8/7/2019 Bill Eastman

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QBill Eastman has been watching Aledo sports forover half a century By Dominic GenettiThe Community News

Rain turned the eld to mud andmuck that fateful day. But the play-ers didn’t care. They were about toplay the rst game of a new sportscraze that had just arrived in Aledo.

This game was different. It wasn’tlike baseball, where one personcould 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. 19on his jersey snapped the ball estab-lishing a high school tradition thatlives on in Aledo to this day.

Bill Eastman, a senior, didn’tknow he was making history; afterall football was something new tothe folks in these parts of Texas.

“I was just happy to have thechance to play,” he said. “I just thinkthat’s the greatest sport there is onFriday nights.

“Not everybody out here really knew about football. The players didn’tknow 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’tthe intense and demanding game itis 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 theschool year students had to get hometo family farms and work.

“We played both ways,” Billremembers. “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 twoperiods during the day. Once schoolstarted we only worked out abouttwo hours a day, it was generally before lunch time.”

Workouts and small staffs wereonly 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 laidout from the high school to the historicrock gym (today Aledo Middle Schooland the Vandagriff Elementary SchoolGymnasium). The ground was unevenand grass was out of the question.

A full dirt eld (on dry days) wasall the original football Bearcats hadto play on and with the program start-ing just after the end of World War IIfootball cleats were nonexistent. Simpletennis shoes were all that was available.

“We played a lot of games in the

rain and water standing on the eldand if you got tackled in the waterpuddle, you better hold your breath,”Eastman recalled. “Nobody had shoes back then to speak of, no footballcleats, you couldn’t hardly nd them because it was right after the war andthey 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 theirown piece of land.

“Everybody knew everybody,”Eastman said. “I probably knew every one of (the students), I knew all thefamilies.”

A LEDO ’S LIFELONG FAN

DOMINIC GENETTI/THE COMMUNITY NEWS

Bill Eastman has been living in Aledo his entire life. He was part of the inaugural Aledo High School football team andsnapped the ball in the first game in school history. An avid baseballl fan, he also established Aledo Athletics. Bill canbe seen today at many, if not all, Bearcat games for just about any sport.

Eastman has lived his entire lifein Aledo. His family’s property has been in ownership for 130 years andhe’s never really left, except when he joined the United States Air Force toavoid being drafted by the Army forthe Korean War. Two of Bill’s broth-

ers served in World War II with the Army, but the Air Force was a bettert for the Aledo High class of 1947graduate.

“I didn’t want to go in the army,” hesaid. “ I was at the top of their list.”

He was away from North Texasfrom 1952 to 1955. Six of thosemonths was spent in New Mexicoas a member of the special weaponsdivision of the Air Force learning

the ins and outs of the A-Bombs. He was later transferred to WashingtonState to nish out his service.

“We had enough A-Bombs to

blow up the world,” Bill said.

About seven years after returninghome, Bill helped establish Aledo Athletics in 1962. The local baseballclub for kids started with four teamstotaling 40 boys; today it has growninto a full establishment for localkids with a full baseball and softballcomplex.

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