| Remembering the talents of a Palestine work of art |
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Illustrations by Jack Roquemore
9-8-2003 A "game-o-gram" gives all the pertinent details of a Palestine High School football game. Before there was Super Bill there was Goober. Before there was Ivory Lee there was a jack rabbit named Saxton. Before the concrete and plastic of Wildcat Stadium there was character to be found behind the hedges of Luckett Kolstad Field. The 1964 team seemingly the center of gravity, conversations of Palestine High School football inevitably lead to that year and the miracle against Hirshi and a state championship. Yet the roads of local fever pitch high school football do not end with Luke and his Boys and it certainly didn't begin there. It was the 1950s, Eisenhower, Sputnik and an earlier, thinner Elvis. It was a time of rabbit ears and not 100 channel choices. Miracle of all miracles, local folks survived with one, maybe two televised college and pro football games per week. (Made much easier in these parts because Tom Landry was an assistant in New York and Murchison millions were being made in oil, not Cowboys.) Maybe not so entertaining. It was a simpler time. It was the end of generations where athletes, not announcers were the lone heroes of the gridiron, back court, etc. The game spoke for itself. (See the movie Hoosiers) Newspapers and men of the written word commanded the world of sports reporting - not x-rated comedians and those who reveled in the fact they never played the game. If you listened to a game you found character and picturesque words, not shock treatment. Stories were told in words that often rivaled those of front porches and camp fires. It was a tough and harsh time, an age when if one chose to know they had to read. Masters of the word reigned. Images in black and white told the way it was. Jack Roquemore took it all even further Entire gladiator games were found in his caricatures and cartoons. Standings, opponents, strengths and weaknesses, your own team's ability and the whole game summarized in simple, entertaining figures of art. A local boy, Jack's father owned a machine shop. Like a good son, Jack followed his father into the hard labor of bending and molding metal. Yet the boy loved to draw and he did it well. There was no college for most in the Depression era and Jack was no exception. Tom Brokaw was right, Jack and his contemporaries were our greatest generation. There were Americans forged from a joy of rarely getting what you needed and never what you wanted. First economic chaos and then world war, Jack put aside his pad and pen and went to fight Hitler and his thugs. Serving under Gen. George S. Patton, he would win two Purple Hearts and come home like Ulysses to wander. Jack would marry Nedra and have two sons, Larry and Matt. A family he loved and supported. Artists are supposed to starve and Jack was no exception. Tragically, Jack would never find work in the love of his life. He would inevitably own and operate a convenience store and do so until he died in 1979. It is a beautiful thing when ability and desire merge; another to see it pay. Some roses are destined to bloom unnoticed. Yet for a brief spell, this great talent came to bloom on the pages of this local paper. Roquemore would take typewritten play-by-play from reporters Walter Murray and Alex Kobar and draw what he termed a "game-o-gram" for the Sunday edition and then for the next Friday's edition there would be a cartoon. Never boring, Jack turned football into an art form. He created murals. His work did far more than inform, it amused. His product not only told the game as it was, but how it should have been. His figures soothed the soul of the curious. Like Coca ColaŽ, high school football is an American classic. Draw it and they will come. Come they did and were richer for it. Jack brought a freshness to print. In covering the drama of the pigskin, Jack left no doubt as to who hit John or rather did John just fall. His caricatures were simplistic yet told all. He filled blank spaces with the truth and nothing but. If Jack took license, he did it with an eye towards enlightenment for the reader beyond stale facts and figures. Jack Roquemore left us a solid legacy of craftsmanship. But gee, what it could have been. A mighty tree fell and few if any heard it. (Excuse my romanticism.) Yet for a fraction of time on a small fraction of this earth we found more than just talent, we found flair. For the true believer it was the best of times. It was Kern Tips, not Dennis Miller. Men played for the love of the game, not a listing in Fortune 500. It was Doak Walker, not Randy Moss. It was the ilk of Jack Roquemore. So sad, local readers are not apt to see Jack's like again, never having seen it before Thank you Jack for the memories. Copyright all rights reserved: Palestine Herald-Press |