DATE: Saturday, September 27, 1997          TAG: 9709270739

SECTION: SPORTS                  PAGE: C1   EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Column 

SOURCE: Tom Robinson 

                                            LENGTH:   83 lines

50 YEARS LATER, PRIDE REMAINS INTACT FROM 1ST FISH BOWL

Frank Townes carries a memento from the first Fish Bowl football game, 50 years ago, with him every day. It's the right shoulder he dislocated Dec. 7, 1947, a shoulder that isn't dislocated anymore but never quite healed properly.

With some luck, Townes' grandson Sid Brown, an offensive tackle for Morgan State, won't meet a similar fate today when he and his teammates mark the 50th anniversary of the Fish Bowl charity game by meeting Norfolk State at Dick Price Stadium.

``At the time, I didn't even realize it was a Fish Bowl,'' says Townes, 69, of that first game. ``To me, it was just Berkley going to Norfolk to play the Brown Bombers.''

Conceived by local African-American Elks and Shriners as a sister to the now-extinct Oyster Bowl, the Fish Bowl was born on the sixth anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

It has continued annually - today's is actually the 51st Fish Bowl - and has almost always featured two college teams, including Norfolk State 24 times and Elizabeth City State 20 times.

But in 1947, the initial game saw the Berkley Bulldogs, a spunky neighborhood team of men mostly in their early 20s, challenging the semipro power Norfolk Brown Bombers on the Bombers' turf, High Rock Park off of Church Street, for the benefit of a Christmas fund for underprivileged children.

High Rock Park is gone, as are most of the men who played in the Bombers' 14-0 victory in front of about 1,200 fans who paid $1.10 in advance or $1.20 at the gate to get in.

Those who live on, and can make it to Dick Price Stadium today, will be asked to take a bow on the field before Norfolk State and Morgan State kick off.

Look for Townes to be there, proud of his grandson, naturally, but also of his Bulldog days.

``I played football the day I got married,'' Townes says. ``We didn't play for money, we played because we loved the game. And some of us were pretty good.''

Brothers Joe and Matthew Austin, Bulldogs both, will be there, too. Joe Austin, president of Norfolk's Downtown Community Athletic Association, was the quarterback and team captain in '47 for coach Willie Hinton. The next season, when the Bulldogs became the Southside Bears, Hinton was a player and Joe Austin the player-coach.

``I've always been considered a leader,'' says Austin, 72. ``I say that's because the leader's usually the guy who's got the biggest mouth.''

The Bulldogs couldn't talk, walk or run their way past the Bombers, though. Never could beat them, really, in many meetings. There were a half-dozen or more adult ``sandlot'' teams around back then, and the Bulldogs were the pride of the Berkley community.

But the Bombers, named after heavyweight champion Joe Louis, drew the best players from around the region, including Navy men stationed here. Plus, unlike the Bulldogs, every Bomber had a few dollars find their way into his pocket every game.

``Plenty of our players could have played in the NFL but were not given the opportunity,'' says the Bombers coach, Joe Rose, 80, who started the team in 1942 and took it up and down the East coast for games, Rose himself playing the line both ways at 130 pounds. ``Nearly half of our boys could've played there.''

The NFL's color line barred them, however. That didn't keep the Bombers from being a big deal in Norfolk, particularly once a shoe salesman named Theodore ``Big Daddy'' Barber agreed to sponsor the team and outfit it in spanking new uniforms.

``We'd get 2,000 or 3,000 (fans) sometimes,'' says Raymond ``Biggie'' Jones, 73, the Bombers quarterback in the first Fish Bowl. ``That was all people had to go to.''

Speaking of events, every summer the surviving Bombers gather at Rose's Norfolk home for a fish fry. Meanwhile, the Austins regularly attend reunions of the Berkley neighborhood and visit with former teammates.

Today, though, thanks to the long-time Fish Bowl sponsorship of the Arabia Temple of Shriners, the Bulldogs and Bombers get to meet again on a football field. This time the beneficiaries are Children's Hospital for the King's Daughters, Norfolk Community Hospital and Norfolk State's Athletic Foundation.

But for the men who started it all, the Fish Bowl of their youth is still paying off. In pride. ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo

VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot

Joe Austin, left, and Joe Rose both played in the first Fish Bowl

game in 1947 at Norfolk's High Rock Park.

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