College Career and Military Service
Groza graduated from high school in 1942 and enrolled on an athletic scholarship at Ohio State University, where he played as a tackle and placekicker on the school's freshman team. Groza played in three games and kicked five field goals, including one from 45 yards (41 m) away. In 1943, he enlisted in the U.S. Army as World War II intensified. He first went for basic training to Abilene, Texas and then to Brooks General Hospital in San Antonio, Texas.
After a stint with the short-lived Army Service Training Program, Groza was sent with the 96th Infantry Division to serve as a surgical technician in Leyte, Okinawa, and other places in the Pacific theater in 1945. The day he landed in the Philippines, Groza saw a soldier shot in the face. He was stationed in a bank of tents about five miles from the front lines and helped doctors tend to the wounded. "I saw a lot of men wounded with severe injuries," he later said. "Loose legs, guts hanging out, stuff like that. It's a tough thing, but you get hardened to it, and you accept it as part of your being there."
While he was in the Army, he received a package from Paul Brown, the Ohio State football coach. It contained footballs and a contract for him to sign to play on a team Brown was coaching in the new All-America Football Conference (AAFC). He signed the contract in May of 1945 and agreed to join the team, called the Cleveland Browns, after the war ended in 1946. Groza got $500 a month until the end of the war and a $7,500 annual salary.
Read more about this topic: Lou Groza
Famous quotes containing the words college career, college, career, military and/or service:
“In looking back over the college careers of those who for various reasons have been prominent in undergraduate life ... one cannot help noticing that these men have nearly always shown from the start an interest in the lives of their fellow students. A large acquaintance means that many persons are dependent on a man and conversely that he himself is dependent on many. Success necessarily means larger responsibilities, and responsibilities mean many friends.”
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“here
to this college on the hill above Harlem
I am the only colored student in my class.”
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“In time your relatives will come to accept the idea that a career is as important to you as your family. Of course, in time the polar ice cap will melt.”
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““My ancestors were all famous for military genius.”
My Lady smiled graciously. “It often runs in families,” she remarked: “just as a love for pastry does.””
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“The service a man renders his friend is trivial and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend, and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit it is in my power to render him seems small.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)