What About Charlie?

Still working on book three, adding a story here and there. I am going to post a story I just finished for book four but have decided to move it up to book three, A Scattering Of Memories, being that book four may not happen. It is a little long but I am hopeful enough of you will take the time to read it and give me some feedback, good or bad. It will help in the decision making progress as we finish up on the book.

What About Charlie?
By Terry Beck

I was born and raised in Brownwood, Texas. Brownwood, like most Texas towns, is proud of its athletes, in particular, it's football players. Now Brownwood had many outstanding athletes in all the other sports and the town would back them to the hilt during their particular season, but football was king, football was talked about all year long. I can remember knowing who the high school football coach was when I was in elementary school and knowing, even then, he was the man to impress if you were going to make it in high school football.

There are many great years in the history of Brownwood football, as there were many quality athletes. However, for the most part, Brownwood's championship history would support their true strength, the ability to play as a team. The 1965 State Football Champions were an example of team spirit and how that spirit could build champions. The 1965 team played fourteen games that year, scoring 305 points. The '65 Champions only allowed 43 points that year, holding nine of their opponents to 0, including Bridge City in the state championship game. It has been said the 1965 Champions could have been one of the all-time great high school football champions.

These are the things folks of my era like to talk with pride about when looking back to the 1965 State Champions. However, that's not the purpose of this writing. I want to talk about the 1965 football team, but I want to talk about an event that occurred that year, with that team, before the regular season had begun. Most folks, other than those that were there and their families, know very little, if anything about the events leading up to the 1965 Championship season.

It was before the 1965 football season had begun and the team had just started its grueling two-a-day workout schedule and the beginning of school and our first scheduled game against Stephenville was ten days to two weeks away. Back in those days it was not public information when or where we would play a preseason scrimmage game to limit the potential audience or scouts for the game. On this particular day we arrived for our regular workout/practice and we were told we were going to participate in a preseason scrimmage with Weatherford at a neutral field out of town and we were to advise our families of the fact.

We packed our equipment bags and were loaded in a regular yellow and black school bus ( we only used charter buses during the regular season) and we were off to scrimmage the Weatherford Kangaroos. I don't know if we knew how good we were but we knew there was a good feeling when we prepared to do what we needed to do. I don't recall what we knew about Weatherford but we knew we had to do whatever was required to do our best. Little did we know we would meet this team again in the semifinals, we were there for that day, we were there to practice and to learn from it.

Scrimmage games were a controlled competition with each team running a predetermined number of offensive plays and the same number of defensive plays. There were referees and the coaches were able to stand on the field with the players. The scrimmage began with each team running an equal number of offensive and defensive plays. The tailback for Brownwood was Charlie Ellis. Charlie was an amazing athlete who appeared to have no fear. When Charlie ran with the ball, he would lower his head to about two feet off the ground and run as hard and fast as he could. He ran like a torpedo, knowing no fear.

Brownwood took its offensive turn and once again Charlie was the showcase of Brownwood's offense. Right off the bat Charlie was given the ball and he ran as only he knew how to run. I can remember the sound of the impact, as Charlie ducked his head and hit several defensive men head on. The "crack" of the impact could be heard throughout the stadium. This is Charlie's recollection of that play:

"The impact you were talking about was evident in the film and was shown to me about ten to twelve weeks later after I came back to school. The impact that I remember was between me and one of the linebackers and two defensive tackles all at once. The result was not immediate, other than me breaking a rivet in my helmet suspension and I realized the helmet was sitting a little funny on my head.

"After that, I played another fifteen minutes or so. I remember David Henley pitching the ball to me and I fumbled it. I remember when David pitched the ball to me, I saw two balls coming at me, however, when I fumbled the ball it took a perfect bounce right back up into my hands and I was off to the races. I remember getting to about their forty yard line and was feeling I was on my way to the end zone. Usually no one could have caught me from behind, not that fast, just scared, once I built up a full head of steam, however they caught me at the fifteen yard line. That's when I knew something was seriously wrong. It felt like my brain was about to pour out the front of my head!

"Then Coach Woods or Coach Southall sent me out of the game. I think I walked about 200 yards to get off the field. The Team Doctor looked at me and told Kenneth Early (Trainer) to give me a couple of aspirin. By that time I was starting to feel sick at my stomach."

I remember an assistant coach running to Charlie's side after finding him near the parking lot and yelling for help. He took a towel and frantically wiped the vomit from between Charlie's facemask and his face as Charlie's convulsions had apparently started. Later I was in the shower when Charlie walked in and stood in the shower with his head ducked under the showerhead, water running off his head and down his back. I asked if he was alright, without looking up he said he thought his head was about to explode.

We ate a cold hamburger and fries and loaded up the school bus to begin the journey home. After a while of bouncing in the bus, with most of us trying to sleep, the grind of the bus engine was interrupted with moans, gagging and the cries of Charlie...something was dreadfully wrong, apparently the convulsions were back in earnest. They moved Charlie to the front of the bus along with the managers, trainers and coaches. The bus picked up speed and there was a sincere sense of concern. The bus became quiet, as quiet as a school bus could be, and we all sat there listening to the gagging, moans and cries of Charlie, our friend.

I recall seeing something that night in the faces of my fellow teammates and hearing their quiet, concerned conversations as well, reflecting something I had never been exposed to before. We were all young athletes playing a sport that had been hard work but for the most part was rewarding and fun. Now, it was full of doubt and fear.

At some point the bus was stopped in a small town on the side of the road. A coach ran to a business to use the phone (way before cell phones). From what we were able to understand, they had called the hospital in Brownwood and requested an ambulance. It was determined that it would be faster for the bus to continue on to Brownwood rather than send an ambulance. Whoever was driving that bus that nerve racking night managed to get the best of the potential of that old bus.

We sat listening to the pain of Charlie, some praying, some crying and some not knowing what to do. Some of us could hear the discussions of the coaches and hear the words of doubt. Finely we could see the lights of Brownwood and could feel the hope of help. We rolled into the front hospital entrance with hope that this would give Charlie relief. As I recall, Charlie lost consciousness as the senior captains and others carried him inside.

Charlie also told me some things I was not aware of that is very much worth sharing:

"You need to remember Kenneth Early. The little guy recognized what was happening and he used blankets and rubbed my arms and legs to keep my circulation going as I was in shock. That young man saved my life that night. I remember him keeping that up for the whole trip."

It seems we sat there for an eternity and even though we wanted to be as close to Charlie as possible, we were told to sit in the bus. There wasn't much said, probably because we didn't want to speculate as to the fate of our teammate, our friend. Finally we were driven to the high school parking lot where we tried to go through our normal routine of unloading our equipment, placing our sweaty uniforms in the laundry, placing our equipment in our lockers and getting ready to go home.

There are other things Charlie shared with me concerning happenings after his arrival to the hospital that are worth sharing:

"My temperature was 95 degrees when they got me there. The Doctor told me I was probably on my way out. I woke up at 4:30 AM with Annette Morris (His then girl friend) sitting on my arm trying to keep it straight to keep me from dislodging the IV needle due to my convulsions. I passed out again and came to at 7:00PM the next night and saw Coaches Wood, Southall and Murray standing at the foot of my bed along with my Mother and Dad. I never saw three such humble and scared football coaches. Later I discovered that I was paralyzed on my right side. They found that the paralysis was due to brain swelling and a blood clot on the left side of my brain. As the swelling went down and the clot began to dissolve the paralysis began to subside. After six weeks in hospitals I finally got to come home, I had lost from 155 pounds to 109 pounds."

Seems like Charlie was in the hospital for a long, long time. He and his family know what he had to endure. All I know, as a friend of Charlie, he was a heck of an athlete, with a fantastic future, who fell victim to a vicious injury. I only wish we knew then what we know now. As for me the results are inconclusive. I know from that date on, I had a fear, not from injury to me, but that I could injure others. I still played hard but there were times during the year when I may have had an opportunity to really put someone on the other team down and I may have held back a little. I fulfilled my responsibility as part of the team, but I no longer had the "killer instinct". It's probably good my football career ended after high school.

The next week after Charlie's dreadful injury, the Brownwood paper wrote that Wayne Fenton, a sophomore running back, had been moved to the varsity team account of an "illness to Charlie Ellis". I suppose the difference between an illness and an injury when dealing with a concussion was not clear , even to the media in those days.

There were a lot of things that were different back then when compared to today. Things like if got thirsty or needed a drink you weren't in shape. When they did let you have a drink, you drank salt water with sliced lemons added. You were required to take salt tablets every day. As I look back, some of the worst medical advice I ever received was a coach telling me to, "Walk it off Beck!". None of these things were malicious, it was accepted by better coaches across the board as being the way to build champions. It's almost as if someone forgot, we were kids. We may have been playing a man's game, but we were kids!

The rest of the 1965 season is public knowledge. We defeated Weatherford 14-7 in the Semifinals. We went undefeated. We won the state championship that year. But what you may not remember was that Charlie was the Senior Class President, a guitar playing member of The Folk Singers, he was voted Mr. Talent, he was the star in the school play Bye Bye Birdie, he was a member of The Attorney General's Youth Conference and a friend to all.

Charlie went on to graduate from Howard Payne University majoring in Biology with a minor in Chemistry and continued to work toward a Master's Degree in Biology. Charlie met Twyla Carr while attending Stephen F. Austin University and they were married in August 1969. They have three sons Daniel, Mathew and Benjamin as well as seven grand kids, six girls and one boy. His sons never participated in sports even though Charlie never tried to influence them one way or the other. They were more into the arts and sciences. As a matter of fact Charlie said he had not shared the history of his 1965 injury with his wife or his children until the first draft of this story was written and he let them read it.

After college, Charlie went on to work forty successful years before retiring in 2013. He taught for five years, worked at Alcon for five years and then worked thirty years with Exxon. Now Charlie is enjoying his retirement the way a husband, father and grandfather is supposed to. He says he and his family have become somewhat amateur Paleontologists over the years enjoying the challenges of deciphering the earth's secrets with her fossils, bones and such and doing it as a family.

Charlie never had a chance to finish what he had started in 1965, however, he did, and still is living what every man would hope for. He is healthy, happy and living with no regrets. He would never say it, or even give it a thought, but as far as I am concerned, Charlie was a determining factor in the 1965 State Football Champions...The Brownwood Lions. As far as Charlie is concerned, "There is not a day that goes by that I don't think of all of you. You people were such a great part of my life and I loved each and every one of you. I will never forget any of you!"