freshman defensive back being introduced to a new position under a new head coach.

George Welsh, who had done legendary things as a Navy quarterback in the mid-1950s and had been a sought-after assistant coach at Penn State, had recently arrived back home, charged with the mission of reviving the faltering program at his beloved alma mater.

Moeller took a look at the depth chart and saw a head-scratcher.

"I was a fourth-string rover back. I didn't even know what a rover was," Moeller recalls. "We'd changed the defense after George had been hired. Then, some people started [getting injured] in front of me and dropping [on the chart]. Before long, I found myself with the opportunity to play."

Moeller became a three-year starter at safety/cornerback and eventually a First-Team All-America selection in 1975 and a College Football Hall of Fame inductee in 2010. As a senior co-captain in '75, he led a Navy defense that held five opponents to single digits and allowed more than 17 points on only one occasion, as the Midshipmen finished 7-4 in Welsh's third season back in Annapolis.

It marked Navy's best finish since that 1963 team, and it was a sign of greater things to come under Welsh. He would guide the Mids to a combined 31 victories and three bowl-game trips from 1978-81 – his last four seasons as the academy's head coach. Among those Welsh highlights was a 23-16 victory over BYU in the inaugural Holiday Bowl in 1978 and a 7-1-1 record against Army.

Following a 31-28 loss to Ohio State in the Liberty Bowl on December 30, 1981, Welsh took the head coaching job at the University of Virginia, which had never been a football factory in the Atlantic Coast Conference. That changed drastically under Welsh, whose 134 wins over 19 seasons in Charlottesville remain by far the most in UVA history and were the most ever in ACC history, until former Florida State coach Bobby Bowden passed Welsh.

"Things came together in '75. We were a senior-laden team that really cared about each other, just like George really cared about us, even though he drove us very hard," Moeller says.

"He learned along the way with us, even while he had such a great ability to recruit and he knew what he wanted and needed to be successful. What a great offensive mind with a brilliant sense of who he was and what he was doing," Moeller adds.

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"George [Welsh] would lean on us to help him get the team ready to play. He'd tell us, 'Guys, this is your team, too.' He and I had sort of a student-teacher relationship. He would talk to me, not yell at me. He was all about helping me see things and try things, helping my vision as a running back. Also, a good leader knows what he knows and what he doesn't know. George brought in so many good people [such as Tom O'Brien and Joe Krivak] who knew what they were doing and that's what a good leader does.  They surround themselves with people that can help them. A lot of those assistant coaches went on to be head coaches and that's a testament to George. They were a team of coaches." – Eddie Meyers '82 and co-captain with Tim Jordan of the '81 team. Meyers served in the United States Marine Corps and later played running back for the Atlanta Falcons.

"Rick Forzano recruited me. When he came to my house in Lima, Ohio, Rick was 31, a dapper, articulate, funny man, just a ball of positive energy. Notre Dame had offered me an academic scholarship, and I could have gone to Purdue or Northwestern [on scholarships]. Rick convinced me to go to Navy. He was a very demanding, critical coach on the field. Off the field, he was the life of the party and could be more like your father. I had a lot of trust in him from the beginning. We stayed close through the years and until the end." – Tom Lynch '64, a linebacker/center who captained the '63 team, returned to work under Forzano in 1969 as a recruiter and the team's Officer Representative and went on to rise to the rank of Rear Admiral and serve as Superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy.

"Back when I was a midshipman, there was always a big fight between athletics, academics and the military. Coming from Penn State, George [Welsh] was used to having players around for five, six hours a day. We couldn't even get out of a noon formation before he got there. He understood the place, but he started to change things. We started having noon meetings to get ready for practice. On Sunday evenings, we worked on scouting reports with [assistant coach Steve] Belichick. We were starting to make lifting weights a bigger deal. We started coming back to Annapolis earlier in the summer for pre-camp workouts. George was raising the bar for football." – D.C. Curtis '76, who started at cornerback with Chet Moeller in the defensive backfield and reached the rank of Vice Admiral.

"After I spent my first year in the NFL on defense in Baltimore [in 1975, under head coach Ted Marchibroda for $25 per week], Rick hired me as an offensive assistant in Detroit. Along with [offensive coordinator Ken Shipp], I was the new guy on the staff, so Coach Forzano had me doing things in many different areas – offense, defense, special teams, administrative. That was a great experience for me as a young coach." – Bill Belichick, Head Coach of the New England Patriots.

"I had the experience of playing for both coaches [Forzano and Welsh]. Rick was warm and funny, but so demanding at the same time. I remember one day we were practicing in really bad weather, lots of mud. We were tired and sluggish. Rick suddenly blows the horn and yells, 'Everybody back in the locker room!' Some of the players were relieved, thinking practice was over and started undressing to hit the showers. Rick comes in, lays into us for about 20 minutes about how our hearts aren't in it. Then he yells, 'Everybody out on the field for warm-ups, now!' We started practice over and all missed dinner that night. Welsh was a totally different animal – not as physically demonstrative [as Forzano], not as many highs or lows, but more mercurial. He was more of a paternal sourpuss." – John "Boomer" Stufflebeem '75, punter. Stufflebeem reached the rank of Rear Admiral.

"George Welsh was an extremely tough and demanding head coach. We practiced very hard. Every drill was run with precision. He was the type of coach who left no stone unturned and he held every member of the organization to a high standard. It was a true meritocracy. George didn't care who you were or where you came from, he wasn't worried about how big and fast you were. Every man had to earn his playing time the old-fashioned way." – Phil McConkey '79, wide receiver, star and co-captain of the '78 team, as told to the Annapolis Capital Gazette. McConkey went on to win a Super Bowl with the New York Giants in 1986 after serving as an officer in the United States Navy.