Born To Be a Newspaper Man

by Martin J. McGowan Jr.

Student Athletic Manager

When an announcement was posted that freshmen could turn out for the job of student athletic managers it sounded interesting to me. That was the only way I could be involved with the famous Notre Dame football team. So I applied.

This turned out to be mostly grunt work. It consisted of lugging tackling dummies around the practice field so linemen could practice trying to block them. There were other duties such s picking up wet towels and socks in the locker room or working various duties during home games.

In 1937 I attended a football game at Memorial stadium in Minneapolis between Minnesota and Notre Dame. A year later as a student manager I was assigned to the south scoreboard at Notre Dame when Minnesota played there.

At another home game with Southern California some movie stars showed up to watch the game. On that occasion I was assigned to the box of the university president, to be available if he wanted anything like a cup of coffee. The president's box was near another box where Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck, two stars who were married at the time. She seemed bored by the game but he took an interest and stood up to see some of the action.

After the game I went to the locker room to do the usual pickup and Don Ameche, another big-time star, was congratulating players. They wanted his autograph but he didn't have a pen or pencil. I happened to have a fountain pen n my pocket and loaned it to Ameche to sign the autographs.

Digressing a bit, years later Betty and I attended a national newspaper convention in New York City. We attended a stage play starring Charles Laughton and also having Clinton Sundberg, from Appleton, in a supporting role. After the play we decided to attend Midnight Mass at a church just off Broadway. To our surprise when the priest came out his altar boy was Don Ameche.

At another home football game, I believe with College of the Pacific, Kate Smith, a great singer of the day, was present. She did not appear in movies because she weighed at least 250 pounds, but she had a great voice. Her trademark song on her radio show was "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain." However, she also became noted for singing "God Bless America," which almost replaced the national anthem. At half-time of this game she stood on the bottom stadium railing to sing "God Bless America." The Notre Dame student band was asked to play her accompaniment and it turned out to be a disaster. They played in marching tempo and she sang it in the regular beat. They never got together on it.

Student managers also took their turn with the dirty work for other sports like basketball and baseball. The freshmen were supervised by sophomores and we had one Jewish fellow supervising us. His name was Newman and everybody called him Cardinal Newman after the British cardinal of the church. He left school after his sophomore year.

Junior level student managers aimed to be the top manager for one of the sports. The juniors usually typed out eligibility lists and made out the list of players making the traveling team for out of town games. The seniors worked closely with the coaches of their particular sport and were rewarded with an athletic letter like the athletes. It would have been nice to stay the full four years with the possibility of receiving one of those letters. What I received was a numeral sweater with 42 on it for my year of graduation.

Apparently, I did a good job as student manager in my freshman year. I was invited back two weeks early in my sophomore year at the start of football practice. Two things stood out in that period.

As I was dashing between trains to catch the commuter line between Chicago and South Bend I passed a newspaper rack. The rack must have contained the Chicago Tribune and on the front page was a headline: "Hitler Invades Poland." This was the start of World War II on Sept. 1, 1939.

During those two weeks of early football practice the student mangers could eat with the players in the food service. This was great until we came to Friday. Fish was the standard fare for that day and it came fried to the consistency of a rock. It was said the fish came from the polluted St. Joe river that ran through town. The meal was so bad that students were willing to spend their own money to eat elsewhere.

I went along with everybody else on that first Friday of practice and the choice was a restaurant that served spaghetti and sauce. The other student managers ordered a beer and those under age 21 risked expulsion in doing so. They seemed to figure that since school was not in session the liquor policy didn't apply.

For some reason when I moved from Minnesota to Indiana I suddenly developed asthmatic hay fever. I was tested for allergies and found to be allergic to beer, cigarettes and feather pillows. I also had some seasonal reactions to ragweed and budding trees. So, when I ordered that beer not only was I risking expulsion but also some physical reactions.

After the meal we decided to attend a movie in South Bend. All went well until midway in the movie I started gasping for air. I had an extreme reaction to the beer. I got up and went searching for help. The theater manager saw my predicament and drove me to the campus and the health center. The campus doctor gave me a shot of adrenaline and I was relived to start breathing better. I asked the doctor if he was going to report me to school officials. He assured me he had no plans to report me and end my career at Notre Dame.

As it turned out, four years later when I was called up on the military draft the doctors at Fort Snelling ruled me unfit for service because of the asthma and hay fever and put me in Class 4-F. I had earlier been rejected for the Coast Guard officer training for the same reasons. When I wrote to Canadian military officials they said that if the United States didn't want me, they couldn't use me either.

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