I was raised with little religious training or practice. My mother was a sometimes, any-denomination-will-do Protestant. My father, the result of a Catholic/Protestant union, was opposed to any and all organized religion.
I entered Nichols School, a small private boys high school, in Buffalo NY, in the fall of 1951 as a sophomore. There were then about fifty boys in each class. Almost all students were required to participate in sports in the afternoon, after classes.
I had played football before in junior high, but was not especially fond of it. I think my father expected it of me. I was not particularly interested in the violence, and was somewhat scared of being hurt. (At Nichols in those days, in the fall, the other option was soccer, which I had never even seen before.) But I went along with the school's program (and my parents' investment in my getting a good college-prep education. ) I was a stout (or "chubby") kid, and not very fast, so I was assigned to guard position. In those days, the starters played both offense and defense.
My sophomore year the head coach was Mr Muha. For my junior and senior years, it was George Stevens, the Princeton quarterback teamed with All-American Dick Kazmeier.
Before each game, the team would gather in a tight group, all hands towards the center. It seems the more religious kids (or was it just the Catholics?) would recite a prayer, the ending of which is, I now think, "....pray for us now....and at the hour of our death."
But what I heard at the start of my first varsity game, as a new boy and in my first few weeks at Nichols, was "Pray for us now at the hour of our death". My reaction was "Oh my God, these guys are taking this way too seriously!"
