The 1948 Team: Changing Times

By Jack DeGange

Dartmouth's 1948 football season was a beginning and an end. The restoration of traditional college campus life after the turmoil of World War II was virtually complete. Nowhere was it more apparent than on the football field.
In 1945, Joe Sullivan, Ray Truncellito, Connie Pensavalle, Jonathan Jenkins and Carll Tracy had arrived in Hanover as 16-year-old freshmen on a team built predominantly with players passing through the Dartmouth campus as members of the Navy and Marine Corps V-12 Program.
Truncellito, a 160-pound freshman guard from New Jersey (he added 45 pounds by his senior year), remembered one of his first practices. “I was lined next to a guy who said, 'How old are you, kid?' I was almost 17 but admitted I was still only 16. He looked at me and said, 'I'm getting too old for this game.' He was 26.”
The wartime years marked a turning point in Dartmouth's football schedule as well. For decades, Dartmouth had opened each season against small colleges from the region including Amherst, Bates, Norwich, Springfield and St. Lawrence.

In an era of limited passing, quarterback John Clayton '51 passed for 2,227 yards and 26 touchdowns from 1948-50.

After the 1943 team, comprised almost entirely with V-12 players, finished 6-1-0 (losing only at Penn, 7-6), Dartmouth decided to really step up the move to a major college schedule. In 1944, the Green played Notre Dame, the national champion in 1943 (and again in 1946 and 1947), at Fenway Park. The Irish rolled, 64-0, and a rematch at South Bend in 1945, when Sullivan, Truncellito et al got their first taste of college football, was better but still ended with a 34-0 working over.
Under Coach Tuss McLaughry, Dartmouth struggled through the 1945 (1-6-1) and 1946 (3-6-0) seasons. “Many players were coming back from the war,” said Truncellito. “They were married, had kids and were working to support their families while finishing their education.”
But, by 1947 the process of building a team with juniors and sophomores (representing the classes of 1948 and 1949) now had the benefit of playing together. In a 4-4-1 campaign that included six road games, Dartmouth beat Syracuse, Brown, Harvard and Cornell, and tied Holy Cross. One of the losses, 15-0 at Columbia, came two weeks after the Lions had ended Army's 32-game unbeaten streak.
As the 1948 season approached, there was more help arriving in a group of sophomores that may rank as McLaughry's best recruiting class (in an era when recruiting was a very casual process). “We knew we would be good,” said Truncellito. “We had the makings of a prolific offense.”
John Clayton, a sophomore from Chelmsford, Mass., would win the quarterback job over highly regarded classmates Bob McCraney and Gil (Ace) Mueller after Sullivan - the QB in 1946 and 1947 - was moved to halfback. Clayton recalled, “I was 'recruited' by Milt Piepul (the backfield coach who had been a great player at Notre Dame) over lunch one day in Boston.” His decision was influenced in larger part by his brother, Hal '47, who had been a Dartmouth fullback during the war years.
In an era before drop-back passers were in vogue, the pass game evolved off the ground game. Clayton would become the trigger in an offense that saw the Green post matching records of 6-2-0 in 1948 and 1949 and become the first Dartmouth team to defeat six major opponents, Clayton passed for 2,227 yards (26 touchdowns), a career passing total that still ranks 14th all-time for the Green.
If Clayton started things, Sullivan was the finisher. One of the most versatile players in Dartmouth history (as a defensive back he still holds the Green record for interception return yards, 212 on 11 thefts), he had started at fullback against Notre Dame in 1945, then moved to quarterback in 1946 and 1947. McLaughry's decision to moved Sullivan to halfback was described as requiring “more deliberation than the Navy would make before moving the fleet.”
It was a wise move. Sullivan averaged 6.7 yards per carry and was honored with the Bulger Lowe Award as New England's outstanding player. He also threw one pass - in a 41-14 win at Yale, he scooped up a fumble and passed to end Dale Armstrong for a 63-yard scoring play.
Armstrong was one carryover from the war years. He arrived at Dartmouth in 1942 as a freshman blocking back. He then spent three years in the Army, winning the Bronze Star while serving in Europe. He returned in 1946 and was the captain in 1948, earning All-America honors as he caught 17 passes for 290 yards, a catch total matched by junior Tom Rowe, the right end who netted 335 yards and scored seven times.
Armstrong also excelled on defense, never more than at Harvard in 1948. On successive plays in the third period he made successive tackles for losses of eight and six yards. In the fourth period, with score tied at seven, he hit the Crimson quarterback, forcing a fumble. Dartmouth recovered and scored four plays later to win, 14-7.

Joe Sullivan '49 ranks among Dartmouth's greatest football players. A two-way halfback in 1948, Sullivan won the Bulger Lowe Award as New England's outstanding player.

The other dominant lineman in 1948 was Jon Jenkins, another four-year starter. The 210-pound tackle was the strongest man on the Dartmouth squad. He played beside Armstrong and won All-New England and All-East honors, went on to be captain of the North squad in the 1949 Blue-Gray game and later played with the Baltimore Colts.
Sullivan, Armstrong and Jenkins were the standouts, but they had a superb supporting cast. In the line, junior center George Schreck was an anchor. The guards were Truncellito and Stew Young, a junior whose brother, Lou, had been captain of the 1940 team that played the famous fifth down game against Cornell. Dick Gowen and Bill Carpenter were junior tackles playing opposite Jenkins. Rowe and Dave Beeman, two more juniors, were rangy receivers.
In the backfield with Sullivan and Clayton were two more juniors, halfback Hal Fitkin (second in rushing with 450 yards to Sullivan's 477) and fullback Herb Carey who would be captain of the 1949 team.
Carey was also a fine linebacker and, recalled Clayton, “one of the first players I knew who wore contact lenses. It's easy to remember because he was always losing them on the field.”
The 1948 season opened against Penn at Franklin Field. Led by Chuck Bednarik, the center-linebacker who would become one of the great players in NFL history, Penn won, 26-13. McLaughry opted to split Dartmouth's quarterback duties that day between McCraney and Mueller. Each threw a touchdown pass, but a week later Clayton was in the starting backfield where he would remain for three seasons.
Dartmouth proceeded to collect home wins against Holy Cross and Colgate and then went on the road for two more victories at Harvard and Yale.
There were 16,000 fans at Memorial Field when Columbia came to Hanover with two of their all-time great backs, Gene Rossides and Lou Kusserow (who had a 100-yard kickoff return in the game). When Clayton connected with Fitkin on a 79-yard pass play, Dartmouth had a 26-7 lead.
“We had a good lead and Tuss took the starting line out,” said Truncellito. In 1945 he was being recruited by Lou Little, the Columbia coach before a New Jersey sportswriter steered him to Dartmouth. “Columbia scored twice in the fourth period and we had to hang on.” The kickoff had been at 2 p.m. and, as darkness descended, Dartmouth survived, 26-21.
Dartmouth was 5-1 and Cornell was 6-1, losing only to Army when the teams met on November 13 in Ithaca in what Cornell coach George (Lefty) James would call “the greatest game I've witnessed in my 18 years of coaching.” A crowd of 30,000 fans couldn't disagree.
At that point in Dartmouth's longest continuous rivalry with any opponent (they've played annually since 1919), the Cornell-Dartmouth series stood at 15-15-1.

Coach Tuss McLaughry was described by his players as “a father image and perfect gentleman who you naturally followed.”

Cornell was installed as a one-point favorite and that's the way it ended with Cornell winning, 27-26.
Dartmouth had a 20-13 lead in the third period when Sullivan uncorked one of the most memorable plays in Green football history. Taking a handoff at the Dartmouth 26, he was nearly collared at the line of scrimmage but broke clear, losing his helmet in the process. He proceeded, bareheaded, through the Cornell defense and covered 72 yards before being tackled, setting up Fitkin's two-yard burst that made it 26-14.
That was Dartmouth's high point. In the final period, Cornell scored twice, tying the game on a two-foot plunge by fullback Bob Dean who then kicked the decisive extra point in the last minute of play.
“We had them beaten but we were exhausted (on the last drive),” said Truncellito. “We should have taken a time out to catch our breath but we didn't.”
A week later, Dartmouth handled Princeton, 33-13, while Cornell beat Penn, 23-14, to finish among the nation's top 20 teams.
Sixty years ago, the first of successive 6-2 seasons marked a high point in McLaughry's 12 years as Dartmouth's coach. It was a season of changing times for Dartmouth football and the nation.

Jack DeGange is a freelance writer. He was sports information director at Dartmouth from 1968-77.

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