Book released about Clarke County's gridiron 'glory days'
BERRYVILLE — Charlie Ramsburg, Clarke County High School Class of 1962 and a star lineman on the Eagle football team, first learned of the project — i.e. the book that had to be written — on Facebook.
All he knew, Ramsburg said Friday, was that “some guy, somewhere,” wanted to write a book about Clarke County’s fabled 38-game unbeaten streak on the gridiron (37 victories and one tie, to Elkton in September 1964) back in the halcyon days of the early-to-mid 1960s.
Both men laugh about it now, but the “some guy” was a distinguished gentleman in his own right — not a Clarke County athlete as he will readily admit, but a 1973 graduate of the school who is now a partner in a Northern Virginia law firm.
There’s no question Robert “Bobby” Moore’s Clarke roots run deep. On Friday, during a book launch and signing at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Berryville, he pointed to three major reasons why he not only wrote the book, eventually titled “Glory Days,” but why the book needed to be written.
Not surprisingly, the genesis of this desire began at the first game he ever attended, on Nov. 6, 1964, which just happened to be the most famous — or at least most-discussed — contest in CCHS history: the Eagles’ contested 7-6 loss to James Wood. Was the PAT (extra point) booted by the Colonels’ Chuck Marks good? There are thousands of Clarke County residents, all who claim residence in the end zone that Friday night, who say it wasn’t.
Whatever, Moore’s appetite was whetted, and was rendered further when, as a youngster, he worked for apple concern Moore & Dorsey. His boss was Mason Longerbeam, whose family constituted a pipeline of fine players to the Eagle program. One way to catch a break from work, Moore says with a laugh, was to ask Longerbeam if he “knew any stories” about Clarke football.
Finally, Moore speaks of a party he attended around 1975 when a total stranger came up to him and asked if he knew Buckeye Potts, a Clarke running back of prodigious skill in the mid-’60s. If anything, this rather odd encounter reaffirmed the staying power of memories of Eagle football and its remarkable run under head coaches Don Maphis and Carroll Reid and assistant Rudy Telek, the streak’s binding link.
All these stories — and the desire to tell them — lay fallow for more than 40 years until that “some guy” decided to undertake the task because time was slipping by and “no one else had done it.”
Two people, he says, lent continued impetus to the project — Ramsburg, who Moore laughingly says “bugged the [expletive] out of me” asking when the book was coming out.
The second was his intrepid researcher and media consultant Martha Sullivan. Moore says Sullivan spent “days and days” in the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives at Handley Library poring through the microfilm for any story or photo pertinent to The Streak. Sullivan herself says it was “weeks and weeks.”
Whatever time element suits you, the bottom line is that Sullivan wore out the microfiche machine researching The Streak — and then came back for more tedious toil when Moore discovered the 1960 team was District 10 champions and the 1965 squad, who took the field the year after The Streak was broken, reeled off another 10 in a row. Hence, researching 39 games expanded to 59.
But, discussing the project with Sullivan, you discover that, for her, it was a labor of love. And not just the time in the library, but the exhaustive work with photos (few of them original copies; most were gleaned from newspapers, many coming from a comprehensive scrapbook kept by Reid and his family) and the advance work getting 750 copies to press.
“I loved it,” says Sullivan, a graduate of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria who really does “remember the Titans.” “It took me back to a simpler time when integrity was the rule. The pleasure was all mine . . . It gave me an opportunity to go back to that wonderful world.”
Even the process by which “Glory Days” was written spurned modernity in a sense. Moore would read all that was available about each game, digest it, and then dictate his narrative into a dictaphone.
At times, he admits, it was a challenge to keep going — game after game after game. “It got to the point I wanted Clarke County to lose a game, so I could stop writing that book,” he says, with a discernible grin.
“That book” will not not only fill a void Clarke folks say exists, but will also benefit future Eagles. Proceeds from “Glory Days” — the mini-coffee table tome sells for $30 — go to the Moore Family Scholarship, a $1,000 award handed out annually through the Clarke County Education Foundation given to an Eagle graduate who has overcome hardship.
If the recipient maintains a 3.0 grade point average in college, the CCEF’s Nancy Specht says, the scholarship will be renewed. “Glory Days,” in a way, begetting “glory days” of a different stripe.
Copies of the book are available for purchase at the Bank of Clarke County at 2 E. Main St., Berryville.
— Contact Adrian O’Connor at aoconnor@winchesterstar.com
- By ADRIAN J. O’CONNOR The Winchester Star
- 7 hrs ago
- 0
BERRYVILLE — Charlie Ramsburg, Clarke County High School Class of 1962 and a star lineman on the Eagle football team, first learned of the project — i.e. the book that had to be written — on Facebook.
All he knew, Ramsburg said Friday, was that “some guy, somewhere,” wanted to write a book about Clarke County’s fabled 38-game unbeaten streak on the gridiron (37 victories and one tie, to Elkton in September 1964) back in the halcyon days of the early-to-mid 1960s.
Both men laugh about it now, but the “some guy” was a distinguished gentleman in his own right — not a Clarke County athlete as he will readily admit, but a 1973 graduate of the school who is now a partner in a Northern Virginia law firm.
There’s no question Robert “Bobby” Moore’s Clarke roots run deep. On Friday, during a book launch and signing at the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Berryville, he pointed to three major reasons why he not only wrote the book, eventually titled “Glory Days,” but why the book needed to be written.
Not surprisingly, the genesis of this desire began at the first game he ever attended, on Nov. 6, 1964, which just happened to be the most famous — or at least most-discussed — contest in CCHS history: the Eagles’ contested 7-6 loss to James Wood. Was the PAT (extra point) booted by the Colonels’ Chuck Marks good? There are thousands of Clarke County residents, all who claim residence in the end zone that Friday night, who say it wasn’t.
Whatever, Moore’s appetite was whetted, and was rendered further when, as a youngster, he worked for apple concern Moore & Dorsey. His boss was Mason Longerbeam, whose family constituted a pipeline of fine players to the Eagle program. One way to catch a break from work, Moore says with a laugh, was to ask Longerbeam if he “knew any stories” about Clarke football.
Finally, Moore speaks of a party he attended around 1975 when a total stranger came up to him and asked if he knew Buckeye Potts, a Clarke running back of prodigious skill in the mid-’60s. If anything, this rather odd encounter reaffirmed the staying power of memories of Eagle football and its remarkable run under head coaches Don Maphis and Carroll Reid and assistant Rudy Telek, the streak’s binding link.
All these stories — and the desire to tell them — lay fallow for more than 40 years until that “some guy” decided to undertake the task because time was slipping by and “no one else had done it.”
Two people, he says, lent continued impetus to the project — Ramsburg, who Moore laughingly says “bugged the [expletive] out of me” asking when the book was coming out.
The second was his intrepid researcher and media consultant Martha Sullivan. Moore says Sullivan spent “days and days” in the Stewart Bell Jr. Archives at Handley Library poring through the microfilm for any story or photo pertinent to The Streak. Sullivan herself says it was “weeks and weeks.”
Whatever time element suits you, the bottom line is that Sullivan wore out the microfiche machine researching The Streak — and then came back for more tedious toil when Moore discovered the 1960 team was District 10 champions and the 1965 squad, who took the field the year after The Streak was broken, reeled off another 10 in a row. Hence, researching 39 games expanded to 59.
But, discussing the project with Sullivan, you discover that, for her, it was a labor of love. And not just the time in the library, but the exhaustive work with photos (few of them original copies; most were gleaned from newspapers, many coming from a comprehensive scrapbook kept by Reid and his family) and the advance work getting 750 copies to press.
“I loved it,” says Sullivan, a graduate of T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria who really does “remember the Titans.” “It took me back to a simpler time when integrity was the rule. The pleasure was all mine . . . It gave me an opportunity to go back to that wonderful world.”
Even the process by which “Glory Days” was written spurned modernity in a sense. Moore would read all that was available about each game, digest it, and then dictate his narrative into a dictaphone.
At times, he admits, it was a challenge to keep going — game after game after game. “It got to the point I wanted Clarke County to lose a game, so I could stop writing that book,” he says, with a discernible grin.
“That book” will not not only fill a void Clarke folks say exists, but will also benefit future Eagles. Proceeds from “Glory Days” — the mini-coffee table tome sells for $30 — go to the Moore Family Scholarship, a $1,000 award handed out annually through the Clarke County Education Foundation given to an Eagle graduate who has overcome hardship.
If the recipient maintains a 3.0 grade point average in college, the CCEF’s Nancy Specht says, the scholarship will be renewed. “Glory Days,” in a way, begetting “glory days” of a different stripe.
Copies of the book are available for purchase at the Bank of Clarke County at 2 E. Main St., Berryville.
— Contact Adrian O’Connor at aoconnor@winchesterstar.com
