MIKE BURKE
Allegany Communications Sports
For some of us it’s impossible to believe that it’s been 53 years since the famous Turkey Day Game between Allegany and Fort Hill was played on Thanksgiving, 1971, at what was then known as Fort Hill Stadium. Of course, it’s hard to believe the game was played at all.
Yet, as the late, great J. Suter Kegg would say, “played it was.” And, as Kegg, legendary sports editor of the Cumberland Evening and Sunday Times, actually did say in his Tapping the Keg sports column the following day, Friday, November 26, 1971, “behind the 44th Thanksgiving Day game involving city rivals is a story unique in the history of Cumberland sports. It’s the kind of a story, as Bob Pence puts it, ‘that makes a person proud to be a part of the community.’ “
Clearly, the Turkey Day Game on Thanksgiving is no longer played here. In fact, it’s been 51 years, but that’s not been a bad thing the way so many of us thought it would be, because the Homecoming Game and the Maryland state playoffs (despite the finest efforts of the MPSSAA) have worked out pretty well.
We’re still proud, though, of our Turkey Day Game history and heritage, and while all of them produced grand days and moments in Cumberland, in my time, the three most talked-about Turkey Day Games have been the 1948 game, the very last Turkey Day Game in 1973 and, of course, The Snow Game – the 1971 entry in which the undefeated Allegany Campers defeated once-beaten Fort Hill, 18-14.
The Campers were a great team that season, and they beat a great Fort Hill team to finish undefeated and win the City and CVAL championships in a down-to-the-wire classic that had a little bit of everything and would have otherwise been long remembered on its own merits.
There is nothing ordinary about an Allegany-Fort Hill football game to begin with, but in the instance of 1971, there was nothing about that day – nor the preceding night – that was like any Alco-Fort Hill game before or since.
Roughly before noon on Wednesday, November 24, the day before Thanksgiving, and just about the time the two schools were dismissing for their traditional pep rallies, it began to snow. And it continued to snow, and it kept snowing, which was a major bummer since there was no school until the following Monday, anyway.
By 11 o’clock that evening when it had finally died down, there was close to a foot of snow covering Cumberland – except, of course, for the small portion of the concrete stands at Fort Hill Stadium that the Fort Hill Pep Club had begun to shovel.
I remember this, because the Fort Hill Pep Club’s adviser was my mother Colleen Burke, an English teacher at Fort Hill, who tended to be a little stubborn at times (she was also little), and she had no intention of going to the Turkey Day Game the following Saturday afternoon, which was when the game likely would have been postponed to.
As Kegg wrote, “By that time, many residents who had already bought tickets for the game had retired for the night, believing that they would be spending their Thanksgiving Day at home watching football on television.”
Uh … my mother didn’t think so. So around 9 o’clock Wednesday night, she called Fort Hill coach Charlie Lattimer and asked him what had to be done for the game to be played the following day. I could hear Coach Lattimer growling something on the other end of the line, until my mother just point-blank asked, “Do you want to play the (so-and-so) game tomorrow, or not?”
Apparently, Coach Lattimer did, saying a decision would be made at 8 o’clock the following morning. That’s all my mother needed to know, and off 20 or so of us went to the stadium, snow shovels in hands.
The radio stations were soon called and pleas for help were aired. By dawn there were roughly 300 volunteers, mostly kids, gingerly shoveling the stadium field (remember, it was a grass field) and using cardboard backing to signs the Pep Club had made to scoop the snow out of the concrete stands and slide it down to the track.
Around 7 a.m., Bob Scarcelli, Fort Hill principal, and Bob Pence, supervisor of physical education for Allegany County Public Schools, arrived, as did a Cumberland City Streets Department plow, operated by a gentleman by the name of Jack Baker, who donated his time after spending all night clearing the streets of Cumberland. But while the plow was able to get much of the top snow cleared, the surface had to be shoveled by hand.
Don Squires, Gary Brinsfield, Ken Leasure and Jay Hardy lent the use of smaller plows, as well as their services.
Allegany head coach George Stimmel arrived around 10 o’clock and promptly put the thumbs-down. No way, he said, was he going to risk his players to injury on what, at the time, was an unplayable surface. Soon thereafter, the Fort Hill players began to file in and couldn’t believe their eyes. For as more than one of the Sentinels said, they, too, went to bed believing there would be no game on Thanksgiving.
Or something like that.
Around 11:30 a.m., Coach Stimmel returned with the Allegany team, and the impressed Camper coach immediately gave the thumbs up, telling Kegg, “Those kids did a tremendous job.”
The game was afoot, and the rest is history. In fact, the entire 18 hours remains history.
“It beats anything I’ve ever seen in Cumberland so far as community effort is concerned,” Pence told Kegg.
To which Kegg wrote, “And that it did. This is a case where youth, much maligned in these trying days of drug problems and disregard for authority, deserves a big salute. Boys and girls, you’ve made us both proud and grateful. True, your names will never appear in books recording the gridiron deeds of city schoolboy players but what you did will long live in the hearts of us all.”
What they did continues to live in our hearts. It’s been 53 years since the youth, “much maligned in these trying days of drug problems and disregard for authority” took the initiative to help, because every single person who was on that field that late night and early morning reflected the spirit of Cumberland, much maligned or not.
In fact, they were and remain the spirit of Cumberland, because it’s long been what we do here. Check out downtown Cumberland if you don’t believe me.
So on this Thanksgiving, let’s raise a glass to all we are thankful for, including the spirit of Cumberland, which will live for as long as the last of us holds a breath — which somehow will be forever.
And while you’re at it, take time to offer a toast as well to a great English teacher, who taught at Fort Hill for nearly 30 years and who, seven years after she left us, continues to inspire her students, her community and her family.
A Happy Thanksgiving to us all.
Mike Burke writes about sports and other stuff for Allegany Communications. He began covering sports for the Prince George’s Sentinel in 1981 and joined the Cumberland Times-News sports staff in 1984, serving as sports editor for over 30 years. Contact him at [email protected]. Follow him on X @MikeBurkeMDT