Undefeated: 1970 West Nottingham Academy Rams

By Wesley E. Williamson

I want to tell a story of how kids from different backgrounds and cultures came together in the summer of 1970, and grew during that fall to produce an 8-0 undefeated football season. This book is a journal of my own personal experiences with that team. These memories, along with personal accounts, recollections, periodical reports are recalled in this memoir. Also included are anecdotes that I gathered from players, cheerleaders, teachers, coaches and sports writers. While compiling information to glorify the achievements of that great team, I discovered that WNA had a tradition of assembling undefeated football teams that dates back to 1933, and were known for their tenacious football style as far back as 1895.

When I showed up at West Nottingham Academy in the fall of 1970, our nation was at war with Vietnam, and we were still healing from the aftermath of the shooting of Dr. Martin Luther King where all of the large inner cities had exploded with anger, hatred and riots. My choice to attend a primarily white school was a bit ambitious so I was feeling a bit ambivalent, and a little worried about this new adventure that I was embarking on at this countryside campus in rural Maryland. I had a few nasty racial encounters while in Florida that had left me wondering about my reach out and be friends with everyone attitude. As it turned out, it was a decision that would define my future, and growth into a man . . . . and not just a black man. What I experienced in that rural prep school and in particular what I learned during that wonderful season of comradeship and accomplishment taught me a lot about community that I have carried through the years with me and has kept bringing me back.

While attending the 2008 Homecoming at West Nottingham Academy, I discovered that football had been dropped from the schools athletic program. This was my motivation for writing this journal of sorts. I hope it will bring enough attention to the alumni and the administrators at the school to put a competitive football team back on campus. Football has a way of bringing together people who otherwise have very little in common. It brings together student and faculty as well as creates a common goal for all of the campus to reach for in addition to an exhilarating educational experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 10, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483648774

Wesley E. Williamson

Born on August 18th, 1955, Wesley Eugene Williamson has been an aerospace contract design engineer for 30 years and the proud father of four. The only child of Samuel and Vivian, I attended Washington, DC public schools until I was 14 years old. After attending one year at Florida Air Academy, an Air Force ROTC prep school located in Melbourne, Florida, I transferred to West Nottingham Academy in Colora, Maryland where I was a trainer/manager for the school's sports teams. Upon returning for Homecoming weekend in 2003 I found that football had been dropped from the sports program. WNA has a tradition of greatness including students who signed the Declaration of Independence. Its sports history is just as exciting, with players and coaches who have gone on to make an impact on modern day events and lives. In showing appreciation for their great contributions, I give you...”Undefeated”.

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Copyright © 2013 by Wesley E. Williamson.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2013910027

ISBN:       Hardcover         978-1-4836-4876-7

                  Softcover           978-1-4836-4875-0

                  Ebook                 978-1-4836-4877-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 09/14/2013

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CONTENTS

Foreword

Preface

Chapter I.   Mean Streets

Chapter II.   Florida Air Academy

Chapter III.   The Visit

Chapter IV.   Traditions

Chapter V.   The Arrival

Chapter VI.   Friendships and Bonds for life

Chapter VII.   The 1970 Undefeated WNA Rams

Photos

Epilogue

Bibliography

FOREWORD

I would like to first of all thank my mother, father and grandmother for their continued guidance and support for 57 years of my life. My many teachers and mentors and of course my guiding light . . . . God.

This book is dedicated to Coach Jim Spiro, and his wife, Mary, who are both with our heavenly father. To Coach John Schultheis who helped me to put this chronicle together; to the Reverend Norman C. Farnloff, who was headmaster, and someone that you could talk to anytime, about anything. To the many teachers, and faculty like Craig Thrash, who made a big impact on my scholastic growth, Herb C. Foutz, and Kenneth Detrich; to Joseph Ray and Richard Funk. To my dorm supervisor that year, Roger Heim. To Gracie and Marie of the cafeteria staff who kept us all well fed. To my many classmates and dorm mates who came from a variety of financial, social and ethnic backgrounds. The experience of living in such a diverse environment taught me at an early age the rewards of assimilation.

How strong we are as a country and a society when we pool the great experiences of our individual backgrounds into one common goal of betterment for the overall masses. I believe the founders of West Nottingham Academy had a dream like this in mind when they planted the seeds of an institution that would help populate the New World with educated, broadminded and refined citizens.

PREFACE

I want to tell a story of how kids from different backgrounds and cultures came together in the summer of 1970, and grew during that fall to produce an 8-0 undefeated football season. This book is a journal of my own personal experiences with that team. These memories, along with personal accounts, recollections, periodical reports are recalled in this memoir. Also included are anecdotes that I gathered from players, cheerleaders, teachers, coaches and sports writers. While compiling information to glorify the achievements of that great team, I discovered that WNA had a tradition of assembling undefeated football teams that dates back to 1933, and were known for their tenacious football style as far back as 1895.

When I showed up at West Nottingham Academy in the fall of 1970, our nation was at war with Vietnam, and we were still healing from the aftermath of the shooting of Dr. Martin Luther King where all of the large inner cities had exploded with anger, hatred and riots. My choice to attend a primarily white school was a bit ambitious so I was feeling a bit ambivalent, and a little worried about this new adventure that I was embarking on at this countryside campus in rural Maryland. I had a few nasty racial encounters while in Florida that had left me wondering about my reach out and be friends with everyone attitude.

As it turned out, it was a decision that would define my future, and growth into a man . . . . and not just a black man. What I experienced in that rural prep school and in particular what I learned during that wonderful season of comradeship and accomplishment taught me a lot about community that I have carried through the years with me and has kept bringing me back.

While attending the 2008 Homecoming at West Nottingham Academy, I discovered that football had been dropped from the school’s athletic program. This was my motivation for writing this journal of sorts. I hope it will bring enough attention to the alumni and the administrators at the school to put a competitive football team back on campus. Football has a way of bringing together people who otherwise have very little in common. It brings together student and faculty as well as creates a common goal for all of the campus to reach for in addition to an exhilarating educational experience.

CHAPTER I

Mean Streets

I was in my second year of middle school when the shots rang out in Memphis that would forever change racial relations in this country. The dreamer was gone, but the dream had just begun. It was a brisk April day in 1968. Washington DC was being held hostage by the citizens who lived there. The President had called in the National Guard to patrol the neighborhoods and streets. It was the 1968 riots, after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. The people of neighborhoods located in the poor inner city began pouring out of their houses and proceeded to burn and pillage their own neighborhood stores and businesses. I witnessed this first hand from my neighbor’s balcony, in an apartment building we lived in overlooking a local shopping center. We watched as people ran in and out of the Liquor store, as well as the food supermarket with arms full of food, liquor and other looted goods. Our parents didn’t approve or support this kind of senseless violence and unruly behavior, so none of my friends or I joined in to any of the looting or rioting. We just watched in amazement through binoculars and cameras.

After five days of rioting and burning, the public schools reopened. The president had called in 13,000 National Guardsmen to defuse the violence that had overtaken our capitol city. The National Guard had set up their camp right on the school’s sports field of my junior high school, Carter G. Woodson Jr. High School ( from which my daughter would graduate some thirty-four years later). My friends and I would stop and chat with them while on our way to school. They would tease us about joining up and we just laughed at them.

The Vietnam war was in full swing and some of the soldiers that were camped out on the lawn would joke about not taking ROTC in high school and maybe college, so they could be officers, instead of the grunts. That spring event must have stuck with me for the rest of that school year, because I wanted to join up right then. All thirteen years of me.

The following are photos of a period of history that proves that a society, we have grown. Like the dreamer wished for in what I believe to be the most important speech since the Sermon on the Mount, given by Jesus Christ, and I quote:

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. August 28, 1963

2.jpg

National Guardsmen stand guard as firefighters battle fires in blazing stores

and businesses on H Street, N.E. In the Capital City

In April 1969, I had decided to attend military school in Florida, rather than remain in DC, and put up with another abusive year at home, going to Woodson Jr. High. Its hard to concentrate on learning when the only thing you can think of is how to get home safely every day. I was tired of trying to find new routes from school to home without getting jumped and pummeled by all of the neighborhood gangs and thugs. That, along with the fact that I was unhappy with my Mom’s choice in replacement father