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A shout out to Wisconsin and Barry Alvarez for recognizing a nearly 70-year-old injusticeBob Hanzlik finally gets his deserved letter
 May 14, 2011: Portland-area resident Bob Hanzlik, at left, is
the sole surviving starter from the 1942 Wisconsin Badgers team I profiled in Third Down and a War to Go. The letter
jacket he’s wearing in the photo is new, signifying the awarding of a letter he was denied after the ’42 season
by a sometimes-petty Badgers coach Harry Stuhldreher.
More on that in a second…
Sadly,
most of his teammates have left us.
Since 2001, I often
have visited the grave of one of them, my father, at Fort Logan National Cemetery, where my mother — to whom the book
was dedicated — joined him two months ago.
Two
starters from the team that won a version of the national championship — end Dave Schreiner, a two-time All-American
and the ’42 Big Ten Conference MVP; and tackle Bob Baumann — were killed in the war.
When the hardback edition of the book came out in 2004, Hanzlik had more company. Roughly
one-third of the ’42 players still were alive, including Crazylegs Hirsch. Today, that number has dwindled to a handful,
and most of them were younger reserves. Hanzlik is the end at the far right-hand side of the book’s cover.
In the book, I told the story of how the admittedly headstrong
Hanzlik late in the season got on the wrong side of Stuhldreher, the one-time Four Horseman quarterback at Notre Dame under
Knute Rockne. They had a falling-out during the team’s only loss, a controversial defeat at Iowa, and Hanzlik then was
benched for the final two games, against Northwestern and Minnesota.
The backdrop was that star fullb ack Pat Harder, later a pro star and NFL umpire, essentially led a rebellion in practice the week after the Iowa loss, making
it clear to the coach that even players used to blindly obeying orders had lines — and Stuhldreher was crossing them
with his petulant actions and a ridiculously punitive practice. The coach backed down. But he held a grudge against Hanzlik,
then listed as a junior, saying Hanzlik wouldn’t play again that season, but that if he wanted to be on the squad as
a senior in 1943 (that became a moot point), he would continue to practice and accept his banishment.
This from the book:
Hanzlik, still in the doghouse, didn’t play a second against Northwestern. He got in deeper trouble
when he didn’t go back with the team on the train. Stuhldreher
chalked up another black mark against the big end from Chippewa Falls. “I said, ‘The heck with you, I’m
leaving,’ ” recalled Hanzlik. “I left. I didn’t accompany the team back, and that was wrong on my
account. I’m not making excuses, but I’m eighteen, nineteen years old, and I couldn’t stand not playing.
I was very selfish, because other guys deserved a chance to play, too, and I’ve regretted that for a long time.”
Hanzlik again practiced all week, but didn’t play
against Minnesota. Stuhldreher was the athletic director
too, and so dictatorial, he was able to unilaterally rule that Hanzlik wouldn’t be awarded a letter for ’42 —
a season in which he started seven of the 10 games (he was injured for one) and played an ironman’s role for Wisconsin’s
greatest team. That was ridiculous and unfair.
Hanzlik ended up in the Marines as one of the V-12 program Badgers playing tackle for Michigan while in
training in Ann Arbor in 1943. In this picture at left of one of Michigan's '43 starting lineups, made up mostly
of military men studying and training on the campus, Hanzlik is the left tackle, or second from the right in the line. Crazylegs
Hirsch is right behind him and the other two former Badgers are center Fred Negus and left guard John Gallagher.
 After the war, Hanzlik enrolled at Minnesota and was ruled to have eligibility remaining because of loosened war-time
and immediate post-war standards, and he played for the Gophers in 1946.
The feat of playing for three schools
— Wisconsin in ’41 and ’42, Michigan in ’43, and Minnesota in ’46 — caused Ripley’s
Believe it Or Not to feature him in 1951. But he always was short one deserved letter, and when Hanzlik’s family wrote
to Badgers AD Barry Alvarez recently, asking if something could be done, Alvarez and Terry Murawski, the head of the National
W Club, responded.
They sent Hanzlik a letter — on that new letter jacket. The picture above is of the Mother’s
Day party at which his family, including daughter Heidi Hanzlik, presented the jacket to him, with “On Wisconsin”
playing in the background. I’m assuming the official record will be changed, too, adding a ’42 letter to the one
he long has been listed for in 1941, and I’m impressed and thrilled by the Badgers’ response to the request from
the family. I also have to note that when I was researching the book, Bob Hanzlik’s memory was amazing, and he was quite
helpful.
(Postscript, because I’ve been asked about this a lot: Although Bill Hanzlik also has lived
in both Oregon and Wisconsin — he was a high school star in both states — the former Nuggets player and coach,
and current team broadcaster, is not related to Bob.)
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