After hearing from a loyal reader who reminded me about the football part of the story, I hit the library and pulled together a few excerpts from Koop: The Memoirs of America's Family Doctor, the 1993 book by C. Everett Koop '37, the former U.S. Surgeon General who died this week at age 96.
Regarding his high school career Koop wrote:
The teachers encouraged me to try new things. I loved the athletic opportunities, especially football. Although the tiny school could barely field a football 11 my senior year our team remained unbeaten, untied and even unscored upon in our division in New York City thanks to several ringers. I joined the wrestling team but made the terrible mistake of pinning the coach.He wrote this about a scary injury that would end his career after he'd been named to the first team – but before he'd played a game:
On defense I was playing roving center, and the opportunity came to intercept a short pass, just as (coach Red) Blaik had seen me practice. I snagged the pass, found a hole in the line, and must have run about 10 yards before I was hit by two very vicious tacklers. I was knocked out cold. I don't really know how long it was, but my friends told me I was on the ground for several minutes. When I tried to walk to the sidelines I realized that my shoulder was extraordinarily sore. More disturbing, something strange happened to my vision. I was seeing two of everything, a second image superimposed on the first, somewhat to the right and above it.And . . .
The double vision was strange. When I woke up in the morning, it was very severe, and the two images were separated widely. By sheer effort of concentration, I could pull the two images together and hold them there, a feat I later learned I was able to do by tightening the six extraocular muscles around each eye. Throughout the day, as I got more and more tired, it became harder and harder to hold the images together, especially when reading. By the time I was ready for bed, the two images were as widely separated as they were when I woke in the morning.Encouraged by a professor to consider his options if he wanted to be a surgeon, Koop gave up the game. From the book:
I don't think Dartmouth football suffered much from my absence. Instead, Dartmouth got a very fine center, Carl 'Mutt' Ray, who inspired team for the next three years, especially when in 1936 Dartmouth finally broke the "Yale Jinx" to pull off the great football victory during my college career.
Koop would suffer from some degree of double vision the rest of his life. From the book:My wife thinks it's quite humorous that I managed to be such a successful pediatric surgeon and had the confidence of so many patients' parents for so many years, when all the time I had double vision.Koop: The Memoirs of America's Family Doctor, is available here.
For a 2.5-page transcript of Koop's football story that, among other things, explains how poorly his decision to give up the game was received by Blaik and others around the program, click here.
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A helpful reader has sent along a note regarding the passing of former Dartmouth football great John Clayton '51. The note points out that John's granddaughter, Ellie Clayton, is a senior on the Dartmouth women's lacrosse team and that she made what might have been her first career start in last weekend's win at Oregon. Find her bio here.
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A note in today's local daily regarding Dartmouth's 13-8 win over Vermont in men's lacrosse reports that while defensive lineman Teddy Reed is playing lacrosse this spring as a senior, kicker RC Willenbrock, who came to Dartmouth has a lacrosse player, is no longer with the squad.Among those who turned out to watch at least some of the game yesterday was sophomore quarterback Alex Park, who said he's fully recovered from the shoulder/rib injury that cost him the starting job late last season and is eager to get going again this spring.
