Don’s time in the pros was brief…by choice. After graduating from Syracuse, he was invited to try out for the Saskatchewan Rough Riders of the Canadian Football League. He drove, by himself, all the way from Manchester to Saskatchewan because he wasn’t sure he’d make the team and didn’t want to bring his family with him and put them through that difficult period.
Describing himself as a freshman at Manchester Central…“I was really skinny and wanted to get bigger legs. I figured the best way to do that would be to go out for the JV football team that fall. It was OK, but people need to remember that JV ball back then wasn’t anything like it is today. We played only maybe three or four games so that wasn’t much time for me to develop physically.
Let me begin by telling you that no question I would ask Don could top the one posed by his editor-in-chief grand-daughter as she was interviewing him for her school newspaper, Central’s “Little Green.”