Football and Forensics

Football produced another embarrassing situation. As is customary, the visiting team uses the girl’s locker room because at that time of year it is available except during daytime physical education classes. In this instance we were assigned the Cherokee (another unique Iowa school name) vacant lockers in the girls’ quarters, where we left our street clothes during the game.

Each locker had a combination lock on it, but obviously we did not use it since we were not given the numbers for opening it. Some wiseacre, however, came through the locker room when we were gone and twirled the dial on my lock.

After the game -- which we lost 45-0, by the way -- a search was made for the combination to the lock without success. The bus was getting ready to leave and I had no choice but to accept the offer of a track suit and tennis shoes three sizes too large as apparel for the ride home. School officials promised they would mail my clothes when the combination to the lock was found.

That might have been all right under other circumstances, but as it happened we didn’t arrive back to Ida Grove until nearly midnight. At the time, we lived in an apartment downtown and that night a street carnival was still going full blast.

I got more than a few side glances as I made my way through the crowd with people wondering what this clown was doing in that kind of a getup. By the way, I did get my clothes back and I returned part of the sweat suit. I kept the shirt that had Cherokee Track emblazoned on the front of it. For years, people thought I was a track star at a major school.

In later years I was also mistaken for a letter winner from Grand Island, a major sports power in Nebraska. After I graduated, my folks moved to Ord, Nebraska and I would occasionally wear my Ida Grove letter sweater -- an I superimposed over a G. It was quite similar to the G over I for Grand Island, and since the colors were the same, the mistake was natural.

Four seniors qualified for the State Forensic League contest in Iowa City April 10-12. Richard Overholtzer and I won three of three debates to make it, along with two other seniors.

Socialized Medicine was the national debate topic that year. Fifty years later, the question of some type of national health care was still being thrown around in the U.S. Congress.

Out of the twelve rounds of debate, Richard and I won two on the negative side. Our other team, Don Young and Marvin Lorenzen, got a superior rating for their resolution while our team got similar recognition for a bill submitted to the student senate.