(cont'd)
At camp, there was something scheduled to do every day. They had a dozen or so .22 rifles - all just alike - and they would bus us to a nearby rifle range where we would learn/practice target shooting. The next day, it would be a bus trip to a lake for swimming and water skiing. There were your requisite punt, pass & kick competitions. Nothing was really strenuous except for maybe the non-mandatory one mile jog back from the rifle range. It was all pretty much just fun 'n games and competitions. At camp, one of more popular hang-out areas was the ping pong table room. IIRC, there were two ping pong tables set up. There were free bottled sodas and one of the more popular choices was a bottled chocolate milk drink - something like a Yoo-hoo. I suppose it was made by a regional company but the name of it escapes me. Anyhow, I remember spending a lot of time playing ping pong and drinking bottled chocolate milk.
There were a few pro football players that would visit the camp and give a talk to the campers. The only fellow I can remember was Billy Shaw who played guard for the Buffalo Bills. Shaw was a perennial All-AFL guard. I remember him relating a story of how when he was a rookie, he was getting overwhelmed in a game. After the game, his nemesis on the other side of the line had told him he could tell whether it was a run or a pass just by looking at his knuckles. White knuckles = run, no color = pass. I'm guessing he made the necessary corrections in his stance.
Friday nights were movie night. They would bus us into Arcadia to the local movie theater. I remember seeing "The Pink Panther" and a rerun of "Shane". And, get this: the bus driver was none other than Billy Cannon. Most of us knew who Billy Cannon was - Heisman trophy winning RB from LSU, gridiron hero of the Saturday night lights and with a name straight out of central casting. He was one of the AFL's first big steals from NFL having signed with the Oilers straight out of college. In '65 and '66, I believe Al Davis was turning him into a tight end for the Raiders. I have no idea where he was living at the time but apparently it was in the area and he was, no doubt, pals with Hennigan and Fowler. Looking back, I suppose he was one of the few that had a bus driver's license. Didn't see him around camp much but come Friday night, there was Billy in the school bus waiting for us to load up. I remember on one trip someone asked him, "hey Billy, why is your hair so long?" (We were into flat-tops and buzz cuts at the time - long hair and bell-bottoms were just around the corner. Cannon had kind of a rockabilly-do.) He replied, "I'm like Samson. If I cut my hair, I lose all my strength." I think most of us were thinking "makes sense to me".
I attended Camp Touchdown for one 2-week session in '65 and two 2-week sessions in '66, IIRC. It was a fun time in a different era, in a different world. Everyone got along for the most part and behaved like good little soldiers. Now, some of the campers, especially some of the younger guys, you just knew that athletics were not going to be a part of their future, yet the staff was there to encourage everyone to do their best and everyone was treated with respect. Looking back, I am really amazed at how smoothly every thing was run. The organizing of the activities, the ladies that prepared the meals in the kitchen - never so much as a blip - the camp was really run the right way.
For a last anecdote, when my parents came to pick me up one year, Jerry Fowler started gabbing with my dad. Fowler learned of our Arkansas roots and told a story of how his college, tiny Northwestern St., had scheduled a game with the Arkansas Razorbacks one year in Little Rock. He said his team walked into the stadium and the Arkansas faithful, pretty much the whole stadium, began calling the Hogs (Whooooooooooooooopigsooie). He said his team started shaking in their boots. They lost - badly. Eheh, they both got a hearty chuckle over that one. I looked it up and sure enough, Arkansas beat Northwestern St. 42-7 in 1961.
Thanks to the previously mentioned deep closet cleanout,
a few momentos.
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The following taken mostly from
www.wikipedia.com
Charley Hennigan - went on to get a doctorate at U of H, raised a family and after taking a stab at politics, went into teaching, helping prisoners get their GEDs.
Jerry Fowler - eventually went into the family's political business and in the early 2000's, was sentenced to 5 years for bribery, income tax evasion and accepting kickbacks. (my note: that's some old school Louisiana politics, right there). He served 4 years in a federal prison and a number of months in a half-way house. Rumors I've heard were as much as 3 million embezzled, mostly to pay off gambling debts. In 2002, wife #2, Mari Ann Fowler, disappeared in Port Allen on a trip to visit Jerry at the prison. She was never found. Rumor is she may have been abducted by a serial killer that was stalking the Baton Rouge area at the time. Jerry Fowler died in 2009.
Billy Cannon - after his football career, Cannon went into dentistry. "In 1983, after a series of bad real estate investments, he became involved in a counterfeiting scheme and served two and a half years in prison. In 1995, he was hired as a dentist at Louisiana State Penitentiary (aka Angola), a position he still holds as of 2017. "