Nestled away at 2324 Huffman Drive in Mobile, Ala., a hop, skip and a jump from Irongate Way, a quick trip from Dukes Avenue and about 20 minutes from the site of the annual college football Senior Bowl, lives a very happy old couple.
Mildred Yorke, 83 but not a minute older with her booming Southern snare of a voice and good ole girl laugh, keeps her marriage certificate and family pictures tucked inside her closet right on top of newspaper clippings, their edges withering, of 1930s football fame.
Her husband, Fred, 88 and more simple than buoyant, more "aw shucks" than austere, is the star of those memories. Though his heyday may have faded to the Dijonnaise yellow of that newsprint, he served three years in the trenches with the then-famed Duke football team, culminating in the most important season of his life, from whence remembrances of his wedding day and his football career would never stray far apart: The brutal winter of 1938 and 1939.
That season the Blue Devils would take 15 men and fight through the entire regular season unbeaten and unscored upon. George McAfee, hall of fame running back, or, as Fred puts it, "George McAfee, from Ohio," was supposed to be the quarterback in '38 - that is, until he ran over a broken bottle practicing football on the sands of Virginia Beach earlier that summer.
And so, with seven regulars playing on both offense and defense, that team would score barely over 12 points per game, turn itself into one of the greatest defensive units in college football history and not allow one of its imposing opponents to cross the goal line, not even in the bitingly close 7-0 finishes that came to be commonplace.
"It was tough going, there's no doubt about it," Fred says. "We earned our reputation as 'The Iron Dukes,'" a nickname the Duke faithful pinned on this magnificent seven and a moniker whose origins have been firmly buried in Duke lore and reassociated with season ticket holders for a school that, over the years, has dramatically shifted its focus to basketball.
But after Duke closed the regular season in Durham Nov. 26, 1938 with a win in the blistering cold over arch-rival Pittsburgh, with captain Eric Tipton punting the ball 20 times for a still-team record 788 yards and Fred keeping the teetering grudge match in check at right guard on offense and then defensive tackle on the other side of the ball, the glory days were ready to come to an abrupt halt.
Meanwhile, Fred, a senior, and Mildred, a sophomore at Duke, who had been going steady for over a year, decided to get married. Married players were frowned upon and female students at the school simply weren't allowed to tie the knot, but with Duke head coach Wallace Wade assuring that the Blue Devils would not accept a bid to a post-season bowl, the two planned on eloping to southern North Carolina immediately after the Pittsburgh game.
With snow covering the football field and the highways, the couple waited until Monday morning, only to find that Mildred, not yet 18, was ineligible to wed without her parents' permission in that county. They drove across the border to Danville, Va., went from college sweethearts to husband and wife in a local courthouse and headed back to campus.
"But someone saw us running into the courthouse," Mildred exclaims.
By the time they got back to Duke the next day, their running away was the talk of the town, the student government was holding a meeting to decide what to do about Mildred's future at the University (she would later be forced to take a semester off, but would never return) and the NCAA was scheduling an impromptu gathering having to do with Fred - after all, Wade had, that very afternoon, accepted an invitation for Duke to play in the Rose Bowl.
Fred would eventually be allowed to play, but the newlywed wouldn't head to Pasadena, Calif., without his wife. Hell, they hadn't even had a honeymoon yet. But with a little help from Wade - "He was an old Army man," Fred says, "and he believed in everybody doing his share and living right. You did right or you didn't play" - Mildred was allowed to make the week-long trip on a separate train from the team.
When they got to California, Mildred was forced to live in a hotel in Los Angeles while Fred and the Blue Devils stayed in Pasadena. But at a few team meetings in the week leading up to the New Year's Day game, Fred went missing. Eventually Wade gave Mildred a call in her room, asking, "Is Fred there?"
"Yeah..." she said.
"Well pack your suitcase and come on over," the coach responded.
A reminiscent, girlish giggle straightening her wrinkles, Mildred remembers, "So I packed my suitcase and went on over!
"Then I was sitting there on the 50-yard line next to Clark Gable and Marin Alloy - she was a big star then. And the team all ran out hollerin' and wavin' at me. I was so proud of me, I didn't even ask for an autograph. But everyone'd be askin', 'Who they wavin' at?' Course I jumped up like a little fool and said, 'Me! Me!'"
So in front of 90,000 people, the Blue Devils set out to keep the record, to keep the Iron Dukes going for one last fighting try. With Fred standing there no larger than 6-foot-1, 190 pounds and his teammates who "did everything in the world they could to help reach that end together" topping out at no more than 230 pounds, the unheralded squad took the stage against the mighty Trojans of Southern California.
Even with USC sending in and out reserve units, the Iron Dukes held their own - being used to the blood and bruises (Fred had his nose "burnt back with the N.C. State game, but Dr. Galloway up in the hospital sewed it right back on straight.") - as Tony Ruffa managed a field goal early in the fourth quarter for the first score of the game.
But Southern Cal's fourth-string quarterback, Doyle Nave, completed four-straight times to "Antelope" Al Kreuger, who outfoxed Tipton to catch the game-winning 16-yard catch with a minute remaining, the first and last time the Iron Dukes' goal line would be crossed.
"That was really rough," Fred says. "Everything else was hero all the way down."
An all-bowl selection softened the brunt of the loss for Fred, as did the everlasting good spirits of Mildred, who ran back under the tunnel with the team and handed each player a season-ending cigarette before she was able to ride back to Durham on the same train.
After the season, Wade had several of the Dukes placed in jobs in Newport News, Va. And even after 12 years there toiling in a shipyard, working seven days a week and getting paid five dollars a day, and after moving around from Tennessee to Delaware as a supervisor for Dupont for 25 years, and even after coal mining and raising feeder cattle back in Virginia for four, Fred kept up with his teammates, going to watch the occasional bowl game.
And even after Robert Alabaster died in July of 2000 to leave him as the only living member of the original seven - McAfee lives in a retirement home in Durham, but he only played in three games in '38 - Fred still holds that season as the most defining experience of his life. Right?
"Yeah, just about. That's right," he says. "I wouldn't take anything for it looking back. I'm glad I played and served with some mighty fine people."
That was the season that saw Fred go with Duke football to the top of the game, but even if the team has faded into the louder cheers coming from Cameron Indoor Stadium, it was also the season that saw him get married, something that would stay strong for much longer.
Mildred takes care of the slowed-down Fred now, her exuberance as strong now as it was then, when she was always the life of the party
"Oh yeah, and always has been!" Fred proclaims. "She's one of the greatest."
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