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Issue 1465 April 22, 2012
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ENGEL STADIUM: Lest We Forget, Coach Elmer Was a Marine Hero of Iwo Jima

November 19, 2014       Leave a Comment
By: Dave Rogers

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Elmer Engel as an outstanding end at the University of Illinois.
 
Engel in his iconic coaching mode, urging excellence with strong encouragement. (Photo by Leonard Falce)

The name Elmer Engel should live on for lots of reasons, including the now even more famous stadium at Bay City Central High School that bears his name.

Engel Stadium, voted Michigan's "grandest" stadium by readers of MLive.com, is only superseded in fame by its namesake, Elmer Engel himself.

Engel, born in 1919 in LaSalle, Illinois, was a tough farm boy from the hinterlands 60 miles southwest of Chicago, a graduate of LaSalle-Peru High School. He was the son of Eastern European immigrants.

As a sophomore, Engel had played on the lightweight football team for the Cavaliers before moving up to the varsity with the bigger boys.

His father, Frederick, a farm laborer, was born in Hamburg, Germany, while his mother, Louise, was born in Bohemia. There were three sisters and another brother in Elmer's family.

The granite-headed rawboned Engel went on to star at end for the University of Illinois football team for three years, 1940-42.

His fame as a scrappy player peaked in 1942 when he single-handedly won the Northwestern game for the Fighting Illini by stealing the ball from a Wildcat halfback and running 46 yards to seal the victory.

Engel was named Most Valuable Player on the 1942 Illinois team in his senior year, the Illini yearbook commenting: "This man was one of the mainstays of the Fighting Illini, making spectacular tackles behind the opponents' lines and racing down the field on punt formations. Elmer is considered by his teammates and coaches as one of the greatest ends in the country." He played 231 consecutive minutes against Minnesota, Iowa, Notre Dame and Michigan.

As a multiple letter winner, he was named to the honorary Tribe of Illini at the university. He was a member of Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity.

After graduating with a degree in Physical Education in 1943, Elmer immediately enlisted in the U.S. Marines and completed officers' training at Quantico, Virginia.

As a 25-year-old Marine second lieutenant, Engel led his fellow Marines in one of the most desperate, and bloody, battles of World War II -- Iwo Jima.

Iwo Jima was a tiny mountainous pile of volcanic rock bristling with Japanese weaponry manned by 20,000 fanatical defenders. The eight-square mile island 800 miles south of Tokyo boasted an air base that had to be taken if the U.S. island-hopping strategy to close on the Japanese mainland was to succeed.

Landing exposed on the beach at Iwo, Engel recalled: "If you weren't afraid you were crazy." Harold Dean, Central football historian, wrote: "They told me 'kill or be killed -- I remembered only the kill part."

Many of the enemy had burrowed into caves. "I didn't take chances unnecessarily," Engel recalled to Dean. "I would call on mortar rather than charge machine guns like the Japanese did. I had made up my mind that I would never fight hand-to-hand as long as I had a pistol and a clip."

The battle was one of the most costly of the Pacific campaign, with 6,000 Marines dead and nearly a third of the 60,000 Americans either killed or wounded. The monumental victory took two months but U.S. bombers escorted by fighters finally could use the Iwo Jima air base as a jumping off spot to bomb the Japanese mainland.

After training troops on Guadalcanal, another island that had been taken in 1943, Engel and his company got orders to come home where he was awarded his first lieutenant bars. "I guess I was too dumb to get killed," he quipped.

By some accounts, Engel returned to U-I after the war and, under the Navy V-12 program, played in the 1947 Rose Bowl along with star guard Alex Agase. Illinois defeated UCLA 45-14.

The stadium that bears Engel's name was erected in 1925 at a cost of $45,000 through bond sales and donations from local business people proud of their outstanding football team.

Ron Pesch has written of Michigan high school stadiums for the Michigan High School Athletic Association: "The Bay City stadium featured two stands of solid concrete with 16 rows of seats for 7,100 fans.

"At the time, the capacity ranked third in the state, behind the facilities of the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. The facility was unveiled to the public on Saturday, Sept. 26, 1925, for a gridiron contest between Bay City Central and Detroit Western. A crowd of 3,000 gathered for the season opener, won by Central, 14-0.

When Elmer arrived in Bay City in 1950 the grid squad was on a 20-game losing streak.

Long gone were the Central stars of the 1920s and early 1930s (undefeated in 1930 and 1931) who had moved up to professional careers. Those included the likes of Bill Hewitt, an all-time All Pro end for the Chicago Bears, and Andy Karpus, who quarterbacked the undefeated Los Angeles Bulldogs in 1937 and played for 15 different pro teams.

The two boys from Bay City's glory days under Coach "Chief" Garland Nevitt, Hewitt and Karpus, were notable for being among the last pro holdouts to wearing newfangled helmets.

Seats in Central Stadium were noticeable empty during the win drought, 1947-49, and no doubt the backers who were still around wondered why they had put up all that dough for the fancy new stadium.

Engel was recruited by local businessmen who bought him a new Cadillac as a welcoming present. He and his wife Mary moved into a small house at the foot of Fairview Avenue near the Bay County Fairgrounds where they would live throughout his career. They had two daughters, Margaret and Kathy and two sons, John and Jim.

Coming from three years as assistant to Ray Eliot at the University of Illinois, Engel was quick to tell Principal Paul Briggs that part of the reason for grid losses was the outdated equipment "from 1929 when Red Grange played football."

Wolfpack football historian Harold Dean wrote: "To his credit, Briggs, who wanted excellence in every department, promptly ordered all new equipment."

Using Eliot's patented "T" formation, Engel drilled his team using only one play, running it over and over in practice. In the season's first game against Midland, Engel recalled: "Midland didn't know our offense, didn't know how simple it was, but we executed to perfection."

His stunting defense, linemen charging first one way then the other, "a concept so new most coaches did not teach it," wrote Dean, "created enormous havoc to the opposition's blocking assignments."

Central beat Midland that first game 12-6, breaking the 20 game loss streak, and went on to a 3-6 season, upsetting Saginaw 14-13 and topping Owosso 14-0 while losing to Alpena, Pontiac, Flint Central, Arthur Hill, Flint Northern and Handy.

It wasn't great, but the Engel and the Wolves were on their way to his all-time record of 165 wins, 34 losses and 8 ties. His teams never lost more than three games in any season. Line Coach Art Nixon explained that Engel's offensive blocking scheme was so precise that a runner who slashed through a hole often had clear sailing to a score. Many games were shutouts for Central.

Funded by the sale of bonds to the public, the Engel Stadium structure was erected during the summer of 1925 at a cost of $45,000. Featuring two stands of solid concrete with 16 rows of seats, the stadium could seat 7,100 fans. Access to the seating area was provided by entry ramps located under the stands. At the time, the capacity ranked third in the state, behind the facilities of the University of Michigan and at Michigan State.

"In the new stadium, Central High of Bay City can boast of the finest athletic plant possessed by any high school in the state of Michigan," stated the Times Tribune, "and the fact that it was procured and built without a penny's cost to the board of education or the taxpayers of the city, but entirely through the efforts of a small group of local business men, makes the gift to the school -- for that is what it virtually amounts to -- all the more appreciated."

The was facility was opened to the public on Saturday, September 26, 1926 for a gridiron contest between Bay City Central and Detroit Western. A crowd of 3,000 gathered for the season opener, won by Central, 14-0.

Elaborate dedication ceremonies were planned for the Saginaw Arthur Hill contest late in the season. The only Valley opponent on the Central schedule, the contest was expected to draw a crowd of over 5,000. However, heavy rains forced cancellation of the event.

The ceremony was re-scheduled for Thanksgiving Day against Pontiac Central The newspaper ran an aerial photograph of the contest - a real rarity during that era. Bay City emerged victorious, 13-0.

Wrote Pesch: "Over 75 years later, the results are still on display. Re-christened Elmer Engel Stadium, (in honor of school's greatest head coach) on September 23, 1973, over a million dollars have flowed into repair, renovation, and restoration of the facility. The results are indeed impressive."

With additional stands on each end of the field, an estimated 9,000 fans jammed the stadium in 1965 for a state championship showdown against, who else? --Midland. Halfback Rollie "Joe" Auman ran 75 yards untouched for the game's only score in what Engel told the Central Boosters was "a perfect play." Films showed all defenders were knocked down by Wolfpack blockers as a startled Auman waltzed to the end zone.

And now, the stadium has been justly recognized by more than 110,000 news readers as Michigan's most outstanding high school football facility.

And the name Elmer Engel, who brought pride back to Bay City in a 22 year career, is properly recognized. Engel was one of the first inductees into the Bay County Sports Hall of Fame in 1991.

Elmer Engel died at age 86 in 2006. His fame lives on, a timeless tribute in stone at Johnson and Columbus.



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Dave Rogers

Dave Rogers is a former editorial writer for the Bay City Times and a widely read,
respected journalist/writer in and around Bay City.
(Contact Dave Via Email at carraroe@aol.com)

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