Recalling a 1939 High School 'Super Bowl'
Garfield Boilermakers (NJ) vs. Miami Stingarees (FL)
Awash by the floodlights at Miami’s Orange Bowl, Benny Babula leaned forward at the waist and contemplated the 22 yards between him and the goal post.
The wooden scoreboard behind the end zone with its big red clock told him all he needed to know on that Christmas night in 1939.
Two minutes remained in a tie game for the national championship of high school football between the Garfield Boilermakers and the Miami Stingarees, and it all depended on Babula’s powerful right leg.
Field goals back then were as rare as Miami snowflakes. The stadium hadn’t seen one at any level since the previous season.
With his golden locks peeking out from underneath his leather helmet and sweat weighing down the woolen uniform, Babula met the moment. He crossed himself, called for the snap and somehow, booted it just over the crossbar.
Garfield’s 16-13 victory was long called one of the greatest games ever to take place in the old Orange Bowl.
As the hype machine revs up for Super Bowl LIX, the memory of that game, the last to settle a high school national championship on the field, lingers in Garfield, which has called itself the City of Champions ever since.
Sitting snug along the Passaic River, it was where George Washington once crossed with his troops before the place ever had a name.
The area remained sleepy until German woolen manufacturers began setting up shop, attracted by the availability of electric power and proximity to New York City.
A wave of immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe and Italy, flooded in to provide manpower for the mills, producing the finest woolen goods in the country under labels like Botany and Forstmann.
Those immigrants left their parents behind in Europe, never to see them again in most cases. Broken English may have been the unofficial language of Garfield, but their sons were American boys playing American sports.
And by 1939, a head coach named Art Argauer, himself German-born, had built the high school football team into a powerhouse with 20 consecutive victories.
High school football was more popular than the pros back then. In the days before TV, with means of travel limited, folks went to see local teams play.
When Garfield took on Bloomfield in ’39, with the winner expected to be selected as state champ, 19,000 packed Foley Field to see Babula dominate in an 18-0 win.
At the same time, Jess Yarborough, nicknamed ‘Mule’ because of his tenacity as a two-way lineman at Clemson, had turned Miami High into the South’s premier high school program with coffers to match.
The Depression still held the nation in its clutches, but Miami’s coaches hopped on airplanes to scout opponents outside Florida.
The state, at the time arguably the richest source of football talent, couldn’t produce suitable competition for the Stingarees.
Serendipity brought Miami and Garfield together on that Christmas night.
The Stingarees had been inviting Northern teams down for a holiday tussle for many years and now, the National Sports Council, a group of sports writers headed by the legendary Grantland Rice, was putting together a series of benefit events on behalf of the Infantile Paralysis Foundation, a pet charity of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The idea of a national championship game between the best high school teams of the North and South begat what would be called the Health Bowl.
Miami was an obvious choice to represent the South and following a selection process that included teams as far away as Billings, Montana and Casper, Wyoming, Garfield got the call.
The train ride to Florida was the first time many of the Garfield athletes traveled farther than 50 miles from their front doorstep.
“We were kids of the Depression,” said Walter Young, one of the last surviving members of the Garfield team.
“My father worked for Botany as a loom fixer. He suffered greatly during the Depression in not being able to work and earn his daily bread. My mom held the family together. Like so many other mothers in Garfield, she went out and cleaned houses and washed clothing to collect enough money to pay what they had to pay on the mortgage of the house and to feed the kids.”
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Once the sides were announced, the newspapers got busy promoting the game as a duel between two of the most sought after, if diametric high school players in the nation.
Miami was led by little Davey Eldredge, a 151-pound jitterbug and a state champion sprinter. He had scored 16 touchdowns, half of them on runs of 50 or more yards. Garfield had never seen anyone like him.
Then there was the sculpted 190-pound Babula. One story described him, in the jaunty style of the day, as having “the face of a matinee idol, a powerful frame like a Tarzan and a name that sounded like a football cheer.” His moniker was ‘Bam, Bam’, ‘Golden Thunderbolt’ and ‘The Fabulous.’
The game would live up to its billing with Babula and Eldredge playing their roles.
Garfield got off to a 13-0 lead, equaling the total number of points the Stingarees had allowed all season. The second score came on a naked reverse with John Grembowitz following Young's block into the end zone.
Young, in fact, had lived for 75 years with the thought he may have gotten away with a clip on Eldredge, who was playing safety and had the last shot at Grembowitz, until he saw a video of the game posted online.
Grembowitz, meanwhile, made tackle after tackle on Eldredge, who still piled up the yards and even got loose on a spectacular 77-yard touchdown run that tied the game at 13 in the fourth quarter.
By that time, the heat was taking its toll on the northerners. Argauer instructed his players to remain standing during timeouts as they gathered around the water wagon supplied by the Garfield Fire Department. They weren't to show any effects.
In the end, they battled through. Babula had a good return on the kickoff following Eldredge’s touchdown, and when Argauer called for the naked reverse again, Grembowitz took it to the Miami 14.
On fourth down, Babula, who had missed the first extra point and had never kicked a field goal in his high school career, huddled the team. There was a discussion as to who would kick.
Young remembers, “I kicked a few field goals during the season, but he called the shots. He was the quarterback. The discussion was short. Benny said, ‘I'll kick the field goal,’ and that was it.”
Babula recalled the moment in 1989 when the team met for a 50th reunion. “When I went to kick it, I blessed myself in the open. I was a strong believer in religion, and kicked it through,”
Back home, School No. 8 rocked, although there was time left for Miami. Ultimately, Al Kazaren, a second stringer who played the game of his life, intercepted a pass -Garfield's fourth takeaway of the day -and Babula sealed things with a signature run for first down, carrying at least five Stingarees for the ride.
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The teams could barely shake hands after their fierce engagement.
The Boilermakers remained in Miami for a week, taking in the sights and attending the Orange Bowl between the Tennessee Volunteers and the Oklahoma Sooners.
When they returned to New Jersey, the Garfield DPW had collected all the used Christmas trees in town and sent them off in a bonfire at the future site of Garfield's high school and stadium. A crowd of 20,000 joined in the celebration.
Within a couple of years, though, World War II would rob most of the kids of a big chunk of their lives. Some even made the ultimate sacrifice.
Grembowitz went on to play for William and Mary. The 1942 squad was the Indians’ finest, losing only to the North Carolina Pre-Flight Cloudbusters, who were made up of former college studs training to become Navy pilots.
After college, Grembowitz too was training to be a pilot with the Army Air Corps when in March of 1944, he collided in mid-air with another Air Cadet over Kansas and was killed.
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Eldredge starred at Georgia Tech after high school, then entered the Navy and resumed his college career afterward at the University of Miami.
He went into politics and served many years in the Florida State Senate. In 1962, Eldredge challenged incumbent Dante Fascell in the Democratic primary for Congress but was trounced by a two to one margin.
Afterwards, he was asked by the Miami News, “Was there ever a time in your life before when you'd given everything you had with all your power and still took a licking?”
Eldredge thought for a moment. “Yes,” he answered.
“There was a time. It was Christmas night of 1939, a football game.”
Hank Gola is an award-winning sports journalist and the author of ‘City of Champions’ and soon to be released, ‘Ryder Cup Rivals: The Fiercest Battles for Golf’s Holy Grail’.
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