It could be "just my imagination runnin' away with me" --- the tunes of the Temptations reverberate after a late night at the Saenger --- but former football players seem to fit a particular mold. My better half chief among them, they never forget their days on the gridiron. Over the past decade, while chatting with genteel gentlemen for this gig, I've found that, as a whole, they revel in the glory days --- play by play. They wouldn't trade time on the football field for treasure. They recite the score. And R. W. "Dick" Richardson was no exception.
While a student at Franklinton High School in the late 1940s, he played football. Recollecting like it was yesterday, Mr. Dick reminded, "Everything had stopped for the war." The Second World War. When football resumed in 1946, Mr. Dick --- a thirteen-year-old --- went out for the sensational sport. His senior season, in 1950, he was the FHS quarterback. With his traditional dry wit and a spectacular memory, he deftly proffered the stats, "We won six and lost five."
It was interesting that though the team had no football equipment to speak of, the dedicated players managed quite well in this bygone age. They determinedly took their brogans, which Mr. Dick described as old shoes that farmers used to plow, to Barney Welch's shoe shop where Mr. Welch nailed cleats to the bottom of their shoes. An example of what my depression-era parents promoted, a vestige from childhood - making do with what they had. Mr. Dick added that their football helmets, made of leather, "fit snug on our heads."
Having written in the fall of 2017 a two-part series on football from its inception at FHS in 1920, I was enthralled with Mr. Dick's time, mid-century, on the football field. It's true what they say --- the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. For I had learned from renowned historian Daunton Gibbs that FHS team members prior to 1924 included Frank Jones at quarterback, Howard Butler, Hunter Magee, Lamar Richardson, and Frank Richardson --- Mr. Dick's dad. And Lamar Richardson was his uncle.
Mr. Dick also reminisced about basketball, another sport he excelled in. His junior year, FHS went to the state finals, losing to the Baker Buffalos. Mr. Dick fondly remembered the camaraderie of his teammates and friends --- Richard Morgan, Tommy Babington (my mentor Sally Babington Knight's brother), Earl Corkern, and Freddie Joe Seal (J. Y. Seal's brother). Continuing, he named more companions --- James Stafford, Donald Bickham, Paul Markquat, Steve Richardson, Otto Magee, Kaye Varnado, Walter Green, David Richardson, Tommy Carter, and Gaylord Bickham --- a band of brothers, he grew up with in Franklinton.
With his signature dry wit, Mr. Dick --- president of the 1951 Franklinton High School senior class --- remembered graduation like it was yesterday. He deadpanned, "I didn't get the recognition I deserved." Apparently, his close friend Walter Green passed out on the FHS stage and would have tumbled off in calamitous fashion had Earl Smith, a teacher seated on the front row, not come to the rescue. Mr. Smith caught Walter when he keeled over. Something no one would ever forget. It was Dwight D. Eisenhower who declared, "For any American who had the great and priceless privilege of being raised in a small town there always remains with him nostalgic memories." He must have been referring to Franklinton.
After graduation from FHS, Mr. Dick matriculated at LSU along with several of his pals including Gaylord Bickham (who soon transferred to Tulane), Steve Richardson (who landed at Louisiana Tech), and Jerry Denman. Going through rush, Mr. Dick pledged Sigma Chi, becoming president of the fraternity. And his Cousin David Steinwinder gave him his first job at LSU refereeing girls volleyball for $1 per game.
Looking to the future, forestry became Dick's major and Marilyn Allard, a beauty from New Orleans, became his sweetheart. I would wager he was humming, "My Girl." The daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Morris Allard, Marilyn was a Phi Mu and also the sweetheart of Sigma Chi. Dick's wife of sixty-five years, she remains the apple of his eye.
With the pulpwood business taking off like a rocket, he was on a trajectory toward home. After he and Marilyn married in August of 1957 in New Orleans, the following year they moved to Franklinton --- Dick's hometown and the parish seat --- where they embarked on a wonderful life. Going into the pulpwood business with his dad, Dick started off with some tough tasks, one of which was loading. He recollected being in the woods from sunup to sundown. That's the nature of the timber business.
Yet, there's no better place to learn about life, than the forest. This, I discovered last autumn in Massachusetts when I visited the woodland on Walden Pond, once owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson, where his mentee Henry David Thoreau, writing in the woods for more than two years, built his cabin. It was he who said, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately." Going into the woods is something Mr. Dick did for decades, and it's something locals enjoy to this day. Going to the woods, in Washington Parish. Of course, Mr. Dick was bringing out valuable pulpwood.
•Stay tuned for Part 5 as Dick and Marilyn Richardson settle in Franklinton.
