It was Nov. 18, 1960, and along with being changing and sometimes violent times, they were quite vibrant ones, too.
“Dayton was at its height as a city,” said Aaron Burke, now a semi-retired Wright-Patterson Air Force Base chemist, but back then a senior tackle for Colonel White High School. “The population here was over a quarter-million people.”
The factories were running. The downtown was thriving, and there was plenty of entertainment.
“Butterfield 8” with Liz Taylor was drawing crowds to the Loews theater, and Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin starred in “Ocean’s 11” at the Belmont.
The Volcanoes were at Little Mickey’s Bar on Third Street. Suttmiller’s had The Josita Hernandez Duo and Kitti Kar. “The Original Geisha Girl” was taking it off at the Mayfair Burlesk.
But there was no hotter ticket in town that night than over at Welcome Stadium where Burke and the rest of the unbeaten Colonel White Cougars were meeting perennial power Chaminade for the City League football championship.
“When we left school, we had to make our way through a tunnel of fans,” said George Pavlakos, the longtime Vandalia Butler teacher, coach and administrator who played center for the Cougars. “And when we approached Welcome Stadium, all you could see was a crowd everywhere.”
Some Cougars remember it taking an hour to get through the traffic and to the stadium. All recall the sight once inside. The stands were full and people ringed the field eight and 10 deep.
Colonel White, in just its fourth year as a high school since splitting from Fairview, had outscored its opposition 502-34 through nine games.
Chaminade had won the city crown 16 of the past 20 seasons, including a 1959 triumph over the Cougars, 23-16. Although 7-2 coming into this game, the Eagles, most said, had played a tougher schedule and had just demolished Stivers 88-0. In turn, the Cougars had stunned Roosevelt 42-0 just after the Teddies — led by John Henderson, who later starred with the Detroit Lions and Minnesota Vikings — had beaten Chaminade 30-13.
That Colonel White-Roosevelt game had drawn 12,927 to Welcome, a crowd slightly bigger than the one Centerville and Alter drew in their showdown this season.
Yet, all those games are dwarfed by the 1960 title turnout, which set an all-time mark here with 17,822.
“There were probably a couple of thousand more people outside, but (Welcome) ran out of tickets,” 89-year-old Jim Eby, who coached the Cougars, said Thursday.
“A lot of it didn’t register at the time,” admitted Pavlakos. “I was in a dazed focus that night. I was just thinking about the game.”
So was Cougars quarterback Bill Gaines, who said he felt he’d cost his team the title the year before when he threw an interception. Because of that he’d spent every night of the summer watching game films of that season and that moment.
“I had been waiting for this game for a year,” he said from his home in Georgetown, Ky. “They had a big ‘C’ on the field they wanted us to run through before the game, but I was so pumped, I forgot and ran straight to the bench and started throwing the football. I wanted to be ready.”
And thanks to Eby, the Cougars were.
‘The perfect coach’
Growing up on a dairy farm off Wolfe Creek Park, Eby had starred at Trotwood-Madison High, then Otterbein before becoming a Naval Air Corps fighter pilot.
After that, he coached his alma mater to two Little Buckeye Conference titles, moved to Greenville, had an unbeaten season and won a Miami Valley League crown there, then launched the Colonel White program in 1957 with all underclassmen.
Eby said he had several Jewish and Greek kids — Burke’s great grandparents were Russian Jews, Pavlakos’ dad came from Greece — and many had forged friendships playing on various city park teams before they got to high school.
Gaines called Eby “the perfect coach for a near perfect team. ... He was ahead of his time in a lot of things.”
Eby stressed fitness and togetherness — his teams did early morning gymnastics, played handball at the downtown YMCA — and that helped off the field, said Pavlakos, whose father died of a heart attack six months before his senior season.
“All that hate and anger of losing my dad was devastating. Bonding with my team helped me get through that year,” Pavlakos said.
Running what the Cougars called their “belly series” — faking hand-offs to various backs, especially fireplug fullback Bruce Hain, then either keeping the ball or having guys such as Jim Ratliff and Butch Baldasare carry it — Gaines orchestrated an offense that averaged 56 points a game.
With Baldasare scoring two first-half touchdowns — one on a run, the other on a pass from Gaines — Colonel White held a 12-6 lead over Chaminade at the half, then blew the game open, winning 32-12.
Afterward — as Eagles coach Ed Regan sang the praises of Gaines, who threw for two scores and ran for one — the Cougars players hoisted Eby on their shoulders and carried him from the field.
Before the team headed back to Colonel White — where players’ moms cooked a postgame meal — Ratliff hugged his coach and was heard saying:
“I hate to take this uniform off, Coach. It means so much to me, and you’ve had a great deal to do with it.”
A time to relive
Later, Eby coached the North-South game in Canton, and his quarterback played in it.
“Afterward Charlie Bradshaw, Bear Bryant’s assistant at Alabama, came into the locker room and offered me a full ride to come down there,” Gaines said. “But I’d said I was going to Wichita State and I was going to stick to my word.
“Then a couple years ago, I’m reading a book on Joe Namath and I find out a couple weeks after the (North-South) game, Howard Schnellenberger, another Alabama assistant, goes to sign Joe Namath.”
Gaines started laughing: “So the way I tell it, Joe Willie was their second choice...It should have been Broadway Billy.”
After transferring to Eastern Kentucky, Gaines was hampered by injury. Pavlakos played at Ohio University, Burke at Kenyon. A half dozen other Cougars went elsewhere, including the late Terry Meyer, who lasted a while with Woody Hayes, until the equally volatile Buckeye coach — according to Eby, who just smiled and shook his head — “tried to throw him down a flight of steps.”
Through the ups and downs of life, many players pointed to the lessons Eby instilled.
“Jim always stressed football could do a lot more for us if we worked hard,” Burke said. “And it did. It got me to college. It gave me things to draw on later in life.”
As for Eby, he coached a few more years at Colonel White, then spent a decade as the Trotwood-Madison athletic director.
Today, he lives in Huber Heights with Freda, his wife of 62 years. He still looks fit and admits he misses some aspects of coaching:
“It’s satisfying to see kids develop and become men. It’s something you never get tired of. ... You just get too old.”
This Saturday, though, will be like times past as the 1960 Cougars team — along with the three squads that came before it — is gathering for a 50-year reunion at the Miami Valley Golf Club.
It’s the first time the team has congregated since its title season, and although the school has moved and been renamed Thurgood Marshall, much remains, said Pavlakos:
“The actual school might be gone, but in our memory — in a lot of people’s memories — we know we forever put Colonel White on the map.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2156 or tarchdeacon@DaytonDailyNews.com.
About the Author