Epic_Legacies_Book

he Schenley Award ceremony was a classy afair. And Vessels
would win the very irst Schenley Award, although a long list
of people—including Vessels himself—would have told you it
deserved to go to Rollie Miles.
“I thought it was great,” said Vessels. “I was really impressed. I
stood up at the banquet and told them they’d picked the wrong
player, though. I thought Rollie Miles should have been the
winner. He had a great season. Rollie was one of the most gited
athletes I played with in my entire career.”
Vessels didn’t come back in 1954. “I had to go into the service
for two years,” he said, referring to the Korean Conlict. “When
I got out, the Baltimore Colts made me one of those ofers you
can’t refuse. I tore up my leg pretty good there. And I also found
out I didn’t have the ability any more when I got out of the army.”
Moe Lieberman, the team president in 1953 and 1954, was
always of the opinion that Royal had been responsible for the
achievements of his successor, Pop Ivy, who inherited a team
that would win 61 games and lose 18 during his tenure.
Also joining the Eskimos was fullback Johnny Bright, who
had been a Calgary Stampeder for two seasons.
“Johnny never ran for daylight, he ran for someone to run
over,” remembered teammate Mike Lashuk.
“People remember Johnny as a big, lumbering fullback,” said
Don Getty. “But really, he was the fastest guy on our team. And
he was a great athlete. He played with the Harlem Globetrotters.
He was Drake University’s Athlete of the Half Century.”
“I remember Johnny would always be at the front of the bus
and Normie at the back of the bus,” said Don Barry, “and they’d
start taking shots at each other and keep topping each other with
one-liners. It usually started with Normie debating if Johnny was
blocking as hard for him as he blocked for Johnny. Good times.”
Royal quit ater one season to chase and capture U.S. college
coaching immortality with the University of Texas Longhorns.
But he came to Edmonton as a young coach, with some faults.
For one thing, he went with irst-stringers all the way that year,
when he could have played other guys. By the time the playofs
came around, the irst-string guys were all racked up.
According to Frank Morris, Royal was actually the guy who
made the decision for which quarterback Claude Arnold was
blamed, for decades aterward. Morris said, “We lost the inal to
Winnipeg. It was late in the game, and Rod Pantages made the
decision to kick the ball right through the end zone. It was Royal’s
decision to throw one more pass. Dave Skrein intercepted it and
lipped it to Tom Casey, who went all the way.”
“It’s real yesterday, but the thing I could never forget was my
pass interception in the inal playof game against Winnipeg,
with Tom Casey taking that lateral for 100 yards,” remembered
Arnold. “We were leading 21–0 at the end of the third quarter,
but our defensive backs were kind of shot, hurt and tired.
Winnipeg came back with three touchdown passes to tie us.
We’d dominated the game, and we fought back and were on our
drive to score the winning touchdown. We got to about the 15-
yard line and my irst pass was tipped out of the receiver’s hand
at the last second, but we mistakenly ran one more play before
kicking it in for the ield goal or rouge.
“I golfed with Darrell Royal the other day and told him I
still have dreams about it,” Arnold said, in our interview back
in 1992. “I think about that damn play in the middle of the
night sometimes.”
Royal didn’t depart with a Grey Cup championship, but he let
a parting git.
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