Steven VanGrack

Posted on: Oct 06, 2016 at 4:33 AM

Paul Smithson was a good guy and a very good football player. He had great potential and decided to join the Marine Corps after high school.

I was on the University of Maryland campus mall one day in 1967 or 1968 and ran into Paul. He had just returned from Basic Training was in College Park to visit a friend. Our interaction was coincidental.He talked about how he really got his act together with the Marine Corps. he knew that he had some great things in store in his life. However, he recorgnized that he was going to fulfill his duty to his country and then return to build his life. He parting words were that he was going to Vietnam and when he returned we would get together and see what the future holds.

When I visit the Vietnam Memorial I think of Paul Smithson as one of the great tragedies of that war. The thought of so many people like him having given their life for our country has always been and will always be very difficult to accept.

Bill Gerrish was one of the most impressive people I have known and it was amazing that he became such a close friend. He was handsome, funny, had a lot of class, and was an incredible athlete. He was the envy of most guys and the heart throb of most girls. His parents would often entertain Bill's high school friends and his father took great pictures of the football players. My favorite picture came from his dad. In the years following graduation Bill became a prosperous investor. Yet, he alsways had a down to earth nature about him. He suffered from a lung ailment for the last 10 - 15 years of his life and would never complain. Even in his later stages of life he maintained his great sense of humor.

One of the treasures from my post high school years were the many summers when Jim Kovakas, Mike Freeman, Bill and I would travel together. We would laugh and drink and tell stories about our high school football years,. After several years our team record went from 3 - 6 to undefeated to state champions.In one of the last years when the four of us were together at Bill's beach house he ordered a sweatshirt-jersey for each of us with B-CC Barons on the front and our names and football jersey numbers on the back. 

He left a classy wife and two wonderful kids. 

Kit
Glad to see you will be attending the 50th.
Hope we can find time to catch up and find out how kind the last 10 years have been to you.
Seems like we will have a lot of the old folks joining us.
Regards
Steve VanGrack