THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 21, 1994 TAG: 9408210055
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: PAUL SOUTH
LENGTH: Medium: 98 lines
On practice fields from Elizabeth City to Manteo, and in Norfolk and Portsmouth, and at high schools and colleges around America, optimism sounds like the popping of shoulder pads. It is August and with major-league baseball busy with its walk-a-thon for greed, football is at the forefront of our sporting mind.
Last week, the Perquimans County High School Pirates were hard at work, readying for their Friday night opener. With wild abandon they went about their work, as if each play would be the one that would make the difference between winning and losing. Laughter didn't dress out that day, but joy was in abundance. Happiness came with every snap, crackle and pop of the day's work.
So it was, too, in the summer of 1979, 15 years ago. Hell hath no fury like a 98-degree day on a football practice field in southeast Alabama. As a manager at Auburn University that summer, I was in my senior year, ending three years of varsity football.
A few weeks back, as I was packing to move to this job in the Outer Banks, I ran across some photographs in a college yearbook. The faces were younger then, but no less remembered. That 1979 Auburn team went 8-3 and came within a whisker of beating the eventual national champion, Alabama, coached by the legendary Paul ``Bear'' Bryant.
It was a time when we believed we were invincible.
It is a strange power that ex-athletes have - the ability to recall virtually every play of every game in which they were a part. I remember the plays, but even more clearly, I remember the faces.
There was Charlie Trotman, our quarterback. He was an amazing story in his own right. A three-year starter, Charlie was blind in one eye and going blind in the other, yet he knew how to lead and win.
There was Willie Huntley, a walk-on running back who gave up scholarship offers from smaller schools because he wanted to play at Auburn. He didn't play much, but his hard work in the classroom and on the field won him mountains of respect.
Jim Skuthan was one of our offensive tackles. At 6 feet 5 inches and 265 pounds, he was a fierce competitor. But Jim, a political-science major, seemed most at home when he was talking politics. He blocked for future National Football League stars James Brooks, Joe Cribbs and William Andrews on Saturdays, but he tackled voting data and constitutional law at night.
Chet Chessher was a guy who always had a smile on his face and something encouraging to say to a friend or teammate, and always seemed to have a pretty coed on his arm. I will never forget the look of rapture on his face late on a crisp November afternoon in 1977, when he scored his first collegiate touchdown. The victory that day over Georgia was well in hand when Chet scored - for the sportswriters a ``meaningless score.'' But for the 18-year-old from Niceville, Fla., it meant the world.
There are abundant stories about that 1979 team. And after 15 years those stories have aged and mellowed, and so has the team. Every football player in Auburn's class of 1979 got his degree. Four of the seniors later earned law degrees. From our class came the coach of a national championship football team, a doctor, a veterinarian, a dairy farmer and a minister. And in its group of underclassmen, there were other success stories, such as Brad Everett, who went on to business school at Harvard and earned an MBA. Chet Chessher, who tasted one of his few moments of football glory on that Saturday against Georgia, became an actor.
And time has flown.
In those 15 years, Charlie Trotman, bad eyes and all, mastered the law books and earned his degree. He now is in business in Montgomery. Willie Huntley graduated from Auburn and went on to the law school, graduating near the top of his class. In his first year of law school, his wife left him. But he went on to become one of Alabama's top trial attorneys. He was on the short list for appointment to the U.S. attorney's post in Mobile, and was even mentioned as a possible member of O.J. Simpson's defense team. He is remarried, and happy.
Jim Skuthan completed a master's and a law degree and is now a federal public defender in Florida. In one of the strange twists of life, he married a federal prosecutor he faced once in court.
Time has not always been kind to the class of 1979. Many of us have laid parents to rest. Some of us, like Willie Huntley, have endured the pain of divorce. Foster Christy, a tight end on our team, faced and survived cancer.
And Chet Chessher is dying of AIDS.
I don't mind saying that there is often a tear mingled in the fond memories of that time. I remember riding with my Dad from Birmingham's Legion Field after we lost the last game of the 1979 season to Alabama, 25-18. And I began to cry, not because of the game, but because those wondrous roaring three years were done. As I wept, he said nothing. He understood. Our time of being invincible was over.
Nine years later, I would lay my Dad to rest, only a football field away from where coach Bryant is buried.
Friday night, for high school athletes all over our area, the time of feeling invincible, the time of glory, begins again.
And as it does, I am reminded of George C. Scott's soliloquy in ``Patton,'' as the general recounts victory parades in the days of ancient Rome.
The conquering hero is preceded by slaves he has captured and goods he has taken from faraway lands. Behind him, a man stands and whispers constantly in his ear four words.
``All glory is fleeting.''
Cherish your fall Fridays and Saturdays.
Invincibility, or at least the thought of it, lasts only so long. by CNB