Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, July 24, 1993 TAG: 9307260280
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CARLISLE, PA. LENGTH: Long
It's been 30 years since two Washington Redskins threw two local bullies through a plate-glass window at the old James Wilson Hotel on High Street.
To Grant Shatzer, it seems like yesterday. His memories of the Redskins' training camp mix the historical and hysterical - like the time coach George Allen bought his dormitory-room bed to take home to Northern Virginia.
Shatzer hasn't just been the coordinator of the Redskins' midsummer visits to this central Pennsylvania town, he's become a curator of sorts, a walking encyclopedia. Richie Petitbon is the eighth different head coach Shatzer has worked with in 31 years.
When a Redskins head coach wants something, Shatzer gets it. Somehow. Jack Pardee needed a Catholic priest for daily Mass during camp. Shatzer found a good father, not to mention an altar and candles.
And to think, when all of this started 31 camps ago, in 1963, Shatzer was a Baltimore Colts fan.
"People ask me how long it took me to change over and become a Redskins fan," said Shatzer, 70, relaxing in the basement of Adams Hall on the Dickinson College campus. "I tell them, `The first day the Redskins came on campus.' "
Shatzer was a custodial supervisor then. When he retired from Dickinson in 1990, he was the assistant director of the physical plant. The other part of his job - "a job a football fan any age would love to have," he says - is being the campus liason with the Redskins.
He's worked with Bill McPeak, Otto Graham, Vince Lombardi, Bill Austin, Allen, Pardee, Joe Gibbs and now Petitbon, whom he's known since 1978, when the current Redskins boss joined Pardee's staff as an assistant.
He's married, with a daughter and granddaughter. He has been presented with Super Bowl watches from each of the Redskins' championships. From Super Bowl XXII in January 1988, Shatzer was presented a game ball. He exchanges letters and Christmas cards with some of the former coaches, too.
"My wife says - and she's right - that I can't wait for training camp every year," Shatzer said. "And she says you can't talk to me for about a week after the Redskins leave town. It's like I've lost my best friend."
He has lost some, like Allen and Lombardi. When Lombardi was gravely ill with cancer during camp in 1970 - he died less than a month after leaving Carlisle - Shatzer was one of his few daily visitors.
So, a stroll down memory lane of summers on the Dickinson campus with Shatzer is worthwhile:
\ California to Carlisle
"How the Redskins picked this location is a good start," Shatzer said. "They had been training in California and the vice president of the college, Dr. George Shuman, had friends in Washington who told him George Marshall [Redskins owner] was interested in having the team train closer to home.
"Marshall visited here and so did Bill McPeak, who was then the coach. They liked that it was quiet, away from Washington, a lot closer than California, but far enough away, too."
Dickinson and the Redskins signed a five-year contract. Now, the parties make two-year deals.
"When this all started, it was a lot smaller and longer," Shatzer said. "Camp lasted 6-8 weeks [it's now about four weeks]. In 1963, we used one dorm, one meeting room and one off-campus house. Now, it's two dorms, four off-campus houses, and nine meeting rooms."
\ Redskins ready to rumble
Shatzer remembers that the first two Redskins coaches to come to Carlisle couldn't have been more different.
"Bill McPeak was happy-go-lucky," Shatzer said. "He hung around with his players some. Otto Graham was more strict, a religious guy, a very different philosophy from McPeak."
One of the first nights the Redskins spent in Carlisle, several players walked a few blocks down High Street to the James Wilson Hotel, which has closed.
"It had one of the few bars in Carlisle, and the players liked to hang out there," Shatzer said. "One night, these two big burly fellas from Carlisle walked in and said they would take on any of the Redskins.
"Two of the players stood up, grabbed them, and threw them through the plate-glass window. So, people in town weren't really sure if they wanted the Redskins here or not.
"Graham had discipline. That's when the bed checks started. He had strict rules and was a member of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. There weren't any problems [1966-68], and people decided the Redskins were a good organization to have here."
\ Nobody crossed Lombardi
"Lombardi already was a legend when he came here [1969]," the bespectacled retiree said. "He had retired once, after winning at Green Bay, when the Redskins talked him into coaching again.
"He was very outspoken, and he knew just what he wanted. Howard Cosell came to practice one day, and Lombardi didn't have much love for him. Cosell walked out onto the practice field and kept giving his opinions out loud.
"Lombardi stopped practice, walked over to Cosell, grabbed him by the back of his neck and the seat of his pants, and physically tossed him out the main gate at [Biddle] field.
"A few years ago, Cosell was here to speak at a sports banquet and I was sitting next to him at the table. I leaned over and said, `Howard, do you remember that time when Vince Lombardi took you out of practice here?'
"Cosell looked at me and said real quietly, `Oh, let's not talk about that.' "
Lombardi didn't mind his players drinking. He just wanted to know when and where they were doing it.
"He started a cocktail hour for the coaches and players," Schatzer said. "From 5-6 p.m., after practice, we opened a room. We put liquor in the cabinets there and locked them. From 5-6, they were unlocked.
"The coaches and players could drink, but no one could have more than two drinks. And believe me, Lombardi knew who had two, and they didn't get any more, even if the hour wasn't up. He was very strict on bed checks, too." \
Then came George
Austin, an assistant coach, ran the club in Carlisle when Lombardi was too ill in 1970, before his Sept. 3 death, then coached the team that season. Then Allen arrived. For Schatzer, it was a whole new world.
"George was the most colorful, most outspoken coach I've worked with here, but he was very likeable," Schatzer said of the coach who died last year. "He was very demanding, but in a nice way.
"He had to have ice cream, with honey on top. When George came, the head coach started staying in the guest suite of Adams Hall. We put a cooler in his room for ice cream. And he wanted fresh honey, not just any honey, the pure stuff."
Schatzer had to drive several miles out of town to find that. He did the same another day when Allen decided he wanted Pennsylvania fruit trees in the yard of his home in Virginia.
"George wanted peach and apple," Schatzer said. "He wanted seedlings. We went out and got them, and he planted them at his home. The next year, he decided he wanted some black raspberry bushes from up here.
"It was the day camp was breaking, a Sunday, and the person we had gotten the trees from was an Amish man, and I doubted he was going to dig up anything on a Sunday, whether it was for George Allen or not. Well, we talked to the man, and he had his son do it."
Several years later, when Allen was fired and moved to San Diego, the coach called Schatzer and asked that the Dickinson custodian chief bring a crew to Northern Virginia and remove the growing trees and bushes from his yard and take them back to Carlisle.
Schatzer told Allen it would cost $1,500. Schatzer took several men to Virginia for an overnight stay and they dug up the trees before Allen's house was sold. The trees returned to Carlisle.
"So, now, George Allen's fruit trees and bushes are on some farm here in Carlisle," Schatzer said.
Allen sent Schatzer a check for $2,500. "George wrote, this is for moving the trees, and some more for all you did for me during my years in Carlisle."
That included the expensive lamp in Allen's suite that he decided he wanted to take home from camp. Schatzer said he'd go buy another one. No, Allen wanted the one from his room. The college sold it to him.
That was a year after Allen phoned Schatzer from Washington two days after camp ended.
"George said, `Grant, I haven't slept a wink in my two nights home,' " Schatzer recalled. "He said, `I want to get that mattress and box spring that was in my room at camp.'
"I told him what kind of mattress it was, that he could probably buy one down there, but he said, `Well, find out what it costs and let me know. I'd rather have the one I slept on up there. So, we sent it down, and got a new one for the guest suite."
Allen loved Carlisle and the camp atmosphere.
"He was the only coach we had to tell to leave," Schatzer said. "George kept them in camp so long that one year it was just a day or two before the students were to report back, and we had to tell him he had to go."
\ Gibbs a strict one
Pardee may have been the most cordial coach in Schatzer's years. He was the head coach for three seasons, and Schatzer still gets notes and cards from Pardee, who is now the Houston Oilers' boss.
"Pardee was quiet, and he let everything build up inside," Schatzer said. "Sometimes, I think he'd have been better off if he'd have blown his stack when he got mad, but he couldn't or wouldn't, and maybe that was part of his downfall."
While Lombardi traveled with a chaplain and attended Mass in town, Pardee was the only coach who had Mass on campus every morning, Schatzer remembered.
"Gibbs is very religious, too," Schatzer said. "He always wanted to have a good lamp in his room so he could read. He read the Bible quite a bit, maybe every night.
"Coach Gibbs was the most strict coach that's been here. Everything ran on time, to a tight schedule. Another thing you learned was that if it was an hour or less before a practice, you had to let him go. Even if you just walked past him or said hello, he didn't respond. His mind was on football."
And Petitbon, the 55-year-old rookie head coach?
It's still early.
"I've known Richie since 1978," Schatzer said. "He's a very friendly person. I don't think things will change too much. There hasn't been a day in those 15 years I've walked past Richie that he hasn't said hello or hollered across the street to me."
"Someone asked when I was going to retire from the Redskins' camp," Schatzer said. "I told them, `When I can't walk in here any more.' "
by CNB