Marines keep memory of Glenbard West grad alive

They're the lucky ones.

The guys who made it out of Vietnam, got married, had kids, settled into retirement.

Every so often, they think back to the ones they left behind.

Maybe it's survivor's guilt or maybe it's the bond from a common experience, but they speak of a responsibility to preserve what's lost.

These former Marines recently reunited for the homecoming football game at Glenbard West. None of them went there or have any ties to the school. One traveled some 200 miles.

They dressed in dinner jackets and stood a little taller during the anthem.

And they listened intently when the announcer said the name - Bruce Capel - and took in the crowd's reaction. The 23-year-old was killed in Vietnam, a 1961 grad from the Glen Ellyn high school.

"He was really everything you want as a football player, and he was everything this community wanted in one of its students," said Jay Robertson, who knew Capel's name from Big 10 football and trained with him at the same base.

The Marines joined Capel's family almost 50 years after the 23-year-old's death for a brief ceremony before the game, a West win decided by less than two touchdowns - the kind Capel would have liked. They unveiled a plaque detailing Capel's football and military career and swapped stories of the gentle giant.

It was the idea of Ron Aubrey, a former park district commissioner who, while beautifying a park across from Glenbard West, found four trees were planted there in honor of Capel and three other grads who died in Vietnam.

Aubrey tracked down Capel's brother in Virginia, gave him a cold call and told him his plans.

"It was a long conversation interrupted by a lot of tears, frankly on both sides," Aubrey said.

"As he learned more about who Bruce was, it was kind of like a magnet, drew him into his sphere," Capel's older brother, Steve, said.

Aubrey learned of a buzz-cut, no-nonsense jock known for his bruising tackles and his sportsmanship. He learned that Coach Bill Duchon dedicated his Hitters Club - meant to encourage contact on the field - after Capel to inspire the team "to live up to that standard," Aubrey said.

That name - Hitters - was resurrected again in recent years and now appears on game-day uniforms. But Aubrey worried that the Capel legend was slipping away.

The plaque will remind visitors when it's installed in about three weeks on one post of the Duchon sign by the football field.

And on the 50th anniversary of Capel's death next year, Aubrey wants to have a ceremony at the park that he continues to restore to its original use, as a memorial for veterans.

"There's quite a story," Steve Capel said. "There's quite a memory to be maintained."

His brother was the "epitome" of the Hitters Club. The bylaws, noted in Joe Carlton's book on Glenbard West football, were:

A burning desire to be in on every tackle.

A hard-nosed attitude on the field,

A gentleman off the field,

A positive leader, who does not wait,

but attacks with reckless abandon

The senior captain was recruited by Virginia Tech and Arizona State, his brother said. But he wanted to play Big 10 football, "where the men go."

He walked on at Illinois. There was another center-linebacker on the team, some guy named Richard Marvin "Dick" Butkus. But Capel sought competition, not the spotlight.

"He wanted to be in the trenches," his brother said.

A quiet Capel would room with the prankster Butkus on away games, and each got snaps at center in the 1964 Rose Bowl win.

The Chicago Bears, of course, drafted Butkus. Capel enlisted in, again, "where the men go:" the Marines.

Robertson was on the defensive coaching staff of the team at their base in Quantico, Virginia, when he learned Capel would be starting.

"I said, 'Oh my god, we got a player here,'" said Robertson, who as a Northwestern Wildcat in the same conference, knew Capel's skills.

The team played against other bases and even colleges. Glenn Custar was the center.

"He was a perfect example of a good Marine," said Custar, who rose through the ranks to colonel.

Custar, now living in Naperville, still remembers Capel's smile, his manners.

"But he'd knock you down in a minute," he said.

He'd also reach down and lift you back up.

"It's just kind of the character he was," he said.

Capel was killed on a mission to rescue a unit that had been ambushed on May 12, 1966. Every Memorial Day, Custar visits his grave in the Forest Hill Cemetery and leaves an American flag, a tribute to the "memory of comrades that fell."

"The camaraderie and the risk that we all went through - I'm just one of the lucky ones," he said.