My father, Don Holler, offensive line coach, Shelbyville. 

There’s Something Happening Here: Bountygate in 1968

Mom has always told me I was a serious kid.

I always wanted to sit at the adult table. I ignored my younger sisters and hung on every word of my parents. I watched the news on TV.

Memories are funny things. Sometimes we don’t choose our memories, our memories choose us. Seems like half my childhood was spent at my grandparents yet, in reality, it was only a few days a year. My sports memories dwarf everything else that happened in my teenage years. What makes us remember? What makes us focus so intensely that we never forget?

I have no more than a dozen memories of the first eight years of my life as a little kid, but then it all changed. I learned to multiply and divide. My parents gave me what seemed like endless freedom to ride my banana-seat bike anywhere I wanted. I caught four-inch bluegill in the clear shallow water of the park lagoon. I don’t know why, but I loved coded messages, invisible ink, and secret hiding places. I had two younger sisters, a dog (more when she had puppies), a goose, a chicken, and several free-range turtles living in our basement. Anytime I had a nickel, I bought a pack of baseball cards at the A&P grocery store. My baseball card collection was extensive. I organized every player into their respective teams, alphabetically, in my grandfather’s cigar boxes. For Christmas of 1967, my top present was a chemistry set. When I woke up earlier than my parents, I listened to my dad’s record albums. My favorite was a gift he got from a student teacher, Bill Cosby’s “Why Is There Air?”. I wore a watch.

I loved sports, but I wasn’t good at shooting a basketball, throwing a football, or hitting a baseball. I was terribly slow. I got good at those things a few years later. The ability to sprint came last.

I think I was always my dad’s sidekick, but the side-kick thing really seemed to kick-in for me in 1967-68 (educators live hyphenated years). I don’t know how often but I know I hung out at football practice quite a bit. I roamed the sidelines under the lights on Friday nights (Dad was the varsity offensive line coach, see header picture). Basketball was my main memory. With Dad being head basketball coach, I attended practices, rode the buses to away games, dreamed of concession stands, and loved the games. I wasn’t the type of kid that played under the bleachers, I paid attention. My mom suspended my bus rights after I confessed that one of Dad’s players showed me a Playboy on the way home from a game. During the spring, I attended track meets (my dad was also head track coach).

As I was having the time of my life, my dad was a serious coach. He had arrived at Shelbyville High School at age-29 after going 19-4 at Flanagan H.S. in 1964-65. After one year as varsity assistant, Dad took over an underachieving program that had won only 17 games in the previous three years. In his first year as head coach, Shelbyville turned it around, winning 16. Shelbyville was a small school of only 550 students (Shelbyville’s 2018 enrollment is listed at only 323). Dad may have been coaching at a small school but he dreamed big. He had played for Hall of Famer Gay Kintner, winner of 649 games and three state championships at Stephen Decatur High School.

In the summer of 1967, Shelbyville was looking for a football coach. The football program was in a slump, wanting to rebound from two consecutive losing seasons. Don Holler was on the search committee. When it came down to the two finalists for the job, Don Holler strongly recommended the hiring of Del Pruett.

My 82-year old father, to this day, calls Del Pruett one of the best football coaches he’s ever known. From the outside looking in, Shelbyville’s 1967 football season was a success, ending with a 6-3 record (no playoffs back then). However, this was football and unless you’ve been living in cave, you know things happen in football programs that can’t stand the light of day. Football seems to operate outside of the educational mainstream. When people recently learned what was going on at the University of Maryland, they were shocked. Whenever a football scandal erupts, people pretend to be deeply offended.

From my favorite movie, Casa Blanca:

Rick (Humphrey Bogart): How can you close me up? On what grounds?

Renault: I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!
[a croupier hands Renault a pile of money]

Croupier: Your winnings, sir.

Renault: Oh, thank you very much.

What was going on back in Del Pruett’s football program? Well, from what I’ve learned, there was reported verbal and physical abuse. But, then again, the kids loved the guy. And, what’s so bad about a little tough love?

I usually don’t quote myself but I wrote this a year ago in my article New Ideas for Old School Football Coaches:

I’ve been around too many football coaches who border on being sadistic and abusive. They mix patriotism with bible passages as they rule with an iron fist. I don’t blame these guys. When they played football, they loved and feared their coach. Punishment was a part of the game.

I’ve never understood the love-fear stuff that goes on between football player and his football coach. There must be some genetic component involved. Maybe human history favored the obedient warrior. Obedient warriors killed guys like me, guys who questioned authority. I guess it’s just an example of Warrior Darwinism. Soldiers who followed orders and accepted military discipline lived to pass on their genes to the next generation. Opinionated freethinkers lived short lives and had fewer children.

Then again, it might be the Stockholm Syndrome, where abused hostages begin to love and trust their captors.

I don’t have to list the creative ways football players are physically and emotionally punished. Ask any former football player and they will tell you stories of abuse. Watch closely and you will see a gleam in their eye.

Del Pruett, like many football coaches, was a single-minded zealot. He put his heart and soul into coaching. Pruett was big on weight lifting and had a recipe for protein shakes to gain muscle mass. Mind you, this was 1967. Bob Devaney of Nebraska was the first college AD to hire a strength coach, and that was 1969. In 1970, the average Husker could bench press 212 pounds and no one on the team could bench 300. The average body weight of Nebraska football players in 1970 was 212 pounds. The 2018 Nebraska roster lists 136 players with an average weight of 237 pounds.

Del Pruett was a PE teacher. His football players lifted weights instead of participating in the normal PE curriculum. He assured my father that during basketball season, PE for basketball players would be different, shifting focus away from weight training. We’ve seen this scenario replay itself a million times. For many football coaches, football becomes the tail that wags the dog. Football becomes religion. Football becomes bigger than life itself. It’s as American as apple pie.

“I live football.” – Del Pruitt, February 19, 1968

In addition to the reports of abuse and not playing well with others, something else emerged.

In early 1968, Shelbyville’s Athletic Director heard from another school that they had found a Shelbyville playbook that outlined a system of incentives for injuring players from an opposing team. The pamphlet also spoke of hating to lose and hating opponents. The rival school said they were severing their relationship with Shelbyville High School and dropping them from their schedule. Don Holler was called into the Athletic Director’s office and asked about Del Pruitt’s playbook. My father went home for lunch that day and returned with what he called a “supplemental playbook”. There were points awarded for hitting someone hard enough to cause them to miss a play, hard enough that they didn’t return, and hard enough to cause them to leave in an ambulance. My dad and I have different memories of the award. The awards may have been decals/stickers of skulls (dad’s recollection) or shrunken heads (my recollection). I’m not sure whether the stickers went on posters, lockers, or helmets. On a side note, both me and my dad remember guys wearing tape on their helmet with “HATE” written on it.

But what’s the big deal? Football has always celebrated brutality. Football is the last realm of the Spartans. Michigan’s Jim Harbaugh says, “football is the last bastion of toughness for our young men” and that “the body craves collisions”. Larry Fedora, football coach at North Carolina believes our country wins wars because of football, “Our game is under attack,” Fedora said. “I fear the game will be pushed so far from what we know that we won’t recognize it in ten years. And if it does, our country will go down, too.”

The word “Bountygate” comes from the suspension of Saints defensive coordinator Greg Williams for the 2012 season after the NFL found that Saints players pooled their money and then paid “bounties” for big plays. Players received bounties for “cart-offs” (plays in which an opponent was removed from the field on a stretcher or cart) and “knockouts” (plays that resulted in a player being unable to return for the rest of the game). Players usually earned $1,000 for “cart-offs” and $1,500 for “knockouts”. These amounts doubled or tripled for playoff games.

Greg Williams explained “There was nothing that hasn’t been done in the last 50 years in the sport”. Williams continued. “I’ve said this before, I take a look at all these high school programs, little league programs, college programs and you see the decals on the side of the helmet and you wonder, you get those decals because you shake hands and kiss after the game or you get those decals because you rushed for 100 and you threw 17 touchdown passes and you knocked the stuffing out of somebody?”

By the way, the NFL would have never investigated Bountygate if not for a previously fired Saint’s coach who turned whistleblower. You can imagine the investigation. The Saints circled the wagons and stonewalled. Football teams take loyalty to exponential extremes. No one cooperated with the investigation. Loyalty is a problem in football (and in the mafia, and in police departments, and in churches, and in politics, etc.)

Del Pruett was fired in the winter of 1968. He stopped attending basketball practice (Pruett was assistant varsity basketball coach). He was terminated as a teacher. My father did not know if there were other factors involved in the board’s decision. Del Pruett, true to form, went down swinging.

Below is an excerpt from a February 22, 1968, article where Pruett defends his weight-lifting PE class and justification of hating opponents, found in his “football player’s bible”.

The school board and administrators did not comment on the dismissal. Del Pruett pointed the finger at guy who got him fired, Don Holler. The administration asked my father not to comment.

Our house got “egged”. I didn’t know getting “egged” was a thing. There were reports of other vandalism being planned. One school board member, Dr. Larson, advised my parents to buy pepper spray. A policeman parked on our street to give us protection. It was no longer deemed safe for me to walk home after school. I remember my dad talking about getting a gun (and I’ve never seen my father hold a gun).

In my third grade classroom, a girl pointed her finger at me and said, “His dad got my dad fired!” Yes, the daughter of Del Pruett was in my third grade class. Welcome to small town America.

It was 1968, so, of course, there was a student walk-out to protest the firing of Del Pruett. TV stations came to record the event. The Decatur Herald estimated that more than half of Shelbyville’s 550 students participated in the walkout. The article below is from the February 20, 1968, Decatur Herald.

In the meantime, my father taught his history class and coached his basketball team. One of Dad’s best players, Brad Pancoast, was also the star quarterback of the football team. Pancoast was a strong supporter of Pruett but continued to perform well on the court. Somehow, Shelbyville won the regional tournament in 1968. I think it was one of the happiest moments in my dad’s coaching career.

1968 IHSA Regional Champs, Shelbyville Rams. There are three Hall of Fame coaches from three different sports in this picture. Don Holler, back row far left, is in the IBCA, Millikin University, and Aurora University Hall of Fame. Brad Pancoast, first row far right, is in the IHSFC Hall of Fame. The kid in the middle, Tony Holler, is in the ITCCCA Hall of Fame. 

Trouble in Shelbyville continued to fester. People took sides. People who went to Pruett’s church (Baptist) were solid in support.

In 1966, my parents had bought their first house for $10,500 with an FHA loan. The well-built two-story house at 405 S. Broadway was going to be our home for a long time. Two years later, it was time to sell. As my mom recently told me, “We no longer had a future in Shelbyville”. We moved to Princeton, Illinois, in the summer of 1968.

How’s this for a defining moment? After a month of tumultuous happenings (vandalism, threats, police protection, negative press, etc.), my parents took their annual trip to the two-day IHSA State Tournament at Assembly Hall, University of Illinois. For Mom and Dad, this was the closest thing to a vacation in their life. They stayed in a motel for two nights and dined at restaurants. My parents lived simple lives, there were no vacations in my childhood (I didn’t see the ocean until age-22, didn’t fly until age-25). In 1968, I attended the state tournament with mom and dad. (Remember, I was a nine-year-old adult, ha!) At half time and between games, fans would go to the outer concourse, take a walk and stretch their legs (there were four games on both Friday and Saturday, Illinois was a one-class state in 1968). Seemed like most people smoked cigarettes creating a smoky haze (40% of America’s adults smoked in 1968, only 20% now). As I walked with Mom and Dad, we ran into guess who? You guessed it. Del Pruitt was holding court with friends. My dad said nothing and smiled as we passed. My mom started to shake. Del Pruitt said, “You better smile now, Holler, while you still got your teeth.” The three of us kept walking.

I struggle to describe what I learned from that moment. My dad was raised by post-depression parents in government housing. In Don Holler’s hard-scrabble childhood, the ability to fight was highly valued. Dad wanted me to grow up tough. His advice was consistent, “You aren’t really a man until you are willing to put your fist through someone’s face.” Another bit of advice that didn’t make my 101 Bits of Advice article was, “The winner of a fight is the guy that’s willing to pick up a ball bat.” I knew my dad was tough. The act of walking on and not responding to Del Pruett’s threat at the Assembly Hall reminded me of a scene in “To Kill a Mockingbird”, when Bob Ewell spat in the face of Atticus Finch. When Atticus did not respond, Bob Ewell questioned his courage by asking if he was too afraid to fight. Atticus responded, “No, too old”, and walked off.

Later, Atticus explained to his son, “Jem, see if you can stand in Bob Ewell’s shoes for a minute. I destroyed his last shred of credibility at that trial, if he had any to begin with. The man had to have some kind of comeback, his kind always does.”

That moment at the Assembly Hall in Champaign lives on in me fifty years later. My wife, Jill, and I loved “To Kill a Mockingbird” and in honor of Atticus Finch, we named our youngest son Quinn Atticus Holler. If we would have had a girl, she would have been named Scout. Instead, our Border Terrier was named Scout in 1998.

In 2004, I lived through my own version of Bob Ewell and Del Pruett. I will write about it someday.

A New Start

Del Pruett stayed in Shelbyville to avenge his perceived wrongful dismissal. He got a job with Prudential Insurance. Del Pruett ran for Shelbyville’s school board and won. Imagine that one!

Our family of five moved to Princeton, Illinois, where Dad coached football, basketball, and track. As head basketball coach in 1968-69, Dad’s team went 19-8. His best player was 7’1″ Rick Larson. In football, Dad assisted the legendary Rod Butler. Butler later went to Peoria Richwoods where he went 90-15 and won a state title in 1988. One of Butler’s star players at Richwoods, Matt Martin, is the head football coach at Edwardsville where my son, Alec, coaches his defensive backs. In 1968, Princeton also hired future Hall of Famer, Gary Coates, as cross country and track coach. Princeton’s track team featured the returning state champ in the mile, Tom Swan (4:13.3). Dad went on to coach 38 years after leaving Shelbyville. He was 32 when the shit hit the fan back in 1968. I was nine in 1968, 59 now, and I’ve coached 38 years.

Del Pruitt’s QB in 1967 was Brad Pancoast. Pancoast averaged 12 points per game for my dad’s basketball team. In the spring of 1968 my parents drove Brad for a visit at Illinois State (football). On the 90-mile trip north, Brad sat in the back seat and played Spirograph with a nine-year-old (me). Pancoast decided against ISU and attended Southern Illinois instead, where he broke a couple of Jim Hart’s passing records (total yards, completion percentage) in his senior season (1971). Pancoast was SIU’s MVP and made Honorable Mention All-American. He stayed on for two years as a grad assistant before becoming an assistant coach at Duke for two years. From Duke, he returned to Illinois to coach high school football at Mt. Vernon. During the 1980s, I was the head basketball coach and freshmen football coach at Harrisburg High School. Mt.Vernon and Harrisburg were both in the South Seven Conference. Brad and I never missed a chance to talk, but we never talked about Del Pruett. Brad Pancoast was the nicest football coach I’ve ever met. Pancoast is in the Illinois H.S. Football Coaches Hall of Fame.

This project focused the collision of a football coach and a basketball coach in 1968. But, as we all know, nothing happens in a vacuum. We are all interconnected. When I was researching, I found a hospital announcement from August 1965, the month we moved from Flanagan to Shelbyville. “Elizabeth Jean Holler, infant daughter of Don Holler and Paula Kane Holler, was stillborn at Brokaw Hospital Friday morning. Graveside rights will be at 2:00 p.m. Saturday at St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Flanagan.” After carrying the baby full term, my mother (age-25) suffered a ruptured uterus and almost died. The doctor gave her a 50-50 chance of surviving. She was saved by a couple hospital nurses donating blood (rare, type AB). My dad’s former Flanagan players assisted him in our move to Shelbyville as mom recuperated. My mother’s Shelbyville experience began with a tragedy and ended with a controversy. My sister, Elizabeth Jean, would have recently turned 54.

Del Pruitt was 34 in 1968. As far as I know, Del Pruitt never coached again. Shelbyville school officials discovered that Pruitt had been fired at three of his four previous schools. Shelbyville’s football team won a total of three games over the next four years. Everything is interconnected.

Del Pruitt’s name was seldom, if ever, mentioned in our house for the next 50 years. Don Holler and Del Pruitt’s paths never crossed again. The lives of two men became intertwined for one fateful year, and never again. Both lives were changed forever.

I googled Del Pruett a month ago. The first link to pop up was his obituary from June of 2017.

“Del was larger than life. He filled a room with his unbridled enthusiasm and undeniable charisma. He will be missed by everyone who was lucky enough to know him. A skilled entrepreneur with a business acumen rivaled by few, he was the king with the Midas touch. As a motivating football coach early in his career, he polished the type of skills that would later help him build the many successful business relationships that cemented his legacy in his later years. Del also had many interests and hobbies, all of which he attacked with the same focus, determination and dedication that he gave to everything in his life. He loved to golf, he loved to fish, and he loved to play poker. But he loved to do these things with the people he loved more than anything. He was always happiest when he was surrounded by his family and friends.”

Del Pruett sounds like a great guy. His family obviously loved him. But then again, life is complex. Sometimes “great guys” aren’t so great to their wife and kids, and sometimes the flip side is true. The world’s most notorious villains were often loved at home. Al Capone reportedly had a normal, loving wife and family.

Del Pruett was only 34 years old in 1968. No one wants to have their lives judged by the mistakes they made at the age of 34. I’d like to think that we are judged by our body of work, not our worst moments.

I’ve tried to approach the subject of Del Pruitt with accuracy and balance. I’ve done weeks of research. If I’ve made factual mistakes, they were unintentional. Memories can sometimes play tricks on you.

In some ways I feel sorry for Del Pruitt. There’s no doubt in my mind Del Pruitt loved coaching football and loved kids. I’m sure, as his obituary said, “He filled a room with his unbridled enthusiasm and undeniable charisma.” By all reports, Del Pruitt was an excellent football coach whose ideas about weight training were way ahead of his time. Every football coach in America is guilty of celebrating high speed collisions, it’s baked into the game. What’s so wrong with players at Shelbyville High School fifty years ago being rewarded for hard hits? Football is the last bastion of manhood. Football is religion. Football is war. Love your comrades and hate your enemies.

I’ve consistently said that I have a love-hate relationship with football.

The seeds of my love-hate relationship with football were sewn in 1968.

Seeds of My Future from 1968

It’s impossible to understand Shelbyville in 1968 without the context of America in 1968. America was divided, probably the most divided she had been since the Civil War one hundred years prior. Trump’s America in 2018 doesn’t come close.

1968 was the source of most things that define me today. The seeds were planted when I was nine.

The dark cloud that hung over America was the war in Vietnam. Vietnam divided our country, mostly along generational lines. Today’s young people have no idea how it would feel to be drafted to fight in an unpopular war ten thousand miles from home.  The World War II generation supported the war. That’s what Americans do, they support war. Those who protest for peace are unpatriotic. That’s the way it works.

January 1, 1968 – USC beats Indiana 14-3 in the Rose Bowl behind MVP, OJ Simpson. Usually professional athletes retire from the game and fade away. OJ kept his celebrity status. OJ made his fortune while he turned his back on civil rights and politics. White people loved him until he murdered his wife. 

January 14, 1968 – Vince Lombardi’s Green Bay Packers of the NFL won Super Bowl II, beating the Oakland Raiders of the AFL, 33-14. My favorite player was Bart Starr. In 1970, I read “Run to Daylight” by Vince Lombardi and “Instant Replay” by Jerry Kramer. 

January 30, 1968 – The Tet Offensive begins. North Vietnamese and Viet Cong attacked multiple targets in South Vietnam. Vivid reporting on the Tet Offensive by the U.S. media makes clear to the American public that an overall victory in Vietnam was not imminent. 61 days later, LBJ announced he would not seek another term. 1968 death counts reached 181,149 for North Vietnam compared to 16,592 for the United States, but Americans grew weary. The war was in our living room every night. I was only nine years from being eligible for the draft. Americans killed 181,149 people in 1968. Americans treat war like a football game. Love your comrades, hate your enemies. 

February 8, 1968 – Planet of the Apes is shown to an audience at the Capitol Theater in New York (U.S release, April 3rd, 1968). Planet of the Apes is my all-time favorite science fiction movie. It’s difficult for people today to remember a time when nuclear war was inevitable. Besides showing a post-apocalypse scenario (year 3978), Planet of the Apes brilliantly depicted the clash between religion and science, old and young, and black and white. (Another science fiction classic came out in 1968, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey)  

February 18, 1968 – My ninth birthday. The US State Department announces the highest US casualty toll of the Vietnam War. The previous week saw 543 Americans killed in action, and 2547 wounded. On a happier note, guitarist David Gilmour joins Pink Floyd. Five years later, I bought “Dark Side of the Moon” (1973). It was unlike anything anyone had ever heard. The artwork was classic as well. 

March 16, 1968 – Over the course of four hours, American soldiers kill more than 500 unarmed civilians in and around the hamlet of My Lai. The U.S. Army lists the killed as 347, the memorial site lists the dead at 504. The U.S. Army did all it could to whitewash the My Lai Massacre. In the end, only Lt. William Calley took the fall for the massacre, serving less than four years on house arrest. Life Magazine ran the story December 5, 1969. The government had covered it up it for almost two years. 

March 23, 1968 – UCLA wins NCAA National Championship over North Carolina. John Wooden is the head coach and Lew Alcindor (shooting 15-21 from the floor in title game) was MVP. My favorite Lew Alcindor story dates back to 1965. UCLA was ranked preseason #1 in the country after going 58-2 in the previous two seasons under Wooden. Back then, freshmen could not play on the varsity (after all, it’s all about the student athlete!). The UCLA freshmen beat the UCLA varsity (#1 ranked team in the country) 75-60 behind Alcindor’s 31 points and 21 rebounds. The UCLA freshmen ran off the floor chanting “We’re number one!” in front of 12,051 fans. Sad that people remember Kareem later in his career when he was just a tall guy with a sky hook. Twenty seasons in the NBA have a way of making you look old. At UCLA, Lew Alcindor was so explosive, so athletic.

April 4, 1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. spends the day at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis working and meeting with local leaders on plans for his Poor People’s March on Washington to take place late in the month. At 6 pm, King was shot and killed. In 1968, black people were a mystery to me. To the best of my knowledge, I had never lived in a town with an African-American resident. Think about that. At the age of 59, my mind is never far from the subject of racial inequality. I’m a Black Lives Matter guy. I’m a Colin Kaepernick guy. For-profit prisons make me sick. Voter suppression is evil. Death of a King by Tavis Smiley should be required reading. My favorite Martin Luther King quote, “The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who stay neutral in times of moral conflict.”

April 4, 1968 – Robert Kennedy, hearing of the assassination of Martin Luther King just before he is to give a speech in Indianapolis, IN, delivers a powerful extemporaneous eulogy from the back of a truck. The King assassination sparks rioting in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Newark, Washington, D.C., and many others. Across the country 46 deaths will be blamed on the riots. I’ve listened to the Bobby Kennedy speech many times. I love that he quoted Aeschylus. “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

April 23, 1968 – Demonstrators at Columbia eventually occupy five buildings – Hamilton, Low, Fairweather and Mathematics halls, and the Architecture building. It will culminate seven days later when police storm the buildings and violently remove the students and their supporters at the Columbia administration’s request. The protests were just beginning and eventually resulted in four students being killed at Kent State on May 4th, 1970. “This summer I hear the drumming, four dead in Ohio.” – Neil Young

May 2, 1968 – The Boston Celtics, led by player-coach Bill Russell, win the NBA championship beating a LA Laker team featuring Jerry West, Gail Goodrich, and Elgin Baylor. The Celtics had to get by Wilt and the 76ers in the semis. MLK was assassinated during the Celtic-76er series. Wilt and Russell attended King’s funeral. Russell respected Martin Luther King but questioned the effectiveness of peaceful protest. Russell was an outspoken supporter of Mohammed Ali when Americans were not. In 1966, two years after winning the heavyweight title, Ali antagonized the white establishment by refusing to be drafted into the U.S. military, citing his religious beliefs, and opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War. He was eventually arrested, found guilty of draft evasion charges, and stripped of his boxing titles. 

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No, I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.” – Mohammed Ali

May 5, 1968 – Buffalo Springfield performs their final concert. Buffalo Springfield, IMO, was the genesis of folk-rock leading to super-groups like The Eagles. When Buffalo Springfield split up, Neil Young and Stephen Stills were free to roam. Stills hooked up with a refugee from the Hollies, Graham Nash, and a malcontent from the Byrds, David Crosby. I would consider CSN and later CSNY my favorite band(s) of all time. To this day, I think 4 Way Street (1971) is the best live album ever recorded.

June 4, 1968 – On the night of the California Primary Robert Kennedy addresses a large crowd of supporters at the Ambassador Hotel in San Francisco. He has won victories in California and South Dakota and is confident that his campaign will go on to unite the many factions stressing the country. As he leaves the stage, at 12:13 AM on the morning of the fifth, Kennedy is shot by Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year old Jordanian living in Los Angeles. We were visiting my grandparents. I was up early on a beautiful, sunny, Friday morning, June 5th, 1968. My parents were sleeping in the basement bedroom. I woke them up with the news that Bobby Kennedy had been shot. 

June 26, 1968 – Bob Gibson throws 5th consecutive shutout, beating Pittsburgh 3-0 in the first game of a twilight double header. Dad and I attended the game. I kept a full scorecard for both games. Dad, as he always did, narrated the entire game to me. The only down-side for me was the fact that everyone around me was enjoying concessions. Baseball games were expensive, and we were poor. Dad never carried cash. Still doesn’t. I think Dad’s favorite place was a major league baseball game. Bob Gibson was pretty good in the next five games, too. Over a ten-game stretch Gibson’s stats: 90 innings, two runs allowed on 51 hits, with 12 walks and 74 strikeouts. Gibson’s ERA was 1.12 in 1968. 

July 1, 1968 –Music from Big Pink, by The Band, is released. The Band flew under my radar for many years. It wasn’t until their last concert (1976) was made into a movie, “The Last Waltz” (by Martin Scorsese), that I became a huge fan. I have seen the movie more than ten times. George Harrison’s “Concert for Bangladesh” is my all-time favorite concert movie. The Last Waltz is a close second. There is no third. The Last Waltz featured the greatest hits of the Band but some of their guests nearly stole the show. Neil Young did “Helpless”, Muddy Waters rocked “Mannish Boy”, and the Staple Singers helped out with “The Weight”. Bob Dylan ended the show with “Baby Won’t You Follow Me Down” and “Forever Young”. The encore was “I Shall Be Released”.

August 28, 1968 – Day-3 of Democratic National Convention. Mayor Daley’s police take action against crowds of demonstrators without provocation. The police beat some marchers unconscious and sent at least 100 to emergency rooms while arresting 175. I watched the convention. (Was I the only nine-year-old watching?) It was riveting TV. No one knew what would happen next. It was a time to take sides. Are you with the people protesting for peace or are you with the people beating the hell out of them. The Democratic nominee was Hubert Humphrey, LBJ’s Vice President. Humphrey was a loyal Vice President and defended the Vietnam War during the Johnson years. To Humphrey’s credit, he was staunch supporter of unions and stood up to the segregationist wing of the Democratic Party (Southern Democrats). Humprhey eventually pledged to stop the bombing of Vietnam if elected. 

October 3, 1968 – George Wallace, who has been running an independent campaign for the presidency which has met significant support in the South and the Midwest, names retired Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis E. LeMay to be his running mate. At the press conference, the general is asked about his position on the use of nuclear weapons, and responds: “I think most military men think it’s just another weapon in the arsenal. I think there are many times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons. I don’t believe the world would end if we exploded a nuclear weapon.” Whenever I hear people say, “trust the generals”, I think of crazy Curtis LeMay. LeMay lobbied to nuke Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 movie, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, LeMay was portrayed brilliantly by two characters, first, Jack D. Ripper; and then as the George C. Scott character, General Buck Turgidson. The fact that a Civil War holdover, George Wallace, picked a crazy general for VP, and still won 13.5% of the popular vote should be a warning to all of us. This country is capable of electing someone crazy! 

October 10, 1968 – The Detroit Tigers win the World Series over the St. Louis Cardinals. Shelbyville was only 116 miles from St. Louis. The Cardinals had won the World Series in 1967 behind my favorite player, NL MVP Orlando Cepeda. Seemed like we heard Harry Caray do every game on the radio. I switched my allegiance when Caray left the Cardinals for the White Sox (1971) and again when Caray went to the north side to work for the Cubs (1982). The turning point in the 1968 World Series happened in game-five. Lou Brock was thrown out at the plate by Willie Horton, changing the momentum of the series. I still recall my dad yelling at Brock through the TV for not sliding. 

October 12. 1968 – The Summer Olympic Games open in Mexico City. The games have been boycotted by 32 African nations in protest of South Africa’s participation. On the 16th, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, US athletes and medalists in the 200-meter dash will further disrupt the games by performing the black power salute during the “Star-Spangled Banner” at their medal ceremony. I remember my father believing that Smith and Carlos had disrespected their country. I’m proud that Dad has evolved. Avery Brundage, who was president of the United States Olympic Committee in 1936, had made no objections against Nazi salutes during the Berlin Olympics. He argued that the Nazi salute, being a national salute at the time, was acceptable in a competition of nations, while the athletes’ salute was not of a nation and therefore unacceptable. Avery Brundage banned Smith and Carlos from the Olympic Village and both men were sent home. 

October 25, 1968 – Jethro Tull’s debut, This Was, is released. When I heard “Aqualung” on my uncle’s stereo in 1974, I loved it and to this day believe it to be one of the best ten albums ever produced. I saw Jethro Tull (Ian Anderson) live in 1975 and 1976, possibly the two best shows I’ve ever attended. 

November 5, 1968 – Election Day. The results of the popular vote are 31,770,000 for Nixon, 43.4 percent of the total; 31,270,000 or 42.7 percent for Humphrey; 9,906,000 or 13.5 percent for Wallace. Bobby Kennedy was shot and we got stuck with Richard Nixon. Nixon was a *law and order* and *win the war* guy. Nixon capitalized on the South’s rejection of the Democrats’ anti-segregation platform and called it his “Southern Strategy”. The South has been a Republican stronghold ever since. The South has never stopped fighting the war. I liked Jeff Greenfield’s alternative history book, When Everything Changed, imagining a world where Bobby Kennedy had not been shot. If you want to seriously understand the 60’s, read Nixonland by Rick Perlstein, possibly my all-time favorite non-fiction book.

November 12, 1968 – Neil Young releases his self-titled solo debut album. Four years later, “Harvest” was one of my 13 original albums when I joined the Columbia Record Club in 1972. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969), After the Gold Rush (1970), Harvest (1972), and Comes a Time (1978) are four of my all-time favorite albums. They never grow old. 

November 22, 1968 – The Beatles released The White Album. I didn’t buy The White Album until 1978, but it became my favorite Beatles album. The album featured the anthem of 1968, Revolution. “Well you say you want a revolution, well you know, we all want to change the world.” Charles Manson’s favorite song was McCartney’s Helter Skelter. 

December 8, 1968 – The Stones released Beggars Banquet featuring Sympathy for the Devil. In 1968, the music reflected the times. “I shouted out ‘Who killed the Kennedys?’, when after all, it was you and me.” I saw The Stones at Soldier Field on July 8, 1978. Later that night, The Stones sent a car to pick up Muddy Waters and they played together at a blues bar called Kingston Mines on Halsted. 

Missing from the music references above is the common thread of my 50 years of music, John Prine. In 1968, Prine was in the army (Germany, not Vietnam). He returned to his home in Maywood, Illinois, to become a mailman. With lots of time to think as he walked his route, he crafted some of the best-written songs in the history of songwriting. He was discovered by Roger Ebert, John Belushi, and Bill Murray. Eventually, in 1969, Steve Goodman took Kris Kristofferson to The Earl of Oldtown (across the street from Second City), where they heard Prine sing “Sam Stone” and “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore”. John Prine signed with Atlantic Records for $25,000. Kristofferson would also introduce Prine to Dylan. One night Prine wound up at Carly Simon’s apartment, where Dylan, largely off the grid after his mysterious 1966 motorcycle accident, shocked Prine by singing along with several songs from Prine’s not-yet-released debut album. “The album wasn’t even out, and he knew the words because he had an early copy,” Prine says. “I’m thinking, ‘This is like a dream.’”

I’ve seen Prine in five decades. My appreciation of Prine’s songwriting led me to other folky songwriters like Bob Dylan, Steve Goodman, Chris Knight, James McMurtry, Steve Earle, Todd Snider, and Jason Isbell.

Takeaways From 1968

John H. Arnold said, “War is sometimes described as long periods of boredom punctuated by short moments of excitement.” Maybe life is like war – long periods of mundane living punctuated by short moments of intensity.

I asked the question at the beginning of this project, “What makes us remember? All my attempts to answer this question fell short. I considered writing, “Maybe we remember best when we are most alive”, but that borders on cheesy stuff like, “Dance like no nobody’s watching.” I teach my chemistry kids that uncertainty is a trait of the best scientists. Certainty is a quality of fools. Maybe I should accept my own teaching. I have no idea why we remember some things and forget others.

At age-59, I still love and hate football. I went to a high school game last Friday (my son, Alec, is assistant varsity coach at Edwardsville). I will attend another high school game this Friday (my son, Quinn, is assistant varsity coach at Andrew). During the games, I’m constantly checking Twitter for updates of the Plainfield North game (half of my sprinters and most of my throwers play football). Football is the only sport on TV that demands my attention. Tuesday and Wednesday are the only two days in the fall when I’m football-free. My favorite book of recent memory was The Perfect Pass by S.C. Gwynne. Further demonstrating my love-hate relationship for the sport – I love being retired from coaching football even though my teams went 47-1 in the final 48 games of my career. Meanwhile, football continues to attract too many guys like Del Pruitt. Football is NOT life, NOT religion, NOT warfare. Football is a game.

It’s an interesting exercise to try to remember all you can from 50 years ago. A quote from John O’Malley keeps presenting itself in my thoughts. “Above all else, my teenagers have the very unique experience of being taken seriously.” I love the idea of treating kids like real people, not just future adults. I think I had the very unique experience of being taken seriously at age-nine. My parents let me sit at the table with the adults.

I think 1968 was the year I knew I wanted teach and coach like my father. Why? Why is it that one of the rockiest years in my father’s career made me want to be just like him? Rational thought should have led me in a different direction. Wouldn’t life as a pharmacist be infinitely better? (I would have been bored out of my mind.)

In 1968, the seeds of my future were planted. I want to be on the side of people like Bill Russell, Mohammed Ali, Tommie Smith, John Carlos, and Colin Kaepernick. I want to be on the side of people like Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Cornell West, and Bernie Sanders.

The music of 1968 planted the seeds that evolved into the soundtrack of my life.

I’ve often wondered how my life would have been different if I’d been born to a wealthy family that measured success in dollars. I’ve wondered how my life would have been different if my dad would have been a cop or a soldier. What if I had been raised in Alabama?  What if I’d been born in 1969 instead of 1959? What if my parents hated the Kennedys and loved Richard Nixon? What if my parents hated Martin Luther King and loved George Wallace?

My father-in-law once asked his mother, “Would you have been a Baptist if you were born in Calcutta?” She said yes.

Grow where you are planted. Pay attention. Try to remember. Tell your story. Enjoy the ride.

“Life is a ticket to the greatest show on Earth.” – Martin H. Fischer

Tony Holler
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