A Red Letter Day

Dave Camerer '37 went to a birthday party in February. A big one. They came from all over - Texas, New York, Iran - 131 guests, half of them former West Point and Dartmouth foot- ball players. Among the others were Bob Hope and Gerald Ford (he used to play football, too). Glenn Davis and Tom Hayes, players from the undefeated Army teams of World War II, spent two years gathering old Dartmouths and old Mules on the sly, to be at Gene Autry's hotel in Palm Springs, Cal., on February 15 to shout "Surprise! Happy birthday!" at their old coach. Red Blaik.

Earl Henry Blaik, unbowed by his fourscore years, stood up, ramrod straight as ever, and acknowledged the tribute: "I am honored, yes. Humbled, perhaps."

For those who don't remember, and those who may not yet know. Red Blaik was the head of Dartmouth's first non-alumni coaching staff. He came to Dartmouth in 1933 from West Point, and in the seven years he was here produced a record of 45 victories, 5 ties, and 14 defeats. "Our major problem at Dartmouth," Red recalls in his book, You Have to Pay thePrice, "was to replace the spirit of good fellowship, which is antithetical to successful football, with the Spartanism that is indispensable.... The successful coach is the one who can sell the Spartan approach, the one who is able to get a willing acceptance from his men that victory or success demands a special price."

He got that acceptance, if the recollections of quarterback Eddie Chamberlain '36 are any indication. "The Blaik staff rarely yelled at the players," Chamberlain wrote in 1973. "The strongest epithet I ever heard Blaik use, on or off the field, was an occasional 'Jesus Katy.' They carefully explained every step we should take on every play and why.before we did it. If you missed.a block or tackle, they put an arm around your shoulder and told you why you had missed and how you could get it right the next time.

"One thing, though. There always was a next time, and a next and a next and a next until you got it right. Blaik never moved his team to more complicated plays until, within the capacities of the players, it had mastered the bread and butter movements.... Blaik believed there was only one way to do anything: the right way. He insisted on it. His practices were highly structured with daily schedules posted in advance. Everyone knew exactly what he was going to be doing at every minute during practice. This is S.O.P. today, but was new then, at least at Dartmouth."

The party in Palm Springs was a time for reminiscences, both jubilant and solemn. Red's friends and his boys talked with him and Merle about the 1935 Dartmouth game in which a drunk in a coonskin coat lurched onto the field and joined the Dartmouth line (Dave Camerer says the linemen never even saw the guy, so singlemindedly set were they on doing the job for Red Blaik). And they remembered too, the difficult days of the summer of 1951, when 90 cadets were dismissed from West Point for infractions of the honor code — to Red's great distress and against all his instincts about the characters of those 90 young men. Merle, Red's wife of more than 50 years, remembered es- pecially their time at Dartmouth. "David," she said to Camerer, "Our happiest years were spent in Hanover." Red's career took him back to West Point in 1941, though, and he remained there through 1958, when he retired from coaching.

It was a special party, reports Camerer. "If any single ingredient made this one different, it traced back to one man. Devotion to the Old Coach? Loyalty to the concept and shared experience of sportsmanship at its best? Youthful enthusiasm tempered by maturity? Yes. But above all, it was a breadbreaking by men of several generations who shared a loyalty that sprang from a common launching pad."

The Dartmouth contingent there were honored in return by a salute from Red Blaik. Who was in it? Jack Kenny, Pop Nairne, Ed Chamberlain, Jack Matzinger, and Bob Morris from '36, John Merrill and Dave Camerer from '37, Fred Davis '38, Bob MacLeod and Bob Gibson from '39, Whit Miller '40, and Lou Young '41.

Happy birthday. Red.