I loved football as a kid. I still do. In 1968 to 1970 us neighborhood kids (our neighborhood was a farm community) played in the sand lots, mostly in the farm fields and especially at the Lima Center Grade School lot. We played tackle with no equipment. It was the era of the first Super Bowls. And, we lived in Wisconsin. In high school I joined the team - the Whitewater Whippets (a dog like a Greyhound). In my freshman year I had all the basics from the sand lot games. Football would be the only sport I would excel at. I would go on to be an All-Conference defensive end my senior year in a league of 12 teams - the Southern Lakes Conference. I played for the regional coach-legend, Jim Crummy. I was a senior his last year of coaching in the Fall of 1973.
But, it all could have come to a bitter end early in my freshman season. A tough kid named Kenny and who would never advance to the subsequent years' teams, played football like he lived in the streets - like a thug. One practice I was playing line backer on defense. During a play from no where Kenny put his head down and smashed his helmet at full speed sprint into my spin. For a moment I was stunned. The young freshmen team coaches did not see the illegal and stupid block, they only saw me leaning over in pain. They yelled at me to quit slacking off and get back in the practice.
Eighteen years later while a landscape supervisor in Dallas, Texas, spinal pain would often show its ugly head on really hot and really cold days. In never used it to get off work. But I did have a first name relationship with a chiropractor for a while in the 1990s. For some reason in the last few years the intermittent pain has gone away. It probably gave up trying to compete with all the other defects that dog a person who turns 50. That day, now almost 40 years ago, Ol' street-mean Kenny could have put me in a wheel chair. Every once in a while when there is a twinge in the place on my spine where Ol' Kenny pulverized me, I think of him. I later found out he had a child at a very young age - around the year we got out of high school - I hope the kid made it to middle age. Ol' Kenny, boy or boy, he did things his way - fate kept his way from putting me in a wheel chair.
This week's Wisconsin soldier to remember is Army Staff Sergent Charles Kiser, 37. Staff Sergent Kiser died when a car bomb went off near his convoy in Mosul, Iraq, on Thursday, June 24, 2004. Kiser was with the 330th Military Police Detachment, an Army Reserve unit out of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Charles was originally from the Cincinnati, Ohio area but was living in Cleveland, Wisconsin. He had been in Iraq since January of 2004. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mentioned Charles had also spent duty time in the Navy. They also noted Kiser was remembered in Ohio as champion high school sprinter. Sergent Kiser is survived by his wife, a son, a daughter, five sisters, and his mom. Staff Sergent Kiser was the 19th Wisconsin soldier to die in Iraq.
3,699 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
27,279 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring 2003.
78 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
112 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
Soldier of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; and, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
