Chapter 1

1972

As I mentioned earlier I am a huge sports fan. Like most guys I love to park my big butt in front of the TV and watch countless hours of sports. All kinds of sports. Football, especially NFL football is by far my favorite but depending on the time of year you can find me watching some kind of game on the tube. And thankfully my wife has the same love of sports so it is something we can do together.

Next to football I love to watch golf, tennis, basketball, all the Olympic sports both summer and winter and even fishing shows. OK, I hear you. “Fishing shows?” Yes I love to watch fishing shows on TV. I will give you the fact that maybe fishermen are not actually athletes so it isn’t a real sport but still most Saturday mornings you can find me glued to the Bassmaster Fishing show. The draw could be the beautiful scenery or the chance to learn the latest fishing techniques from the world’s best but most likely it is the riveting dialogue. Where else can you hear such delicate use of the English language with great phrases like, “Ooooh baby, ooooh baby, whoooo baby, come to daddy, stay on there, stay on there, she’s a beauty, oooooh baby!!! If you have heard talk like this before you are either watching fishing shows or you have the porn channel.

Over the years sports on TV as evolved to not only sports on the weekend but now includes several 24 hour sport channels like the Golf Channel and the Tennis Channel. Throw in countless ESPN channels you can watch sports nonstop. Of course the most popular 24 hour sports channel is probably the NFL Channel.

This is really amazing when you think about it. The football season is the shortest season among the major sports with four weeks of pre-season games, sixteen weeks of the regular season, followed by four weeks of the playoffs including the Super Bowl. From start to finish the season is only twenty-four weeks long and even when they are playing the games they are basically only on two days a week with games all day Sunday and then one on Monday night.

But still, the NFL Channel runs 24-7 for fifty-two weeks a year. Is this a great country or what? No wonder we have so many people trying to cross our borders.

With coverage for fifty-two weeks and more than half of those weeks being in the off season they can come up with some amazing things to fill the air time. As soon as the Super Bowl winning quarterback smiles at the camera and says, “I’m going to Disney World” the commentators start talking about the next season. And boy can they talk.

They talk about which coaches are getting fired and which ones will be hired. Which players are changing teams? Who’s retiring? Who’s getting drafted? Who’s having surgery? Who’s having sex with Tiger Woods? Oops, sorry that is on the Golf Channel.

For the last two or three years it seemed like all they talked about in the off season was Brett Favre. “Is Brett Favre retiring? Is he coming back? Who will he play for? What kind of jeans does he really wear? This is the kind of stuff they have on there and that is the kind of stuff I am sitting there watching. I need to get a life.

But it was while I was watching the beloved NFL Channel that got me started on the journey I alluded to earlier.

Thirteen weeks into the 2009 NFL season two teams found themselves undefeated. The Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints both had identical records, both were 13-0. It is very rare that any team finds themselves with a 13-0 mark but to have two teams in the same year is really bizarre. So as it happens in any NFL football season that has a team that is undefeated this late in the year the sport commentators can’t keep themselves from bringing up the only team in NFL history to go through the entire season, playoffs, and Super Bowl without losing a game. You know who it is. Let’s say it all together. The 1972 Miami Dolphins.

There have been other undefeated teams. Both the 1934 and 1942 Chicago Bears didn’t lose a game all year. But at that time there wasn’t a playoff system in place so they only had the regular season followed by the Championship Game between the Eastern Division and Western Division leaders. And Chicago ended up losing both the Championship games in 1934 and 1942.

A couple years ago the 2007 New England Patriots had a great season and it looked like they would join the 1972 Miami Dolphins as the only teams to win all their games during the regular season, playoffs, and Super Bowl. But it was not to be.

The Patriots were a perfect 18-0 going into the Super Bowl game against the New York Giants. But at the end of the day the Patriots found themselves at 18-1 for the year and it found the members of the 1972 Miami Dolphins once again popping the corks on the champagne bottles as they celebrated being the ONLY truly undefeated team.

But in 2009 with two teams at 13-0 it got everyone thinking and talking about, “Could this be the year?”

Late one night I found myself watching the NFL Channel when a story on “the perfect season” came on. I had heard it before and I am sure I will hear it again but I decided to stay on the channel rather than surfing any of the other 432 channels I have.

They showed clips from the 1972 season and highlights of some of the great plays and replayed interviews from the season. They talked to Coach Don Shula and had him relive some of his memories of the season. Players like quarterback Bob Griese, running backs Larry Csonka and Mercury Morris and receiver Paul Warfield all pitched in with their comments of the season and what it meant to them to have sole ownership of the “perfect season.”

Speaking of those interviews from 1972, wow guys, nice leisure suits and I really dig those groovy side burns. I loved the ‘70’s for the great music that came from that time but boy oh boy the Fashion Police must have been busy handing out tickets during that decade.

Like I said I had heard the story of the 1972 Miami Dolphins several times before but there was something different about this night that caught my attention. It wasn’t anything Coach Shula or any of the players said in the interviews or even anything said by the guy doing the story. The great plays from the season or from the Super Bowl game really didn’t stand out. Strangely enough it was simply the year that it happened that caught my eye. Or actually my mind.

Seems like every time I heard someone say 1972 my brain seemed to flash back in time. For some reason I didn’t immediately pick up on how old I would have been in 1972 so various thoughts or flashes of events seemed to randomly dance through my mind. Thoughts of grade school friends, favorite teachers and hated principals. First car, first girlfriend, first dance, and first broken heart. My first and last football game, the last F on a report card, and last chance to be cool. A trip to California with two of my High School buddies dominated my memory merry-go-round. All these things made their way in and out of my mind in a matter of seconds. One thought seemed to lead to the next and some seemed to come out of nowhere. Thoughts about people or places or events that I hadn’t had in years were now passing one after another as I sat there watching TV. All because of the year 1972.

But obviously not all of these things could have happened in the same year. You just can’t have that many firsts and last all in the same calendar year.

So I put a halt to the trip down memory lane to figure out exactly how old I was and what I was doing in 1972. I remembered my older brother, Eric graduated in 1971 and the year he graduated I was in the seventh grade. It was one of only two years that we went to the same school. When I was in the first grade and Eric was in the sixth grade we both attended Eugene Field Elementary School. And then when Eric was a senior at Webb City High I had caught up with him again and we attended the same school. Well, not actually the same school but we were on the same campus as he was in the High School and I was in Junior High.

If I was in the seventh grade in 1971 that would obviously mean I was in the eighth grade in 1972. Although with some of the grades I was making back then it was never assumed that as a calendar year passed by that I would automatically be in the next grade. I was never held back in any of my years of schooling but that might have been more because the teachers didn’t want to deal with me for another year. That is one of several regrets I have lived with. I wish I had been a better student. Or maybe I just wish the questions were easier. Either way.

So with my wonderful Sherlock Holmes deductive reasoning powers I finally came to the conclusion that I was in the eighth grade and would have been 13 or 14 years old in 1972. Wow, the eighth grade at good old Webb City Junior High.

Stopping to think about it the eighth grade was a pretty good grade to be in. Back in my days of going to school, elementary school was first grade through the sixth grade, Junior High was the seventh and eighth grade and High Schools was the ninth through the twelfth grades. In Webb City there were three elementary schools, the best of course was the one I attended and the one I mentioned earlier, Eugene Field. Mark Twain and Webster where the other two elementary schools in town. Some of the other Benchies would argue which grade school was the best as Benchies came from each of the elementary schools.

The Junior High and the High School were in two separate buildings but they both sat on the same city block located in the heart of town. The High School seemed huge to us back then and it was a big red brick building that had a basement where the lunchroom was and then three stories of classrooms. A new High School was being built out on the edge of town and my class was the first group to go all four years in the new building. The Junior High was a gray brick building and it had two floors for the classrooms and a separate building for the gymnasium.

As I said the eighth grade was a good grade to be in. We had a year of Junior High under our belt and if you didn’t consider the nearby High School we were the big man on campus. The seventh grade year was full of all kinds of adjustments such as dealing with multiple teachers and changing classrooms. It was also an adjustment to having so many kids around you that you didn’t know. All three elementary schools funneled into the Junior High so all of sudden there were tons of new faces in the crowd. Of course a lot of those new faces were girls so that wasn’t all bad. By the time we made it to the eighth grade we had kind of settled into our environment and we were able to fully enjoy all that life had to offer a 13 or 14 year old.

1972. Eighth grade. Wow, suddenly another memory flooded my brain. Our eighth grade basketball team.

With these new memories in mind I walked through the house back to our bedroom to see if my wife, Janice was still awake. Thankfully, because I would have had to wake her if she wasn’t, she was still awake, setting up in bed reading. I said, “Honey do you know where that box with all my old school stuff is?” I get a lot of strange looks from my wife so I was use to seeing the face she was making when she responded with, “I think it is upstairs in the attic.” She didn’t ask and I didn’t say why I was looking for the box but instead I quickly headed to the garage, pulled down the steps to the attic and started my accent.

My first thought was, “Wow, it is freezing up here” and my second thought was, “Rats, I need to get up and here clean the attic out.” But I was on a mission and cleaning the attic was NOT the mission I had in mind. As I scanned the area I noticed box after box for every TV, radio, fan, iron, etc that we owned or seemed to have ever owned in our twenty years of marriage. Bags and bags of my wife’s “seasonal” clothes were up there too. Looking at the piles of clothes I quickly assumed that I must be married to several women since surely not one little wife could have so many clothes. Next to the mound of clothes were all the Christmas decorations. Clark Griswald would be very proud of the heaping stack of goodies I had gathered over time.

But then I saw what I was looking for. Right behind the nativity scene decorations were three boxes stacked on top of each other. The top and the bottom box were unmarked but the middle box was labeled with, “Jon’s Junk.” Junk? How dare they label my treasures as junk?

I pulled the top box off and set it aside and then started sorting through the box holding so many memories of years gone by. I had something in mind that I was looking for but I found a ton of other things as I searched through the box. Old record albums, High School yearbooks, a tennis trophy, and all sorts of pictures were scattered all over the inside of the box. One by one I picked up a photograph and quickly examined it and then went to the next one. Smiles, chuckles, and several “oh my” seemed to follow each viewing of a picture. Grade school class photos, old grade cards, and even a list of Class Prophecies written by my sixth grade teacher, Mr. Conrow was in there. Several newspaper clippings that covered each of our football games during my senior year were tossed about among the other treasures. I even ran across a couple poems I had written way back when. I took a second to read them and then moved onto my search for the Holy Grail.

And then, there it was. Not sure how I could have missed seeing it earlier with its bright red, white, and blue cover. I picked up the book, smiled, and then started to read the front cover;

The Bench

Featuring comments by the 1972 8th Grade Bench Warmers

As written by Greg Storm and Jon Cunningham.

Click Here For Chapter 2
The Book

Chapter 2

The Book

Wow, talk about a flooding of memories. The year 1972, the phrase “bench warmers”, my good friend Greg. All these things rushed through my mind as I read the title listed on the small book that I now held in my hand. And when I say small, I mean small. Calling it book is probably a bit overstated so maybe using the word “booklet” would better suit it. Nah, I am calling it a book!!

With the book in my hands I slowly stepped back from the pile of boxes in which it was found and noticed a weight bench that had been stored in the attic. I thought I might as well finally put it to use so I took a seat and began glancing through my newly found treasure. For some reason the coldness of the attic didn’t seem to bother me as much as it did earlier. Before I share with you any of the contents of the book itself I guess I should explain what The Bench was about and how it came to be.

In short The Bench is a book about the life and times of the 8th grade basketball team. Well not so much the whole team, but mostly just the bench warmers. The book wasn’t something that was planned and being a bench warmer definitely wasn’t desired by any of us. They both just seemed to happen. All of us on the team had a year’s worth of experience of playing basketball in the 7th grade so this was our second season of Junior High basketball. Ed Coleman was our 7th grade basketball coach and he did a fine job of introducing us to the game of basketball and as a team we had a good first year. We won more than we lost and I felt like each of us learned the basic fundamentals of the game. For myself I had the privilege of being on the starting lineup during some of the games that year and looking back the same was true of my 9th grade year on the basketball team. But this wasn’t my 7th grade or 9th grade year. This was my 8th grade year and things were a little different that year.

Just like all the players on the team I had high hopes going into the 8th grade season and making the starting lineup. But as with all teams not everyone is going to be a starter so some of the members are going to find themselves as bench warmers. Or as we later called ourselves, Benchies.

Things looked good for our 8th grade team as the practices started immediately following the football season. We experienced a little success during the previous year and thanks to another year of physical growth we looked forward to building on that success. Plus with the arrival of a new student and a stud of an athlete, John Wynne we were excited about the coming season.

Richard Correll was our basketball coach that year and he was also a science teacher at the junior high. Thinking back to junior high and science I suddenly remembered our science teacher in the 7th grade, Miss Navarro. Wow, they shouldn’t do that to 12 year old boys who are at school to get an education. Miss Navarro was young, pretty, red headed and very well built. I would like to be able to write in this book that Miss Navarro inspired me to be a better student and she was responsible for me continuing on with my education and finally getting a minor in biology. But really all I can remember is that she was young, pretty, red headed and very well built. But again, I was a 12 year old boy. What do you expect me to remember? And now I am 50+ year old man, what else do you expect me to remember?

Since we had one year of basketball behind us Coach Correll didn’t have to start our practices with “This is a basketball and that is the basket” speech. However, a lot of practices, especially the early ones dealt mainly with the basics of basketball. We did a lot of dribbling and passing drills at each practice which is never as much fun as shooting the ball. Everyone dreams of making the game winning shot but very few of us spend much time dreaming of making the game winning pass and that’s probably what is wrong with the game today.

Over the first few weeks of practice we worked on dribbling, passing, shooting, offense and defense all under the watchful eye of Coach Correll. As he evaluated each player he was trying to formulate in his mind who should be the starting five players once the season started. Every athlete at any level wants to be on the starting team and I am confident that each and every one of the 17 players on our team wanted to be a starter. We all worked hard, well at the beginning of the season, to try to make the prestigious starting line-up but unfortunately that is not how it worked out.

The starting positions ended being awarded to Keith Morris, center, Lloyd Walker and Wes Waggoner, our forwards, and to John Wynne and Tracy Prigg, our two guards. So with those 5 spots filled the next thing to work towards were the key position of the 6th or 7th man. These were the guys that would be the first two substitutes to go into the game to give one of the starters a breather. The guys filling those two positions seemed to fluctuate through the season between a handful of players depending on who was doing better in practice that week. Guys like Garry Clute, Sam Starkey and Toby Bottom battled it out for the 6th and 7th man position. The rest of the players ended up filling in the second and third team spots. Now that I think about it, had Greg Storm or myself landed any of the top 7 positions on the team "The Bench" probably would not have been written and I wouldn’t be writing this book now. Had Greg been picked to be a starter he probably would have gone on to lead the team to an undefeated season thus winning the heart and attention of Miss Navarro and they would have been involved in some kind of scandal which you would have read about it in the National Enquirer. (You don’t know how hard it was for me not to write myself into that role.) But none of that happened.

The season finally got underway and realistically Coach Correll made the right choice for the starting five. Not only were we beating the other teams we were beating them bad. Many of the early games that season were routs and we would end up beating the other team by 20 or 25 points. And it was probably those lopsided victories that made setting the bench even harder. Even with a huge lead going into the last quarter many of us only got to play a minute or two or sometimes just a matter of seconds. That really got discouraging after a few games.

You have heard the term, “What came first the chicken or the egg?” Well that phrase seemed to apply to my situation on the basketball team that year. If you would ask Coach Correll he would probably tell you I was a bit of screw off all year long and that is why I didn’t get to play. But the way I remember it was I wasn’t getting to play much so THEN I became the screw off.

I do remember one time during warm-ups before a game that I definitely pulled something that I am sure didn’t help my chances for getting to play. We had already warmed up a little by doing some lay-up drills and then everyone shot a few free throws. Then we were just practicing shots from different positions on the court. While most of the team was shooting more layups or eight to ten foot jump-shots, you know, shots that you would see someone taking in the game, I chose to practice a few shots from around half court. Of course I wasn’t making any of my shots and the ball would bounce wildly off the top of the backboard or if I was lucky off the rim. But I kept shooting them. Coach Correll then noticed what I was doing and he gave me one of those “coach glares” as he motioned for me to come over to where he was standing. Looking me directly in the eye he said, “Hey Cunningham. Why don’t you work on some shots that you would shoot in a game?” At which I wise-assly replied, “Coach, you get me into the game and I will shoot that shot.”

You can only imagine what my playing time was after that not so wise comment. Obviously the coach thought I might have been serious about shooting that shot so I don’t think he was willing to risk it. From then on I found myself along with seven other guys getting to watch the games from the comfort of the bench.

I don’t remember the eight of us calling a meeting and discussing, “Ok guys, if we aren’t going to get to play we might as well have as much fun on the bench as we can.” And I am not sure who, if anyone was responsible for leading us down that road but I do remember what was written by the teacher on my 6th grade report card. The report card was packed away in the same box I had found "The Bench" book and on the back of it Mr. Conrow had written, “Jon shows good leadership quality but he tends to lead in the wrong direction.” So I could have had something to do with leading us astray.

With the top 7 or 8 players getting all the playing time in the games they obviously got most of the attention during our daily practices. And since the team just had one coach that left the rest of us mostly unsupervised. Not a good thing. It’s never a good thing for 12 year old boys to be unsupervised. So most of the practice time we would take turns sneaking out to go to the bathroom or get a drink. We would bring candy and eat it while the first stringers kept the watchful eye of Coach Correll on them. The worst part was when we did finally get on the court to practice it was very hard to shut off the “screw off” mode and turn on the basketball player mode. So we would do things like this.

One day Correll had the first string working on their full court press. A full court press is when you are on defense and you try to keep the opposing team from throwing the ball in bounds or try to stop them from advancing the ball up the court. Well to really work on this you needed some guys to play the role of the opposing team so that role was played by the bench warmers. Coach reluctantly picked out 5 of us to see if we could get the ball in bounds and then advance it on down the court. This was 8th grade basketball and I wasn’t much good but in 7th and 8th grade football I was the starting quarterback so I knew a little about throwing a ball to receivers. So I had a plan. The starters got into position to defend against us and as they did the five Benchies formed a huddle like they do in football and I made up a play. We broke from the huddle and I stood along the inbound line under the basket and the other four guys lined up like wide receivers. The starters looked at us kind of funny, imagine that, and they started to laugh. I don’t think Coach Correll was laughing. I called out in my best quarterback voice, “Down, set, hike!” and I rolled out to my right as all four of my highly skilled receivers ran their predetermined pass routes. Of course the 5 starters didn’t know what to think since I am sure the coach hadn’t covered this maneuver while explaining the proper way to run the full court press.

With the starters caught off guard I found it quite easy to hit one of my teammates in full stride as they ran a “fly” or “post” pattern down the court. In a matter of seconds the full court press was broken. I don’t think the starters were laughing now and I know for a fact that Coach Correll wasn’t laughing.

Clowning around like this wasn’t just saved for practices. We proudly took our show on the road and performed countless antics during the games. We weren’t getting much playing time but we were having a lot of fun. And to this day I am not sure how we came up with the idea to write about what we were doing but somehow the idea was born.

One of the mistakes in our educational system at that time was the formation of a class called “Study Hall.” And to multiply the mistake of study hall the Webb City School system went one step farther in making it even worse. They separated the boys from the girls for Study Hall so there was a Boys Study Hall class and a Girls Study Hall class. I'm sure they meant well by this and I am sure the reasoning behind it was quite simple. They figured with all the hormones and testosterone racing through a pre-teen’s body they should come up with a way to separate the sexes thus giving us all a “cool down” period. A nice idea but I am not so sure it worked.

So for one hour a day during school a class was set up that would separate the boys from the girls with the intent of giving us time to study. The plan was for us to use this hour to get our homework done, study for an upcoming test, or to read. Their plan failed miserably. At least in the boy’s class. The only reason most guys at that age would study at all would be to impress some girl. To try to show them we actually had a brain in our head. But take the girls away then the only person you can worry about impressing are a bunch of other guys and you aren’t going to impress most of them by studying. You need to be much more creative. The silent but pungent fart immediately comes to mind or throwing a textbook out the second floor window. Or as it happened one day being the first guy to point out the two dogs “humping” in the yard across the street. That’s how you impress a room full of 12 year old boys. But even a 12 year old boy can only fart on command so many times before the fun wears off and of course the dogs are not going to show up every day. So we had to think of something else to fill the hour we were supposed to be studying.

So Greg and I somehow came up with the idea of writing "The Bench". After each basketball game we would get together in Study Hall and would talk about the events of the game and then write them down on paper. Sometimes under the guise of working on a paper or actually studying Greg and I would ask to go to the library where it was quieter so our creative minds could work their magic as we wrote "The Bench". Thankfully we had the sense to let Greg do the actual writing. He had great penmanship for an 8th grade boy so he got the ever important job of putting "The Bench" down on paper. In each chapter we would talk about the bus ride to the game or something about the team we were playing and then we would give a blow by blow analysis of what happened in the game. Probably the best part of each chapter was the “Comments of the Game.” You can only guess what kind of comments we would come up with after spending most if not all four quarters setting on the bench with nothing much to do. That’s right, most comments had something to do with the cheerleaders. And usually the opposing team’s cheerleaders. If not the cheerleaders then the ref or the coach seemed to be the topic for our comments. Since most of the basketball team was in the same Study Hall we could go around the class and ask each “Benchie” for their comment on the game.

So Greg and I wrote the first chapter and then added the Comments of the Game. After that I am not sure if either one of us really thought there would be anymore chapters written. The attention span of a 12 year old is pretty short so the odds of us continuing on with the book were very slim. But without any girls in Study Hall to distract us we continued writing and as time went by we ended up writing a chapter for the each of the ten remaining games that year.

The highly esteemed position of Benchie was awarded to eight players, I mean to eight bench warmers. They were Jim Byrd, John Bailey, Kent Williams, Bobby Lauck, Norman West, Greg Storm, and myself.

Sadly by now the memories of Miss Navarro faded away and I once again realized the coldness of the attic and I wondered how long I had been up there. So I closed up the boxes of relics and with "The Bench" under my arm I headed back down the stairs, turned out the lights, and raised the steps back up into place and yelled out, “Hey honey, you will never guess what I found.”

Click Here For Chapter 3
Once Was Lost, But Now I'm Found

Chapter 3

Once Was Lost, But Now I’m Found 

Apparently I had been up in the attic longer than I had thought because when I returned I found our bedroom lights were out and my wife was fast asleep. So I got ready for bed, put The Bench on my nightstand and climbed into bed and tried to slow all the thoughts racing through my mind so I could actually go to sleep myself. As memories of my Junior High days danced in my head I was finally able to drift off to a good night’s sleep.

With a wife, seventeen year old son, and a full-time job, hobbies, not to mention assorted homeowner responsibilities, life can get pretty crowded. So The Bench sat on my nightstand as days turned into weeks without me finding time to pick it up again. The red, white, and blue cover caught my eye from time to time and I would pick the book up and glance through a chapter or two, chuckle a few times, and then put it back down.

After a while the book seemed to work its way to the bottom of the pile of other books on my nightstand. As an adult Sunday school teacher I am constantly looking for books to read that we can use in our class. I must say I have a lot of help with this. People all the time are bringing me books or suggesting books that I should read. Actually I just think they are concerned about my spiritual well being. Anyway, The Bench found its way to the bottom of the pile and as they say, “Out of sight, out of mind.”

Even with The Bench at the bottom of the book pile and not in my day to day thoughts I still found myself thinking of years gone by and how our world has changed over those years.

Gone were the days of rotary phones, busy signals, vinyl records, 8-track players, computers the size of a house, 427 motors, 6 x 9 coaxial speakers, mini-skirts (bummer), Beatle boots, Beatle haircuts, the Beatles, cigarette ads, the Three Stooges, the Fonz, and the drive-in movies.

All these were replaced with cell phones, voicemail, IPods, computers the size of a phone, hybrid motors, clothes with built in speakers, mini-skirts (yippee), Bieber boots, Bieber haircut, Justin Bieber, stop smoking ads, the three Kardashian sisters, Charlie Sheen, and movies on demand. Holy crap, just typing this list makes my head spin for so many reasons.

And the world of communicating probably changed the most.

Everyone has a cell phone. And I mean everyone. The other day I was in Walgreens and I saw a four year old kid walking along talking on a cell phone. I wanted to yank it out of his hand and yell, “Give me that phone. You can barely speak a complete sentence. You don’t need a phone. Now go play in the street like I did when I was kid.” Give me a freekin break.

And if just calling someone on the phone wasn’t enough for folks to stay in touch now we have email, texting, instant messaging, twitter, MySpace, Facebook, etc, etc. You can barely fart without the whole world knowing about it. (Which I just did.)

But I must admit I love the ease of communications these days. As a “want-to-be” writer I must say I love the non-verbal ways of communicating with the world. Let me “type” instead of “speak” and I can go on all day. Oops, see what I mean. Now back to the story.

 I kept hearing friends talk about how great the invention of Facebook was. They kept giving me the old line, “It will change your life.” And I guess it in a way it has. It eventually led me to writing this book.

One weekend when my wife, oops, lovely wife was out of town I decided to check out all the fuss about Facebook and I set up an account much to my wife’s heckling when she came home. But with a possible Class Reunion coming up I thought it sounded like a good way to reconnect with old classmates.

But after getting started with Facebook I really didn’t do much with it. I would check my page from time to time, post a goofy picture of me from my high school days, and that was about it.

But then one day I got a message that said: “Bruce Hardy wants to be your friend on Facebook.” Bruce Hardy! Wow, now that is a name I hadn’t heard in a long long time. If you remember from one of the earlier chapters in this book Bruce Hardy was listed as one of the Benchies. And he was one of the long lost Benchies.

The Bench was written as the basketball season went along so shortly after the season ended we considered having the book typed up and printed. My poor Mom got the job of typing it which led to a lot of late nights setting with her at the Royal typewriter typing with me setting close by so I could help with any word clarification. Which there was plenty of since the book was written using an eighth grade boy’s vocabulary.

Mom would be typing along and then suddenly stop and ask, “Who is Coach Squorrell?” Which I had to explain that is what we called Coach Correll. Since we thought he as a “squirrel” for not playing us we just put Correll and squirrel together and came up with Squorrell. Hey, we were eighth graders!

So as Mom typed I would explain things like nose mittens, pit experts, and why we barked at some cheerleaders. Plus every now and then Mom would stop typing, sigh, and turned to me and read the line she was about to type and say, “You guys can’t say that!” So some lines got removed, changed or where censored by my Gestapo Mom. And the book was better because of it.

So Mom got the book typed up and then handed it over to my stepfather, Dale who was a Vo-tech teacher that happened to teach printing. This is where the book really came to life. We had the name of the book, The Bench but we really didn’t have a clue on what the cover should look like. Dale worked his magic on the book and came up with a great looking red, white, and blue front and back cover. It was 1972 but we would graduate in 1976 which we all know was the Bicentennial year of our great country so Dale masterly tied the patriotic red, white, and blue to our book. Maybe I am giving Dale too much credit, truth be known these were probably the three colors of ink he had opened. But either way, I think the book colors worked great. The front cover has the red, white, blue stripes across the top and The Bench in bold blue letters shown just above a wooden bench. Listed below the wooden bench is the phrase:

Featuring comments by the 1972 8th Grade Bench 

Warmers as written by Greg Storm and Jon Cunningham 

The back cover was all white with red and blue letters spelling out:

THE CLASS 

OF 

76 

HAS SPIRIT 

THAT MAKE THE 

WEBB CITY FIGHTING 

CARDINALS 

GO 

I wasn’t wild about the line “that make the Webb City fighting Cardinals go” but we decided to leave it in. I do remember we had some extra book covers printed up and we cut off the part that had, “The Class of 76 Has Spirit” and hung them around the school and in our lockers. Great job on the book covers Dale. I sure wish you were here to work on this book.

So we had the book in print which was pretty impressive for a bunch of screwball eight grade boys. We sold some around school and I think the going price was .50 which went to help cover the cost of printing the book. I don’t think we actually sold enough to cover the total cost to print it and I am sure none of the Benchies actually made any money on the deal. It would be my guess that most of the money we received ended up being used to play pinball at the local West End Pharmacy. It was a favorite hangout for the Benchies since it was located just down the street from the Junior High. We didn’t make any money selling the book but still it was fun seeing a copy of it around school from time to time.

The Bench was written, typed and printed all in a matter of a couple months. As the school year was coming to a close soon our attention and focus would be on summer activities. Spending time at the swimming pool and trying to revive our sports careers as the baseball season started. Yep, back in those days the baseball season was only in the summer not like it is today with practices and even games being played as soon as the snow melts.

But before the school year ended someone came up with the great idea of giving a copy to Coach Correll. Why in the world any of us thought this would be a good thing to do is beyond me. But great ideas were so few and far between that we really wouldn’t know one if it bit us in the butt.

As I mentioned earlier Coach Correll was an 8th grade science teacher and many of the Benchies had him as our teacher. I don’t know who came up with the idea to offer the coach a copy of the book but I definitely know who was picked to give it to him. Me.

As a group we weren’t very smart but every now and then we did manage to show a little common sense. We waited until the last day of class before the summer break started and we waited until the last few minutes of class time before showing Coach the book. I remember walking up to the front of class and standing next to Coach Correll as he stood there leaning on a podium.

I had the book in my hand and quite stupidly said, “Coach, we (trying to be all inclusive) wrote a book during the basketball season and we would like for you to have a copy.” I handed him the book and then added, “You might check out the last chapter.”

Holy smokes what was I thinking? Not the last chapter!

I must admit that even though The Bench is a corny little book written by corny little screwballs I have always been proud of what we accomplished in writing it. If for no other reason than we stuck with it until it was completed.

But what I am not proud of is the way we crucified Coach Correll with our words and comments. We were ruthless when it came to our feelings about him. I know we all thought we should have had more playing time and at the time we just couldn’t see that our lack of ability and dedication is why we weren’t getting to play. We just figured that Coach had his “favorites” and we knew we weren’t on that list so we cut him down and made fun of him every chance we got in the book. We showed no respect to him as a coach or as a person and when I think about it now it’s a wonder he didn’t kick us off the team several times during the year. Again, not something I am proud of now. And Coach, if you are reading this, I am sorry for my part.

But out of all the chapters in the book Chapter 10 was by far the worst in our trashing of the coach. And there I stood in front of him and the entire science class and I had just asked him to read it.

He didn’t say a word but simply took the book from me, glanced at the cover, thumbed through the pages of the book until he reached the last chapter. Chapter 10. As he started to read it, thankfully silently to himself I returned to my seat on the front row.

The chapter wasn’t that long and I don’t even think he actually read it all but still it seemed like an eternity with him still leaning on the podium, reading “our” book. (Still trying to drag everyone down with me.) Then as the class sat there silently waiting for his response, there was none. He just closed the book and tossed it back to me as I sat there at my desk.

It was then that I experienced my first awareness of the grace of God. The bell rang! And thankfully class was dismissed without any further incidence. I walked, probably closer to ran, out along with the other students with Coach’s copy of the book still in my hands.

I guess there is a part of me that hopes Coach Correll will be sorry he tossed the book back at me when The Bench gets made into a movie and we are all famous. Ok, maybe I am not as sorry about the way we treated him as I should be.

And that is how the school year ended. Our junior high days were behind us and our first adventures into high school just three months away. A lot of changes would be coming into our lives and the first change was one of the Benchies moving away.

During the summer break Bruce Hardy’s family decided to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma. The Hardy’s had lived in Webb City for many years and Bruce went to grade school at Mark Twain Elementary along with fellow Benchies, Kent Williams, Norman West, and Jim Byrd. The rest of the Benchies, John Bailey, Bobby Lauck, Greg Storm, and I all attended Eugene Field Elementary. I guess the other grade school in town, Webster Elementary didn’t produce any Benchies. Just a couple of the starters. What losers.

But thanks to summer baseball and just the mere fact that Webb City only had 6,800 people in it we all had known Bruce for a quite a while and we hated to see him move away. Tulsa was only a hundred miles away but back in those days it might as well be a million miles.

With Bruce moving away we decided to give him a “going away” present before he left. I would have thought a gold painted jock strap would have been appropriate but instead we decided to give Bruce the original hand written copy of The Bench.

So, Bruce was awarded his gift and he and his family packed up and moved to Tulsa. And as far as I know was never heard from again. Until now.

And there I sat looking at my Facebook page on my computer and Bruce Hardy wants to be my “friend”. I about fell over. After all it was 1972 when I had last been around Bruce and now it was 2010. Thirty-eight years since I had last spoken to Bruce.

I was still fairly new at this whole Facebook thing so I really wasn’t sure how to accept his offer or what to do but finally I figured it out and we became “Friends”. Well, friends again.

Through Facebook and emails Bruce and I once again became acquainted with each other and we tried to get caught up on a few things since our days together in junior high. The amazing thing was after Bruce moved to Tulsa in 1972 I followed him there in 1984 shortly after I graduated from college. But I had no idea he was still there and he never knew that I had moved there. So we were both in Tulsa from 1984 to 1998, when I left to move to Oklahoma City but as far as we knew we never crossed paths.

I was shocked to be contacted by Bruce in the first place but I was almost equally shocked when Bruce told me he still had the original hand written copy of The Bench.

How many junior high kids keep anything given to them for thirty eight years? My first thought was, “Why” But it turns out if we were going to give the book to anyone Bruce was the one to give it to. It turns out Bruce is quite the collector. Mostly old movie memorabilia and anything, and I mean anything that has to do with Elvis. Young Elvis, old Elvis, fat Elvis. Anything. So with a passion to collect things Bruce managed to hang onto The Bench for all this time. But I still couldn’t believe it had been found.

I knew I couldn’t ask for the book back from Bruce but I did ask him if he would make me a copy of it and send it to me. Bruce graciously responded with, “I have owned the book for forty years; you can have it for the next forty.” And he said he would put it in a FED-X envelope and get it to me the follow week or so.

I was so excited, I couldn’t wait to see the original manuscript again. It wasn’t hand written by me, Greg had that honor but the part that made it so important to me is the fact that all the notes and corrections that were in my Mom’s handwriting. And believe me there were plenty of corrections.

The handwritten copy probably didn’t mean a whole lot to the other Benchies but to me it was priceless. Before Bruce mailed it to me he scanned it and make an electronic copy of it and emailed it to me so I got to see it before the actual copy arrived. But then a few days later it was delivered to my house.

It was so cool to hold it again in my hands. The front cover just had the words, “The Bench” written on it and then encircled with eight golden stars. I had forgotten about the stars and I chuckled when I saw them. Not sure how we came up with that idea but I guess we figured the stars gave it that “special” look that a book of this quality deserved. Now that I think about it we should have used ten stars.

So Bruce and I had been reunited and The Bench was now back in my hands. News like this couldn’t be kept to myself so the next step was to contact the Library of Congress so they could clear out an area so they could put The Bench on display for the world to see. Ok, maybe that would be the next step after I contacted the rest of the Benchies.

I have always had a passion for keeping in contact with old classmates so I had most of the Benchies contact information but not all. Jim Byrd and I had remained best friends since first meeting in the sixth grade and we had been each other’s Best Man in our weddings so I contacted him first about connecting with Bruce and the book. But shortly after that I had all the Benchies contact information and I then sent off an email to let them know about this historic event.

 Little did I know where that email would lead us to?

Original "The Bench" Book Found

Bruce Hardy Uncovers The Original "The Bench" Book

As you can read in "The Bench" our 8th grade year was full of fun and adventure. The Benchies might have stunk at basketball but we had a ton of fun. Getting to play more would have been a lot of fun but getting in the game free and having a front row seat for Cheerleader Watching is not a bad gig if you can get it. In a matter of just a few months we came up with the idea of the book, wrote it, awarded Kent the Benchie of the Year award, had the book typed and printed and even sold a few copies. Probably not enough to cover the cost but still we suckered some folks into buying one.

The next year saw a lot of changes to the Benchies. Some retired and some moved away. The first to leave the flock was Bruce Hardy. Bruce and his family moved to Oklahoma but Bruce didn't leave town empty handed. As a going away gift we award him with the hand written copy of "The Bench". (I know, he must have been so excited.) With the book now in print apparently Greg and I didn't think we needed the handwritten version. So Bruce headed off to Oklahoma with The Bench in tow and we just figured that was that.

Over the next 30 years or so "The Bench" book or talk of the book would come up every now and then. I took a copy to one of our class reunions and from time to time an old classmate would bring up the fact that they still had their copy. I was always afraid to talk too much about it cause I figured they were going to ask for a refund. But none did.

In 1984 I moved to Tulsa to take a new job. Found out later that Bruce was in Tulsa too but we never crossed paths. I was in Tulsa until 1998 when I moved to Oklahoma City. Where I live now.

Jump forward to the Fall of 2009. Thanks to the wonder of Facebook one day I get a "Friend" request from none other than Bruce Hardy. He was still in Tulsa. After a couple emails Bruce brought up the fact that he still had the original copy of "The Bench". I about soiled myself. My first thought was why in the world would he keep something like this? My second thought was, I would love to see it again.

Whether you call it fate or the work of God (I go with the second one) we definitely had the book in the right hands when we gave it to Bruce way back in 1973. As it turns out Bruce is quite the collector. He collects old movie memorabilia, Elvis treasures, etc. Some call him a collector others may label him a pack-rat but either way it was great that he was the one that owned the book.

I asked Bruce to make a copy of the book and then email it to me but he said, "Heck, I have had it 40 years, you can have it the next 40." So a couple weeks later Bruce packed it up, called Fed-X, and hired a swat team for protection and had the book sent to me in OKC.

Getting the original book back inspired me to try to round up all the Benchies and without too much work I was able to find all of them. Jim Byrd - Orlando, Kent Williams - Washington DC, Greg Storm - Joplin, Bobby Lauck - Austin, Norman West - Oklahoma City, John Bailey - Neosho.

And after getting in touch with each of the Benchies another event happened which inspired me to start on the second book, Back on the Bench. But for now you will have to wait for more on that. Stay tuned.

Thanks Bruce!! The book couldn't have been in better hands.

Why the Bench was written

Why "The Bench" Was Written?

Why was The Bench written? Good question. Wish I had a good answer. It wasn't a class assignment or anything like that. I recently talked to Greg Storm, the co-author and asked him if he remembered why we wrote the book. He just chuckled and said, "You know I was thinking about that too. I am sure we thought we would get something out of writing the book but after reading it again for the life of me I can't imagine what it would have been." We both seem to think the simple fact of boredom probably was the driving force behind the writing of The Bench. As you can read in "Back on the Bench" I talk about how Greg and I along with most of the other Benchies were in an all boys Study Hall class. And since studying wasn't a high priority for most of us we needed something to do to pass the time. So somehow Greg and I came up with the idea of writing about our adventures of setting on the bench. My wife is still amazed that we had the attention span long enough to write ten chapters about ten different games. Man we must have really been bored.

A Special Thanks

A Special Thanks

Of course The Bench would have never made it to print if not for the help of two very special people. My Mom and stepfather. My Mom spent countless hours setting at a typewriter (yep a typewriter) typing up The Bench. As you can see from the attached copy of the handwritten version of "The Bench", Mom had a ton of corrections to make. I guess it was a good thing we weren't turning the book in for a grade. Once Mom completed the typed version she then turned it over to Dale (My Stepfather) to be printed. Since Dale was a printing teacher at a vo-tech school we were able to actually get the book printed. Dale designed the artwork for the front and back covers and then printed up several copies of the book. If I remember right we sold the book for .50 to try to help cover the cost of the printing.

Dale passed away in 2009 but his life lives on in the work he did on The Bench and more importantly in the many lives he touched. To honor the work that Dale did on the book I wanted the cover of the new book to have somewhat the same feel. Dana Jordan, a graphic artist friend of mine worked on the new design and I felt like she did a great job of capturing a retro feel of the '70's as well as the look of The Bench for the new cover.  Check out Dana's websites at http://www.cottongindesign.artfire.com/ & www.facebook.com/cottongindesign

The Original Manuscript

The Bench

Share Your Benchie Story

All of us have been a Benchie at one time or another in our life.   Most of us can remember a time when we had the hopes of being the best at one thing or another just to find out that in a sense we had to sit on the Bench instead.

Please share your stories of a time when you were a Benchie.  Maybe not in a sports activity but in a job or some other situation.  Share your funny, or inspirational, or emotional story with us.  We have readers of all ages so please be respectful as you share your thoughts.

We look forward to reading your story!