There’s a good article in today’s T&G about the hepatitis cancelled 1969 football season. If I had a clue how to post it I would. Of course it’s behind a paywall.
1969 Holy Cross football team members reflect on 50th anniversary of hepatitis outbreak that canceled games, ended careers, made national headlines
By
Jennifer Toland
Telegram & Gazette Staff
Posted Sep 28, 2019 at 8:23 PM
Updated Sep 29, 2019 at 6:26 AM
WORCESTER — Where the Luth Athletic Complex now sprawls across Holy Cross’ upper campus, the HC football practice field once was, and in late August 1969, the Crusaders, enthusiastic and expectant for their upcoming season, trotted onto it for the start of training camp.
Members of HC’s strong senior class, heartened by a new coach, had reason to believe they could go out on top.
“We thought we had a pretty darn good team,” Bob DeSaulniers, a senior defensive lineman on the ’69 squad, recalled last week.
The 1969 Holy Cross season began with promise. It ended, just a few weeks later, in despair.
“I’ve been up there a few times,” Tom Lamb, senior co-captain of the ’69 team said, “and I can’t help but look over and think about where we drank the water.”
This fall marks the 50-year anniversary of HC’s 1969 football season that was canceled after two games when 90 of the team’s 97 players and coaches were afflicted by hepatitis. The outbreak was traced to a contaminated water faucet at the practice field.
Players from the 1969 team can’t believe five decades have passed since that fateful fall, but memories of “the missing season,” as it is often referred to in Holy Cross football history, have not faded.
“When you mention Holy Cross football it makes me feel young again,” Mark Doherty, a senior linebacker in ’69, said. “It makes me feel young, innocent and indomitable. We thought we were indomitable, and we got taken to our knees by that disease.”
On Sept. 24, three days before HC’s opener at Harvard, sophomore Bob Cooney was the first to fall ill with flulike symptoms. On Sept. 29, Cooney was diagnosed with infectious hepatitis and admitted to St. Vincent Hospital.
The Crusaders were lethargic by the end of the 13-0 loss to the Crimson - “Guys were just out of gas,” DeSaulniers said - and in the days leading up to their Week 2 matchup at Dartmouth, more players became sick.
“We all felt at that time there was something wrong,” Pete Stratton, a senior receiver, said. “We didn’t know it was hepatitis. After the first game against Harvard, a number of people were going to the infirmary, so we knew it was something serious.”
Incubation period
Doherty said he sensed “something wasn’t right” about three or four weeks after the start of preseason practice. The incubation period of hepatitis A is approximately 28 days.
“I was always in great condition,” Doherty said, “and I was struggling with some things that I never struggled with before.”
In addition to starting at linebacker, Doherty was also the backup quarterback that season.
“I just thought I had more responsibility, more time on the field and that could have been one of the reasons I was feeling a little more tired,” Doherty said. “But I would always pride myself on being first in line for every drill at the beginning of practice. In those days, we’d always be told, ‘Take a lap,’ and on the hill at Holy Cross, that was one hell of a lap. I always wanted to be No. 1 at that, and I struggled. The other years it was pretty easy so I thought, ‘What the hell is going on here?’ ”
More players got sick on the bus ride to Dartmouth and were sent home.
By the time the undermanned Crusaders took the field against the Big Green, the situation had become dire.
“People actually started vomiting on the field,” senior co-captain Bill Moncevicz said.
Doherty played inside linebacker next to classmate Fran Kittredge.
“I remember calling a signal to Franny that Franny would respond to,” Doherty said, “and he didn’t respond. I looked over and he was on the ground. He had passed out.”
Many players, Doherty recalled, came to the sideline throughout the game, removed their helmets and asked to be replaced.
“Now we knew something’s fishy,” Lamb said. “Something’s going on here.”
“When we got to the locker room,” Moncevicz said, “they noticed jaundice in our eyes.”
Season canceled
Blood tests taken in Worcester revealed further cases of hepatitis, and on Oct. 6, two days after the 38-6 loss at Dartmouth, coach Bill Whitton and athletic director Vince Dougherty called a team meeting and announced that HC’s remaining eight games, the rest of the season, were canceled.
“It was like having your candy taken away when you’re a munchkin,” Doherty said. “It really was a loss. You could feel it. It was unbelievable. ‘We’re not going to have football. They’re going to cancel the whole season.’ You think, ‘I can continue to play.’ The warrior in you starts to take over, but thank God sensible professionals were making the decision, and they made the right decision to shut us down.”
DeSaulniers treasures a photo of him and his then-girlfriend and now-wife (of 47 years), Lois, walking off the field together at Dartmouth.
“Little did I know it was my last game,” DeSaulniers said.
The most seriously ill were sent to the infirmary. The rest were quarantined for weeks in Hanselman Hall, a Holy Cross dormitory.
“You handled it because you had your comrades,” Moncevicz said. “Everybody was in the same boat. We were isolated together.”
The players kept up with their studies the best they could. Tutors took notes for them, and they took exams in their rooms. Their professors were very supportive, players said.
“Academics were challenging,” Doherty said, “but the faculty was very fair. They made it doable. It was just weird.”
Players passed afternoons watching the 1969 World Series between the New York Mets and Baltimore Orioles on TV.
“The funniest thing,” Moncevicz said, “was when people would come to bring you food. It was like the lepers in (the movie) ‘Ben-Hur.’ They would leave food and treats at the door and then we would open the door and we would pull them in.”
Investigation launched
DeSaulniers grew up in nearby Southbridge and every other night his father would drop off brownies and chocolate chip cookies that his mother baked.
“Our parents had a more mature outlook and they knew we would go on to do other things in our lives,” Stratton said, “but all of the parents were disheartened by it because we were a very close team and our parents were very close. They used to travel to the games. They were very supportive of us.”
Dr. Leonard Morse, who was the director of the infectious disease division at St. Vincent Hospital, led an investigation that determined the cause of the hepatitis outbreak. On Aug. 29, a fire broke out on Cambridge Street that caused a drop in water pressure, and groundwater, contaminated by children with hepatitis that lived nearby campus, seeped into the practice field water system. When the players drank from buckets of water that were filled from the faucet at the practice field, they were infected.
“The Hart Center is right on top of the little building where the pipes were that got tainted,” Doherty said.
The report was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“It’s an incredible story when you go through it,” Moncevicz said, “because the hepatitis, the virus, was actually sitting in the water buckets. I didn’t get hepatitis even near what some people got because I never drank the water. When we were training, I used to put it in my mouth and spit it out, but a lot of people drank that water and you were literally drinking hepatitis.”
During his senior year, Lamb contracted mononucleosis and had to drop out of school. He returned to Holy Cross for another semester and was allowed to redshirt and play another season. The Crusaders finished 0-10-1 in 1970.
“The 1969 season certainly is not a season that is looked back on fondly, that’s for sure,” Lamb said. “From our point of view, as competitors, because we didn’t play a whole season. I think it set the program back a little bit for sure. It took a while to get caught up, to get experience, to get players with experience. It certainly isn’t something we look back on fondly. It was quite an experience ... it was quite an experience.”
Where are they now?
Lamb went on to a storied coaching career, most notably at Natick High, where he coached 1984 Heisman Trophy winner Doug Flutie.
DeSaulniers, who was principal at Littleton High and Weston High, was also a longtime coach. He and Lamb were called out of retirement to coach the freshman teams at rivals Framingham (DeSaulniers) and Natick (Lamb). Last year, the teams were both undefeated when they met for a season-finale showdown at Natick.
The game ended in a 24-24 tie.
“It was perfect that way,” DeSaulniers said.
Lamb continues as an assistant at Natick. DeSaulniers is enjoying his first fall off since 1970.
“As a coach,” DeSaulniers said, “I oftentimes referred to (the 1969 Holy Cross season) as ‘you never know when your last game is. Don’t take things for granted.’ I revisited that message several times and it really resonates with me for (sports) and for life itself. You think, ‘Oh, yeah, we’ve got our whole senior year ahead of us,’ and all of a sudden it’s gone. It points to living each day to the fullest, that’s for sure.”
Stratton, who was president of a consumer products company in Cincinnati, lives in Narragansett, Rhode Island.
“I absolutely still think about (the ’69 season) at times,” Stratton said. “It certainly was a tragic event to someone our age, but we’ve all gone on to other things, building careers and being husbands and fathers. We were very excited going into that season. We had strong leadership, solid talent at every position. We were very accountable to each other; we were a real team. At the time, we were devastated. Since that time, we’ve grown. We understand what it was to become fathers and husbands and establish careers.”
Moncevicz and Doherty both attended dental school at the University of Pennsylvania.
Moncevicz, who grew up in Brockton, now lives in Chatsford, Pennsylvania. His dental practice is in Wilmington, Delaware.
Coast-to-coast support
Sacramento State dedicated its 1969 season to Holy Cross and wore purple jerseys in its season-ending game, which Moncevicz and Lamb attended. Moncevicz keeps the game ball, signed by Sacramento State players, in a trophy case.
“You never forget (that season) when you walk by the cabinet,” Moncevicz said.
“Mostly everyone turned out pretty decent as far as getting professions and doing things in life,” Moncevicz said, “but everyone carried that same wound.
“If you look at the positive part,” he added, “it taught you bad things happen, but even when bad things happen you turn around and you find a good thing to get from it and you take that energy and you apply it to something else because you have to live with it, you can’t just sit there and stare at your loss.”
Last Sunday, Doherty, who lives in Lakeville, Stratton and a couple of their other former HC teammates went to the New England Patriots game together.
The bond among the ’69 Crusaders remains as strong as ever.
“I don’t think a month has passed in the last 50 years since graduation that I haven’t talked with one of my teammates,” Stratton said. “They remain my closest friends to this day.”
“We didn’t win a lot of games back then,” Lamb said, “but the group has remained close, I suppose because of all that we went through.”
“I wonder how we would have been,” said DeSaulniers, who played golf with Kittredge last week. “The adversity, I think that brought our group very close together. It really forged us together as friends for life, and 50 years later we’re constantly passing around texts and emails to stay in touch.”