On the eve of a 50th anniversary celebration, the founder of the football program at Carson Graham secondary still has vivid memories from that first season in 1965.
They aren't memories of stirring victories on the field but rather scrambles off the field to complete all the thankless tasks needed to start a team from scratch.
"I remember getting about 20 guys together and painting helmets," Earl Henderson, now 77, says with a laugh on the phone from his home in Victoria. "I had to do all those things myself, all the way through. I wasn't lucky enough to have a field that was always lined. I had to go line it at lunch hour for the game that night."
From those humble beginnings the program grew. What he couldn't produce on his own Henderson would beg, borrow or steal from whatever source he could, including legendary BC Lions trainer Bill Reichelt and CFL Hall of Famer Bob Ackles.
"I tried to keep the costs down for the kids as much as I could," says Henderson. "If a kid needed a pair of shoes and couldn't afford it I'd go to the Lions. I knew Bobby Ackles very well — he and I grew up in football together — and when he was the equipment guy he'd give me pairs of shoes for the guys."
Henderson stayed on as head coach for 27 years before handpicking John Buchanan to take over. Henderson volunteered as an assistant for three more years after retiring, driving in from Coquitlam each day, while Buchanan learned the head coaching ropes.
"He's been fantastic — you can chalk that up on my scoreboard," Henderson says of Buchanan, laughing again. "He took that program to a whole new level that I never got to."
Buchanan guided the team for 20 years, sending several players to the pros and winning the team's only AAA title in 2001 (the Eagles won the AA title in 1993) before stepping down from the head coaching spot prior to this season.
The list of famous Carson Graham alumni includes former NFL player Jerome Pathon as well as 15 CFL players, including standouts such as Gerald Roper, Paris Jackson, Sean Millington and Glen Suitor.
Coach Brian Brady has taken over the team this year, becoming only the fifth head coach in the history of the program. Another of those head coaches was Larry Donohoe, currently an assistant coach in his 36th year with the team. Donohoe, who was the head coach for two seasons, co-coaching with Ray Marshall for one of them, joined the team at a time when his life was at a crossroads following the death of his father.
"Earl Henderson, after my dad passed away in 1980, said if you're not going back to school you're going to coach," remembers Donohoe. "I haven't left yet."
Donohoe is organizing the team's 50th anniversary celebrations to coincide with the team's homecoming game against West Vancouver Sept. 19. Events will include a tailgate party at 11 a.m., the varsity game (admission by donation to the Harvest Project) at 1:30 p.m., and a reunion celebration in the evening at Narrows Public House.
For Donohoe, football has been a huge part of his life since he first strapped on pads himself as a running back and receiver for the Eagles.
"There's team bonding in every sport but for some reason it just seems that for football it's just different," says Donohoe. "I still see a lot of the guys that I played with in '79 and '80. It's funny, I can't remember any math test I ever took but I can remember just about every game that we played. Those were good times and we got a lot out of it. When Earl scooped me back in to coach it was worth something for me to be involved."
Football means family for Donohoe, literally and figuratively. He played with Suitor, a 1989 Grey Cup champion with the Saskatchewan Roughriders and now an analyst for TSN, in the late 1970s and now they are brothers-in-law.
"Glen was always a student of the game, he took it very, very seriously," says Donohoe. "He'd always push us to get out and throw. He was very driven and it obviously paid off for him."
Suitor likely won't be able to make it to the anniversary due to his broadcasting schedule but he's already sent in a message to be read out on the celebration day. In it Suitor recalls his first practice.
"I'm paraphrasing but will not forget the message from coach Henderson that day," Suitor writes. "He said: 'Men, welcome to the Carson Graham Eagles, if you are here for the jacket and to become the big man on campus, there is the door and you can leave now because we will play with nine players if they are the right nine and here for the right reasons.' I knew at that moment that if you worked hard and were a team player you could make the team. Earl Henderson would be a positive influence for me and I have always considered him a mentor."
Henderson says he's proud of the Carson players who made a mark in the professional leagues but added he'd also like to acknowledge the backups who committed the time and effort to play on the team knowing that there wouldn't always be playing time for them. His voice cracks slightly as he recalls the effort the players put in week in and week out to play a handful of games a year. "I'm just as proud of the kids who were third, fourth, fifth stringers who came out and busted their butts in practice every day," he says. "If you ask around the league, you'll find that I was the kind of coach that anytime we got either ahead enough that I thought we were going to win or behind enough that I didn't think we had a chance to win, all those kids that were subs got in the game. I wasn't the kind of guy who played my first string all the time."
Henderson and his wife were involved in a serious boat accident a month ago in Victoria that left Earl with a broken shoulder, five broken ribs and a broken lumbar vertebra, while his wife suffered 17 broken ribs.
The old coach says he won't come to the anniversary celebration if his wife needs him to stay on the Island but if she is healthy enough in two weeks he will try to make it to over to see his old team once more.
"I'm really, really planning on it because I love all those guys and I'd really like to see them."
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For more information about the anniversary celebrations or to purchase tickets to the reunion contact Larry Donohoe by email at [email protected].
