Dad Loved Radio

My dad loved radio.  I can imagine him sitting at home or walking by a Woolworth's or pharmacy and hearing voices broadcasting Notre Dame and Frank Leahy as they rolled on to victory.

Maybe it was his love for the glory of the old days of Knute Rockne commandeering the Irish to a win against the dominant Army Black Knights team in 1924. 

After the game, New York Herald Tribune sportswriter Grantland Rice, 1880-1954, penned one of the most famous ledes in sports history.  Rice's iconic memorable headline appeared in the paper's evening edition, as well as the Sunday, October 19 printing.  The Four Horsemen helped lead Notre Dame to a its first-ever national championship, and the quartet of backs became college football icons.

Well, that is pretty cool.  By the way, Rice's NY Herald piece opened with this:

Outlined against a blue-gray October sky, the Four Horsemen rode again.  In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction and Death.  These are only aliases.  Their real names are Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden.  They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army football team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds yesterday afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down on the bewildering panorama spread on the green plain below.

Wikipedia has the background on the Irish's Four Horsemen: 

George Strickler, then Rockne's student publicity aide and later sports editor of the Chicago Tribune, made sure the name stuck. He had pitched the idea out loud at the halftime of the Army game in the press box as a tie in to the 1921 Rudolph Valentino movie The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.^[5] After the team arrived back in South Bend, he posed the four players, dressed in their uniforms, on the backs of four horses from a livery stable in town. The wire services picked up the now-famous photo, and the legendary status of the Four Horsemen was assured.^[5]

After that win over Army, Notre Dame's third straight victory of the young season, the Irish were rarely threatened the rest of the year. A 27–10 win over Stanford in the1925 Rose Bowl gave Rockne and Notre Dame the national championship and a 10–0 record.

As it usually is with legends, the Four Horsemen earned their spot in gridiron history. Although none of the four stood taller than six feet or weighed more than 162 pounds, they played 30 games as a unit and only lost to one team, Nebraska, twice. They played at a time when there were no separate offensive and defensive teams. All players had to play both sides. Once a player left the field, he could not come back into the game. 

Could you imagine owning a beauty, like this 1940 Philco?

For information on radio broadcasting greats, check out this site.

At the 27-minute mark, Frank Leahy, 1908-1973, is introduced.  He coached Notre Dame from 1941-1943 and again from 1946 to 1953,

compiling a career college football record of 107–13–9. His winning percentage of .864 is the second best in NCAA Division I football history, trailing only that of fellow Notre Dame Fighting Irish coach, Knute Rockne, for whom Leahy played from 1928 to 1930.

I mention Leahy because my dad admired him more than any other Notre Dame player or coach, I am sure, but also because Leahy was a devout Catholic.  During Leahy's reign, 1946-1953, my dad was in his late twenties, 27 to 29, the prime years of his life. In 1946, Leahy's second stint as Irish head coach, Dad was 32 years old, a prime year for a man in the bloom of his physical life. Leahy was indeed memorable to Dad. Dad was drafted by the U.S. Marines in 1943, the last year of Leahy's first stint with the Irish.

You really get a sense of the reverence and love that my dad had for Notre Dame through the years.  It wasn't just the winning tradition of Notre Dame that he loved but the fact that the team was essentially a Catholic team made up of Irish boys. Having attended Cathedral High School in LA between Chinatown and Dodgers Stadium and been an altar boy a score of times, my dad, too, was a Catholic dedicated to the Catholic tradition, to the holidays and their call for commemoration and a call to honor.  Notre Dame, therefore, was his team that fired his devotion for and dedication to the church. Notre Dame's struggles on the gridiron were high moral drama between on the Elysian fields between successful execution of strategy or blundering failure.  The holy imagery of the Virgin Mary and the suffering Christ on the Cross was sidelined for four quarters on an early Saturday morning.  The demands for precision, for outsmarting, for outplaying their opponents exhausted my dad.  

   

There was Don Criqui years later after the Notre Dame era,  FYI, if anyone is interested in excavating further details on or about Notre Dame, the university, this site is their archived site.  

More on Don Criqui

This game likely made my dad sick.  It was played on Saturday, October 14 in South Bend.  Notre Dame was ranked #5, while USC was ranked #1.  USC beat the Irish that year, 24-7.  Notre Dame scored first and was leading 7-0 before USC scored.  This is what always worried my dad.  Whenever Notre Dame didn't come out of the gate dominating USC, he knew that USC was a powerhouse and would always come back.  OJ Simpson led the league in rushing that year, 

Simpson led the nation in rushing in 1967 when he ran for 1,543 yards and scored 13 touchdowns.  He also led the nation in rushing the next year with 383 carries for 1,880 yards.  

OJ scored 3 touchdowns in that game.  

Terry Hanratty was Notre Dame's quarterback in the game, and he looked bad.  

Tony Roberts was one of Notre Dame's radio/television announcers from 1980 to 2006.  Wikipedia explains that 

Roberts is from Chicago, Illinois and graduated from Columbia College with a degree in journalism

When Roberts retired in 2006, it was Criqui who replaced him.   

Transistor radios weren't invented until 1954.

Following their development in 1954, made possible by the invention of the transistor in 1947, they became the most popular electronic communication device in history, with billions^[1]  manufactured during the 1960s and 1970s. Their pocket size sparked a change in popular music listening habits, allowing people to listen to music anywhere they went. Beginning in the 1980s cheap AM transistor radios were superseded by devices with higher audio quality, portable CD players, personal audio players, and boom boxes.

As for radio broadcasters, here is a list:

1.  Red Barber. 
2.  Mel Allen.
3.  Vin Scully
4.  Jerry Doggett
5.  Ross Porter.
6.  Gil Stratton.
7.  Dick Eagan.
8.  Chick Hearn.
9.  Marv Albert
10.  Dick Stockton
11.  Pat Summerall
12.  Tex Rickards, Dodgers announcer in Ebbett's Fields.
13.  Marty Glickman.
14.  Harry Kalas, 1936-2009.
15.  Keith Jackson, 1928- (he's 87 years old).
16.  Brent Woody Musburger, 1939-
17.  Mick Hubert, the voice of Florida Gator football.  His birth year is not given at Wikipedia.  Hysterical.  
18.  Charlie Steiner.
19.  Rick Monday.   


SPORTS WRITERS
1.  Donald Honig.
2.  Jim Murray. 
3.  Bob Broeg, 
4.  Leonard Koppett.
5.
6. 
7. 
8. 
9.
10.

Top 10 College Football Radio Announcers of all Time.


Allen Pinkett. 

Joe Boland, Radio voice of Notre Dame football.

Are Americans Tuning Out the NFL over Protests? 

Loved those Andes Chocolate Mints.  

There was a distribution outlet,  store, an office supply store on Beverly or 3rd Street in Hollywood where I used to deliver and pick up for UPS in 1984.  And they had a small porcelain and glass dish filled with Andes Creme de Menthe, or what I like to affectionately refer to, chocolate mints.  And I would always walk away with a handful of chocolates.  I loved the wrapped candies, like Chunkies that were wrapped in shiny silver foil.  Beautiful.  It wasn't just a treat, it was a luxury, for these were things you'd enjoy only around Christmas or at fine dining or parties, special occasions.  But here I had access to them almost every day.  I was guilty of cheating time and I paid for it health-wise.