William Redd

It’s raining a little bit, misty, it was just my third game of playing.  Right?  So I don’t remember to this day whether I actually got into the game or not.  But that’s part of the story.  We held them on downs.  They punted.  Halfback fumble.  They recovered on the seven-yard line.  They went in and scored.  But might have been the third quarter.  Same scene.  We held them on downs.  They punted.  Same halfback fumbled on the six-yard line.  They beat us 12 to 7.  At the end of the game I’m walking off the field going up to — and I look back and the crowd that was in the stand is attacking the players from Maggie Walker.  Horrible scene.  I mean really attacking them.  The same way we got attacked down in Richmond, that’s the way they were attacked.  So I just kept walking.  So the next day, which — the Saturday.  He calls a practice, which was unusual.  So first thing he said when they called us all together, he said, “I taught you how to win, but I never taught you how to lose.”  So in my mind to this day I don’t know if he was saying the players from our team was attacking.  But it wasn’t teams, it was as I said a father with wife and two kids beating up on teenagers.  And that was the only game we lost that year.  We were nine and one.  So from that game we won the next 28 straight games.  That’s how awesome it was.  From the fourth game in ’55 to the first two games in ’58 we won them all.  In ’56 we were undefeated.  Untied.  And un-scored-on.  A record that has now stood for 63 years in the state of Virginia.