By Barrie Maguire
On Sunday, December 19, 1948, Philadelphia awoke to a blizzard. The heavy snow only added to the excitement as my father and I pushed our way through the old wooden turnstiles at Shibe Park. I was nine years old and this was my very first Eagles game. Our opponents were the Chicago Cardinals, and the game was for the championship of the NFL!
The game started an hour late after the ground crew, armed only with snow shovels, painstakingly cleared the snow from the tarps that covered the field. By the end of the scoreless first half I was freezing cold to the bone, my skinny little body shivering uncontrollably.
“Let’s go get you warmed up,” my father said, and taking my hand he led me up the steps and into the concourse beneath the stands. We crossed the dingy, crowded space to a doorway in the concrete wall. “In here is where they make the hot chocolate,” he told me.
I remember being afraid that we would get in trouble for going in there, but my father boldly led me into the incredible warmth of a large subterranean room. He spoke to a huge man in a white apron stained with chocolate. The big man grinned, nodded, and gestured toward an alcove in the concrete wall where we could stand out of the way. For a long time, my father and I stood bathed in the hot, moist, chocolate air, watching the hustle-bustle of snow-covered vendors hurrying in with empty wire mesh trays, then back out again, trays heavily laden with containers of steaming cocoa.
Not until my shivering had completely stopped and my father was satisfied that I was safely warmed did he lead the way back to our snow covered seats. We had missed the entire third quarter! But we were there to cheer when, late in the game, Steve Van Buren scored on a short powerful run to give the Eagles a 7-0 victory and the first of two straight NFL championships.
My father took me to every Eagles home game from then until the fall I left for college.
Of all the memories I have of my father, the one that says it all was that time he skipped an entire quarter of an NFL championship game, standing patiently beside his shivering 9-year old son in the healing warmth of the “hot chocolate room.”