FRIDAY FACT: We have all passed it many times and perhaps even read it at least once, but here is the history behind the memorial that resides near the Roper track and field area This is an excerpt from a Tulsa World article written by Barry Lewis in October 2011. Former Berryhill, Union and Hale head football coach Jack Kiper still recalls vividly seeing Rogers senior Henry Frnka Jr. suffer his fatal injury in the 1946 Rogers-Central game that Tulsa World sports writer Bill Haisten wrote about in his blog that also was printed in Tuesday’s Tulsa World. Late in Rogers 14-7 win, Frnka Jr. was knocked unconscious on a carry into the line and was removed from the field at Skelly Stadium (now known as H.A. Chapman Stadium) on a stretcher and taken by ambulance to Hillcrest Hospital. Surgery was performed to remove a blood clot, but two days later on Oct. 6, Frnka Jr. died from the brain injury. He was 17. “It was a Sunday morning and they broke in to a church broadcast on the radio with the bulletin that he had died,” Kiper said on Wednesday. “I never knew you could die from playing football.” On that fateful weekend in ‘46, Kiper passed up a chance to attend the Texas-SMU game in Austin in order to stay in Tulsa for the Rogers-Central game. Both were state championship contenders and Central would go on to win the large-school title. Kiper, who was in eighth-grade at that time at Wilson Junior High, knew all of the Rogers and Central players. He was a friend of Frnka Jr., but closer to his younger brother Odell, who was nicknamed “Champ.” Frnka Jr.’s nickname was “Big Boy.” Rogers led late in the game and was trying to run out the clock. “Now you would just have the quarterback drop to a knee,” Kiper said. “I saw `Big Boy’ go straight up the middle and he didn’t get up. I knew it was serious when they took him off the field on a stretcher because I had only seen one other player ever taken off the field on a stretcher. I could see Big Boy’s face was `beet red.’ Kiper speculates that current medical procedures could have prevented the tragedy. “I remember he had been knocked out early in the game,” Kiper said. “When that happens now they don’t let you go back in. He might have been wearing a helmet with some special padding because earlier in the year, he had collapsed at school, and that was a big story in the paper at that time.” Kiper said he felt a lot of grief over the death of “Big Boy,” who was a fullback on offense and a linebacker on defense. “We played all the sports back then and I always considered baseball to be more dangerous,” Kiper said. “In football, they tackled differently than they do now. Back then they wrapped ‘em up and rolled ‘em over.”
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 13:12:51 +0000
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