A Very OK Podcast
Episode 28: “Making History on the Gridiron”
September 19, 2023
Episode Transcript
(upbeat music playing)
Trait Thompson: Hello, and welcome to A Very OK Podcast. My name is Trait Thompson. I’m the executive director of the Oklahoma Historical Society. And here with me, as always, is Dr. Bob Blackburn. Bob, so great to see you again.
Dr. Bob Blackburn: Thank you, Trait. It’s good to be here, especially to talk about a subject that I’ve studied for years and years, and of course, I’ve always loved football. So, you’re combining the story of race in Oklahoma and its impact on our lives and sport. And I think that’s a good combination.
Thompson: Well, we’re talking about this because it’s September. It’s football season. And everybody in Oklahoma, you know, starts to be in mid-July. Everyone starts to look forward to football season, and college football especially, you know, all the way from the Sooners and the Cowboys, and then even to some of our other teams like the UCO Bronchos, and everybody just is getting in that mode for getting ready to cheer on their favorite team, getting ready for tailgates. So, I thought it would be great to talk a little football here today.
Blackburn: You know, it also brings back some painful memories for me because they were still doing two-a-day drills in Edmond, Oklahoma, when I played football in the mid-1960s, and two-a-days in August, and their idea then was not to give you water because that would slow you down. So, basically you were doing two-a-days in the heat of Oklahoma’s August weather, running drills and running and doing sprints at the end of each of those two-a-days, and you didn’t feel like eating between. I’m surprised a lot of us survived two-a-days in the 1960s.
Thompson: Now, Bob, were they still wearing leather helmets when you played?
Blackburn: Almost. (laughter)
I had one bar for a face mask, and of course, I was on the scrub team generally, but I just loved it. Even with the two-a-days and those memories, it just brings back some thoughts that make me smile.
Thompson: Now what position did you play?
Blackburn: Well, I was an end, but I was 135 pounds, even as a sophomore. And one of my fondest memories was I was on the scrub team playing linebacker against the first team. And Will Jones was our running back at that time. And Will had to be up 200 pounds, 190 at least, and strong, and I’ll never forget the kind of the practice team’s line was just split, and here comes Will. So I’m looking right at Will’s eyes. And so, I thought, well, I’m going to run as fast as I can and hopefully hit him the right place. So I was running full speed. He was running full speed, and he hit me and basically I did a backflip. But what hurt more than that, the coach says, dang it, Will, you’re not going to be able to do that in a real ball game.
(laughter)
Blackburn: Gotta make a move! I thought, well, okay, I can get by that. And I tried.
Thompson: Well, that’s great. I did not play football in school. I was tall, and I was, you know, if I turned sideways, you couldn’t see me. I was pretty skinny. But I know my friends today look at me, and you don’t believe it, but I actually was pretty skinny, and I just felt like that I would get beat up pretty bad if I was going to play on the football team. My brother played football, and he played offensive lineman, and then he played linebacker. And to this day, we still have to, every now and then, we have to watch the video of him in high school of when he got through the line, and he stripped the ball and ran all the way back for a touchdown. And so, every now and then, we have to relive those memories. He actually walked on to Texas A&M his freshman year and made the made the practice squad, which he always said that, you know, you ask him was like, well what was it like being on the practice squad? And if you remember the Dallas Cowboys defensive player Dat Nguyen. Well, he was on the Aggies, and he said he was Dat Nguyen’s tackling dummy for most of that year.
(laughter)
Thompson: But it’s great to be talking about football. It’s great to be in that season again. But we always love to talk a little movies and television. And do you have any favorite football movies or TV shows?
Blackburn: Oh, I do, of course, one of the most touching movies, Rudy, about an underdog kid in high school. I think I identified with him because I was the undersized. Although Rudy had talent, I didn’t, but Rudy played hard. He had that spirit and just dreamed of playing for Notre Dame and worked his way through junior college, lived kind of a rugged life to get there and finally got in one last game and just a touching movie about football and the spirit of competition and then willing something and trying to overcome your own limitations.
Thompson: Yeah, basically he grew, his teammates grew so fond of him that they pretty much demanded that he get to get into a game before he graduated.
Blackburn: Yeah. So you occasionally, I want to go, “Rudy, Rudy, Rudy.” But I think more applicable to our theme today in race and football, Any Given Sunday, which came out in 1999, and one of Jamie Foxx’s early roles as this young quarterback. And young people today look around, and they see a lot of African American quarterbacks, very common; OU, OSU, all the pro teams. And so, it doesn’t seem that odd to the current generation, but in the ’90s, there were still very few Black quarterbacks in college or the pros. And here comes this movie where there’s a young Black quarterback who had an injury. And this old grizzled coach, Al Pacino, has control and is losing control and losing touch with the game. But it’s about their relationship. It’s about Jamie Foxx’s ability and a changing game at the time. And it’s, Barry Switzer is one of the performers in that movie.
Thompson: I didn’t remember that.
Blackburn: One of his four cinematic starring roles, and he was really good as one of the announcers and in some of the football games. But it’s just a great movie. And again, it captures that spirit of competition and and teamwork, working together for a common cause. And, you know, we all look for a leader, and Al Pacino was that leader at the time, and the players responded. And Jamie Foxx finally responds, even though it’s a rough relationship. But they finally figured out we are on the same team. Let’s walk into the future together. And I always have liked that story.
Thompson: Well, there’s so many good football movies and TV shows that we, you know, we could spend the next hour talking about them for sure, but there’s a few that I love. I love the Friday Night Lights television show where you had Coach Taylor and the big, it was about high school football in Texas. And the big mantra, their thing they chant before they go out on the field is “clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” And then they charge out on the field and they go play. But you had some great characters that were developed in that TV show, Matt Saracen and Jason Street and Tim Riggins and, all of those folks. So that was, I watched all of those episodes when that show was on, kind of in the, you know, 2007, 2008, 2009 time period, some time in there.
I grew up, I loved the movie Necessary Roughness, and this is more of a football comedy, but it had Scott Bakula in it, and I’m a big Quantum Leap fan. So I loved Scott Bakula, but he plays an aged, he’s about 35 years old, but he still has a year of eligibility left, and the Texas State football team basically got the death penalty because of violations, and so all of their players transfer out. And so they’re trying to go build back a team again. Hector Elizondo plays the coach, and they bring this coach in because he’s like a strict rule-follower. They call him Ed “Straight Arrow” Gennero. And so, and he goes and recruits Scott Bakula who had some success as a college quarterback back in the day, and he’s this fish out of water coming as a 35-year-old to enroll in college again. Sinbad’s in the movie. Kathy Ireland plays the kicker. You know, back in those days, you know, I was a fan of Kathy Ireland for obvious reasons. And, so it was a funny movie. It was a good movie. One of the lines I think of from time to time is Rob Schneider played the football announcer, and when there is a fumble, he would say, "fumble, fumbalaya, fumbilina.” (laughing)
So, another great football movie, I actually rewatched this one this weekend in preparation for getting ready for this. Remember the Titans, great movie with Denzel Washington, and it tells the story of the T. C. Williams High School football team in 1971. Alexandria, Virginia, had been going through some racial tension, and the football team integrated. And then it’s all of the struggles for the players to understand each other, to identify with each other in a very charged atmosphere. And then, of course, it’s a Disney movie. So, over time, they all develop bonds with each other, and then they end up winning the championship that year, and they had an amazing run. They beat, they really destroyed all of their opponents pretty well. And, so, that was a good movie.
And then another one of my favorites was The Junction Boys, and that was a movie that came out in 2002 where it chronicles Bear Bryant’s first season as the head coach at Texas A&M, and he takes, you know, he he thinks his team is soft, so he takes them to Junction in August, July and August. And it is just hot and dry, and they’re out in the middle of nowhere. And they’re going through all of these hard and terrible drills, and that was back in the day, like you said, no water. You’re weak if you if you have water. Of course, the thinking on that has completely changed now. But it bonds those guys together and they go on, they are 1–9 in 1954, which was Bear Bryant’s only losing season in his entire 38-year career. And then he goes on to success at A&M before he goes, of course, to the University of Alabama and becomes a college football legend. So and then, going way back, Knute Rockne, All American, 1940 movie. And that one is really more famous for a line that Ronald Reagan has, and “win one for the Gipper.” And so, Ronald Reagan even used that in his political career and when he was president. So, if you ever wonder where that line comes from, it comes from the movie Knute Rockne, All American from 1940.
Blackburn: Well, another famous line from movies. It’s not a football movie, but it has football scenes in it, but Forrest Gump. And Bear Bryant, what reminded me of the story, is Bear Bryant recruits Forrest, who, he’ll stand there just kind of looking at the stars. They hand the football, and they say, “Run, Forrest, Run!”
Thompson: Yeah.
Blackburn: He just runs and runs through everybody, all-American. And of course, that’s one of the darling movies of all time, and my wife’s favorite movie of all time. But that’s a good scene with Bear Bryant saying, who is that kid running?
(laughter)
Thompson: Yeah, that’s a great movie too, and those are some great scenes as well. So, lots of great football, We Are Marshall, The Waterboy, Jerry Maguire, The Program, all kinds of great, Varsity Blues. So, we could talk football movies forever and ever.
But I want to transition into our topic that we’re going to talk about today. And this was something that I did not know about until the principal of Frederick High School, Frederick, which is in southwest Oklahoma, Randy Biggs, contacted me. And he sent me, it’s called a sizzle reel. It’s about a six- or seven-minute video that’s portraying a documentary that they wanted to do on the 1956 Frederick Bombers football team. And the reason that team is special is because they were the first integrated football team in the US to win a state championship. It’s a story that’s gone on under the radar. I really didn’t know much about it. I watched that sizzle reel, and it has several of the players who are being interviewed about that season and about their coach. And so, I really got intrigued about this and started doing some more research. And I thought, I really want to have an episode of our podcast to talk about this, because I think this is a story that not too many people know much about.
Blackburn: Yeah, segregation, and to really put it into context, even in the 1950s and the story of segregation, you have to go back almost a hundred years to really understand segregation. And of course, originally with slavery and in the nation, it was forced segregation because there was a certain group of people who were actually owned as property: chattel slavery. And then after the Civil War, even though times were changed, there was no more slavery. You still had de facto segregation. So, in the South generally, the African Americans would live in a section that was kind of delegated to them, generally shacks and in a new form of slavery, which would have been sharecropping and tenant farming. They could not break the cycle of poverty. So you had de facto segregation.
But even in the North, in cities like New York City, Harlem, in a city where there was no slavery, there was no tradition of slavery there, but yet still you had de facto segregation, which was pretty much the rule across the land. And as Reconstruction ends formally in 1876, when Ulysses S. Grant leaves the presidency, and he had been protecting African Americans in the South. Basically, the federal government says, we’re hands off. We’re going to leave that up to the states; states’ rights. And so, at that point, it became really an issue at the state level. But on the national level and kind of this overall blanket of what is the law, not just de facto, what was happening, you know, in a neighborhood based on tradition and culture, but the law of the land. The Supreme Court in 1896 says we will allow separate but equal in the land as constitutional, and so it was a case that went before the Supreme Court. Supreme Court said segregation is a legal concept that can be enforced, and it was enforced. Now you also had the non-traditional means of enforcement, such as lynching and terrorism, beatings. But then you get to the law of the land.
The US Supreme Court says, yes, you can segregate a community based on the pigment of their skin. So, as Oklahoma is developing, we had slavery here. We had self-segregation when the African Americans, the former slaves and their children, the Freedmen, selected their own allotments. Generally, they selected their allotments near family members, as we all tend to do. That’s our first nature—family first. And so you get communities in the all-Black communities where it’s almost self-segregation. Well for the for the protection of our people, of self-improvement, we’re going to go to an All-Black town. Many people did that at the time. And so, as you roll into statehood and the Constitutional Convention, President Theodore Roosevelt says, you are not going to put legal segregation into your constitution, right?
Thompson: Otherwise, they would have done it. They would have put segregation into the constitution.
Blackburn: And of all of those white men come into the Con Con and Guthrie in 1906, that would have been what they would have expected. They came from a de facto segregated community where it was just common practice. I don’t even know that people then would have thought about it in terms of the legal system. It was just the way it was, and people were not going to violate those traditions. But, when the first legislature meets, they file Senate Bill Number One. It is a law to segregate.
Thompson: Segregates train cars.
Blackburn: Train cars. And then, of course, it expands beyond that when they create the higher education system. It is a segregated system. An African American cannot attend, by law, one of the all-white colleges. And so OU, A&M, Northwestern, the old Normal Teachers College we now know as UCO, could not accept an African American, even in the 1950s. And so Langston was the college for African Americans. So, it was a segregated higher education system. Each school district at the common school level had their segregated school districts. Here in Oklahoma City, it would have been Douglass. In Tulsa, Booker T. Washington. And so, people just accepted that as a way of life. That’s the way it was in Oklahoma, as it was in much of America into the 1940s and 1950s.
Thompson: Living in Edmond and growing up in Edmond, and we all know Edmond was a “sundown town.” Do you remember colored and white and the segregation of different facilities?
Blackburn: I don’t remember that too well because we did not have a Black family in Edmond.
Thompson: Okay.
Blackburn: I left Edmond in 1967. It was a town of about 7,000 people. Not much larger than the town we’re going to talk about here in a minute—Frederick. And so it was really a small town, but it was an all-white town. We had no African American students in the school system. There was no African American school in Edmond. And even when I transferred my last two years of high school to Putnam City, we had no Black students in Putnam City. And it was just a different climate. And even as late as 1969, most of the Oklahoma City Public Schools system was still a segregated system, even when the courts had become involved. Really, until you get busing and the Finger Plan and some judicial decisions there in the late ’60s, early ’70s, does that change.
So it’s hard for young people today, especially, whether you’re white or Black today, to remember those days. I start a lot of speeches with young people. I’ll say, how many of you people today were denied service in a McDonald’s because of the pigment of your skin. And they just look at me like, what? I say, your grandparents faced that very tradition, that law, and they were denied service. They had to go to the back of the store to pick up a sack lunch if they wanted to eat out of an all-white restaurant. In a courthouse, it would be a “colored” water fountain and a “white” water fountain. And that was just the way it was. People expected that that’s the way people would behave, and it would be that way forever. But of course, fortunately for us today, times have changed and continue to change. And we’ve still got to keep our eyes on the ball because we still live in a society where race is a factor in our lives, and there are still limitations. There’s still injustice. There’s still discrimination. And as Americans, we can improve our community by being aware of that and doing something about it.
Thompson: Yeah. I, you know, our last podcast, we had the opportunity to interview Marilyn Luper Hildreth, which was so wonderful. I just had such a good time talking to her and hearing about her experiences. And then, about oh, a few days after that podcast came out, was the 65th anniversary of the 1958 Katz Drug Store sit-in. And like the Clara Luper Legacy Committee does every year, they always commemorate that. And so I took my daughter, and we went to the march. They started at Frontline Church, and they marched down the Kaiser’s diner because it kind of resembles one of those old lunch counters that they had back downtown that would have been at Katz. And I was asked afterwards, why did I bring my daughter to this? You know, somebody was interviewing me and I said, I want her to understand that what she takes for granted or what she sees as normal wasn’t always normal. In other words, I want her to know that there was a struggle and a fight to get to the place where a Black student and a white student could play together on a playground and nobody think anything about it.
And being there in that atmosphere and seeing all those original sit-in participants and seeing what they did, and what they had to sacrifice and what they had to go through, it’s just so inspirational to me. It moves me every time that I get a chance to be around a group of people that really did advance and move forward our society, and I was glad my daughter got to see that. And of course, she loved it because, before we started the march, we sang those freedom songs all together at Frontline Church. Marilyn and Joyce Henderson led us in those freedom songs, and she loved singing those. And it was a really great moment for us, and I was glad we got to be a part of it.
Blackburn: Well, she’ll remember the rest of her life. So, good parent doing that with her.
Thompson: Well, thank you. I’d like to hope that I hit as much as I miss on parenting. Sometimes, you never know.
Blackburn: If we can bat .330, you know, we’re in the major leagues as dads.
Thompson: Yeah, exactly. But I want to talk about Brown v. Board of Education and then what it leads to in Oklahoma as we’re talking about desegregation. And we’re getting into the 1956 Frederick Bombers integration. May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court rules that separating children in public schools on the basis of race is unconstitutional, and it signals the end of legal segregation in schools based on race. And it really you know, you talked about Plessy v. Ferguson, it erases that for all intents and purposes, and then in 1955, they have the Supreme Court case, Brown II, basically that says, that states have to begin desegregating schools with all deliberate speed. And that really sets us on a timeline.
In 1954, there’s a governor’s race in Oklahoma, and the man who eventually wins that governor’s race is a man named Raymond Gary. And Raymond Gary— which I think is pretty bold on his part to do—Raymond Gary says Brown v. Board is the law of the land. He says, I’m not going to fight against it. I’m not going to, you know—in many states, and we all know the stories and we’ve seen the videos— you know, there were, you know, troops that had to escort kids into schools, and there were riots, and there were all kinds of things. Raymond Gary set the tone and said, we’re not doing that here in Oklahoma. And he said, we’re going to take all the measures we can to integrate, and I’m sure that that cost him some votes. He still ended up winning the election. But I think that’s pretty incredible.
Blackburn: Well, and one reason that times are different now than they were then, is that school districts were much more independent in the 1950s. Today, we see the national government, the federal government being involved with education because of all the funding, so they can pass down standards and testing and all that that’s come in from the national level— unheard of in the 1950s and ’60s. I never took a test—a state or national test—when I was in school. Graduated in 1969 from common ed, and school districts were pretty well isolated. They had their own board of education. The state might set standards. There were still a lot of dependent schools and counties. County superintendents were still around, but largely the state department of education was there for support rather than leadership or direction. And so, it happened differently in each school district around the state.
I had an uncle, E. B. Turley, we call him Uncle Buddy. He started in Pocasset, went to Marlow, finished in Chickasha. But he was the superintendent who helped guide the town of Chickasha, which had a a large African American population because of the railroad center there, go through those years. And years later, I gave a speech in Chickasha one time, and these elderly Black ladies came up, and after I’d mentioned my uncle was E. B. Turley, they said, well, almost with a tear in their eye, said, we loved your uncle because he gave us a chance to teach. In some districts, they fired all of the Black teachers when they finally desegregated. Uncle Buddy chose the best teachers he had, and these two ladies were two of them. And they gave me a big old hugs, just meant for my uncle, who was long gone at that time.
But every school district had a different story. Tulsa, Oklahoma City, different stories. So all these towns, and especially in southern Oklahoma, the story would have been much different because typically, and there are many exceptions, but generally the northern counties were settled from northern states with northern traditions. My wife from Woodward County, Cherokee Outlet traditions, came in from New England to the Ohio River Valley to Missouri to Kansas, and then Oklahoma. Well, in our southern counties, typically it came in from Mississippi and Alabama and Texas,
Thompson: Little Dixie.
Blackburn: Little Dixie, and then worked its way up. Here in Oklahoma City, it was split, of course, but people like Charlie Colcord came from Kentucky, strict segregationist. His daddy fought for the Confederacy, and he was one of the leaders in Oklahoma City. So that would have been typical. But you get into these little small towns, especially along the Red River and places like Old Greer County, which is really a Texas county, till the US Supreme Court said in 1896, no, no, that’s part of Oklahoma. So they take all these Texans and just say, no, no, now you’re Oklahomans. And it was very much a southern culture—resisting desegregation in their hearts as well as their minds, in the courts, trying to find ways around it. And that was pretty much the situation in Oklahoma, and especially in southern Oklahoma.
And Raymond Gary being from Madill, a very Southern cotton culture community where slavery had existed, before the Civil War, for him to come out and say, no, we are going to tackle this and we’re going to do our best. It’s pretty amazing. And you get these stories throughout the state of people saying, I’m going to embrace desegregation and do something about it.
Thompson: Yeah. Well, Governor Gary, what he recognized was we had a different way of funding Black schools versus white schools. And he said, if we’re going to make it, we’re going to have to put everything on an equal playing field insofar as funding. So white schools, they levied taxes on a district basis, with the state supplementing local collections. For Black schools, they allotted a four-mill countywide levy, which was then supplemented by the state.
So, he puts forth a constitutional amendment in 1955, and the constitutional amendment, of course—constitutional amendment— that means that the people have to vote on it. It removesd separate financing of schools. It transferred the existing county levies for Black schools to the local districts. It authorized up to ten mills for school support. It raised the debt limits for construction and provided for a $15 million bond issue for capital improvements at state colleges and mental hospitals. So this was the package that people would vote on. And the amendment’s failure would have cost the state millions of dollars in local revenue and in federal aid, and so this was a big deal for Oklahoma, and it was not an assured success. But thankfully, Governor Gary was able to make the case. And the amendment was approved by voters in April in 1955 by a 3–1 majority. And so, that sets us on, so, you know, Oklahoma, we didn’t have the riots that you see, in the 1950s and ’60s over school desegregation that you see in places like Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi, and I think it’s largely because of Governor Gary’s leadership. In the first year, 273 schools desegregated, including Oklahoma City and Tulsa, that voluntarily dropped their racial barriers. And so, what he did worked, and we I think we all owe him a pretty good debt of gratitude for what he did to be proactive in that situation.
Blackburn: He was, and he would run for re-election later. He could not succeed himself at that time; governors could only run for one term in Oklahoma under the constitution. Later, that was changed during the Bartlett administration. And the governor had run again unsuccessfully, but he had a good reputation. I think today in the history books, he still is treated fairly.
Thompson: Yeah. He said, he has a quote, he said, “I grew up in Little Dixie, but as an active Baptist and a believer in scriptures, I have never understood how persons can call themselves Christians and believe that God made them superior because they were born with white skin.”
Blackburn: Strong statements.
Thompson: Seems like a good man, and that sets the stage. So, when we’re talking about the integration of schools starting in 1955, that amendment passes. Well, in 1956, you see quite a few football teams across the state that begin to integrate, and Frederick was one of those schools that did that. And so that is all set in the stage. So talking about the 1956 Frederick Bombers, the team had, they were coached by Coach Dean Wild, who had previously coached at Watonga, and he’d led Watonga to a state championship, and this is Class B. So these are smaller schools, but the team had 12 Black kids and 27 white kids. So the two schools that were integrated were Boyd High School, which was the all-Black school, and then Frederick High School, which was the all-white school. And Frederick was a segregated town, but Dean Wild was determined that he was going to compete. He was determined that the best players, albeit whether you’re Black or white, are going to be the ones to play on the football team.
I have a quote by Homer Ryan, who was a friend of Coach Wild who said “coach was tough as a junkyard dog.” So, I don’t think he was a man that anybody wanted to trifle with as far as, you know, him being a successful coach, and he had already come in with a good record. So, I think that there was some trust there over what he wanted to do. Coach Wild was a tough coach. In one practice, he told a player he was going to give him the opportunity to, quote, “tear me up as rough as you can.” And when the ball was hiked, the coach jumped in the air and went over the student, and he did this to demonstrate the importance of not losing your cool and keeping your composure during the game. So, he sounds like someone who was really smart, who really knew how to get the best out of his players, and all the best coaches know how to do that. So, he also, you know, if the team was playing away, and the team wouldn’t be served because of they had Black players on the team, then everybody came home hungry. He was not going to let some people eat and other players not eat because of the color of their skin.
Blackburn: You know, I can see that really inspiring his students, both white and Black at the time, because we’re all looking for leaders who do the right things in the right situation. And the minute you start seeing leaders or adults compromise or make exceptions, you start losing that confidence. And on a football team where you have to play, that’s a team sport. And I think that’s why Americans love football so much. It is a team sport with different skill sets and different ways. But if they don’t play together, they’re not going to win. And it sounds like he was one of those leaders who could instill confidence in everyone that he believed a certain way, and he was going to live that, and that he expected everyone else to follow those same standards.
Thompson: And what was really great, and especially in watching this sizzle reel video, is you could tell that the Black players and the white players really developed a love for each other and a camaraderie over the years, over the time of being on this team. And in fact, I found an article by Berry Tramel of The Oklahoman, although if you follow the papers, he’s not with The Oklahoman anymore. He’s gone to an internet startup. But Lloyd Logan, who was one of the star halfbacks on the team, he said, “we went over there to Frederick High School with the attitude that we didn’t want to be there, but we made friends.” And I think that’s what led to their success and going into the state championship game, they won every single game that year. Going into the state championship game, they had outscored their opponents 520–26. I mean, that is good football team. That is offensive domination. That is defensive domination. You don’t really have a weakness. If you allow your opposing teams to score only 26 points the entire year, you’ve got a pretty darn good defense.
Blackburn: And that was probably in the end with the scrubs in with a lead of 50-to-nothing.
Thompson: Yeah, that’s exactly it. And so that speaks to the ability of coach and the ability of those players to play together. So, he got to Frederick in 1955. He won 31 games in his first three seasons as coach of the Frederick Bombers. And when they played Okmulgee Dunbar, which was an all-Black school in Okmulgee, they beat him 33–0. So, it’s just, one of the all-time great high school football teams in Oklahoma history. And, by all accounts, if you listen to these interviews with the players, it was one of those, teams where they gelled incredibly well. They grew to really support each other and appreciate each other, and they had the success to prove it, and they made history! They made history as the first integrated team to win a state championship.
Blackburn: You know, just one quick observation there, too, is that I had the privilege of working in Frederick several years ago, about 20 years ago, when Lloyd Benson was speaker of the House. We had a project that had the Historical Society was involved. And so I spent quite a bit of time there. And I’ll never forget, Lloyd Benson was the announcer for the football games. So, he would be up there in the announcer’s booth and he would, you know, on the radio he was an attorney and, of course, speaker of the House. But he loved football. And he asked me to come to his house on a Friday evening and before games he would invite—may have been even lunch— now that I think about it. But he would have the players come into his house and he and Judy, great woman who, leader in the Methodist church, would have the team members come in and they would serve them a meal. and I’ll never forget there were white and Black players there that night, and no sense of color from anybody, the Black or white people attending there. And I observed this small-town community, where typically a lot of time racism has kind of survived. But in this particular setting, nothing like that. And I was moved by that spirit of support and camaraderie. So whatever was happening there in the 1950s would survive in Frederick, the community, and the football team.
Thompson: Yeah. Well, I grew up in a small town, and hearing that makes me miss that experience of being in a small town. Of course, I love being here. And, you know, you can’t do this job from a small town far away. But there is something about a small town, you know, it’s very, very difficult. In some cases, it’s difficult to hate people when they’re the people that you see every day on the street, and you’re interacting with them, and you just can’t get away from them. So you might as well just love everybody, right?
Blackburn: Right.
Thompson: So this team, 1956 Frederick Bombers, they were inducted into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame as a team in 2007. And I’d like to spend some time. We have a great guest with us today, and I’d like to talk to Danny Griffin, who was a running back on that 1956 team. He lives down in Texas now, and he’s graciously agreed to be with us today. Well, I am really proud to welcome into our podcast Danny Griffin. Danny was a running back for the 1956 Frederick High School Bombers football team. He was named to the all-area Southern Oklahoma team, as a result of his role there. And, Danny, welcome in to our podcast.
Danny Griffin: Thank you. I’m very happy to talk to you guys.
Thompson: Well, we’re happy to have you on. And of course, we’re talking about the 1956 Frederick Bombers, because you all were the first integrated football team in the nation to win a state championship game, and I want to go back. I’d like to learn a little bit about your history. What was your time like growing up in Frederick, Oklahoma?
Griffin: Well, it couldn’t have been more ideal. And let me apologize for my scratchy voice. It’s an allergy thing. Normally, I could talk. Okay. Anyway, my family moved there after World War II, about 1945 in September. I started school that next September and went all 12 grades in the Frederick school system. I didn’t start playing football till I was in junior high, and I had a mother who was overprotective. She didn’t want me to get hurt, but by the time I got to be 14, I was ready for junior high football, and we had an undefeated season under coach Bob Steed. And we had seven games, I think, we won in a row. And so, even at the end of that football season, the high school boys were still playing. And so the coach put us in for a few plays, and the first thing I did was fumble.
(laughter)
Blackburn: Excuse me, this is Bob. Before we get into the football story too much, I would like you to describe Frederick. A lot of our listeners had probably never been to Frederick. It’s not on the road to anywhere anymore other than to Frederick.
Griffin: That’s right.
Blackburn: And describe kind of the town, the size of it, the layout, the main street, and then the two sections of town even.
Griffin: Okay. Frederick, when we moved there, had dirt roads. They finally graduated up to gravel and then finally asphalt later. But it was a town of about 6,000 to 6,500 in 1945.
Thompson: That’s bigger than I would have thought.
Griffin: Yeah, it had an air base, and it still has a hangar and a nice runway that they use. But it was a real happy Mayberry kind of community, real active churches, and lots of stuff for kids to do. Completely segregated. I need to add that. We had a town for African Americans and for Caucasians, and they didn’t mix much. They had a high school system. They had a high school principal that was well known, and they played their own football schedule. But anyway, Frederick, it was a cotton and wheat community. I worked in a grocery store from the time I was about 12 until I graduated from high school. And I don’t know how I found time to do that now because I was active in anything else that they had doing.
It was a very active, prosperous town. A lot of good things happening, and a lot of, like four or five pretty active car dealerships, probably eight grocery stores, some bigger than others. But anyway, it was a very prosperous town. And the First Baptist Church, the First Methodist Church, First Christian Church, First Presbyterian Church, a small Catholic church, is now the biggest church in town. But anyway, it was a wonderful place to grow up. Sunday afternoons piano recitals and vocal recitals. People were, we had a great fair every fall in September, and we had them in the two hangars that were still extant from World War II. I’m talking too much. Let me hush to let y’all ask me questions.
Thompson: No, the whole reason we had you on is to listen to you talk. This is great.
Blackburn: Good description.
Thompson: Can you tell me, you know, prior to the time where you all started playing football together, did you encounter Black people very much in your daily life?
Griffin: I don’t think I had almost any contact until I started working in the grocery store. And then I saw several families, the principal of the high school was a very well known Black man in town. Very dignified, sophisticated, well educated, and I got to know him when I was still in high school, and he had a tremendous influence on the boys I played football with later. It was, as I said, a pretty prosperous town. My mother worked in a ready-to-wear store, and the owner took his whole staff to Dallas to buy clothes. So, when the farmers got enough rain at the right time, the car dealership, the tractor dealership, and all the clothing stores did good business.
Thompson: Yeah. I’ll bet so. I grew up in a farming community myself, and there’s nothing so good as when farmers get a rain.
Griffin: Oh, yeah. They come into the store talking about their 30- and 40-bushel-an-acre wheat. And that was really something, because a lot of times it was 15 and 20 acres, bushels to acres. Anyway, we had, the place where I wouldn’t trade my growing up years for anything.
Thompson: Now getting into 1956, going into that 1956 season, what year were you in school?
Griffin: I started in ’46, and I went straight through all 12 grades in Frederick school system. I was in Whittier, which with the south ward grade school, and then we had the central grade school after they built the new high school in ’51. My sister graduated in the first class of the ’51 class that used the new building. And you all would be interested to know that the Harlem Globetrotters came to Frederick and played in that gym.
Thompson: I’ll be darned.
Griffin: Yeah, I had that kind of clout, but we didn’t know we had it so well. We really didn’t. If I could’ve figured out how to stay in Frederick, I probably would have lived there my whole life. But being a pastor, I moved around a lot.
Thompson: And what led to the team being integrated in 1956?
Griffin: That’s a great question. My coach, Dean Wild, he had a fame all his own, and when he came to, I think in ’55, he, did a little study. He read something that said, if your a Black team across town does not have equal equipment, equal opportunities, then you can integrate the team. And he did it almost before the superintendent knew he was doing it.
Thompson: Wow.
Griffin: And he got us all over there that August in 1956. And we practiced as if we’d been doing that ever since we were in junior high, and we didn’t have any problems whatsoever. We never had a racial epithet thrown at anybody, and it was just a good place to grow up. And I played first string when I was a sophomore in 1955 and in ’56, we won the state championship my junior year, and then the next year was ’58, and we lost to Harding High School in the playoffs. Harding. Yeah, Harding High School, Oklahoma City.
Thompson: Now, Coach Wild, so, it was Boyd High School that was the all-Black school, and he brought everyone over. Was there any resistance from the all-Black school to come play with the white kids?
Griffin: I didn’t know it then, but later I would hear my teammates talk about those very things. And our quarterback, Weegie Williams, who was probably the best known of all our players and the most well-liked leader in our white high school, and Weegie told me that he had people—and Weegie’s father was not in his home. His mother and daddy was divorced. So, he didn’t grow up with a daddy. And so, I guess he was a little more vulnerable to what the men in his church would say to him. And so they said, you’re not going to go play with those Black kids, are you? Well, he said I sure am planning too. And he got that kind of comment from a few people, so there was a feeling in the community that they didn’t want this to happen.
Thompson: Yeah.
Griffin: But when we ended up winning every game, they loved it.
Thompson: Well yeah, I’m sure. Winning cures lots of ills. And watching the video clip that you and several of your teammates were on, and that’s, you know, the principal at Frederick High School sent me that video. Yeah. Randy did. And in that clip, Terry Bennett, one of your teammates, he said a lot of the businessmen in town didn’t want to support the team because of the integration. Do you recall that?
Griffin: I did not know it at the time. I really didn’t but I’m not surprised, because when I grew up in my high school years, we still had those signs in the courthouse. This was a “colored” drinking fountain or a “white” drinking fountain. And those didn’t disappear until probably the ’60s or ’70s. But, yeah, I didn’t realize how prejudiced our town was.
Thompson: Let’s talk about Coach Wild a little bit, because in doing some reading about him, he seems like a legend. And, you know, he, I see a another quote from Terry Bennett he said, “we’re going to eat as a team. We’re going to practice as a team. We’re going to go as a team. We’re going to come back as a team.” So, he really seemed to emphasize this atmosphere that there wasn’t going to be any Black or white on the team. It was going to be the best people were going to play. He was going to expect a lot out of you. Can you talk about him as a person and as a coach?
Griffin: Yes. I adored Coach Wild. There’s nothing I would not have tried to do if he had asked me to do it. We all felt that way about him. There was just something about him, he was just down-home, dirty socks and all, plain old guy, who grew up in Oklahoma and coached in Oklahoma, I guess, you know, he coached Darrell Royal over in Hollis.
Thompson: Yes, I did read that in my research. That’s pretty phenomenal. Darrell’s family tried to move to California, and Dean talked them into leaving him, Darrell, with them, his wife, Mildred, so they could take care of him and let him play football where he wanted to live in Hollis.
Thompson: Wow.
Griffin: When Coach Wild passed away, it fell to me to help with his funeral. And I called Darrell down in Austin, and I believe if he had not been so sick, he would have made it to the funeral. He really felt, as we all did, about Coach Wild. Coach Wild was just one of those guys, that even in his ’90s, he drove from Oklahoma City to Houston to see a particular offensive strategy in football that he’d never seen before.
Thompson: I’ll be darned.
Griffin: He said, his wife said, you’re not going to drive to Houston, are you? He said, just watch me.
(laughter)
Thompson: He sounds like a guy I would love to get to know.
Griffin: Oh, you would have. He lived to be 95, and his funeral was well-attended. And I can always go ahead and stick this in, in that backfield in which I played, the backfield that won state championship, I was the fullback. Weegie Williams was the quarterback. Left halfback was Danny Miller, and right halfback was Lloyd Logan. Weegie became a Methodist preacher. I became a Baptist preacher. Logan became another Baptist preacher and pastored in Frederick most of his life. Danny Miller didn’t go to church much, but after we all got old and came back together, he became a Christian and made his profession of faith in my church in Lancaster, Texas, because Lloyd had been there preaching that day.
Thompson: That’s a great story.
Griffin: The bomber revival! I have it pictured. Now, in the last year, Lloyd has died, and Danny Miller has died. I’m the only one left!
Thompson: Well, as I was researching for this story, I kept coming across obituaries, and it was very sad.
Griffin: Yeah, it was. We stayed together a long time, and we’d love to be together, but it’s not happening now. Jerry Hidlebaugh is on your list. I don’t know if you have time to call him for your program or not, but he’s a retired dentist in Alvarado, and I see him every week, and he knows that I’m going to be on with you today. He could tell you some things where he was on that that video. He was sitting by me on that video. Dr. Jerry Hidlebaugh.
Thompson: That’s right. That’s right. Going back to Coach Wild, Jim Varner said, “He wasn’t interested in anything but letting the best players play regardless of color, religion, or anything.” And was that your experience?
Griffin: Yes. It was even more wonderful than that. When we played out of town; let’s say we played in Clinton, Oklahoma, and after the game, if he couldn’t find a restaurant in Clinton that would feed all of us, all of us, he’d just put us back on the bus and we’d go home hungry. But he just wouldn’t let us be broken up into races. And this was in ’56, you all. We just barely knew how to spell civil rights back then.
Thompson: Well, just two years after Brown v. Board of Education that ordered the integration of the schools.
Griffin: Exactly, 1954. Yeah, ’54.
Thompson: I found this in an article. It said in 10 years in coaching at Frederick, Wild said he never had a football banquet. He said, “They didn’t want those white girls sitting with the Blacks. I don’t know whether you want to write that, but that’s the way it is.”
Griffin: Yeah, that was the way it was. See, we who were teenagers at the time, I bless our pointy little heads. We didn’t know what was going on. We didn’t know when we got through what we had done in integrating the team. Only the football team got integrated, that and the track team. The track team was hardly a feat. It was just who showed up. And they didn’t put basketball together because there wouldn’t have been any white boys playing because those Black kids could really play basketball even back then.
Thompson: Yeah.
Blackburn: Danny, this is this is Bob. Describe some of the players who came from the all-Black school and some of the positions they played, their skill sets, maybe an experience or you watching them in a game where you think, my goodness, how did they do that?
Griffin: Okay, I’ll give you a perfect example. I thought his name was Danny Miller, but he was, he preferred Daniel Miller, and he was the left halfback. And we played the split-T offense, and we would take the snap and turn and hand it to Danny Miller coming around right end. And if he could cut the corner, that was the score because nobody could catch. Danny Miller was the fastest kid that I had ever seen on a high school team, and he was unbelievably fast. He was built like a racehorse. He had big thighs, small hips, and just fast. And if he ever got one step, he was gone. And we scored the first time we had the ball just about every night with that play. He went on and played a little college ball. And I just told you, I had the privilege of doing his funeral not too long ago. And we stayed good friends our entire lives.
Now, another guy was Pete Clewis. Pete Clewis was about 6’4” or 6’5”. I’m not real sure how old he was. Don’t press me on that. But he was another guy who, if we needed five yards for first down, Weegie would call the play where he just takes the snap, stands up, and throws it to Pete on the right end. Every time we played that play, we made five yards at least. Many times more than that. He didn’t live as long as most of us did, but he was a terrific athlete, and he he could barely speak understandable English, but we all loved him.
And when we’d get on the bus to go home after a far away, away game, we’d sing together. Clarence Byrd was our songster, and he knew about a dozen songs by heart, and he’d start one and we follow him, sing along. And by the time we got home, we were, our heads were on each other’s shoulders, leaning across the aisle, sound asleep, almost in each other’s arms. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t that cozy, but we didn’t have any trouble. I’d like to believe it was because so many of the team were Christians, and had gone to church enough to know that’s not right to show prejudice to your brother.
Thompson: You all developed a deep bond, didn’t you?
Griffin: Yeah, we really did, and we came back together. We won the state championship in ’56, then we came back together in ’76, and we met at Bomber Stadium on the Friday night homecoming. Had a little picture and a banquet and just enjoyed telling stories. Dean Wild was always there, and the other coach was Jack Norton. I don’t know if Jack came to all of those or not, but we had 20 to 25 people show up to those dinners, and they really loved each other. We really never, never had any problem. When I would go home in my 50s and 60s, I’d go to Lloyd’s church, and that’s why we stayed in touch enough that he had a revival meeting in my church. This was about two years ago.
Thompson: And this was Methodists and Baptists getting together?
Griffin: Well no, he was a Baptist, but he was a Black Baptist.
Thompson: Okay, okay. Well, I was going to say Methodist and Baptist is almost the you know, it’s almost the same as opposite races is getting together.
(laughing)
Griffin: That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. But we had another young man named Hollis Jones who was almost as fast as Danny Miller. And when he ran, it looked like a gazelle going across the country. Another guy was a really good back— didn’t get to play that much—Jim Stevenson. I’m looking at the annual and with their pictures up here. L. C. Perry was the scariest lineman I ever saw on anybody’s team. I was glad I didn’t have to play against L. C. Perry. I shouldn’t say this, but our opponents that year made 20 points against us, or 26 that year, and we had as many as 70 points in one game, 66 and another 53, 59, and only 26 points were scored against us. And it was basically because of those Black kids. They were so good and so tough.
Thompson: Well, Danny, since you mentioned it, your 1956 Frederick Bombers went 14–0, and you won your games by a combined score. Get this, Bob, 553–26.
Griffin: Yeah, yeah.
Thompson: You guys were, you were good. You were good.
Griffin: Yeah. I said don’t press me on the birthdates. The Black school, Boyd High won the state championship the year before when they were just playing other Black schools, And that’s when Dean brought them over to play with us, and then we didn’t lose any games. He knew what he was doing.
Thompson: He certainly did. Yeah. He said, I found one article where he said, I think, they were asking him compare yourself to the—Dean Wild won the 1948 Watonga, the state championship with Watonga, and he said they asked him to compare that. And he said, “I think we’re better. We’re much deeper and faster than any club I’ve ever had. We have more spirit, and the kids are playing together nicely. I believe this is the best club I ever coached.”
Griffin: Oh, I hadn’t heard that. Thank you for doing your research. I love that. That was in an article from the Oklahoma City Times on October the 9, 1956.
Griffin: Oh man, that’s right back to when it happened. Yeah.
Thompson: Exactly.
Griffin: Another of the Black players that was awfully good was Charles Shaw. I think he played tackle. But he was my lifelong friend. And every time I’d go home and preach in my home church, he’d come and sit on the second row with my wife, but we really, really did bond. There was one Jewish boy on the team, named Dennis Feinberg, but he never played a down, I don’t think, of any competitive game, but he was there at every practice, and he loved to be on the team, and we all loved him. And we had to go to his funeral about two years ago. A lot of us are gone. I look at these pictures. And I’m seeing Billy Hoover is alive, lives in Weatherford, and a young man, I found his picture, who lives in Florida, is Donnie Thorn. Donnie was a tough little guard, a year older than I, but that’s, the rest of them are gone. Robert Lindley may still be alive in Oklahoma City. He had a sports restaurant there for many years during the ’70s. Robert Lindley.
Thompson: Danny, I’d like to give you a chance to brag on yourself a little bit. Can you talk about what were some of your bread-and-butter plays? And do you remember what your stats were— touchdowns and yards you gained in 1956?
Blackburn: And Danny, before you start that description, for a lot of our listeners who are not my age or older, they won’t know what the split-T is other than a restaurant in Oklahoma City.
(laughter)
Griffin: That’s right.
Blackburn: Can you describe that formation and kind of the strategies? I grew up running that in the single wing. But, describe as the split-T for everyone.
Griffin: The quarterback lines up behind the center, and he takes the snap just about all the time. Behind him, two steps is the fullback. On either side of the fullback would be the right halfback and the left halfback. And the quarterback had the option once he got the snap, going to his right or left and handing off a straight dive over the right or the left side of the line. And then if that, he could also keep the ball to himself, pitch it out to the right. The pitch-out guy could run or throw a pass, but it was a very good offense because it had so many varieties, things you could do. And I never did understand why they quit doing it.
Thompson: Well, it’s...
Griffin: Bud Wilkinson, I think, performed it at OU.
Thompson: Well, it’s the predecessor to some more modern offenses that we know. The wishbone and the veer and some of the spread offenses, because one of the one of the hallmarks of the split-T is it actually spread out the offensive line. So, it spread out the defense a little bit and gave the offense more opportunities to get into those gaps.
Blackburn: So, Danny, your role in that was a lot of times a blocking back as well. So, describe some of the plays in your year during that championship run.
Griffin: Well, that’s easy, see, because I only had one or two that were outstanding.
(laughter)
Griffin: Overall, my record held up pretty good to about ten yards a carry over that year when I was selected back of the year. But the play of my life, we got the ball on the two-yard line against Lawton High School, and Lawton was at least twice as big as Frederick, and they gave me the ball, and they cleared a hole for me. And I broke into the open at about the 20 and was able to keep my distance from them until I scored. Then I scored two other touchdowns that same night, and I kicked all three of the extra points. So I made all 21 points that we had that night. So that’s my high-water mark.
Blackburn: Good story.
Thompson: That’s great. Are there any other games from that undefeated season that really stick out in your head?
Griffin: Yeah, one of them does. I don’t remember for sure who it was that we were playing, but at the halftime it was 0–0, and we came to the halftime, the locker room. And Coach Wild said “fellas, we’re behind.” And we looked at him like he was crazy. We said if you count penetrations, they’re ahead of us. And so we really, that’s the first time I’d ever heard of penetrations. I didn’t know what that was.
Thompson: Yeah.
Griffin: So we went on and beat them. But I think it was like 13–7 or something like that. There was, I’m looking on this score thing, I don’t even see. That might have been the the year before that, because I don’t see that. Anyway, we were lucky. One little interesting thing was we went to Grandfield, and I don’t say this in any pejorative way about Grandfield. But Grandfield didn’t like the idea that Fredrick was playing with Black students, Black athletes. And so they were fussing and they were fussing, and Coach Wild put our first string in there, and we scored at will almost. And they were fussing and fussing. And then so he put in an all-Black team, and they scored at will. And then they put in an all-white team. And we still scored.
(laughter)
Griffin: So that finally shuts the Grandfield whiners up. But that’s just small town, you know, patriotism I guess.
Thompson: I love that.
Griffin: Yeah, I don’t remember, Weegie and I had one play that we liked to run, and it was a simple play. As fullback I waited one extra count, if the snap was on two, I waited until three, went through the line, and cut to my left, and Weegie threw me a pass. We never ran it if it didn’t work, and then I go back to bragging a little bit. Just for fun during my last, for my last year, my senior year, which would’ve been the next year. Coach Wild knew that I loved to stay at practice, practice field goals. And so he put me in twice in the last half of that particular game, and I kicked two field goals, and that was something you just didn’t do in high school then.
Thompson: Yeah. Can you talk a little... Go ahead, sir.
Griffin: I was just gonna tell you that later when I did some reading about Jim Thorpe, he could kick a field, kick a field goal from the 20 because the ball was not as—it was almost circular—you know, it was like kicking a basketball. But he was still awful good at it.
Blackburn: And Danny, one thing about you kicking field goals is that a lot of our, our younger listeners who watch the soccer-style kickers kick, and in your day, and even in my day in the ’60s, the the kickers came directly behind the ball, and kicked it with the toe rather than the foot.
Griffin: Right, I still do if I had to. But they swing their leg. If they’re right footed then they swing it from the right to the left. I don’t know how they ever hit a goal.
(laughter)
Blackburn: But they got a lot of speed with that foot. With you, it was really largely the mechanics of the thigh and the calf and the foot all working together.
Griffin: It’s harder really to kick straight than it is to swing your leg.
Blackburn: It is.
Griffin: But I never had to try to swing my leg.
Thompson: I was going to ask...
Griffin: I kicked off, and I punted on fourth down, and I did the extra point, which made it easy to score a lot. Nobody else on the team even tried to learn how to do it.
(laughter)
Thompson: I was going to ask about your memories from the title game. You guys played Okmulgee Dunbar. You beat them 33–0 at Capitol Hill Stadium. What do you remember about that game?
Griffin: Well, Okmulgee Dunbar was a Black school, and they got in a fight with our Black students, with our Black athletes about the third quarter. And here again, a lot of people would see this and say, well, you big coward, because I was 175 pounds and pretty fast. And when they started fighting each other, I ran off the field because I didn’t want to be in a fight, not because of football or sportsmanship, but because I was a Christian, and I didn’t believe I was supposed to fight with my teammates or my opponents. But we got in a big fight on that, but we were stomping them, and I don’t blame them for being upset about that. But it didn’t last very long.
Thompson: And you all went in. Okmulgee’s all total net offensive yards were less than ten. You guys rolled up 229 rushing yards and 96 passing yards in that game.
Griffin: My gosh, you’ve got more information than I do. I’m looking at the score 33–0, and I didn’t even remember it was nothing. But we were the luckiest kids. Growing up in the years that we grew up in the the happy, laid back ’50s. The war was over, the baby boom was on, and television had not killed church on Sunday night. So we went to church all day long and were happy to go, have someplace to go. And I went back to speak at the Chamber of Commerce banquet one year, and I said, and this is kind of smart-alecky, I guess, “Please don’t let Mayberry die” in my speech, because Frederick was my Mayberry.
Blackburn: You know, Danny, one of the things about life when you were growing up in Frederick, and a lot of our younger viewers don’t realize it, but that was the day before air conditioning and in the summertime. So, roughly from the 1st of April through the 1st of October, people were outside a lot, and they were on their front porch gathering what breeze. They were under the trees. They were having picnics in the afternoons. They were going to the swimming holes around town, and it was a more communal spirit at that time. You got to enjoy that. And part of what air conditioning and television has done is that people tend to get isolated in their living rooms and inside where it’s cool.
Griffin: You nailed it. You nailed it, Bob. Yes, that’s exactly right. We sit on the porch, and our porch wasn’t big enough to sit on, but we had a patio, and I’d come home from school. My grandmother lived with us, and she’d be sitting on the southeast corner of the yard facing the highway about a quarter of a mile away. And I said, how many? She’d say 500 cars today.
Blackburn: Oh, oh, that’s fun.
Griffin: Well, that life is gone. It’s gone.
Thompson: I want to wrap up and mention that your team, the 1956 Frederick Bombers, was inducted into the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame as a team in 2007. And I know, many of— you may have been there, and many of your teammates came for that ceremony.
Griffin: We were there.
Thompson: What did that mean to you?
Griffin: Well, it’s hard to describe, but it means that our little town. Now, as you said at the beginning is pretty largely forgotten, and nobody goes there unless they’re going there on purpose, and it’s gradually shrinking. We now have about 3,500 people, and that says to me that there was a time when Frederick stood tall and had a super team. Now, I don’t know if your research took you to the team of ’47, but they also won the state championship. Bob Griffin, who later played for the Rams— no kin to me—was the star. Jimmy Rinehart, the quarterback. And they all refused to shave until they lost. And when the end of the season came, they all looked like, you know, a lumberjack.
Blackburn: The dirty dozen, or the dirty dozen minus one.
Griffin: Yeah. Yeah, it means a lot to me, and the night we were there, Bill Russell was there. And Marilyn, my wife, tried to get me to go speak to him, and I was too nervous and too shy. She went over and talked to Bill Russell, and now he’s dead.
Thompson: Yeah.
Griffin: He was there that night because they had asked him to speak, I think. But anyway, it means a lot to me, and I need to get back up there. I’ve been up there once since that night, and I’ll tell you, it’s worth the drive to me to walk into the lobby of that building and to see the exhausted Indian sitting on his horse. You know what I’m talking about?
Thompson: I’m not familiar with it.
Griffin: I think it’s in the lobby, and it’s a statue. It’s a sculpture. And he’s just, he’s been in battle, and you could tell he is totally exhausted.
Blackburn: It’s the Cowboy Hall.
Thompson: Oh, okay. That’s the End of the Trail statue. I was thinking, I thought you were referring to a statue of Frederick, But no, I know which one you’re talking about now.
Griffin: Yeah. No, Frederick’s got to go on, in fact there’s a little bit of hope that our high school team— not the athletic team— but the robotic team is making a splash in the world. They have won some exciting competition from robotic. And I don’t much, I don’t know much about that, but I’m impressed.
Thompson: Well, Danny, it has been so great talking to you today, and thank you for taking time to share some of your memories with us.
Griffin: My pleasure, and thank you for calling.
Blackburn: And Danny, thank you for your life of service, to your faith, and your congregations, and your spirit of love and reconciliation and all of those qualities that you brought to that team.
Griffin: Thank you. Let me wrap this up on my end by saying, as I look at my book here, this is my annual from the last year that we had the Black team, and it says “to my loving brother, sincerely, Pete Clewis,” who was that big, tall right end, and that’s how we felt. I didn’t even know that was written there until a few minutes ago. “To my loving brother, Sincerely, Pete.” So that’s how—we loved each other. Yeah, we bonded, we loved each other.
Blackburn: Well, that’s the heart of your story, and thanks for sharing that today.
Griffin: You bet, buddy. Thanks for calling.
Thompson: All right, Danny, you have a great day.
Griffin: Bye bye.
Thompson: Bye, bye. Well, Bob, I don’t know about you, but I really enjoyed our conversation with Danny Griffin, running back for the 1956 Frederick Bombers.
Blackburn: Oh, well it’s an inspirational story, and to hear it coming from a participant who is there and the memories he has and the emotion you could hear in his voice. Even at his age, that emotion was still there. Crystal-clear memories of camaraderie, of working together, of amazement and really understanding for the rest of his life. You know, he was a young man at the time, now in his 90s. Think of all of those years that you could reflect back on those good experiences and fall back on the positives of life, of love, and reconciliation, and this spirit that we’re all part of the human race and let’s help each other and work together for the common good. That came out of that interview. I was inspired. Thank you for making me part of that.
Thompson: Well, I think that he’s probably a pretty dang good preacher, don’t you think?
Blackburn: I would think so.
Thompson: And I think that not only did he participate in something life changing of being a part of that high school football team and setting example way back in 1956, but I bet he’s helped change a lot of lives in the intervening years. And so, just the opportunity to talk to him, and like he said, so many of these guys now are passing away. So the chance that we had the opportunity to talk to him and get him on this program was really special.
Blackburn: It was, and hearing about life in Frederick, too. I grew up most of my youth was here in Edmond, some in Oklahoma City, but mainly Edmond. It was a small town. And so, I could respond to those memories of a small town before air conditioning and getting out on your bicycle and just living outdoors for much of the year. So, I enjoyed his memories.
Thompson: Well, Bob, it’s been great talking to you today, and I’m going to look forward to our next one.
Blackburn: Same here. Thank you.
Thompson: You’ve been listening to A Very OK Podcast, hosted by Trait Thompson and Dr. Bob Blackburn. The podcast is produced by the Oklahoma Historical Society. Visit us at okhistory.org, and find us on social media by searching for @okhistory. I encourage you to purchase a membership to OHS to help us continue our mission to collect, preserve, and share Oklahoma’s unique and fascinating history.
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