75th Year Captain

It's the 1954 Holy Cross game; Dartmouth trails 26 to 20; but with five seconds to go a Beagle-to-Turner pass ties it up and the gun blasts to end the game. On the bench, the quarterback who alternates with Beagle, gets up, hurries to the coach and asks to kick the extra point. "I know I can do it," he says. He pulls on his helmet (it looks large on top of his 160 pounds), runs in and, of course, makes the point and a Dartmouth victory, 27 to 26. He was neither surprised nor particularly pleased with himself. He said he could make it and he did - and that's Leo McKenna, captain of this year's Diamond Jubilee football team. Leo has the stuff that makes a fine quarterback and captain: competence under pressure, self-assurance and, pleasingly enough, modesty.

You may take it for granted that he was outstanding at Concord (Mass.) High School. His parents, two brothers and three sisters rooted for him in baseball, basketball and football. He was cocaptain of football in his senior year and helped to sustain Concord's 57-game winning streak.

Leo has been a member of Green Key and served on the Judiciary Committee of the Undergraduate Council, a position of high responsibility in Dartmouth student government. He is a DKE, a member of Casque and Gauntlet, and this year is the president of the Newman Club as well as a member of the Athletic Council.

The Scott Paper Company Award for an outstanding member of the junior class will help to see Leo through Tuck School. He also received the Milton Sims Kramer Award last year as the member of the three lower classes who did the most for Dartmouth.

And he is a worker: he averaged 30 to 35 hours per week as a waiter and shortorder cook during his first three years in Hanover. In the summer, he drove an oil truck or did construction work. But there will be no outside work for Leo this year. He has received an Aldebaran Scholarship which stipulates that he should not work but should be free to give his entire time to his studies and participation in college life.

Leo first dipped French fries from the deep fat at Lou's Restaurant on Main Street. Lou, a friend of many students, reports that he received a letter from Leo last summer telling of the Aldebaran Scholarship and offering, at the same time, to refuse the scholarship and continue working, if Lou wished. "He wanted to be sure that I didn't think he was letting me down," Lou says. "That's the kind of a fellow Leo is."

Unfortunately like the art of the Aztec gold beaters, Leo's culinary artistry may well be lost for all time because of the scholarship and the fact that his wife Mildred is an excellent cook and hasn't let him touch a skillet for months. But, although Mildred is a solo worker in the kitchen, she and Leo teamed up last summer to manage a sports clothes shop at Edgartown, Massachusetts. The McKennas had four people working for them and these helpers were useful in August when Leo was following football coach Bob Blackman's physical training schedule.

Every man on the squad received a weekly letter from Coach Blackman last summer. When the boys returned, they were ready to go and scrimmaged on the third day of practice. A week or so later movies were taken of an intersquad scrimmage at the stadium and within two days each player received a 22-page summary of the action. The pace has been fast as the new coaching staff tried to learn what it had to work with and the squad studied the "V" system Bob Blackman brought to Hanover. There is still too much uncertainty for the varsity captain to make any predictions about the forthcoming season. Some are talking about "spirit" (the old standby for football small talk), but indications are that the boys really have it. And there's a feeling of confidence - which, by no coincidence, is not unlike that which Leo brought with him into the Holy Cross game.

Leo McKenna '56