Big Hands

 

Angkor Wat - photo by JoAnn Sturman

Scott Sturman

I had not seen my father for a long while, so I did not know what to expect when I entered his hospital room. He lay on his back covered with a single white sheet in a modest, dimly lit room at the end of the hall.  He looked peaceful, and his face was exactly the way I remembered it.  When his breathing paused, the room was silent.  After what seemed to be a very long time, his chest began to move until the breaths became deep and fast, then they would fade away until the next cycle began.

Two days ago my brother Sam called me, telling of a major heart attack and a poor prognosis.  During his youth, Dad lived a rough life on a ranch in Wyoming, boxed and played football well, and after college was wounded three times in two wars, but now his time had come.  Too long an interval elapsed between his cardiac arrest and the placement of a breathing tube.  A day later when it was clear he sustained severe brain damage, his doctor complied with the family’s wishes and removed all life support.  All expected Dad to die within a few hours, but to their surprise he continued to breath without assistance.  He was taken to a private room, and now well into his 87th year, was left to pass away on his own time.

I approached the bedside, sat on a chair near his head, grasped his hand, leaned toward him, and whispered in his ear, “Dad, it’s Scott.”  And then I pulled the sheet away from his arm and noticed the powerful hand, muscular and calloused with a scar on the fourth finger from a gunshot wound during WWII.  The palm was broad and the fingers short in comparison.  It was a hand used to hard work, to fighting other men, to writing letters with a clear, steady stroke, and to hold his children on his lap many years ago.  Age thinned the skin, but these hands still could dig, lift, and pull. 

For the next half hour I held Dad’s hand and thought about his triumphs and defeats, his honesty, his modesty, his patriotism, his stubbornness, his sense of humor, and his rigid code of ethics which often collided with my own.  His hands and persona were one in the same.  And then his breathing stopped once and for all.  I hugged him, cried, and thanked him for waiting to say goodbye to me.

Later that afternoon I returned to the house where I was raised and found four bulky bags of peat moss laying on the lawn in the backyard where Dad dropped them.  It seemed unusual to find them strewn haphazardly, since he was by nature a tidy man.  The exertion of lifting and carrying them from the alley to the backyard took its toll on his heart and must have hurried his work.  The bags looked heavy, so to satisfy my curiosity, I hefted a bag to my chest and stepped on a scale I had found nearby.  Unable to see the scale due to the girth of the load, my wife peered beneath the bag and exclaimed, “245 pounds total!  Each one weighed 70 pounds!"  Yet a few days ago a man nearly 90 years old felt it was well within his capabilities to carry them on his own.

The back of my hands are no longer the hands of a young man.  Two fingers are crooked from old fractures, the skin lined and spotted, and the veins no longer straight, but the palms are different.  They are wide with skin thick, and still able to form beautiful letters on a piece of paper or dig up a tree stump.  Like you, Dad, I hope my hands tell a story about me.

Professional Football Contract 1940

Scott Sturman
fliesinyoureyes.com


Above is the original professional football contract offered to my father in 1940. The value of the contract was $1375 for eleven games played over a three month period. This roughly is equivalent to $21,000 in 2009 dollars.

When reading the contract, one is struck by the difference in attitudes and expectations between 1940 and nowadays. After having read it, consider how the philosophy of players and management have changed over 70 years. It is perhaps one more reflection of why they are considered the “greatest generation.”

My father was born and raised on a ranch near Lusk, Wyoming by the Nebraska border. He attended the University of Wyoming and was the first native born Wyomingite to earn All-American football honors. Like many of his generation, as war loomed in Europe he chose to enlist in the armed services. He served for three years in the Pacific Theater as a combat infantryman and took part in four amphibious assaults at Attu, the Marshall Islands, Leyte Gulf, and Okinawa. By the time WWII was over, his chance to play professional football was lost, but I never heard him complain about the turn of events. He was a patriot first and athlete second.

Note: I wrote an account of my father’s combat history and the speech he gave when at the age of 75 he was inducted into the University of Wyoming Athletic Hall of Fame. “The Tiger’s Tail”

If one has difficulty reading the original contract, a transcribed copy follows:


January 22, 1940
Mr. Kenneth Sturman
University of Wyoming
Laramie, Wyoming

Dear Mr. Sturman:

This is the period of the year when we sign our new players to more effectively plan our next autumn’s campaign. Therefore, it is quite appropriate that we now make our tenders to you. This explanation is prefaced lest you suspect that we are too precipitate in approaching you thus far in advance of the football season.

Concerning conditions of which a prospective player should be informed: At least eleven games are played each season. The training season begins about the middle of August. The club houses and feeds its players during the entire training season. After the opening game the player pays his own expenses while the team is in Brooklyn, but while on the road the club pays all expenses. The Brooklyn club furnishes all playing equipment for league games except the player’s pads, but the player must supply his own practice rig, rough but adequate. With the Brooklyn club the player receives his full salary whether he plays in the games or sits on the bench, and if injured in game or practice he is given the most expert medical treatment and full pay for games. The player is expected to conduct himself always like a gentleman and an athlete, and to keep in the best possible physical condition. We have no place for wastrels, dissipaters, or cheaters. Players are paid in full after each game by the club.

We do not present professional football as a major life pursuit, nor the short bridge to fortune. It does, however, provide a young college grad with means to tide over that perilous period between graduation and the time for deciding what shall be his life pursuit. Many of our players fit themselves for the higher professions by playing football and earning the the tuition and living costs to be incurred while filling out the complete study terms in the off months. Or if a player intends to make coaching his career, there is no better intensive schooling than the professional game.

We like to impress our prospective players, too, with the truth that big league professional football is a very, very serious business involving heavy money investments by the management, a winning season spells profits, but a losing team entailing staggering losses. But the player shares heavily, also, if his team goes into the playoff. In last December’s playoff each winning Green Bay player received $705.00, while each losing New York player received $485.00. Pro football provides the good player the game’s pleasures in competition, the joys of physical contact and achievement, of victory in games won and the spectator’s plaudits, and association with gentlemanly teammates.

As the important topic of pay offered you, the Brooklyn club always has been one the most generous in the National Football League. Therefore, we state with emphasis in advance that we do not haggle over terms, nor make indefinite tenders with loopholes for traders’ arguments. Giving full weight to all considerations, we have estimated the price we will pay for your skilled services, and merely state that they are generous. The terms contained in the enclosed contract, on the basis of eleven games, will make your season’s total $1375.00 for three months of playing.

Sign all three copies of the contract, and keep for yourself the tan-colored one. Mail the pink and white copies direct to us. Also, fill out the enclosed league questionnaire to give us the necessary information for the press. Do not delay too long before returning your contract, for obvious reasons. It might be well if you talked this over with Steve Hokuf who was one of our most valued players when I was General Manager of the Redskins in Boston. He knows all the angles and can advise you wisely.

All good wishes.

Sincerely yours,
Dennis J. Shea, Bus. Mgr.

The Tiger's Tail

Scott Sturman
fliesinyoureyes.com

During the first Gulf War I attended a banquet in Laramie, Wyoming, honoring the new inductees into the University of Wyoming Athletic Hall of Fame. In attendance were university officials, members of the sports media, and a former United States senator. My father Ken Sturman had been selected to receive one of the awards. He played football at the university in the 1930's and was the first native born Wyomingite to be named as an All American.

Dad was by large measure the oldest athlete to be recognized that night and one of the last to speak. The speeches of the twenty-five to forty year olds were predictable and forgettable – thanking their coaches, what the award meant to them, and their fond memories of competing in athletics at the school. While listening to the presentations, I noticed my father reading some notes handwritten on a small piece of paper. What did he plan to say?

After my father was introduced I saw the younger athletes raising their eyebrows in anticipation of the reminiscences of an old man. Most of them never had heard of him, nor did they realize that rather than play professional football, he served as a highly decorated infantry officer in World War II and Korea.

Most World War II and Korea War veterans do not volunteer information about their war time experiences. Whether this reticence is due to modesty or an attempt to extinguish the unpleasant memories of combat is difficult to say. My father spoke to me on only a handful of occasions about his adventures, condensing four years of combat into a few hours.

Prior to the Second World War and while attending the University of Wyoming, my father participated in ROTC. With the war imminent he was commissioned a second lieutenant before receiving his degree. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, his unit conducted an amphibious landing and defeated the Japanese invaders on Attu Island in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. He commented the weather was very cold and his unit was not adequately clothed to handle the elements. He was involved in fierce close quarter combat but did not elaborate. The only other glimpse into the battle scene was a few old black and white photos of him and some other soldiers with confiscated Japanese weapons.

His next deployment involved warmer water and was the site of the next island assault – the Marshall Islands. He won both the first of his three Bronze Stars and three Purple Hearts. Again he made no comment about the fighting but joked about the troop ship ride from the United States to the islands. To pass the time poker was a popular form of entertainment. After the first couple of days at sea the soldiers from large cities invariably won all the money from the country boys. The commanding officer ordered no more poker for the ranchers and farmers. Some would lose their lives in the next few weeks but not all their savings.

In 1944 and 1945 Dad took part in two more amphibious landings in the Pacific – Leyte Gulf in the Philippines and Okinawa near mainland Japan. He received his second Purple Heart and two more Bronze Stars during these engagements but was characteristically silent about the specifics.

After the conclusion of the war he returned home, but by 1951 he was in Korea with a United Nations force at the Battle of Heart Break Ridge. He won the Silver Star, the French Croix de Guerre with Palm, and the last of his three Purple Hearts. Years later when reading a book about Heart Break Ridge I found my father's name mentioned several times. When I brought this to his attention, he told me he was aware of the book. His commented that the Turks, Republic of Korea, and Mexican-American soldiers were very tough fighters, but nobody cut in front of a Turk in the lunch line because he would cut your throat.

After my father was wounded the Department of the Army notified my mother that his injuries were severe, and he was not expected to survive. She discovered a short time later that the army had confused my dad with someone else. His injuries were serious, however, so he was transferred home to recuperate. It must have been difficult during the war for my mother to be alone in Wyoming knowing at any moment terrible news could come her way. I cannot imagine her reaction when she received the notification every spouse dreads, only to have it retracted later. To live everyday waiting for an unwelcome telegram or knock on the door must have been agony.

Dad walked to the lectern with a serious look on his face. When he began to speak, he simply thanked everyone for the award, stated his appreciation that his family was with him, and followed with a few concise remarks about his sports career. And then... “We are at war with Iraq. American soldiers are dying in order to free the people Sadam Hussein attacked. It is time for all of us to give complete support to our troops, so they can defeat an enemy of the United States. The President needs only to call, and I will be on the next airplane to Iraq to serve as a combat officer to help lead us to victory.”

This was all he said. Even in this conservative Wyoming audience some probably wondered, “Who is this person? What type of man in his 70's feels such patriotic devotion to his country that he would publicly declare it is his duty to leave the safety of his home and travel half way around the world to fight a foreign despot?”

My father's patriotism and sense of duty were typical of many of his generation whose resilience and sacrifice were forged by the Great Depression and the Second World War. He felt it was immoral for Americans at home to go about their merry way if our soldiers were dying while fighting our enemies. The foe should be defeated quickly and totally to save as many American lives as possible, so we could return to peace with the same dispatch. He had no understanding of the half hearted incrementalism that dragged America through the Vietnam debacle. In his opinion declaring war is the most serious endeavor a country undertakes, but once the decision is made all efforts must be made to crush the enemy. The life of one American soldier is worth more than all of our adversary's military and civilian personnel. Once potential enemies of the United States understand our commitment and resolve, they are not so likely to play with the tiger's tail.