WW South's Bailey still moving forward

Adam Bailey's recovery from a serious brain injury has been smooth. Also a little Rocky.

The Wheaton Warrenville South junior has adopted as a mantra a line from the movie, “Rocky Balboa”: “It ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.”

Its significance increased as Bailey laid in his hospital bed recovering from emergency craniotomy surgery to correct a subdural hematoma suffered in WW South's first 2014 sophomore football game.

Into his room at Loyola University Medical Center walked Tigers varsity coach Ron Muhitch and assistant coach Craig Arthurs. Arthurs presented the defensive lineman and fullback with a sheet of paper that bore only that line Sylvester Stallone uttered in the 2006 film.

“He didn't even know that I liked the Rocky movie,” Bailey said. “It was sort of a coincidence. It seemed like that at first, but the more I think of it, it was not a coincidence, it was meant to be.”

For several years people have questioned whether football was meant for them. Although the National Federation of State High School Federations recently stated overall athletic participation increased for a 26th straight year in 2014-15, 11-player football followed only wrestling with the largest decline among boys sports. A simple eye test reveals most DuPage County football rosters are down.

Ask Adam Bailey whether football must go away.

“He'll raise his voice,” said his mother, Christine. “He thinks the game needs to live on.”

This is despite physicians — swift-acting and universally praised by Christine and Dale Bailey at each level from when Adam lost consciousness on the sideline to those who administered his final cognitive screening in July — ruling him out of all contact sports, including football.

Adam feels strongly enough about football that this summer he spoke at the coaches meeting for the Wheaton Park District's Wheaton Rams entry in the Bill George Youth Football League.

“Some of them asked questions,” Bailey said. “They asked how they could help, or tell if someone was acting differently or what they should look for.”

He hopes to also connect with Bill George League honchos themselves to deliver his message: consistent helmet checkups and proper sizing; awareness and acknowledgment by coaches and players alike of concussion symptoms with instant removal from the game.

Bailey now helps coach WW South defensive linemen, mainly the more impressionable freshmen and sophomores. He emphasizes not just technique but also that it's not cool to continue playing if they're feeling fuzzy.

“I think I kind of found my calling for the next couple years while I'm still in high school,” Bailey said.

The junior admits he's “still adapting” to life outside the lines. Yet he regrets nothing.

“I'm never going to leave the sport and I'm never going to attack the sport and try to stop it. Yeah, it did hurt me. I can't play anymore and I can't do another physical sport because of it, but if I could take that back, I wouldn't,” he said.

“I'm completely happy I played 10 years in the sport and yeah, I hurt myself, but it was the best 10 years of my life.”

Small world

Bob Beck is a Wheaton native who for 27 years has been news director at Wyoming Public Radio, the statewide National Public Radio network.

Typically Beck's beat is state government; he's covered the Wyoming Legislature longer than any broadcaster in the state. Yet since coming out of Southern Illinois University the former Wheaton Central three-sport athlete has also covered sports, even teaming with the late legend Curt Gowdy on Wyoming Cowboys football broadcasts early in his career.

On Aug. 10 as part of a feature on Wyoming's ground game he interviewed former Wheaton North lineman Rafe Kiely, a 6-foot-3, 305-pound senior trying to overcome injury to win the starting center spot. The interview is planned to run Aug. 28 on WPR.

In 31 years covering Wyoming sports, Kiely is only the second player Beck has interviewed from his hometown. The other was Mike Garvey, a mid-'80s defensive tackle also out of Wheaton North.

The ‘Original Hitter'

On ESPN's broadcast of Glenbard West's 2011 football season opener it was barely apparent the home team was called the Hilltoppers.

Though the school adopted that nickname in 1953 according to “Old Codger” Joe Carlton's 1997 book on Glenbard West football — “As the Backs Go Tearing By” — ESPN repeatedly referred to “The Hitters.”

Former coach Bill Duchon initiated the Hitters Club in 1964 for select players fearsome on the field but gentlemanly off it. The tradition of molding these young men continues under coach Chad Hetlet.

Carlton points out Duchon anointed Curt Spears as the first Hitter, but the coach dedicated the program posthumously to Bruce Capel, an all-state guard and linebacker at Glenbard West, Class of 1961. No. 50 was the type of guy who viciously knocked opponents on their pants, helped them up after the whistle, smiled genuinely and wished them well for the next play.

“Bruce was the All-American boy in absolutely every respect,” said Carlton, who for 20 years has tended Capel's gravesite in Forest Hills Cemetery, out of respect. “A winning smile, very athletic, very amenable, very popular in every respect. If you had a son that's the kind of kid you'd want to have.”

Capel never had that opportunity himself.

A walk-on at Illinois who eventually earned a scholarship and Academic All-America honors, Capel moved to center because the Illini had linebacker Dick Butkus, who became Capel's roommate on the road. Capel recovered a fumble late in the first half of the 1964 Rose Bowl which Illinois converted for the first of its 17 straight points in a 17-7 win over Washington.

Graduating from Illinois in 1965, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, sent to the base in Quantico, Virginia. It had a football team and Capel was its middle linebacker, immediately drawing compliments for sledgehammer hitting and chivalry.

Despite the war in Vietnam, in the spring of 1966 Capel's commanding officer said the 23-year-old needn't go overseas. He could stay and play football instead.

“I appreciate that offer,” Capel responded, “but I am a Marine first and a football player second.”

Within six weeks he was gone. A second lieutenant, the younger of Wallace and Lillian Capel's two sons was shot and killed May 12, 1966, leading a recovery unit in Quang Nam.

His brother Steve Capel, Glenbard West Class of '59, said the news shook the town.

“When (people) think about Bruce they can still think of the minute when they heard from one of their friends or got a telegram that Bruce had gotten killed in Vietnam,” he said, unsteadily. “He was the kind of person that that kind of announcement was branded into your brain. It was emblazoned there.”

In short order tributes were erected or established that continue to this day, from the Hitter's Club to Illini football's Bruce Capel Award of Courage and Dedication. Funds from a memorial in his name built six CARE schools in Guatemala; Boy Scout packs walking in Memorial Day events carried some of Capel's personal effects — Capel having been, naturally, an Eagle Scout.

As the 50th anniversary of his death nears in May 2016, efforts to rekindle memories of the “Original Hitter” are underway.

Ron Aubrey, who served nine years on the Glen Ellyn Park District Board, has worked the last four years collecting and archiving Bruce Capel memorabilia, including material Steve Capel held onto for five decades. It includes an old Hitters T-shirt, a rare gold-painted Hitters helmet and 575 sympathy letters Capel has archived digitally and plans to reveal on a website in September.

“He contacted me and this thing started taking on a life of its own,” Steve Capel said.

The impetus began when Aubrey was researching areas around the high school, including one known as Spalding Point, the park property across from the school administration building west of the high school. Among other historical items Aubrey found four trees planted in 1968 honoring students who had died while serving in Vietnam. One was for Bruce Capel. A new “Heroes of Freedom Memorial” will be unveiled “in a couple months,” Aubrey said.

Meanwhile, Steve Capel's daughters, Laura Claassen and Lisa Jones, have started a Friends of Bruce Capel Facebook page for those seeking to share remembrances of their uncle. They've also collated a dozen videos from people close to Bruce Capel, including his quarterback at Illinois, Mike Taliaferro, for a possible ESPN project.

“What I really didn't realize was that how much of a legacy has been left,” said Laura Claassen, like Lisa born after her uncle's death and now understanding his impact.

On Oct. 3 that will be most apparent. Prior to Glenbard West's homecoming game against Hinsdale Central a pregame ceremony will include installing an honorary plaque alongside the Duchon Field sign.

Near-term, folks may view Capel mementos, curated by Aubrey, in a display inside the main entrance to Biester Gymnasium on Crescent Boulevard.

As Laura Capel Claassen noted, 50 years passes “at the snap of a finger.”

Her uncle's legacy, however, perseveres.

“The Capel name means many things to our program,” Hitters coach Chad Hetlet said, “but most of all it means: The successful man gives everything of himself each and every time he faces a challenge.”

doberhelman@dailyherald.com

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