Word: champi
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...went to the Dartmouth game my freshman year, I showed off to my date by predicting which of John Yovicsin's four plays the quarterback would call next. But the quarterback, John O'Grady, a third stringer thrust into the starting role after Yale game hero Frank "42 Seconds" Champi had retired to write poetry and Dave Smith had sprained his ankle running on to the practice field, threw strikes to the Dartmouth linebackers and the Big Green Indians won, 21-10. Dartmouth went on to a championship season, and O'Grady went on to quarterback the Quincy House football...
...came to Harvard stadium as a heavy underdog against Frank "42 seconds" Champi, the last second hero of the '68 Harvard-Yale game, and a Crimson eleven that had not lost since November...
...Harvard band know, as they played "Mickey Mouse" to the B.U. stands, that Harvard's first victim of the season. Holy Cross, had been sandhagged by an undiagnosed epidemic of hepatitis, that one of B.U.'s halfbacks. Bruce Laylor, was a future NFL Rookie of the Year, and that Champi would spend the rest of the season writing poetry in his room? B.U. won, 14-10, and roared off to a 9-1 season. Harvard finished...
Harvard does not exactly attach world-shattering significance to beating Yale-or anyone, for that matter. I don't think many people in Cambridge walk around believing that Frank Champi salvaged the 1968-69 academic year with his 42 seconds worth of athletic bravado. But then, in retrospect, the 1968-69 academic year was probably a lost cause to begin with...
...years ago this morning, Frank Champi was a very normal red-blooded American boy form Everett, much like ourselves. Now he's legend, another Frank Merriweather, another Cap'n Crunch. What Linda Lee Danvers-Supergirl-did for Midvale, Frank has done for Everett, and for Harvard. Frank is gone now, but his spirit lingers on ("Spirit of America," Beach Boys, 1963), and when John Yovicsin sends his boys out on the field today it'll be with the instructions "Win this one for Frank...