I enjoyed Vanessa Lotito’s article in the January Messenger on the Keith-Draper-Wise impressions of the 1981 Delaware-Penn game at Franklin Field. I also attended the 1921 game, and can share their enthusiasm. In my case, though, I was much more interested in escorting my brother Joe’s girl to the game than in the debacle which followed. Shipley had put him in the line-up with only about two weeks conditioning, but Joe wanted to show off his prowess, and asked me to do the honors. But he didn’t count on getting walked on in the first ten minutes, and an ensuing two months in the hospital. Incidentally, neither he nor I got the girl!--but that’s another story. He had completed his Freshman year at Rutgers, and came to Delaware on a Shipley scholarship; so we started Hancock’s physics together as sophomores in the third floor attic at Recitation Hall--where the motto was: no excuses acceptable except death! Well, Joe went back to Rutgers, and graduated on an iceman’s scholarship. And that’s another story, too, but I shared the balance of the summer after Plattsburgh with him, and that was an education in itself.Since we are in a reminiscing mood, I wonder if Muncy recalls an incident in Old College dining hall, when the sophs insisted an uppity frosh make a speech on the balcony extolling the virtues of the sophs. We members of the Waiters’ Union had just served baked potatoes, and the frosh proceeded to lambast the sophs. All at once the air was full of brown projectiles converging on the balcony. The expression on the dietician’s face was a thing to behold. For some unknown reason, she decided to blame me for the incident. Actually, for three years I depended on that job to satisfy my need to eat three meals a day. She had to blame somebody, I guess, but I was sublimely innocent.
Muncy was a good cheerleader, as well as spryly evasive on the basketball floor. I can still see him heaving the ball the full length of the court to one of the Carter boys under the far basket.
Do you recall the goat which Yost and I built for the Swarthmore game? We were the legs for this contraption we carried on our shoulders. Fortunately, we won a prize of $10; we owed $12 for materials, and I am not sure how we paid the other $2.
So that was a good article about three guys I always admired--but they shared one serious fault: none of them were in the Class of '23.John M. Wells '23
Hamilton, IL
April 15, 1982
