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Jack Gillooly has lived a remarkable life. Born in September 1920, he is the oldest living former Navy football player at 104 years old. He is a decorated veteran, father, grandfather, and great grandfather, and on Saturday, when his Midshipmen take on Army in America’s Game, he’ll be reminded of his time as a two-way tackle in two of the most unique iterations of the rivalry on record.
His journey started in 1940 while at a junior college in West Virginia. A friend of his football coach at the time had an ask: Do you have anyone who can do a little arithmetic and also play football? Gillooly’s name was passed on to Edgar “Rip” Miller, Navy’s line coach who himself was a former lineman for Notre Dame, where he blocked for the famed Four Horsemen backfield.
Miller and Gilooly began corresponding, and assurances were made that Gillooly would get one of the precious few appointments from a West Virginia congressman to attend the Naval Academy. Instead, his mother had to secure one the following year, and in 1941 Gillooly was off to Annapolis. After he finished his season on the plebe (freshman) team, Miller took the entire team to an NFL game where Washington hosted Philadelphia. That day in the stands at Griffith Stadium, everything changed, as Gillooly recounted this week to CBS Sports.
“At halftime of that game, the Chief Petty Officer who had been down with the Eagles spotted us up there because we were in uniform, and he came up and he said to the commander with us, ‘Commander, did you hear what happened?’
Oh, no, we hadn’t.
‘Well, they bombed Pearl Harbor.’
We stayed there through the second half of that game and they were calling out [over the PA system] General, so and so, Admiral, so and so, and all the senators, they were trying…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/how-104-year-old-navy-veteran-jack-gillooly-still-lives-by-the-words-beat-army/
Author : Richard Johnson
Publish date : 2024-12-12 17:26:00
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