The yellow school bus rolled into the oncoming December darkness, headed toward Abilene, carrying with it a cargo of teen-age boys who just hours earlier had been celebrating the rewards of an undefeated junior varsity football season. Our prize had been a trip to Dallas and the historic old Cotton Bowl, there to witness the 1957 Class AAAA semifinals.
Now, however, a despondent quiet accompanied the swaying rhythm of the joyless ride. Except for occasional whispers, it was a return made in somber silence.
For most of us--sophomore members of the Abilene High School football program--a dream of glory had died. The chance to one day have our names associated with an achievement unmatched in schoolboy history had been stolen away by Highland Park and a swift, lethal halfback named Jack Collins. They had been victorious that day, earning the right to advance to the state finals where they would meet and defeat Port Arthur High for the state championship.
Abilene, on the other hand, was finished for the year. And so was a record-setting string of 49 consecutive victories.
It had begun in October 1954 and had lasted through three straight state titles until that 1957 day in Dallas. Time magazine had deemed it an accomplishment worthy of note. Sports Illustrated came to town to do a story that called Abilene High an athletic dynasty. All pretty heady stuff for 16- and 17-year-old boys growing up in a dusty, dry-bed West Texas town. In the mid-'50s, the Abilene Eagles, coached by the famed Charles (Chuck) Moser, were the team all others in the state were measured against.
As sophomore jayvee players, we had inherited the drudgery of performing as the scout team for our elders, weekly emulating plays of the next week's opponent. It was the painful and hardly glamorous price to be paid. Yet we were assured that the next season the cheers of thousands would be for us. Seniors would depart, making room for us to play our parts in the continuation of the never-before-accomplished string of victories. Time and S.I. would be writing about us. Sellout crowds would come out to see us play for yet another state championship. It was a dream few who ever reported for high school football practice ever dared dream, one that died that crisp Saturday in the Cotton Bowl. We collectively cursed Jack Collins and privately ached for our lost opportunity.
The passage of time, we would eventually learn, is great balm. Now, 44 years after that cold and quiet bus ride, it is not the loss that is best remembered by aging alumni and ex-jocks. It is instead the glory of the victories and the enduring kinships that they forged.
And, most recently, the knowledge that a new group of youngsters--in another town and another time--have begun to experience a warm and special thrill few will ever know.
On an early November Friday filled with wild and electric anticipation, the 62-year-old visitor--still trim and athletic-looking--walked to the center of the Celina High School gymnasium amid a thunder of applause. One generation of Texas sports history was being introduced to another.
In a matter of hours, the Celina Bobcats would make a short bus ride over to Valley View in hopes of winning their 50th consecutive football game. If successful, the defending Class AA champions would eclipse the state record established by Abilene High.
Glynn Gregory, once a schoolboy All-American and considered the finest running back of his era, had played a major role in the establishment of the mark that had stood for more than four decades. "I sincerely hope you break it tonight," the development officer for Dallas' Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children told the young Bobcats. "Believe me, it is something you will enjoy and remember for many years to come."
He paused, smiled and added: "And one day, hopefully, you'll also have the opportunity to visit with another team and wish them well as they attempt to break your record."
The former SMU and early-day Dallas Cowboys standout visited with fans and parents, then joined them at the game, cheering as Celina rolled to a 40-7 victory that erased him and his former teammates from the record book.
For the young athletes, Gregory says, it is just the beginning of something they will cherish for the remainder of their lives. The winning streak, of course, will one day end, just as Abilene's did. But the memories and the camaraderie, he promised, will last a lifetime.
"There is nothing in the language that properly describes the bond that developed among those who played back then," he says. And it is a bond that remains strong to this day. Though now scattered throughout the nation--doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers--those who played a role in the 49 victories and three consecutive state championships stay in touch. Last year, in a retrospective inspired by the arrival of the new millennium, The Dallas Morning News judged them the Texas high school football "Team of the Century." The designation, recalls former All-State lineman and current Dallas investor Sam Caudle, was nice for a simple reason: "Hey," he says, "it provided a good excuse to get together and spend some time talking about the good old days.
"The longer the record lasted," he admits, "the more I came to realize just how remarkable it was." Old teammate Jim Welch, who scored two touchdowns in the Eagles' '55 state championship victory and went on to play for SMU and for the NFL Baltimore Colts for eight years, agrees. "As time went on," the Trophy Club stockbroker says, "it became an increasingly fond memory, something we were all proud of."
And, he adds, something that remained a shining milestone of his lengthy football career. "Several years ago," he says, "I was in a bar in New York, having a Christmas season drink with some friends, when I saw [sportswriter-author] Dan Jenkins across the room. I'd never met him, so I went up and introduced myself. Dan shook my hand and said, 'Yeah, you played on those great Abilene High teams, didn't you?'"
Today, in fact, they gather in Abilene each summer for a charity golf tournament named in honor of their late coach, funding scholarships for deserving high school graduates. They meet for lunches, golf and backyard barbecues, exchange Christmas cards and busy the phone lines when a new grandchild arrives. Arlington doctor Stuart Peake, another of the Abilene High stalwarts in the '50s, regularly travels to San Marcos to visit his old line coach, Hank Watkins, and take him to University of Texas home games. And, on a few occasions we've gathered for funerals of old friends and teammates claimed by the cruelties of cancer, bad hearts and car accidents.
"You may go for years without seeing some of the guys you played with," says former AHS Eagle, Texas Tech All-American and San Francisco 49ers All-Pro receiver David Parks, "but when you do, it's like no time has passed." Now a Dallas businessman, he notes, "That's the strength and depth of the friendships that developed back when we were kids."
They're too young to realize it now, he says, but that is the special reward the members of the Celina team can look forward to when all eligibility has been spent, letter jackets are stored away and the challenges of the adult world are encountered.
"To accomplish what those kids have," says Dallas insurance executive Jim Millerman, a swift running back who ran for three touchdowns in the first of Abilene's 49 victories, "takes something special. There has to be a collective dedication on the part of the players, excellent coaching and the support of the entire community. That's what made it work for us years ago, and I'd bet it is what you'll find today in Celina.
"When we were kids," he says, "I don't recall anyone talking much about the winning streak or the possibility of setting a record. We just focused on the next game on the schedule. We were just kids, some with a little more athletic ability than others, playing football and having a good time."
Today, he says, the endurance of the relationships that began in his teen years is something he views as even more remarkable than the long-standing record. "Friends I've made over the years have seen how close so many of the guys on that team have remained and remark that they've never seen anything like it. In the long run, that's been the greatest thing to come out of what we were able to do."
Bob Swafford, now a district manager for the Dallas Parks and Recreation Department, agrees. "I doubt that any of us anticipated that the friendships we developed while participating in high school athletics would remain as strong and lasting as they have," he says. A receiver who was a senior in the '57 season when the streak finally came to an end, he notes that to this day his older brother Hollis, a senior in '54 when the streak began, continues to chide him after all these years. "He likes to point out that he started the streak...and I ended it," the former receiver and state hurdles champion says.
"We all lived charmed lives back then," Peake remembers. "Abilene provided a wonderful environment for kids." It was a time free of the dooming distraction of drugs and gangs and ever-climbing crime statistics. Youngsters began playing football in one of the city's 18 elementary schools, graduated to one of the three junior highs, then to the lone high school in town. "Wearing an Abilene High letter jacket," he remembers, "was the goal we all worked toward. And once you got it, you felt like you were somebody special, regardless of what side of town you lived on or how much money your folks had."
To this day he--like many of his school day peers--counts the day he first met Coach Chuck Moser as one of the most important of his life. "He taught us all a great deal about the importance of hard work and fair play and leadership," Peake says. It is also worth noting that Moser established a career mark of 77 wins and only seven losses during his tenure as head coach at Abilene High.
"I am proud of what we accomplished," he told me shortly before his death in 1995, "but not as proud as I am of what so many of those kids grew up to be. Without exception, they became good, solid citizens. Something rubbed off back there, and that fact, above all others, gives me a warm feeling." He never tired, he said, of hearing from those he continued to refer to as "his boys," even as they grew to adults.
And even when the glorious string he orchestrated came to an end, it was in memorable fashion.
On that cold night 44 years ago, as the bus carrying the disappointed youngsters made its way back to Abilene, hundreds of parked cars lined the final 15 miles of their homeward journey. Lights flashed and horns honked, not in salute to fallen teen heroes but, rather, in acknowledgment of their remarkable accomplishment.
It is such wondrous moments, the now graying players of a bygone generation suggest, that the boys of Celina can look forward to.
Staff writer Carlton Stowers had to wait until his senior year at Abilene High to be part of a state championship. In 1960, he served as co-captain of the Eagles team that won the Class AAAA track and field title. To this day, he stays in touch with his former teammates and old coach.
