"The success of our lives will be written in our deeds"
                                             H. Norman Schwarzkopf
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                     Me at China Beach Aug. 1970

 

 

I wrote a letter to my former HS football coach wishing him good luck with the coming season and he gave to the news paper

Copy of News Column By Tom Whelan Westchester Daily News 9-29-70

MORE THAN A GAME...

The professionals in football despite all those early difficulties in
player relations still managed to squeeze in their full contemplated
slate of exhibition frays and have now kicked off a brace of weekends of
ideal competition. The major colleges their athletic budgets transfused
in most cases by permission to play an 11th game have also been hard at
it sincerely in the month.
But on the Westchester school boy scene the earnest head knocking for
most didn’t begin until this past Saturday, a blisteringly uncomfortable
afternoon, and there was one debuting team where the coach, a veteran in
his trade, felt a little better about the coming of another autumn
because of a letter he received prior to the opening kickoff, a letter
which bore a Vietnam dateline.
The coach’s team didn’t have a winning season a year ago, they didn’t
win on Saturday, though they were anything but disgraced. But under his
leadership, the coach had driven the candidates for this years team
hard, in the four weeks prior to opening day, teaching them to play the
rugged game the best way he knows.
The letter written by a former player, a regular, but one who failed to
capture All-Everything laurels, began in the customary way saying “ . . . you
probably never expected to hear from me, from here in the rear in
DaNang.” It then went on to say that the author hoped the coach’s
family was well and wished him the best of luck at the outset of another
season.
It went on from there in part to say, “Thanks coach . . . And then,
“You’re probably wondering thanks for what? . . . and I’ll try to
explain it.”
“I remember when I used to play under you and you’d keep pounding
things into our thick skulls . . . things like putting out 110%, and
never giving up. At the time it seemed that those things were just for
the football field, but I’ve learned different in the past year. Coach,
football really isn’t much different from fighting a war, and when
you’re so scared and tired you want to quit, you have to put out with
that second and third effort.

GRADUATE WORK

“One time in particular I remember came when we were making a company
movement up a mountain. It was about 100 degrees out, and we had full
packs. Halfway up four guys had passed out from the heat and I didn’t
know just how much more I could take. Then, during a brief rest I
remembered you and those practices, and I thanked you for pushing me,
and the team. It helped me get through the hardest part of Nam.”
“I’m not as bad off now. I’m with the 1st Battalion 5th Marines, near
DaNang, and I’m starting to count the days until I can come home, about
70 of them left now.”
“But Coach, drive those guys hard. Make them work ‘til they don’t
think they can go anymore. They may hate you for it now but later some
of them will thank you, believe me. I’ll never forget all you taught
me, and I hope that when I start coaching I can teach my team as much as
you taught me on, and off the field”
The coach will always remember this letter he received on the eve of
the 1970 season, even though he’s asked this writer not to identify in
print either himself or his school, the Marine’s name, however, is Paul
Baviello, for the benefit of those who were privileged to play either
with him . . . or against him.

 

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