HIGH SCHOOL SPORTS

      BY High was a small school but we did participate in all of the major sports being played at that time: football, basketball, baseball, tennis, track, and even wrestling.  Dad had discouraged me from trying out for football noting how his knee injury while playing High School football had ended his participation in most sports. He said it wasn’t worth the risk!

      Our school had an abundance of great basketball players. We had won several state championships. I was good, but evidently not good enough. I got cut from the team during tryouts. Wrestling was definitely not for me. The idea of hugging up against a sweat-covered male body and squirming around contorted on a wrestling mat held no attraction.

BASEBALL

      Baseball was a natural fit. I had done well in Little League and Pony League, and would do well in High School. I started as a freshman. Our coach was Frank Arnold. As well as coaching baseball and basketball, Coach Arnold was the coach for most of the boys' PE classes. He would later coach BYU's basketball team during the Danny Ainge years. 
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Coach Frank Arnold

     Coach Arnold put me on third base. I was a great infielder and had a strong enough arm to make the throw to first. My friends, Dick Thomas, Kent Peterson, and others I had previously played baseball with were all doing great, and we were having fun once again.

     At practice my hitting and fielding were better than ever. Then it happened. One afternoon during a preseason game, I was stealing third base, running hard, it was going to be close. The catcher caught the ball and fired it to third for the tag. I slid in low feet first in a cloud of red dust. I heard a loud crack. The ump called, Safe! The third base coach yelled, Time Out! Pain shot up my arm. 

     Quickly assessing what had happened I discovered a new joint between my elbow and wrist. It was a compound fracture bent at a ninety degree angle. Up to this point in my young life I had considered myself unbreakable. I had felt pain before but nothing like this! With every beat of my heart a jolt of screaming pain ignited in my arm as I sat on the curb waiting for Mom to pick me up and run me to the Emergency Room at the hospital.

      It seemed like forever before Roscoe Nelson, our family doctor and a close friend of Dad’s, made it to the hospital to put me out before setting the bones. Coming out of the anesthesia I was happy to see my forearm straight and looking somewhat normal. Before going under I had wondered if my arm would ever be the same. Dr. Nelson said it was a bad break and I would be in a cast for at least six months. Six months?!! There goes the baseball season along with some fun summer water sports.

LETTERMEN’S CLUB

    Since the break was in my left arm, I would now focus on Tennis. My arm finally healed, and for the next three years I made the tennis team and baseball team, and was good enough to letter in both.

Francis on the BY High Baseball team

 

     I was invited to join the Lettermen’s Club, a group of talented and well-toned athletes. I bought Phil Swenson’s Lettermen’s jacket and proudly displayed my baseball and tennis pins.

Unfortunately the jacket and pins were stolen from our team bus during a baseball game at Pleasant Grove High School. The jacket was probably burned in effigy during a Pleasant Grove High School Pep rally. They were tired of being beaten at every sport by a small, insignificant school like BY High. 

TENNIS

      During our senior year, Dave Beck and I were teamed up as doubles partners on our outstanding tennis team. We were not only good, but we were cool. You see, if you were really cool, you would carry around one or two Stan Smith, Jack Kramer, or Pancho Gonzales wooden rackets strung with cat gut strings, and locked down tight in a wooden brace.

     Our tennis team had qualified for the State Tournament in Salt Lake City. We had a great team anchored by our number one singles champs, Tom Schaerrer and Roger Porter. Another outstanding player, Dave Beck, was my doubles partner and our team captain.

Francis missed this photo because he was with the BY High baseball team playing in an important game.

      It turned out to be a scorching hot day, and felt even hotter on the University of Utah’s cement courts. Dave and I played two hard fought matches and came out on top. We were physically spent after five hours on the court. We were told that we had done our part well and were finished for the day. We wouldn’t know how our team had fared until all the singles and doubles matches were finished. Great, but what we needed at that moment was liquid and lots of it!

      We drove to a nearby A&W root beer stand and each ordered up a sweet gallon, and chugged down the ice cold liquid. With round bellies and rubber legs we returned to the courts. Evidently the State Tennis championship had ended in a tie, and of all things Dave and I would need to play a one-set tie breaker to determine the winner. It would have been nice to know about this before we had challenged each other to a root beer drinking contest!

      The final set began. Whop. Slosh, slosh, slosh. Whop. Slosh, slosh. Whop. Slosh. It didn’t take long watching us slosh around the court before everyone knew BY High would be taking home the second place trophy. Ah, but the root beer was so satisfying!

      Dave Beck was not only a great tennis player but also a good friend. Unfortunately he passed away suddenly a few years ago while playing tennis, the game he loved.

Friends in 2006 attending Dave Beck's funeral in American Fork, Utah. Left to right: David Clark, Paul Evans, Kent Peterson, Stewart Grow, Francis Rogers. Since this photo was taken, sadly Dave Clark has also passed away.

BOXING

      Frank Arnold couldn’t wait for his end of the year boxing tournament in PE. All boys would be paired up with equally weighted partners. He took special delight in pairing up two of the “Three Nephites,” George Taylor and I, in the lightweight division. The matches were made up of three 1-minute rounds with only pride on the line. They were held in the windowless, airless fourth floor attic of the Elementary building. The attic was located above BYU’s original third floor gym on the Lower Campus.

Boxing gloves and headgear

       After watching several matches where our friends were beating each other senseless, it was finally our turn. We suited up with head gear and gloves, and entered the fighting mat. I figured that since George and I were such good friends we would just dance around, throw a few jabs, and fake a good show. But evidently George had other plans. His first punch hit me so hard I thought I was going down for the count! It turned out to be a hard fought fight. We exchanged blow for blow, and somehow made it through the three rounds with our heads intact but our brains scrambled. At least mine was. The last time I had fought George was on the playground at Wasatch School in fifth grade, and he had definitely improved since then! 

     

LEMONS TO LEMONADE

        My High School friends and I weren’t evil. We were just terrible teases. We enjoyed teasing girls, especially beautiful college girls, all dressed up in their finest church clothes. You see, there was a hill on the road just south of the Bean Museum that ran eastward down to a stop sign on Ninth East. To the right were the Heritage Halls which housed BYU coeds. On the other side of Ninth East was the church building the girls would attend faithfully each Sunday. On wet winter days a huge puddle of slushy snow and water would pool up right next to the sidewalk. Oh my, I think you can see where this is going.

        Still dressed in our Sunday duds Dave, Paul, Jed, and I would lurk patiently at the top of the hill waiting for the campus ward to let out. Just like clockwork, dozens of BYUs finest young women would gather in bunches waiting to cross Ninth East and move safely to the sidewalk leading them back to their dorms, and not so safely past the giant “puddle of doom.”

        Sitting in Dad’s red VW Bug with the engine purring quietly we exchanged sly glances knowing that the gaggle of girls had just entered the perfect slush zone. Suddenly the Red Bug lurched forward gaining speed as it accelerated down the hill, at the last moment veering right into the ice cold pool and sending a wall of slush cascading up and over the shocked church goers, covering them from head to toe. Running the stop sign on Ninth East we would turn south making our escape amid a barrage of shaking fists, obscene gestures, and language rarely heard from such well-dressed BYU church goers. 

Snarl!

        Soon other BY High friends caught wind of our adventures and wanted in on the action, come the next slushy day. And so it went. This time it was Brent, Bruce, and Paul Number Two who begged to share in the excitement. The puddle was bigger than ever. The crowd of girls was bigger than ever. And the crest of ice cold, slushy water was incredible. What a rush!

Puddle of Doom

        Several days later a letter addressed to my parents showed up at my house. The return address said BYU Campus Security. Evidently one of the angry girls must have had the eyes of an eagle. She had spotted my license plate number, and with the help of the campus cops they had traced it back to Dad’s red VW Bug.  The letter informed Dad that his car had been involved in a “splash and run.” The girls involved didn’t want to press charges. They just wanted $40 to pay for their dry cleaning. Needless to say, Dad wasn’t very happy. “I’ll get the money from my friends. It was an unfortunate accident,” I explained. Yeah, as if Dad believed that it was an “unfortunate accident” with Dave, Paul and Jed in the car. That would be a first! 

Ca ching! Ca ching! Ca ching!

        Let’s see. Forty dollars divided by four would be ten dollars each. A brilliant idea popped into my conniving brain. What about Brent, Bruce and Paul No. Two? We didn’t actually know which group of perpetrators had been found out. If I could collect ten dollars from all six of them, that would total sixty dollars. My share would be “zero” – and after paying the $40 for the dry cleaning, I would have a net profit of $20! CA CHING! After all, what are friends for?  All went as planned and each paid their ten dollars. No one was the wiser until years later at a class reunion when a group of us were swapping old war stories and the two different car loads told the same story. I had been found out at last! We had a good laugh and went on to more reminiscing about our youthful escapades.

        One day not too long ago Brent and I and our wives were out to dinner when we began laughing about the big splash incident. Brent’s wife, who had been listening, spoke up and said, “I think I was one of those girls!” Then with a disgusted glare, my wife growled, “If I had been one of those girls, I would still, after all these years, punch you in the nose!” Good thing she wasn’t!

(No last names of those involved will be given to protect the rights of the juvenile perpetrators.)

ON A ROLL or DAD’S GERMAN VW BUG

   Dad had returned from Europe with a new VW, a shiny red Bug. Wow! A Bug! VW Bugs were taking the USA by storm. This car was his pride and joy.

Francis with his dad's red VW Bug.

On rare occasions he would let me drive it, if I promised to keep it in showroom condition. My good friend, Paul Evans, was impressed. His dad had a small Fiat that he would race through “The River Bottoms.”  He couldn’t wait to introduce me and the VW to his favorite racetrack.

    Winding through its curves, adrenalin pumping, tires squealing, was a real rush! As time went by we were only satisfied with more speed, more G’s, and the feel of the Bug’s back end sliding out on the curves. We thought we were great drivers! Dad had asked, “Why are the tires wearing out on the sides?” The Red VW would become one of his great mortal trials.

   The night of BY High’s Homecoming celebration I offered a good friend, Paul Denham, center on our State Championship basketball team, a demo jaunt through the River Bottoms. The excitement was impressive as we leaned into the curves, our hearts pounding, lunging ahead with each shift of the gears. We were on a roll and also totally unaware that down the S-curved road about half a mile a gravel truck had lost its load. We hit the curve and the gravel at top speed. The Bug slid across the road sideways, hit an irrigation ditch and rolled twice into a hay field. Fortunately we were strapped in tight.

   We unbuckled, got out of the car, looked ourselves over for damage, and found none. I couldn’t say as much for Dad’s new VW. There was hardly a spot on it that wasn’t scratched or dented.

     The car started up and we got it back on the road, but as we began the long drive for home we soon discovered that along with other problems the back axle was bent. We bounced along, up and down, up and down. Our top speed was now just 10 miles an hour. We stood around for several hours at the garage where our friend, Paul Evans, worked. It was hard to know where to begin fixing the Bug. We decided it was definitely a job for the professionals.

   Climbing the stairs that night at 1:00 in the morning to tell Dad what had happened to his prize import was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. After making sure I was ok, he groaned, “We can fix it, but it will never be the same.”

  

FINANCIAL BIG SHOTS or BIG MONEY

NICE TOYS EQUALS "MUST WORK"

        By the time Stewart and I were sixteen we both had Vespa motor scooters, and both got jobs working at JC Penney’s on Center Street in Provo.

JC Penney's store in late 1950s

        We got up before it was light and buzzed off to work, running every stop light along the way. There we swept the floors, cleaned the bathrooms, emptied the trash cans and washed the front door windows all in time to make it to our first class at BY High. A year later we were both working in the kitchen at Eldered Care Center, loading food trays and washing dishes. I continued to spend a big chunk of the money we earned on religious books.

Eldred Center rest home in South Provo

        Next Stewart landed a car route delivering the Deseret News through the River Bottoms and up Provo Canyon to Wild Wood. After he graduated from High School I took over his route and delivered the papers on my Vespa.

INVESTMENT CLUB or FINANCIAL BIG SHOTS

        Stewart was a good friend and an ambitious worker. Under Stewart’s leadership a group of us organized a club called “Young Investors.” It wouldn’t be long before we would all be driving Corvettes, so we thought.

1961 Corvette

        We each put in $200 and began investing. We followed penny stocks in the newspapers, found one we liked, and visited in the Salt Lake Penny Stock Exchange. They refused to sell us anything. They said we were too young. 

Salt Lake Stock & Mining Exchange - Salt Lake City, UT

        We later bought stock in a movie company that was making a movie about the Mormons crossing the Colorado River at “Hole in the Rock.” It went bankrupt.

"Hole in the Rock" Pioneers. painting by Lynn Griffin.

       We paid the back taxes on a piece of salt grass property near Goshen. We felt like bigshots standing on the County Courthouse steps and bidding on tax sale property. It turned out the title was disputed. The Park Service claimed ownership. Bummer.

Utah County Court House, Provo, UT

        Our last investment before leaving for missions was a loan to the Southam Mining Company. It seemed Mr. Southam was sending out his own missionary and was short on cash. We looked for big returns from “The Man Upstairs.” Maybe we’ll collect in Heaven!

        Toward the end of my Junior year at BY High, some members of our investment club encouraged me to run for student body president. With this group of "Winners" backing me, how could I lose?

Francis standing next to his campaign sign. His sister, Kay, made the poster.

        Our platform was "The Big Deal." We all dressed like gangsters from the '30s in double-breasted, pinstripe suits and carried violin cases. We used Ray Ashby's brother's Model A as a backdrop.

1930s Ford Model A.

         I climbed the old metal fire escape to the second floor platform, and gave my passionate campaign speech to the gawking crowd below. When the votes were counted, the Young Investors finally prevailed. I got the job!

BY High Executive Officers, 1962-1963.

      What became of the Young Investors? We served missions all over the world, got married, and after college each of us was successful in our own way. Stewart Grow became a real estate developer; Paul Hoskisson became a professor of Ancient Scriptures; Ray Ashby became a Seminary principal; Joe Clark became a teacher; Steve Grow became a lawyer, and I became a Seminary principal, and then an Elementary School teacher.