The greatest generation produced many unique characters that defended freedom against the Nazis in Europe and the Japs in the South Pacific. My father Walter A. Mauck fought in the Pacific for four years. My Uncle Carl W. Frey fought in the Pacific in the navy. A Jap Kamakazie plane hit his ship. He didn’t come home. The greatest generation produced men like George S. Patton, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Ted Williams. Some unforgettable characters were part of this generation. One such character was McLeansboro’s Hank Moorman. He was a shell shocked veteran of W.W. II and Korea who knew my Uncle Carl W. Frey and went to school with him. I guess that’s why I took Hank Moorman to every baseball game and fast-pitch softball game that I played in during Legion Ball and Independent Ball in Southern Illinois.
He would get dressed up every Sunday in his suit and starched shirt and tie. Clean shaven he waited on my Grandma’s back porch until we were finished eating. I always slipped something out to Hank. Christina Frey knew I was doing it but she had a soft spot in her heart for old Hank because he went to school with her son Carl. We would go to the ball game with Moorman singing songs all the way. He would sing Beautiful Katy I’ll Be Waiting at the K-K-K Kitchen Soon, When Those Golden Bells Will Ring for You and Me, church songs, military songs, we sang them all. By the time we got back from the game, Hank’s sleeves were rolled up and the coat was off, tie was loosened and a cigar stuffed into his crew-cut jaw. Even when it was a home game, he still came by for his ride to the game.
Hank loved the game of baseball; he loved the boys that played the game. Dick Auten and Harold Pryer were our official coaches but Hank coached everybody on everything from throwing a knuckle ball to swinging a bat. We went to Chester Prison one Sunday for a softball game. We only had eight players so Hank had to play right field. When the game was over, the prison guard didn’t want to let him go. He had a pair of blue jeans, an old gray shirt, black work shoes, and always a cigar. We finally convinced them he was with us and they turned him loose. He came to Southern Illinois in the fall of 1968 (my senior year). He came to the football office and my football coaches had an interesting afternoon. I walked in for practice and there was Hank entertaining the troops.
He did it all when I was growing up in McLeansboro, Illinois. He shot up the pool hall and the American Legion when the men took some of his money on payday. He drove to Marion on I-57 the wrong way from Benton to Marion. He told me he wanted to enter the ‘Do Not Enter’ sign on the highway. He coached a Little League team to the Summer Championship. He put gasoline on the field and lit it on fire so we could play that night.
He was a poet “I am gonna get that coon and it’s going to be pretty damn soon!” He wrote for the Times Leader. He took Rod Pryer and myself to St. Louis one day for a tryout but the Cardinals were out of town. It took us a while for us to forgive him for that one.
I was playing for the Houston Oilers and after one of our good years, I brought our Hi- Lite film home and got a projector and took it to Hank’s place. He was living in town. He always wanted to know about football. I showed him the hi-lite film and he finally thought that it was ok for me to play football. He told me he had cancer (I already knew) and he showed me the red marks where he had cancer. He told me, “Carl, I am going to beat it.” He told me the town always thought old Hank was dumb but he showed me an insurance policy. He took it out for $100,000 two months before he was diagnosed. He made two payments on the policy before he died. Old Hank was laughing about that when I left the house. He was gone shortly after that day.
There are many people that are gone from those days including Harold Pryer who took us all over Southern Illinois playing baseball. He didn’t say much but he saw a lot, and he was always for us. Those days were special to us, dusty ball fields, uncut grass, old uniforms, playing double headers, legion tournaments, and last but not least the ever presence of Ira Eugene Moorman, otherwise known as Hank.
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