Q Bill Eastman has been watching Aledo sports for over half a century By Dominic Genetti The Community News Rain turned the field to mud and muck that fateful day. But the play- ers didn’t care. They were about to play the first game of a new sports craze that had just arrived in Aledo. This game was different. It wasn’t like baseball, where one person could make the difference to win, this game required everyone’s skills. This game was rough, but interest- ing. This game sparked curiosity. This game was football. He didn’t know it at the time – neither did any of the fans in atten- dance that fall afternoon in 1946, but the young man wearing No. 19 on his jersey snapped the ball estab- lishing a high school tradition that lives on in Aledo to this day. Bill Eastman, a senior, didn’t know he was making history; after all football was something new to the folks in these parts of Texas. “I was just happy to have the chance to play,” he said. “I just think that’s the greatest sport there is on Friday nights. “Not everybody out here really knew about football. The players didn’t know anything about football, nobody on the team had experience at all.” Yet that didn’t matter. Interest in this new game caught on very quickly. But football wasn’t the intense and demanding game it is today when the Bearcats celebrated their inaugural season on the grid- iron. At that time, Eastman says, play- ers were both on offense and defense. And two-a-days were only something the team did in summer; during the school year students had to get home to family farms and work. “We played both ways,” Bill remembers. “There wasn’t any two- platoon system back then. “Today’s staff has 10 or 12 coach- es, (our coach) had it by himself. Our workout period was about two periods during the day. Once school started we only worked out about two hours a day, it was generally before lunch time.” Workouts and small staffs were only a fraction of the differences Texas’ pastime had compared to today’s stan- dards. The Aledo school district had just built a new stadium that was laid out from the high school to the historic rock gym (today Aledo Middle School and the Vandagriff Elementary School Gymnasium). The ground was uneven and grass was out of the question. A full dirt field (on dry days) was all the original football Bearcats had to play on and with the program start- ing just after the end of World War II football cleats were nonexistent. Simple tennis shoes were all that was available. “We played a lot of games in the rain and water standing on the field and if you got tackled in the water puddle, you better hold your breath,” Eastman recalled. “Nobody had shoes back then to speak of, no football cleats, you couldn’t hardly find them because it was right after the war and they just didn’t make football shoes.” Back in the late ‘40s, Aledo was just a “country town.” About 125 chil- dren attended the local schools and just about everyone in town had their own piece of land. “Everybody knew everybody,” Eastman said. “I probably knew every one of (the students), I knew all the families.” A LEDO ’ S LIFELONG F A N DOMINIC GENETTI/THE COMMUNITY NEWS5 Bill Eastman has been living in Aledo his entire life. He was part of the inaugural Aledo High School football team and snapped the ball in the first game in school history. An avid baseballl fan, he also established Aledo Athletics. Bill can be seen today at many, if not all, Bearcat games for just about any sport. Eastman has lived his entire life in Aledo. His family’s property has been in ownership for 130 years and he’s never really left, except when he joined the United States Air Force to avoid being drafted by the Army for the Korean War. Two of Bill’s broth- ers served in World War II with the Army, but the Air Force was a better fit for the Aledo High class of 1947 graduate. “I didn’t want to go in the ar my, ” he said. “ I was at the top of their list.” He was away from North Texas from 1952 to 1955. Six of those months was spent in New Mexico as a member of the special weapons division of the Air Force learning the ins and outs of the A-Bombs. He was later transferred to Washington State to finish out his service. “We had enough A-Bombs to blow up the world,” Bill said. About seven years after returning home, Bill helped establish Aledo Athletics in 1962. The local baseball club for kids started with four teams totaling 40 boys; today it has grown into a full establishment for local kids with a full baseball and softball complex. Turn to EASTMAN, page 8A