Chapters from "TIME TRIALS"
• 14 •
College Life
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My sophomore year, I lived in the fraternity house and roomed with track and field teammate Harv Flodin from Oak Park, Illinois. Harv was a brilliant student, which you wouldn’t know upon meeting him as a freshman. He regularly moaned about how tough his classes were and wasn’t sure he would remain at Beloit the next year. When first semester grades were revealed, he had four As and one B. And this was before the era of grade inflation. Pity the professor who gave him the B.
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This was the end of my sympathy for Harv, who nonetheless had his issues on the dating scene. That spring I asked Harv to be my roommate our sophomore year. Later he explained that this was a turning point in his college life, as he was prepared to transfer to the University of Illinois.
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Flodin would go on to set school records in the 220-yard and 440-yard dashes (metric distances were two decades away), run anchor legs on our record-setting sprint relay teams, earn Phi Beta Kappa status, and attend Duke Law School graduating second in his class. Not bad for an emaciated freshman and late bloomer, who claimed he had introduced the Asian flu to Beloit that swept through college campuses in the fall of 1957.
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I felt grounded my sophomore year and comfortable with the course work. As a freshman, and even the sophomore year, my courses were steeped in the physical sciences—chemistry, biology, and mathematics. Then, I took economics 101 and 102—micro and macroeconomic—and was hooked.
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At Elkhorn High, the physical sciences were well-taught but the social studies feeble. College was a different environment, and economics fit my innate quantitative propensity, emergent social consciousness, and thirst for historical and philosophical perspectives. Other social sciences, e.g., sociology and government, were inviting, but they didn’t connect the same way. Initially, I was inclined to major in psychology, but at Beloit, as with many liberal arts colleges, psychology was a feeble discipline. My take on this is that first-rate psychology professors gravitate towards universities with research facilities. Undergraduate sophomores, so it goes, exist as experimental subjects for graduate school research.
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This helps explain why I was happy to have attended a four-year liberal arts college rather than the mega-university with large classes. There the anonymity is compensated with oversized hyper-entertainment, as in big-time sports, particularly football and basketball.
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While my parents appreciated my opportunity to attend a well-thought-of college, they were baffled with my studies. Mom’s concept of college was job training. Spending four years to become a better-informed person and liberally educated without a specific vocational goal was strange to her. I explained that my general studies are preparation for graduate school in a range of areas, e.g., law, medicine, even business. This seemed to satisfy her. Dad was uninterested in such subtlety.
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I heeded Coach Nelson’s call and joined the football team. My playing time was sparse, but, nonetheless, I could tell the coaches saw promise in me. Still, I debated internally the merits of returning my junior year. Although I was a track sprinter, cross-country was an inviting option.
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In the meantime, I joined the varsity basketball team only to see limited action but avoided acquiring splinters on the bench. Track season couldn’t come soon enough, and I joined teammates already practicing on the 110-yard indoor track. With just a week’s training, Coach Alf Harrer, himself a fine collegiate trackman at the University of Wisconsin and our athletic director, had me run the opening leg in 4x320-yard relay at the Milwaukee Journal Games indoor on the Arena oval track.
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This was a magnificent event that drew heralded athletes from across the nation, first-class university trackmen, and college teams. The arena wood track consisted of three lanes with strategically banked curves. Beloit was assigned to compete in a college division against Lawrence and Ripon, Badger land sister schools.
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I was to run the opening leg with Flodin anchoring while fraternity brothers Dave Warner and Rick Chase ran the middle two legs. With no previous Midwest Conference racing experience to gauge the field, I started in the outside lane and took command on the first turn never to relinquish the lead. Beloit won in record time, and little did I know then that Chase (880 yards) and Flodin (440 yards) would become conference champs. Lawrence and Ripon never had a chance.
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Roger, as a freshman at Marquette University, competed in the open 60-yard dash. Freshmen were not eligible to run with the varsity at the time. He placed second in his heat to the world-class, Olympian sprinter Ira Murchison, then finished fourth in the finals. It was a good night for the Elkhorn kids.
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Beloit Men's Coaching Staff: Carl Nelson. Pete Samuels, Alf Harrer
Bob Nicholls and Bill Knapton
RVS lacing up shoes
Roger - 100-yard dash at Marquette Dual Track Meet
At the Midwest Conference Meet that spring, I finished 4th in the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds flat and ran the opening leg in our 4x440-yard relay in 50.6 seconds, which at the time was a personal best. Earlier at the Beloit Relays, I ran a 220-yard leg on the record setting one-mile sprint medley relay team.
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That beautiful spring evening after the final event and showering, Flodin and I returned to campus to celebrate. There, I met my first girlfriend in college on the steps of Pi Beta Phi sorority house. Kathy Anderson, also a sophomore, came from Appleton, Wisconsin, a prosperous city in the Fox River Valley region of the state. I suspect she was influenced by her conservative, status-seeking parents, who thought she could do better than me. Perhaps, but certainly not intellectually.
Not long after, I fell for another attractive coed, whose parents from Oxford, Ohio were well-educated and academics but not pretentious. Cindy Niswonger was an undergraduate, and I departed for the Navy’s Officer Candidate School. Our bond was not strong enough to overcome geographic distance and diverging academic paths. In retrospect, I made ill-advised choices as an undergraduate. Nevertheless, the sex was okay for rookies.
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Before departing for summer break, Coach Nelson would encourage players to secure the toughest job possible, to be ready for football come autumn leaves and the new season. This didn’t take with some affluent guys, who often held cushy jobs at the swimming pools and country clubs or just enjoyed balmy days sailing on the landscape’s many lakes. Inevitably the day would come when two-a-day practices resumed in late August under the blazing sun.
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When the time came near the end of each daily practice for multiple 50 and 100-yard wind sprints, I was pleased to have had a strenuous summer job. This involved unloading lumber from train cars and loading onto trucks sheetrock, doors, flooring, roofing, and all the lumber needed to build a home. Somedays the work took until sunset. Most days we got an early 7:00 a.m. start.
Beloit Varsity Football 1958
Back Row: Jerry Chase, Bob Houdek, RVS, Jon Parvin
As an early school boy, viewing the 13-year ascent to high school graduation was all I could imagine. Sure, I saw my older brothers, after two post-high school years in the military, go on to college. This was instructive.
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Upon reaching college, my goal simply was to do well enough to graduate. The grind of graduate school seemed a “bridge too far,” but that would change, as I settled into academic life. Beloit had its share of brilliant students, whose lives after undergraduate years were preordained. I wasn’t one of them.
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Many of my classmates and friends went on to top-ranked graduate schools among them East Coast Ivies, Midwest juggernauts, and West Coast elites. They were destined to be professors, scholars, researchers, physicians, attorneys, and more. My goal simply was to do well at Beloit then see where the adventures of life might take me.
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Although my studies were demanding, college life was enjoyable and eventful. My junior year, I performed admirably on the gridiron and track and got into the coed dating scene. Nevertheless, my humble working-class family background presented impediments to staying up with polished and affluent classmates. I was perceived, particularly by women, as a good student and talented athlete with a presentable personal appearance, i.e., sufficiently handsome and attired. Such didn’t put me in the league with those from wealthier white-collar families with social ties.
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College was a wonderful growing experience, where I learned how the “other half” lived, but I didn’t aspire to the country club set or scaling to a life of privilege. Whatever my cultural background, I was bent on the search for knowledge and life of service.
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Social life at Beloit centered on fraternities, and I was a member of the SAE tribe known for its athletes who, for the most part, were serious students. Unlike most state colleges, one seldom went home on weekends while attending Beloit. Although Beloit was hardly a “party school,” the social calendar was full of events, including a fall Homecoming that brought alumni back to campus, the Winter Carnival in which students carved snow sculptures, and Beloit Relays, a premier track and field invitational complete with a queen and her court.
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My parents, who lived less than an hour from campus but in another universe, wanted to help by having me send clothes home to be washed. I found the laundry services near campus to be accessible and affordable. They got the message and came to the college occasionally for football games and track meets.
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By my junior year, I was on the Dean’s List, a good thing signifying academic achievement, and feeling comfortable with the academic road ahead. Yes, I lettered in football, basketball, track & field, involved in campus organizations, and graduated in four years.
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I found a lot more playing time in football that fall, gained the respect from opposing teams, and scored an impressive 38-yard touchdown run and two-point conversion in our final home game against Coe College. From then on, I was in the starting lineup and had a gratifying year on the gridiron, as a senior.
Right Halfback and Wide Receiver - 1958-1960
I vividly remember that touchdown and virtually every step to the end zone. On the play before, Quarterback Jim Kuplic had called 27-off-tackle, where I took the handoff and cut off our right tackle. A hole opened and I dashed into the Coe backfield for a 10-yard gain. In the process, however, I saw out of the corner of my eye, where I could have cut outside after a few yards and had a longer gain.
I returned to the hurdle lamenting the missed opportunity. (Roger would not have missed the cut.) Low and behold, Coach Nelson sent in the same play. “Thank you, coach,” I murmured to myself in the huddle. Again, the hole off tackle opened, and I didn’t miss this opportunity.
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Coach then called for a two-point conversion with the same 27-off-tackle play. I thought to myself, “Good luck, we are ‘going to the well’ one too many times.” I took the pitch from Kuplic, but no opening existed on our right side. So, I took my chances and rammed into the line, bouncing off a behemoth lineman, who to my surprise did not wrap me up. Back pedaling and clutching the ball to my chest, I dashed through an opening for two points.
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Upon ripping off that long touchdown run, I curled back and dutifully handed the football to the referee. In a playful moment back the SAE house, Flodin chided me saying, “Scoots, you look like you make those runs every day and twice on Sunday,”
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These days with all the end-zone dancing and theatrics, I’m reminded of the coach who reprimanded his showtime players with these words: “Next time you get to the end zone, act like you’ve been there before.”
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Scoots was just ahead of the time, Harv.