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The Burning of Grissom Field

ROBERT BIEHL AND FRANK LAPINSKI never got along very well. In fact, to see them together would remind you of nothing so much as two wolves circling each other ready to fight. Which was really too bad for Robert, because even though there was only eight years difference between their ages, Frank was Robert’s history teacher. And football coach. And track coach. And ref for the intramural basketball games. And class sponsor. In other words, there was simply not much way they could avoid each other.

Frank was a first-year teacher when Robert entered high school and at first it seemed things would be fine. Robert didn’t play football, but he “managed” the team. That meant that he ran errands, washed towels, packed equipment, striped the field, and generally “did for” the team. And he was pretty good at it, most of the time.

The problems started to arise in Robert’s sophomore year. Coach Lapinski could barely field an entire team for the football season and seemed always to be ragging on Robert to suit up and “join the men.” Robert, on the other hand, was more interested in pursuing his artistic career and would spend a lot of time sketching designs for new mascots or ink “tattoos” for the players. It was near the end of the season when the team made the forty-mile bus ride on Saturday morning to North Liberty and the season had been nothing short of miserable. But it got worse for Robert when he stepped off the bus and realize that he’d forgotten the bag of practice balls in the locker room. There was nothing for the team to warm up with.

Lapinski blew up. He told Robert what a miserable failure he was and how he’d never amount to anything. Then he sent him across the field to beg and borrow a few footballs from the opposing coach so his team could warm up. It wasn’t the end of the humiliation. When they arrived back at school that evening (after a 40-0 loss) Lapinski sent Robert to the track and had him start running laps. Robert balked and Lapinski told him that if he wanted to continue as team manager on his team, or run track, or play intramurals, he’d start running. Well that was too much for Robert and he said some pretty nasty things and turned and walked off.

It was the beginning of a feud that has extended over forty years now.

Lapinski never let a chance pass to make things a little more difficult in class for Robert than they had to be. His papers were graded strictly. His projects looked at critically. Lapinski even criticized Robert’s designs for the prom invitations the spring of his junior year, and that may have been what drove Robert over the edge. Lapinski began to find things going wrong that could have been Robert’s doing, but couldn’t be proved. A flat tire in the parking lot. A missing playbook that surfaced at another school (not one that Willow Mills actually played). A broken leg on his desk chair.

The more accidents that happened, the more convinced Lapinski was that Robert was behind them. That was until the morning that Albert Bailey’s Prize Bull went on his rampage.

Much to Lapinski’s chagrin, when he slipped and fell as the bull came racing down Main Street that morning, it wasn’t a football player who saved him. It was Robert who jumped out in front of the bull and caused him to shy around the fallen teacher as he headed for the new fountain in the square.

Robert made bold to say that it was just a coincidence that he’d prevented Lapinski from being trampled, and if he’d known that Lapinski was in the path he’d have let the bull go. But Lapinski knew that he’d been at risk of serious injury, and that didn’t set well with him. He grudgingly eased up on Robert in class, but kept a close eye on him, hoping to prove that the kid was bad and the cause of all his problems, especially a 40-point shut-out.

But Robert was too busy his senior year to pay much attention to Lapinski, at least not so that it showed. He had a full class schedule and seemed especially intrigued by Chemistry and Accounting in addition to his art. His graphic art had improved to the point that when the school had officially adopted the white bull as its mascot and became the Willow Mills Bulls, they adopted Robert’s new drawing as its logo. Even Coach Lapinski was in favor when the board adopted Robert’s proposal to chalk the mascot and logo in the middle of the football field facing the stands for the Commencement ceremony.

You would think that a graduating class of only 26 students wouldn’t need a football stadium for its commencement, but in Willow Mills graduation was one of the things that brought the whole town together. With Indiana’s fair and warm June nights, it was a natural thing to hold it outside with a platform and podium set up on the track in front of the stands and the beautiful green football field in the background. Commencement was slated for Saturday night and Baccalaureate for Sunday morning.

Robert spent the day on Saturday, not out partying with his classmates, but working on his artistic masterpiece on the football field. What he had learned in chemistry was how to dye the lime used to stripe the field so that he could emblazon a full color maroon and gold emblem with a subtly shaded white bull in the center. And when the townspeople arrived, they were suitably awed. But only Robert knew when the real gasps would come.

One of the things he learned in Chemistry was how to color the lime. The other was what portion of certain elements to mix into the lime that would make it highly flammable.

When the principal announced “Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Willow Mills Graduating Class of 1959,” and all the class members stood to toss their mortar boards in the air, Robert bent over and struck a match to the thin trail he had laid to his seat. As the mortar boards came down, the football field went up. The carefully laid lime trails arced into a glorious flaming logo in the background behind the podium. The audience was amazed and applauded.

Unfortunately, Robert had not accounted for the fact that after the last mowing there was an awful lot of dry grass on the field. Coupled with an unusually dry spring, it didn’t take long after the glory of the flaming logo began to die down, that the rest of the football field began to smolder. And when the smoke finally died down, there was nothing left but a perfect oval of burnt grass.

That was when Lapinski lost it and strode up to Robert yelling that he’d have him thrown in jail for arson. Robert returned as good as he got and swore that as long as Lapinski was alive there would be no reason for Robert to ever return to Willow Mills school.

Well, after it had all died down, there were no charges pressed as it was deemed that the display was done with the best of intentions and the damage to the football field was accidental. But the animosity between Robert and Lapinski never died completely. Years later when Robert had given up his graphic arts career in Indianapolis and had moved back to Willow Mills to become a banker at Eel River National Bank, Frank Lapinski had to suffer through an interview with him in order to get a home loan for his new house out in Willow Woods. The bank manager didn’t step in until Robert started asking Frank his shoe size and the number of times he stopped at Josephine’s for pie and coffee.

Some animosity is bound to remain until one or the other are buried in their graves, and then, they’ll both miss each other.

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