I was one of the original students at RHS in 1962. I had been a sophomore at MacArthur HS in San Antonio and was looking forward to the new experience of a new school. It was actually kind of keen to have had to start in the wooden structures near the chapel because it allowed us to really appreciate the new facility out on the west perimeter road when it opened in the spring of 1963.
Starting in the new school was a real treat because it was like starting with a clean slate. Oh, sure, you had a sort of reputation in your old school and you knew folks who had been there with you, but in the new RHS, everyone was sort of starting anew and there were no limitations.
With no history to guide us, everyone was urged to try to do everything. One of the things I signed up for (for no particular reason) was the yearbook staff. I had no experience that would qualify me for it, but it seemed interesting enough. One of the first things that happened was that someone had to be selected as the yearbook photographer. Somehow, in the setting up of the school, equipment had been purchased and one of the things that was on hand was a camera.
Of course, one place I didn't lug around that camera was in sixth period PE. John Hines and I had run cross-country at Mac, but at RHS we could do anything and football was the thing.
The problem for me (and others) was that I had never played real tackle football before and didn't know anything. Tom McDougall had to show me how to put in my thigh pads the right way (if you didn't, you could hurt yourself in a way that would ensure you would never become a father). I also didn't know how to get in a proper stance and Coach Mickler mocked me, saying I looked just like a frog. I guess I did, but I learned how to do it.
Coach Mickler probably couldn't believe the raw material he was stuck with, but he had a system. He asked all of us how fast we could run 50 yards. Since we had had to do this in PE at Mac, most of us knew. Coach Mickler then said anyone who could do it in 6 seconds flat or less was a back or end, anyone who took more than 6 seconds was a lineman.
So I became a back. But I could never come to rights with our quarterback, James Weaver, and could not take a handoff. After watching me fumble enough times, Coach Mickler said I was to become an end, and was assigned number 81, Naturally, as an end, my hands were still the same and I was not a threat to catch and run. However, in Coach Mickler's system, everyone played both ways and I guess I was tolerable on defense as a defensive end, even if I was hopeless on offense.
In our very first scrimmage with another team, in the open area behind the baseball field on H Street on the base, we scrimmaged with Schertz-Cibolo HS. Those fellows knew how to play. But we were willing to give it a go and hit as hard as we could, even if we couldn't really sustain an offense very well. At some time in the scrimmage, I was the right defensive end and Schertz ran a sweep at me. I could see what was happening, so I stepped up my 135 pounds of defensive end into the gap and was blocked across my thighs by some Schertz lineman. But he didn't knock me down, so as Concepcion Ramirez, the halfback, came through the hole, I reached over with my left arm and grabbed his shoulder pads near the neck and yanked him down. In pro football today, that kind of tackle is called a horse-collar and earns a 15 yard penalty. But in 1962, it was an acceptable thing to do.
Oh, yes, there was one more thing. I did yank Concepcion down, but his speed and my being anchored because of the blocker meant something had to give. And what gave was my left shoulder. It came completely out of socket and hurt like the devil. But I was able to shrug my shoulder and pop it back into socket, and stop the pain.
Coach Mickler, however, had to get me out of there and had the USAF doctor we had on the sideline check me over. He put me in a sling for a few days, but eventually pronounced me fit enough to play and I did, for the next two years.
Everyone involved here probably should have told me that was the end of my football career. I dislocated that shoulder again in 1962 at East Central, and in 1963, I dislocated it about four or five more times. But the time of my last game in November 1963, I had been fitted with the second of two heavy leather straps, one that went around my chest and another around my left bicep, and the two were connected by a chain. This was supposed to keep my shoulder close so it couldn't be pulled out of socket.
I said it was the second, because after one game with the first one, we discovered that I had ripped the chain out of one of the anchors and was just wearing a leather decoration on my arm.
In August of 1964, my shoulder was so shot that I had to have surgery on it over at Lackland. They did what they needed to do, and to this day I have less than full mobility in my left shoulder.
In an intelligent world, I should never have played after that first dislocation. But in the real world, I did, and have never regretted it. I don't think I would have matured as a person without having played football for two years for Coach Mickler and I thank my lucky stars for having had that opportunity.
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