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| 1965 Basketball |
According to the program for the Westwood basketball game, January 22, 1966, Glenn stood 6’2” tall – nothing remarkable, but he had long arms and a vertical leap better than anyone around. He could hold his own on the basketball court with opponents from Quincy and Greenville who boasted a towering 6’8” on the event programs. Sometimes they fudged the numbers a bit, I think, trying to get into our heads, but these guys looked every bit that tall, or taller. That was especially true of a couple of games where Glenn was suspended and I, John Hein, and a few other sub-six-footers were called on to play center for the Tigers. I saw a clip once showing a tall giant of a guy, standing flat-footed, holding a basketball in one hand with his arm straight up, and five little guys running around, trying in vain to jump and take it away. We were those little guys. To say it was hopeless is an understatement!
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| Fall 1965 Football |
And that's not all he said. He closed his message by saying "Six seniors will be departing from the present team, but the juniors showed great improvement during the season and should form the nucleus of a contending ball club for next year." Dang, I hate it when they say "Wait till next year." Thanks a lot, coach. For us there wasn't a next year!
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| 1966 Basketball |
I saved Glenn’s life, and for that, I had to wear number 15! Is there no justice in the world?
Well…perhaps there is. It’s time to rewind the video tape.
The Daring Rescue at Squaw Queen Creek happened four years earlier, near the end of the eighth grade, before any of us superstars in the class of 1966 took the fields, stormed the court, or ran the track in a Tigers uniform. Notwithstanding his athletic prowess in high school, in the eighth grade, Glenn could not swim. Completely in character with his machismo, he would never admit that to any of us guys. But then one day, in the heat of battle, we discovered Glenn’s Achilles Heel was aquatics.
Our eighth-grade band class was a wonder to behold. We boys made for an interesting ensemble: Bob Hurd (aka "Turo"), Pete Thill, and Glenn Hull – Trombone; Rory Luce – Tuba; Stan Ghidossi (aka “Bugs”) – Baritone Horn; Bob Kaufman – Clarinet. I think I was the black sheep in that group of brass players.
Our music teacher, Mr. Ivan Thompson, who also taught seventh and eighth grade English, had a tradition of taking the boys from eighth-grade band class on a camping trip out in the wilderness – without our instruments. Notwithstanding our instrument-less-ness, we took our vocal cords wherever we went and made good use of them riding through Clover Valley in the back of Mr. T’s pickup singing:
“I got a gal named Bony Maroney.
She’s as skinny as a stick of macaroni.
Oughta see her rock and roll with her blue jeans on.
She’s not very fat, just skin and bones.
But I love her, and she loves me,
And oh, how happy now we can be
Makin’ love underneath the apple tree.”
I Got a Gal Named Boney Maroney, by Sha-na-na
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| Glenn Hull, Class of 1966 |
Yeah. Glenn taught us that song. Can you imagine six eighth-grade boys riding through the woods in the bed of a pickup truck singing that one? Better that than dancing to it with a girl at a sock hop. That gig didn’t launch any stellar music careers, but a half-century later, I did make it to the grand stage in Carnegie Hall…but that’s another story.
On Squaw Queen Creek, somewhere before the confluence with Little Last Chance Creek, was a swimming hole, guarded on every side by the tall willow bushes that grow along all the creeks and rivers up home. We once played a basketball game in Westwood where the court was so short the top of the Free Throw Circle was only a couple feet from the mid-court line. This swimming hole was no more than half the size of that half court.
On the west end of the swimming hole was a huge round boulder, protruding high enough above the water to make a small diving platform, but low enough that you could almost sit and dangle your feet in the water. There might have been a small patch of wild grass on the side of the creek, but at best, it was a soggy bog. The only sure way to exit the swimming hole was to climb up the rock. It wasn’t much of a climb, but it was slippery when wet and only had a few handholds we could use to pull ourselves up and out of the water. Three or four boys could sit on that rock and just barely bump elbows. I don’t know how high Glenn could reach in a vertical leap in the eighth grade. None of us had yet finished growing, but that swimming hole was deeper than that – deeper still by the height of one more thirteen-year-old. I know because many years later, Turo told me so. The water was dark and murky. I was only able to see a couple of feet below the surface.
To get to Squaw Queen Creek, we had to drive to Beckwourth, then take the Beckwourth to Genesee Road up to Clover Valley, cross over into Dixie Valley for a few miles and then hang a left to follow Squaw Queen Creek into Squaw Valley (not ‘the’ Squaw Valley loved by skiers). It might have been 25 to 30 miles away from town, but it was all dirt roads from just a few miles north of Beckwourth. I’m sure driving time was an hour or so, especially with boys in the bed of the pickup. It was a remote area. Still is today. It was the perfect place to get away, if nothing went wrong.
There we were on that rock – Glenn, Turo, me, and a couple others. Given that Rory, Pete, and Bugs were the only other candidates, it should be easy, but I simply do not remember who else was there. Somebody asked if we all could swim. Everyone answered yes. A couple guys jumped in followed by Glenn. Suddenly the water was splashing and churning like it was full of piranha on a feeding frenzy! Glenn’s arms were flailing around as he tried to get his head back above water. The only other time I remember his arms waiving around so vigorously was during the 1965 Quincy football game when he was open in the pass pattern, but our QB, Mike Nally, was desperately trying to run away from a couple of Quincy’s defensive lineman and ended up with a mouthful of grass and a ten yard loss right in front of our bench – and a screaming Coach Wise.
The noise around the swimming hole was almost as loud as Coach’s screaming. During the commotion, Turo jumped in. I stayed on the rock, trying, but failing to grab hold of Glenn’s arm. Turo disappeared into the turbulent water for what was probably only fifteen seconds or so but seemed longer than one of Mr. T’s English classes. His arms still flailing, Glenn drifted closer to the rock, and his head popped above the water. My reflexes were too slow for me to catch his arm, and his hair was just too short. In desperation, still having not seen Turo come up, with my right hand, I clinched Glenn’s ear! Holding on for dear life (not sure whose), it must have been enough to keep him safe until the others could get out of the water and help pull him up.
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| Pete Thill, Glenn Hull, Glenn Schwartz |
Forty-five years later, at our 40th class reunion in the Log Cabin, Hurd and I were joking with Glenn about the rescue. He said he did remember the event, and in his goofy way said, "Yeah, and I haven't been swimming since!"
A few years ago, during a reunion as several of us gathered around a fire to reminisce, in the clear night air at River’s Edge RV Park in Clio, under the canopy of his trailer, Hurd said there was one casualty that fateful weekend. As he told it, a few hours after his daring rescue, we were all laying around the campfire in our sleeping bags when a lizard scampered toward the fire, jumped in, and was burned to a crisp. Sadly, that image did not stick in my memory. If my brain had been able to retain three images instead of two, definitely I would have wanted the third to be the fire-roasted lizard.
