It was date 53 years ago – January 6, 1971 – that 11-year-old Kevin Horn returned to his sixth-grade classroom at Valparaiso Elementary School in Saunders County, NE.
Thanks to a January 3 and 4 snowstorm an extended Christmas vacation was enjoyed by all. Especially for the members of the 1970 Nebraska Cornhusker football team.
On a scale of 1 to 10, being stranded on a Miami Beach in January would undoubtedly be met with a stratospheric number. Throw in a National Championship title — when a week earlier the odds against you were certainly stratospheric — and one had reason to celebrate!
As all NU football historians and novices have heard, Nebraska entered New Year’s Day, 1971, ranked third in the county. Texas was No. 1 and Ohio State was No. 2. Both TU and OSU lost their respective Cotton Bowl and Rose Bowl games to Notre Dame and Stanford. The Huskers then edged No. 5 LSU, 17-12, in the Orange Bowl.
Notre Dame head coach Ara Parseghian lobbied poll voters to pick his Irish as the top team in the land. After all, they had whipped the top team in the country.
“Heck, even the Pope couldn’t vote Notre Dame number one,” responded NU legend Bob Devaney.
Obviously, this was a time when political correctness, concerns of causing hurt feelings and retaliation by simpleminded social media writers were non-existent. The Vietnam War raged on, and some football humor was a welcome antidote for life’s more serious storms.
Back at Valparaiso Elementary, my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Emily Millward (a Mary Tyler Moore lookalike), presented me with a copy of the January 2, 1971, sports section of the Miami Herald newspaper which she had acquired from a friend who attended the game. 50 years later it is still stored with my most precious of Cornhusker collectables.
Memories of the first six days of January 1971 are very much embraced in my cranium. Watching the Orange Bowl on a 21-inch black and white Zenith counsel television with Dad — both who are now gone — enduring a school cancelling snowstorm, and then returning to my classroom to be presented a copy of the Miami Herald newspaper loaded with color photos of the Big Red are as vivid as if they were displayed on one of today’s LG UHD 70-inch color televisions.
Those six days rank as some of the happiest of my childhood.
And, had he known me, I’m confident Pope Paul VI would agree.