By Jonathan Brown
JUNIOR VARSITY FOOTBALL 1958
The valley formed by the Fox River has a drainage system covering some 200 miles of Northeastern Wisconsin.
The Fox River flows east into Lake Winnebago at Oshkosh and exits the lake at Appleton. From there, the water flow north into Lake Michigan by way of Green Bay. The biggest high schools in this valley formed themselves into a sports league for football and basketball. They were Fond du Lac, Oshkosh, Appleton, and two high schools in Green Bay, East and West. The final three teams came from two cities on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, Manitowoc High School, and Sheboygan North and Sheboygan South High Schools. Eight teams composed the Fox River Valley Conference, each team played seven games between each other in footfall and fourteen games in basketball between September and mid-March.
We footballers and basketeers came to know the fields and gyms of these six cities as places of triumph and heartbreak.
Most players on Roosevelt’s undefeated football and its 10-1 basketball teams first moved up to try out for Goodrich High School’s teams. We also picked up two transfers from the Catholic schools: Jim Flaherty, a sturdily built fullback and linebacker, and Paul Capicik. Paul was son of our Head Coach Joe Capicik. Jim and Paul enrolled as sophomores at Goodrich High. Paul also played linebacker on defense and quarterback on offense. Flaherty as a sophomore went straight to the varsity team as a starting linebacker with Al White, the Taylor Park lifeguard American Legion catcher. Flaherty was that good.
There was great excitement among the high school coaches for us new sophomores. We junior varsity players—jayvees, for short— would play seven games in the Fox River Valley. While the varsity teams in the Conference played mostly under the lights on Friday nights, the jayvees played on Saturday mornings. When the seniors played at home, the jayvees played at the opponents’ field.
But first, the coaches arranged for a scrimmage on Meet the Team night between the varsity team offense and the jayvees on defense. The more physically mature seniors were made to look good. The hometown newspaper reported that “the 1958 varsity clashed with a burly and stubborn sophomore squad that yielded yardage with obvious reluctance. The Cards managed to strike successfully through the air and on the ground occasionally, however, to give fans hope.” The scrimmage lasted 45 minutes and no one got injured. Seven hundred spectators attended.
We jayvees started the season slowly. We earned a “tie” in the first game of the season against Appleton. The score was 0-0. Amazingly, three other games ended with the same score, 0-0. What were the odds? Oshkosh landed in first place by defeating Green Bay East, 19-0. The other six teams tied for second place by scoring no points whatsoever. I would venture say that it was the first and last season opener that produced such ineptitude at any level of Wisconsin state high school football.
The junior varsity Cardinals ended the funk in the very next game by beating Green Bay West, 35-6. The headline read “Wilderman Scores 17 Points as Jayvees Rout West.” The versatile Kenny Wilderman kicked five extra points and caught two touchdown passes from his halfback position. Matt Karls ran into the end zone, and ends Jon Brown and Dan Buss also caught passes for touchdowns. The newspaper said that Buss “speared a pass away from two defenders” and ran for paydirt in a play covering 44 yards. Jack Nussbaum had a field day as quarterback.
The next game at the beginning of October took us Cardinal Jayvees to Sheboygan South. We fell behind early in the game to a South touchdown. But their kicker missed the extra point. The Commonwealth Reporter sportswriter summarized the game succinctly. “With end Jon Brown taking a 20-yard pass from Ken Wilderman with less than four minutes remaining in the game,” Fondy Jayvees won their second game. Marc Baganz keyed the winning score by returning a punt sixty yards to Central’s 20-yard line. Therefore, Wilderman’s talented toe put away the game by successfully kicking the extra point. Again, defense held the opponents to just one touchdown. Jack Nussbaum, in the defensive safety position ended Sheboygan’s late game rally with an interception. We won, 7-6.
On the following Saturday at Fruth Field, we Fondy sophomores woke up a bit late, falling behind 7-zip in the first half. Rod Brajdic on defense recovered a Manitowoc fumble, and halfback Larry Mueller took a handoff into the end zone. Then Art Kaemmer made a key block that spang halfback Marc Baganz for a 60-yard run to boost the hometown lead. Ken Wilderman, on a halfback option, threw a pass to Jon Brown on a 40-yard play ending up in paydirt. The paper noted that “Brown again showed his ability to haul the ball down despite being watched closely by defenders.” Tackle Dick Bender merited praise for his line play on offense and defense.
Next up, Sheboygan North Golden Raiders. We blasted them 30-nothing behind tough defensive play by Bender, Brajdic, and Leo Steinke. Our touchdowns came on a 40-romp by fullback Art Kaemmer, a 30-year sprint by Mark Baganz, a 41-yard pass play from Nussbaum to Brown, and a field goal by Wilderman.
On the following Saturday, the Fondy jayvees traveled to the old Packers Stadium to clinch a come-from-behind victory after giving up 7 points to East Green Bay. The defense recovered with a score of its own. Leo Steinke blocked an East punt deep in its own territory and Ron Brajdic recovered the ball in the end zone. Jack Nussbaum threw two long touchdown passes. Jon Brown “took the ball away from East defenders” for the first score. End Dan Buss caught another pass and “tumbled” into the end zone for another score. Wilderman ran 15 yards for the final touchdown. Jim Gilmore and Mark Baganz made fine runs, and Dick Bender and center Carl Keating stood out for their line play. Going into the last game of the season, Fondy was in first place in the Fox River Valley jayvee competition.
Fondy then played the Junior Oshkosh Indians for our final game at home on Saturday November 1, 1958. We Cardinal jayvees received the kickoff from our own 35-yard line began a drive downfield to the Oshkosh 15-yard line. From there, we launched a pass or a running play, the Oshkosh newspaper was unclear, that ended up in the endzone. We kicked the extra point for a 7-0 lead, which our great defensive front line defended throughout the entire rest of the game. In the third quarter, Fondy mounted a drive that sputtered on the 15-yard line. On fourth down, Kenny Wilderman kicked a 15-yard field goal for a final sc of 10-zip.
We were champions! Undefeated!
In the standings of the 1958 Junior Varsity season, Fondy won the Fox River Valley championship with a record of six wins, no losses, and one tie. We scored 130 points that season while holding our seven opponents to just 26 total points. Quarterback Nussbaum threw eight touchdown passes. Brown scored 5 touchdowns on 4 passes from Nussbaum and 1 from Wilderman. Mr. Versitility, Kenny Wilderman, scored 36 points on passes caught, passes thrown, and field goals and extra points kicked.
What raises questions about the 1958 Jayvee season was the poor performance of Green Bay West. Their jayvees came in last place with just one win. Fondy jayvees beat them 35-6. Yet, this was the year, 1958, that the varsity Wildcats won the championship. Moreover, these West varsity players started a twenty-game winning streak that continued until we Fondy Junior Varsity champs reached our senior year. In 1960, we seniors from Fond du Lac challenging Green Bay West for the championship and their winning streak. How did West’s ineffectual sophomore players of 1958 become powerhouse contenders in 1960?
The local newspaper reported that Fondy High’s sports teams faced a comeback in Fox River Valley competition. Here’s what the sports editor, Stan Gores, predicted at the end of the 1958 football season.
After a long famine, things seem to be looking up for Fond du Lac high school athletics. The last time Fond du Lac won a Fox River football championship was in 1948 and the last time it won a basketball crown was in 1930.
But in the last two weeks, Fond du Lac has been flooded with honors. The football team finished second after being picked for seventh in preseason predictions. Four members were named to the all-conference team, coach Joe Capicik was honored as “coach of the year,” the junior varsity finished the season undefeated, and the basketball team, which finished last a year ago, was picked to win this year’s crown by valley sports writers.
Actually, the rise started last spring when the baseball team, with Hub King doing most of the pitching went as far as the Eau Claire state tournament. Most of the high school players then joined the city’s American Legion team, which won the state championship and went on to the national sectional meet at Bismarck, N. D.1
JUNIOR VARSITY BASKETBALL, 1958-59
Many of the football players also tried out for the Goodrich High basketball teams as well. The last jayvee football game for me was on November 23, the game against Oshkosh. The very next week, we abandoned the frozen tundra of Fruth Field for the hardwood of the Goodrich gymnasium. We traded pads and cleats for shorts and sneakers. We kept the jock straps that some players washed between seasons and others not, depending on one’s superstitions. I chose cleanliness.
At the outset of the season, the head coach of the varsity team, Swede Smedberg, kept two sophomores on the varsity team. If the sophs could not break into the starting five, he would send them down to the junior varsity to gain playing time. At the outset, the sophomores Ken Wilderman and Jon Brown dressed out with varsity. Kenny and I bypassed one promising junior, Bob Tadman, He initially remained with the jayvee squad, there to develop his considerable potential.
Our first game of the exhibition season was at Kaukauna High School, a smaller city some 50 miles up Highway 41 along the west side of Lake Winnebago. The bus took both the jayvee and the varsity teams, arriving at about 5:30 p.m. The junior varsity teams competed in the early game, beginning with a 6:30 p.m. tip-off, followed by the main competition between both schools’ varsity teams, usually around 8 p.m.
In the Jayvee opener, the home team from Kaukauna gave the Junior Cardinals a tough game. At halftime, the home team led 19-13. One of two juniors on the Cardinal squad sparked a second half surge. Center Bob Tadman, at 6 feet 3 inches, dominated the low post, shooting jump shots and hook shots over the smaller defenders. Tadman finished with 25 points. Guard Dick Wirtz added four field goals and a free throw to clinch the victory. Fondy jayvee coach, Fritz Lautenschlager, played only six of his best players to secure the victory.2
In the varsity game, Fond du Lac’s taller team held off a second-half comeback attempt by a team whose names illustrate the history of Northern European immigration to Northern Wisconsin: Busse, Steger, Weyenberg, and Zachowski scored most of Kaukauna’s points but Vander Horst, Vanvenhoven, Gast, and Lamers also got playing time. What did I, Jon Brown, contribute to this game? Well, I got in for the last minute, when Fondy’s frontline finally had put the game away. We Cardinals had our own starters of white European heritage in Jim Damm, Darrell McArthur, Hubert King, Dick Bestor, and Darwin Rose.
I would have to beat out one of these guys to earn a starting position on the varsity team. Only one of the forwards, Jim Damm, was shorter than I, and he was the team’s top scorer early in the season. It was not to be. I played a couple of minutes in games against Neenah and Ripon. I missed one shot and two free throws and racked up two fouls. I took a shower after each of these games, though I really didn’t need to.
The last preseason contest was the second annual meeting with the cross-town rival, St. Mary’s Springs. These games were always held at Goodrich High gym, because the Springers’ court could not accommodate the hometown fans from both schools.
In the preliminary game, the Cardinal Jayvees won handily over the sophomore Ledgers, so-called because St. Mary’s Springs was located on the ledge above the East Side. Jim Flaherty scored 11 points, and Chuck Brunau added 10. Mike Manis made two field goals, and Jim Smith contributed 3 points. That marked their third victory without the sophomores Wilderman and Brown, who were warming the bench on the varsity squad.
Fond du Lac’s Catholic high school had a student body one-third the size of Goodrich High’s. Yet the Ledgers’ basketball squad had beaten the Cardinals in the two previous years. No one on the Springers team was taller than 6-foot, 1 inch.
The hosting Cardinals had four bigger guys, all of them beefy vets of the football team. Tackle Darwin Rose, quarterback and pro-pitching prospect Hub King, and the end Darrell MacArthur were all 6-3. Junior tight end Mike Murphy was tallest at 6-4. These lanky Cardinals longed for revenge. Basketball is a game for big men, right?
Not for the Ledgers. Their quick guards dribbled around and through the taller players of Goodrich High. Mike Scott and Gary Steinke combined for 39 points. When not scoring, they passed the ball to teammates for open shots. We two sophomore Cardinals got to play in the last meaningless minutes of the game. Ken Wilderman could not connect on one free throw and I, Jon Brown, missed a jump shot.
However, I did earn an “assist,” which occurs when one player passes the ball to another who scores easily. This is how I earned it. A teammate passed the ball to me on the free throw line. I pivoted to the right for a jump shot. In mid-air I saw senior Bob Felda, standing unguarded under the basket. Instead of shooting, I made a split-second decision to pass the ball to him for an easy layup. I think Coach Smedberg kept me on the varsity for a while longer just for that play.
The trouble was, no one in those days recorded “assists,” or “rebounds” for that matter, yet both figure as essential to teamwork. The St. Mary’s Springs game exposed one glaring problem among the Goodrich High players. We had trouble competing as a team.
In his senior year, Hub King hogged the ball. He once threw up to 30 attempted shots in one game, meaning that his four other teammates on the floor could not work the ball around in search of the high percentage shot. If Hub caught a pass, he looked to throw it at the basket rather than look for the open guy.
Moreover, Hub King was known throughout the Conference for his baseball skills, which some fans of opposing teams might use to taunt him. During an away basketball game at Green Bay East, the heavily favored Fondy Cardinals fell behind the home team, whose fans began to smell the blood of victory.
Bob Tadman has vivid memories of what happened: “I do remember the game at Green Bay East. I started to hear that familiar sound that followed the team while playing at away gymnasiums. Hub King wasn’t a crowd favorite in Green Bay. His fame as a Major League baseball prospect didn’t set well with Fox Valley opponents. With Hub’s Mom and Dad in the stands, it was apparent things might get ugly. And they did! The crowd started chanting: Hub-a-dub-a-ding-dong, Hub-a-dub-a-ding-dong. The chant disruptrd the game,” Tadman concluded.
At the beginning of the season, Hub King rarely led his teammates in scoring. Other varsity players started grumbling and whining because Hub hogged the ball. Darrell MacArthur, a high jumper in track, was the best rebounder on the basketball squad. He had led the football team in pass receptions. Darrell made headlines in the local newspaper by quitting the team in disgruntlement before the season was over.
Jon Brown’s tryout with the varsity team continued with the official home opener for the Fox River Valley Conference. The visitors came from Green Bay West. In the preliminary game, the Cardinal Jayvees pulled out a tight victory by beating the West team, 46 to 43. Bob Tadman scored half of Fondy’s points—23 to be exact—to lead the scoring. The Cardinal junior varsity players now had a perfect record of five wins and no losses.
The big question remained why Tadman, a 6-foot, 3-inch junior, played on the Jayvees while Jon Brown, a 6-1 sophomore, continued to sit on the bench for the varsity? It was Brown who needed the work.
In the varsity game, the Cardinals beat Green Bay West, 71 to 64. Guard Jim Damm continued as the top scorer on the squad with 20 points. I got to play the last meaningless minutes. Another sophomore for Green Bay varsity also entered the game at the end. His name was Al Esther. He failed to connect on two field goal attempts, but he did sink a free throw. Nobody knew at the time that, midway through the next season, the Esther family would move to Fond du Lac, and Al would be playing for the Cardinals.
Thank the Lord, Varsity Coach Swede Smedberg finally made the decision to demote me to the jayvee team, where I really belonged. With his ball handling skills, Ken Wilderman stayed on with the varsity as a backup to Fondy’s playmaking guard Dick Bester.
On my demotion, the coaches sent Bobby Tadman up to the varsity team. The Cardinal Jayvees just lost their leading scorer. When Bob and I traded places, most of the old Roosevelt players were reunited. In the first game after my return, Sheboygan Central beat us by twelve points. Chuck Brunau and I produced six points each. But it was not enough to match what Tadman had been scoring for the Jayvees.
After Christmas break, we took on the Oshkosh” B” Team in their own home court. I got a bit of revenge in this game. Playing guard for the Oshkosh Indians was Chuck Bleckinger. His father was the tennis coach at Oshkosh State College. Chuck was already the top young tennis player in the State of Wisconsin. In a regional tennis tourney the summer before, I faced him in the first round. Bleckinger whipped me 6-love, 6-love. Nonetheless, I liked the kid. He was unpretentious and amiable.
But seeing Chuck Bleckinger as starting guard of the Indian jayvee team made me want some payback. I played against Oshkosh like a boy on a mission—running, passing, rebounding, and shooting. With 14 points, I ended up the leading scorer for the Fondy Jayvees. Brunau and Rod Brajdic got 10 points each, and Jim Flaherty added 8 more. We won the game 47-44. Bleckinger graciously congratulated me. And why not? He knew we would meet again on the tennis court, where he would return everything to my weak backhand.
Fond du Lac jayvees in mid-January were tied for first place in the league. It was not to last. Appleton beat us by 16 points; then Sheboygan North won by 5 points; then Manitowoc by 11 points. Green Bay West gained a bit of revenge at home, in beating us by 11 points. The only victory we secured as the season stretched into February was a 1-point victory over lowly Green Bay East. Chuck Brunau iced the game with a free throw, while Brown contributed just 3 points to the cause. One could not say that the narrow victory suggested a turnaround.
In February, the downhill slide continued for the Cardinal jayvees. The coaches had pity on us junior varsity players and sent Bob Tadman down to help us out. He scored 16 points in the next game, but Sheboygan Central won anyway.
Then Chuck Bleckinger and the Oshkosh Indians came to the Goodrich gym and exacted some payback of their own. Despite Tadman’s 16 points, we lost, 47-42. In the following game, Bob Tadman upped his production to 24 points. Yet the Appleton jayvees beat us, 50-47. Sheboygan North’s turn came next, and the Fondy “team” came up four points short, despite both Jack Nussbaum and Bobby Tadman scoring 15 points each. This game marked Nussbaum’s emergence as a basketball player.
We bounced back on the road at East Green Bay, where we “Red Birds” from Fondy won by 13 points. I did not play particularly well as the season came to an end for the jayvees. Nonetheless, the coaches brought both Tadman and me back up to the varsity team in preparation for competition in the regional tournaments for the Wisconsin State Basketball championship—the very prize my father’s Fondy High team won in 1915.
The state tournament did not begin auspiciously for the Fond du Lac Cardinals Varsity team. It too had lost six of the last eight games before the tourney was to begin. The 1958 Goodrich High School basketball hoopsters, despite their size advantage over most opponents, ended the regular season in a slide. They ranked sixth out of eight teams in the Fox River Valley standings.
A winter blizzard slowed the team bus as it traveled to the first regional tourney at Kiel, Wisconsin. This town lies 40 miles away from Fond du Lac. Twelve players including Tadman and Brown, two student team managers, two coaches, a sportswriter, and the bus driver were on the Fondy bus. The other teams traveling into the tournament were New Holstein and Clinton, each within 15 miles of the Kiel gymnasium. Fond du Lac was 40 miles away.
Coach Smedberg had spoken on the phone to the principal of Kiel High School to verify that the tournament was not cancelled. He got word that all the teams were coming despite the storm. At 4:30 p.m., we players entered the bus. The snowfall turned into a blizzard and our bus driver, chugging along at 10 to 15 miles an hour in the dark, reached Keil at 6:55 p.m., just minutes before gametime. “They’ll have to wait for us to warm up,” the coach said.
But when the Fondy team walked into the locker room, the Kiel High School principal told them that the tournament had been postponed. The other teams did not come. Coach Swede Smedberg was incensed and told Kiel’s principal as much without utilizing the ugliest curses.
I had no memory of this perilous journey. But my historian mother Cynthia Brown saved the article that sportswriter Stan Gores published the next day. Gores always traveled to the away games on the team bus, sitting up front with the coaches. This fine sportswriter describes the game-that-never-was with a five-column banner headline: GOODRICH HIGH CAGERS PLOW THROUGH SNOWSTORM BUT PLAY NOBODY AT KIEL. The story represented Stan Gores at his best.
However, road crews cleared the highways, and the Cardinals returned to the Keil gym on the next evening. We defeated the team from Clinton. Hub King finally got his 21-point game, completing 8 baskets out of 15 shots and adding five free throws. After a weekend break, the Cardinal players returned to the Keil gymnasium to dominate a spirited team from New Holstein. The starting players for Fond du Lac shared scoring and defensive honors equally in a balanced team effort. Bobby Tadman and I got into the game in the closing minutes but contributed little to the ultimate score of Fondy, 61, New Holstein 50.
There remained no day off for the winners, and the Fondy team traveled to Sheboygan on Tuesday evening for the regional championship game with Fox River Valley Conference rivals, the Sheboygan South High. We held the lead during the entire first three quarters of the contest. But the Redman rallied in the fourth quarter, at the end of which the score was tied. In overtime, Central scored two more points than Fondy and won the regional championship by a score of 66 to 64.
Yet, in that final game, Hub King again had increased his season-ending scoring surge with another 21-point effort to lead the Cardinals in point production.
Needless to say, the substitutes Tadman and Brown would return in the 1960 basketball season, about which student editors of the 1959 Cardinal Yearbook expressed little optimism. “The Jayvees under coach Fritz Lautenschlager didn’t post an impressive win-loss record,” they wrote. “However, several promising boys were uncovered.” Truth be told, Bobby Tadman was the only “boy” who looked promising.
THE 1959 FOOTBALL SEASON
Approximately 400 students and fans turned out for Meet-the-Team night on Thursday during the second week of classes. The coaches introduced the players. The evening concluded with a scrimmage between the varsity team and the ex-Roosevelt players who now constituted the Goodrich junior varsity. The equipment innovations also were on full display in 1959. The jayvees sported the older leather helmets fitted with a plastic face mask. The varsity players wore the “modern” helmets made of solid plastic. These were advertised as unbreakable and (nearly) concussion proof. But later, during one after-school practice, coaches instructed on tackling techniques. Our biggest halfback, the 185-pound Matt Karls, was to run with the ball through a narrow corridor defended by our 225-pound tackle, Dick Bender. They met head-on. BOOM! Matt’s plastic helmet split right down the middle.
Early in the fall of 1959, the recently retired Chicago Bears quarterback and place kicker, George Blanda, showed up at one of our afternoon practices. We all knew who he was. He had married a woman from Fondy—indicating that he recognized true quality—and was visiting his in-laws. He came down to the field to practice kicking field goals. It only happens in Green Bay that a professional athlete shows up at high school football practice. But here Blanda was at Fruth Field.
Coach Capicik asked this champion quarterback to join the passing exercises, in which the two or three passers threw to two lines of receivers, running individual routes. Everyone knew that Blanda and the Bears had defeated our beloved Packers many times over the 1950s, a dark decade of subpar football for our Wisconsin heroes. Starting in 1959, the new coach Vince Lombardi would turn the Pack around to its winning tradition.
Coach Capicik said, “Here, George, throw one to Jon Brown. He caught several touchdown passes as a jayvee last season.” The coach put me on the spot. What if I dropped Blanda’s pass? What if it went through my hands? I moved apprehensively to the front of the receiver line, and Blanda says to me, “Give me a buttonhook at ten yards.” I was to spring off the line of scrimmage and fake as if I were running long, then suddenly stop at ten yards, turn around to the inside, and wait to catch a pass. I ran the correct route, turned, and felt my hands automatically grab the ball in my mid-section. I never actually saw the pass in the air because Blanda throw the pass before I turned around. This former Bear quarterback had not lost his timing or his accuracy.
The very next year, George Blanda returned to have a second career as quarterback and place kicker in professional football. He joined the new American Football League and its expansion teams, the Houston Oilers and, later, the Oakland Raiders. He did not end his career until he turned 48 years old in 1976, the very year I completed my doctorate and went to teach in Santa Barbara, California. George Blanda holds the NFL record for most extra points kicked, 943.
The following week on Friday night, the varsity Fondy Cardinal team had its first and only pre-conference game against the Neenah Bulldogs. Except for juniors Jim Flaherty and Dick Bender, the seniors dominated the starting positions. Few of them really had any game-time experience with the previous year’s varsity team that had finished the season, unexpectedly, in second place. The end of season ranking won Joe Capicik coach-of-the-year award of the Fox River Valley league.
Not many of the ’59 seniors had played except at the last unimportant minutes of some games. Yet here they were, strutting around as if they had earned their starting roles because they had stuck it out since the 8th grade—which they had. Though he passed for 8 touchdowns as the jayvee quarterback last season, Jack Nussbaum sat on the bench during much of the first game, on the road at Neenah High School. So did his main targets, Dan Buss, Ken Wilderman, and Jon Brown. Only the junior fullback Jim Flaherty made first-down chains move for Fondy with 75 rushing yards in that game. He also played varsity linebacker again as he had as a sophomore.
With senior starters taking the field in the preseason opener, Fondy lost 14 to nothing. The only bright spot for the starters was the performance of the future All-Conference safety, Pete Velasco, batting down Neenah’s passes and making tackles in the secondary.
Speaking of Green Bay West, its football squad traveled to play us at Fruth Field in the home opener. The Wildcats had won all of their games in the previous season, finishing as champions. Fondy’s juniors began to emerge in the lineup against this team, as senior starters in the first three quarters produced fumbles and intercepted passes, while the Wildcats scored 25 points.
Finally, our coaches sent in the juniors to run the offense. Taking over at quarterback, Jack Nussbaum tossed two passes to Jon Brown t advance the ball to the Wildcat 21-yard line. “Then a third-down pass, Ken Wilderman to Dan Buss, clicked on the West 4-yard line, with Buss making “a spectacular diving catch,” according to the newspaper. On a pitchout, Wilderman ran around the right end into the endzone. These offensive players were all juniors.
Junior defenders Dick Bender, Rod Brajdic, and Art Kaemmer held the Wildcats on their next possession. Fondy’s offense came back with a 25-yard run by senior half-back Frank Mesner and another Nussbaum-to-Brown pass got the ball to the West 10-yard line. Wilderman, on the old roll-out option from Roosevelt days, threw to junior end Dan Buss for Fondy’s second touchdown. The final whistle ended the game with a Wildcat victory, 32-12.
Our first conference away game showed continued futility on defense. But much yet the Cardinal passing game engineered by Jack Nussbaum at quarterback, was coming into its own. The host Sheboygan Central Red Raiders turned 302 yards of offence into a 33-14 victory for the home team. Only a passing attack of eight completions for 143 yards, most of it from Jack Nussbaum to juniors Dan Buss and Jon Brown, compensated somewhat. I scored two touchdowns on the road at Sheboygan—one on a 27-yard pass and run and the other on a 24-yard touchdown reception. I finally got my headshot in the newspaper after that performance.
Stan Gores, the sportswriter for the Fond du Lac Commonwealth Reporter, took notice with a paragraph: “End Brown caught six passes from Quarterback Nussbaum in the game against the Red Devils, including two for touchdowns. With the agile hands of a baseball player, Brown is able to take the ball away from many defenders. He also caught three aerials against Green Bay West.” For a while, with 12 points, I was the top scorer for the Cardinals (and the 8th highest scorer in the Conference). Juniors Ken Wilderman and Dan Buss had eight and six points respectively. All of us were juniors.
I have to pause the narrative here to explain that we were playing in the 1950s. When someone made a touchdown, he did not spike the ball. There was no victory choreography, no being lofted high up by beefy tackles, and no Lambeau Leaps. He who made the touchdown courteously handed the football to the nearest referee and trotted back to huddle to prepare for the extra point.
The player who scored did receive pats on the back or on the fanny from his teammates. The marching band might play a shortened version of the school song. In the absence of television cameras to capture the touchdown pandemonium, it was just Joe Geiser of KFIZ radio announcing to listeners that so-and-so had scored for Fond du Lac. Or more likely in 1959, Geiser’s play-by-play reported that the opposing team had just made another touchdown.
However, Fondy High finally got into the winner’s column with a homecoming victory of 13 to 0 over Sheboygan North. We scored on a run by senior Gary Loucks and a screen pass to junior Jim Flaherty. “End Jon Brown hauled in a Nussbaum pass on the North 38 and rambled all the way to the Sheboygan 10.” But a Cardinal penalty negated this 44-yard gain. It was the guys in the line who earned this victory. Dick Bender, Leo Steinke, Matt Karls, and the sophomore tackle from Lincoln School, Larry Olson. Most of the seniors were sitting on the bench. Our record now was 1 win, 3 losses.
It was Dad’s Night on the Friday evening that we hosted the Manitowoc Ships. I remember this distinctly, because my father, “Stub” Brown received recognition for being a member of the 1916 Fond du Lac High school football team. There was an audible GASP from the students, for 42 years ago seemed to them like ancient times. As for the game, I did not factor in any way in our fourth loss of the season by a score of 13-7. Without the running of Jim Flaherty and the talented toe of Ken Wilderman, we would not even have 7 points on the scoreboard.
Rain, mud, and swirling wind beat the Fond du Lac Cardinals almost as much as did the Green Bay East football squad in our fifth loss of the season. We managed only 12 yards in our most prolific weapon, passing the ball. The East quarterback did not bother passing either. Instead, he faked a handoff to the left then ran right for a 28-yard touchdown. That was it. Twelve rain-soaked fumbles between the two teams suppressed any more scoring, and the Cardinals lost to East Green Bay, 7-0. Hardly any fans stayed past half-time in the driving rain, except two gentlemen with raincoats and umbrellas standing on the sidelines. Matt Karls’s dad and G. Franklin Brown had driven to Green Bay together to watch their sons play.
The weather turned cold as we prepared for the last two games of the season. During afternoon practices that week the ground froze. During one afternoon’s scrimmage, I went out for a long pass, caught it, and got tackled from behind. As I went down, my left knee struck the frozen turf. I had to sit out Saturday’s game. Nonetheless, I rode on the team bus to Appleton, where the referees recruited me to work the sideline job of marking the forward progress with the downs marker. I could not be closer to the action unless I were on the field as a referee.
What I saw for the first three quarters was an upset in the making. We scored in the second quarter on an interception by sophomore safety Charlie Bloedorn, who had just been called up from the Jayvee team. He then ran the intercepted ball back 62-yards for a touchdown—a pick-6, as they call it today. Ken Wilderman’s kick made it 7-0 for Fond du Lac. Throughout the first three quarters, our defensive front held Appleton’s runners in check. Fondy’s passing game flourished—even in my absence, I regret to admit. Coach Capicik alternated between Ken Wilderman passing out of the shot-gun formation and Jack Nussbaum operating the T-formation. But a wide-open senior receiver dropped one of Jack’s long passes that could have resulted in an easy touchdown.
Appleton finally scored a touchdown in the fourth quarter but missed the extra point. Fondy still led 7-6. The Cardinal offense could not get a first down and had to punt. The Terrors advanced steadily toward the goal line as time ticked off the clock. Appleton scored a second touchdown and extra point with 28 seconds remaining for a 13-7 win. “What do we have to do to win a football game?” asked the sportswriter Stan Gores. The final game of the season against Oshkosh would provide the answer.
I returned to action for the game against the Indians, but junior linebacker Paul Capicik missed both of our last two games due to a broken ankle. The weather had turned cold, and a blanket of snow fell across Fondy High’s Fruth Field.
The Oshkosh Indians varsity football team came with the intention of extending their five-year winning streak against us Cardinals. The Indians scored first on a 65-yard pass play. Otherwise, the Cardinal defense held them in check. In the third quarter, defensive end Matt Karls recovered a fumble deep in Oshkosh territory. Quarterback Jack Nussbaum got the ball into the end zone on a quarterback sneak. Wilderman’s point-after tied the score at 7-points each. The Fondy defense forced the Indians to punt, and our offence again began a march down the field.
The drive ended when “Jon Brown’s adhesive hands latched onto a pass on the far corner of the north end zone,” Stan Gores wrote. “The officials raised their hands signifying a touchdown, but then they began examining footprints in the snow—and there were many—before deciding that Brown was out of the end zone when he made the catch.” To this day, I believe that I caught the ball inbounds. Oshkosh took possession of the ball on downs deep in their own territory.
Our defense again forced the Indians to punt the ball. In the waning minutes of the fourth quarter, Jack Nussbaum directed the decisive drive to break the 7-7 tie. From the Cards’ 40-yard line, “Brown then grabbed Nussbaum’s pass bringing it up to the Oshkosh 39. Brown juggled another toss on his fingertips, then hauled it in for the first down on the Oshkosh 27.” Three minutes remained in the game. A couple of runs got us to a fourth down on the 14-yard line. Ken Wilderman lined up for a field goal. In the 1950s, the goal posts were located right on the goal line, so the successful kick would have to cover about 22 yards. Jack Nussbaum took the long hike from center, placed the ball straight up on the ground, and Kenny Wilderman booted it through the uprights.
Stan Gores finally had an upset victory to write about. “Quarterback Jack Nussbaum did most of the throwing including one beauty that would have been a touchdown had it not been dropped by a Cardinal receiver,” the sportswriter gushed. “Outstanding on the receiving end were Brown, who made an amazing assortment of difficult catches that in no way indicated his hands were cold, and rugged Mike Murphy, who again alternated at tackle and end. Murphy was giant on offense and vicious tormentor of Oshkosh backs on defense.” Murphy and Peter Velasco were the only senior starters at the end of the season.
What a great way to end a losing season! With this victory, we players easily overlooked that we lost three times more games than we won. Our 1959 football season ended with a record of 2 wins and 6 losses.
Except for the “rugged” Murphy and the All-Conference safety Pete Velasco, all the juniors who contributed to the victory over the Oshkosh Indians would be returning. Junior Jim Flaherty and senior Mike Murphy made the All-Conference defensive team. Four of our linemen receiving All-Conference honorable mentions would be back for next year’s competition. Were we good enough finally to bring Fond du Lac to its first Fox River Valley football championship in decades? We certainly had the experience.
1 Stan Gores, “Famine at Fond du Lac Over,”Fond du Lac Commonwealth Reporter, November 16, 1958.
2 His daughter, Peg Lautenschlager was elected as the first female attorney general in Wisconsin history in 2002. She served in the position until 2007.