Copyright 2013 by John T. Reed

I just watched the TV documentary Marching On: 1963 Army-Navy. It is about the 1963 Army-Navy Game mainly and the events surrounding it. It was to have been played, as always back then, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. President Kennedy, as always, was to watch the game in person changing sides at half-time. Except he was assassinated the Friday before Thanksgiving. The game was postponed until December 7.
.
I heard about Kennedy being shot when I was standing next to my high school locker putting my books away enroute to the gym for our weekly pep rally. We football players sat on the gym floor in folding chairs while the whole student body cheered from the gym stands. We learned that Kennedy had been killed down in the locker room after the pep rally.
.
Young people think that was our 9/11. No. Our 9/11 was the same as your 9/11. JFK being killed was a bigger national trauma. You had to be there.
.
On December 7. 1963, I was a high school senior hoping to go to West Point but feeling very much like a long shot to get in. So I watched on TV from the nearby Philadelphia suburb where I lived and cheered “my” guys including junior QB Rollie Stichweh against Heisman Trophy winning junior QB Roger Staubach and hated the finish where Army was at the Navy one but did not run the final play because they assumed the officials would stop the clock to wait for less noise as they had three times just before that play. The officials let the clock run out, producing one of the most unsatisfying game endings in football history. We Army fans hated, and still hate, the end of that game. Speaking of how the game ended, Rollie, in typical West Point fashion, said on the documentary, “No excuse.”
.
Four months later, I got the letter telling me I had been appointed to West Point by the President. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acOKOstjaMo&feature=player_embedded) One-year later, I was one of the cadets in the stands for the rematch of senior Army QB Rollie Stichweh—then one of my fellow cadets—and senior Navy QB Roger Staubach. Bill Parcells’ younger brother was one of our running backs.
.
Army won the 1964 rematch 11-8. You can see me in the documentary. Which one am I? The one in the gray long overcoat and gray hat up in the stands during the game and rushing onto the field at the end. Do you think my part in the documentary was small? As a director once told me when I was recruited to be in a play as an adult and I described my part as “small,” “There are no small parts; only small actors.”

John T. Reed