Like Any Normal Day

Quarterbacks aggravated Carmen Frangiosa, Jr. It was nothing personal, just that quarterbacks carried themselves with an air of superiority. To begin with, you could never get near them during practice. They would wear a sleeveless top over their jersey to set them apart from their offensive teammates, and they always seemed to have an assistant coach nearby to stand guard over them, just in case Frangiosa or one of his defensive teammates charged through the line and got too close. He remembers that if you even brushed up against the quarterback in practice, the coaches would chew your ass out. Game day could not come soon enough for him each week.

On the Tuesday before the William Tennent game, Plymouth Whitemarsh coach Ed Charters summoned his star middle linebacker to his office and gave him his assignment for that Saturday: Get a helmet on Tennent quarterback Buddy Miley. Given to operatic displays of temperament, Charters patterned himself in style after legendary Alabama coach Bear Bryant, even down to the hound’s-tooth hat that sat perched on his bald head. Charters had assembled one of the better high school teams in Pennsylvania in 1973, a commonly held assertion that even Penn State coach Joe Paterno endorsed in a congratulatory letter he sent to the team at the end of the season. But Charters had seen some film on Buddy and knew that he could create problems, particularly with his running ability. The 5-11, 220-pound Frangiosa understood precisely what Charters wanted him to do to Buddy if he took off running: Make him pay the price.

Collegiality between rivals had no place in the Suburban One Conference back the 1970s. "It was year-round, pure hatred," says Frangiosa, who years later would scratch his head whenever his son would shake hands with an opponent upon leaving the field and say: "See you at the party!" No one extended a hand to an opponent back when Frangiosa played, unless it happened to be attached to a forearm to the chin. Although he knew Buddy from playing baseball against him, Frangiosa looked upon him as just another obstacle in a sport where the coaches had always told him he was too small. The son of a World War II veteran who had seen action in the Battle of the Bulge, Frangiosa remembered that Charters and others played on that insecurity, even when he won Parade All-American honors that senior year and Notre Dame and 40 some other colleges came to recruit him. Frangiosa says, "I definitely had a chip on my shoulder."

Scattered clouds hung over southeastern Pennsylvania that Saturday, the ground wet from some showers that had passed through the area. Early that morning, Buddy bounded up from his bedroom in the basement and found his sister Rose sitting on the living-room sofa. Wearing his helmet, Buddy jogged back and forth across the carpet and asked her, "How does my hair look?" It spilled from beneath his headgear and swished this way and that. "It looks good, Bud," his sister told him with a giggle. Cousin Bobby Miley Jr. (or Bobby J) had been a reserve on that William Tennent squad and remembers that Buddy was "in a good mood, eager to play that day." In the locker room, Buddy stripped out of his street clothes, got his foot taped for extra support and slipped into his uniform, yanking his jersey down over his head and tying a towel to his waist. Giving special attention to his cleats, he wrapped them in white adhesive tape, bestowing upon them the razzle-dazzle of the shoes Joe Namath wore with the New York Jets. With his helmet and shoulder pads under his arm, he then boarded the bus with his teammates for P-W.

Only Bert, his father, and Bob, his older brother, had come to see Buddy play that day. Rosemarie Miley, his mother, had been overcome by an "odd feeling" and instead accompanied Jimmy, her youngest, to his game at the Warrington A.A. As the P-W players stretched on the opposite side of the field, Buddy walked up to the 50-yard line, pointed at them and said: "All you guys are overrated. We’ll see what happens after today!" Frangiosa says Charters would have "crucified us" if he or any of his teammates had engaged in such theatrics, so he just looked over at fellow co-captain Steve Nauta and said, "Are you watching this guy?" Frangiosa could feel the fury build up in him as Buddy yakked, thinking to himself: "YOU are doing THIS on OUR field?" But it was not until the game began that he and Buddy exchanged words. As Buddy crouched behind center, Frangiosa glared into his eyes.

"You’ve got a big mouth, huh?" Frangiosa said.

"Yeah," Buddy told him. "And I can back it up."

On the sideline that day with a broken leg, P-W offensive tackle Steve Bernardo remembers that both teams that day played "physical, physical football." Although Tennent was 0-2 and overmatched in every aspect of the game, they played with uncharacteristic abandon behind Buddy, who undressed the swarming P-W defense with his running ability. "Buddy was a wise-ass, but the better he did against us, the better he got," says Bernardo. P-W safety Mike Dippolito remembers Buddy "chewed us up" with his agility and speed, and that he was "taking big chunks of yardage." When he connected with end Craig White on an 11-yard touchdown pass in the first quarter, Buddy jumped up and called to his opponents: "What about that! What about that! What about that!" Frangiosa passed Buddy as he was leaving the field and told him: "You throw one touchdown pass. What do you want – a medal?" But Buddy just grinned at him. Frangiosa remembers, "He was enjoying it, really in the moment. He was playing well and he knew it."

But Frangiosa was livid. "So pissed off I could have killed him," he says. P-W defensive coordinator Reese Whitely summoned Frangiosa and assigned him to shadow Buddy. "Whenever he goes, you go," said Whitely, once a star quarterback at the University of Virginia. "We have to get on this guy. I want him hit every time he touches the ball!" But Frangiosa would hit him "whether he had the ball or not," which began to unnerve Buddy, who looked up at Frangiosa and asked, "What are you doing?" Frangiosa sneered at him and replied, "Take a look at me. Get used to it." At the end of a passing play, Frangiosa rammed him with a shoulder, tripped over him and gave him "a little shot on the way."

Bodies flew across the line of scrimmage with increasing intensity on each play. As P-W continued to apply pressure on him, Buddy grew irritable and began upbraiding his offensive linemen. Frangiosa chuckled and said, "What are you yelling at them for? Aren’t you the superstar? You’ve got the shoes for it." But the rangy quarterback just laughed as if to say: Bring it on. "Real hard hitting," says Frangiosa, who also played guard. On a P-W offensive play in the second quarter, he inadvertently plowed down his own fullback, Tim Erlacher, from behind. Erlacher writhed on the ground in howling pain. Ordinarily, he would have tried to find a way to get up and walk off the field on his own power to spare himself the wrath of Charters for using up a timeout. But he looked down at his shattered ankle and waved to the coaches for help. As Erlacher sat on the sideline in an air cast, P-W scored, went ahead 7-6 on the extra point, and kicked off.

What happened at that point is a blur, stored by some in an unreachable place in the unconscious mind. But what is clear is that no one immediately knew what was wrong with Buddy, only that he was in an incoherent state of shock and something had to be done. Because of the way he had fallen, and the angle that his head was in, some conjectured that he had shattered his collarbone. Some suspected it was his arm that had been injured, perhaps even his leg. In fact, Frangiosa remembers as he looked on in deepening panic that Charters scolded him: "He has a broken arm! What the hell is your problem?" Frangiosa replied, "No, this guy is bad, coach." But while P-W had a doctor on the sideline who came out to attend to Buddy, Frangiosa remembers that "no one took control of the situation," in part because of the wild screams that welled up from the fallen player. No one suspected that it was a spinal cord injury, which can be the only explanation for why such standard precautions as sliding a board under him and stabilizing his head were not observed. Someone rolled Buddy over on his back. Someone else undid his chin strap and removed his helmet. And McCarney and some other players lifted him up and placed him on the stretcher that had been provided by the attendants of the ambulance that had parked by the field. His eyes glazed over with confusion, Buddy looked at McCarney as they moved him and, as his head jiggled to one side, grunted: "UGGGGHHH!" McCarney says, "I swear that was when he crushed his spinal cord."

Jimmy Miley led neighborhood friend Donnie Schulz down the steep stairwell, ignoring the chin- up bar over the bottom step that the boys always used to swing from. Weak light seeped through the basement windows onto odds and ends of drab furniture. With Bob off on his own and Buddy upstairs, Jimmy had the space to himself now and enjoyed the privacy, even if a hard rain would leave the floor ankle-deep in water. But on this day there was only the usual clutter underfoot: uncollected laundry, baseball gloves and toys from the previous Christmas. As Donnie looked over his shoulder, Jimmy set up the Bell & Howell projector on a table and attached a movie reel to the spindle. When he switched it on, a square of light appeared on the wall: Into it steps Buddy, his lean body crouched over center as the Plymouth-Whitemarsh defense settles into position.

Whatever else Jimmy would remember, it would be this: Something very wrong had been in the air that day. Given that he was only 11, he could not fully grasp what happened, only that "all hell seemed to break loose" and the adults that surrounded him were consumed with panic. Bert had called from Sacred Heart Hospital, but had been too overcome to speak, breaking down as he uttered the words, "Buddy is…" But Bob took the receiver from him and told Rosemarie, "Buddy is in the hospital. It’s pretty bad." Sister-in-law Eileen Miley heard what happened from her husband – also Bob - who told her that it appeared that Buddy had a broken neck. Immediately, she called her two sisters, who were nuns in Ocean City, N.J., and asked them to pray for her nephew that evening at Mass. At the Miley house, Eileen hugged Rosemarie and gathered the youngest of the children, Patti, Linda and Jimmy.

Somewhere beyond his line of vision in the emergency room at Sacred Heart Hospital, Buddy overheard someone say in a low voice: "We’ll just have to see. There’s a chance he won’t live through the night." So…that explained why no one had looked in on him for what seemed to be hours: They’re waiting for me to die. He had the overwhelming sense that he was encased from the neck down in hard cement, unable to move any of his appendages upon command. And yet he still had some feeling, even if it reminded him of being pricked by "a thousand needles." Searching the room with his eyes, he looked over at his brother Bob and told him he was thirsty. Bob found a cup of water and held it to his lips. Buddy jutted his chin forward, sipped from it and asked, "Am I paralyzed? Bob? Am I paralyzed?" Bob did not know what to say, but remembers that he was consumed by dread, the escalating sense that none of their lives would ever again be the same. Bert remembers even less, just that he pounded his head against the wall in the adjoining room as a priest stood by his side. Someone later had asked him to sign a form but he was shaking so hard that he could not hold a pen in his hand. Bert says, "It was a dark day."

Rosemarie placed her hand on his, and replied in a composed voice, "Bud, it’ll be fine."

Getting to the hospital had been a challenge for Rosemarie, who was driven by Eileen and accompanied by a friend, Flos Lutz. Uncertain of how to get to Sacred Heart Hospital, Eileen spotted Mercy Suburban Hospital and stopped there for directions. The women were wild with anxiety, the three of them searching for street signs as they speculated on what would happen to Buddy. When they finally got to Sacred Heart Hospital, Rosemarie saw how pale Bert looked and remembers hearing him explain: "It was a clean hit." But Rosemarie was not prepared for the surge of emotion that welled up in her when she looked down at Buddy in that Stryker frame, rivulets of blood flowing from the site of where the two holes had been drilled into his skull. She told herself: I cannot let him see me cry. None of her children ever had, with the exception of that day in November 1963, when she stood over her ironing board as Walter Cronkite removed his glasses and said: "From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently official. President Kennedy died at 1:00 Central Standard Time…2:00 Eastern Standard Time….Some 38 minutes ago." Bob had come home from school that day and had seen her standing there weeping for the fallen JFK, the first Irish Catholic ever to ascend to the presidency. But while Rosemarie did not let Buddy see her cry that day at Sacred Heart Hospital, tears welled in her eyes as she sat in a rear pew at the small chapel there and prayed.

Those early days would remain a blur to Jimmy. Joanne, his oldest sister, had been house- sitting somewhere and Jimmy and Linda stayed with her that initial evening. Confused, the two asked Joanne, "What is a broken neck? Is Buddy going to be OK?" Jimmy did not see Buddy for a few days, and he stood in the back when he finally did, behind his parents, Bob, and his sisters. Seeing him again and hearing him talk was a relief, even if it was startling to his young eyes the way they had him hooked up in that Stryker frame. While Buddy stopped eating and spiraled into a depression in the hospital, Jimmy found him upbeat whenever he would go see him, so Jimmy would be upbeat, too, thinking: It’s a just break. Players get ‘em all the time. It’ll heal. It was not until later that he began to understand the implications of the word "paralyzed," when a friend stopped by the room to see Buddy and picked up a football that was lying on a chair. With Buddy face down in the Stryker frame, the friend touched the back of his leg with the ball.