Arnie Herber: Love trumps all

Continued from last week

“Although local high school stars had little national recognition in the 1920s, the coaches at West Point had heard about Herber’s high school records,” Norman L. Macht wrote about 1928 graduate Arnold Herber.

“They wanted him to play for Army. But right after graduating, he had eloped with Lois LeFevre, a vivacious blond “older woman.” He was 18; she was 20. He couldn’t go to West Point.”

So, Herber enrolled at UW-Madison in 1928, where he began making a name for himself.
“Flashing a brilliant offensive, which tore the freshman line to shreds, the Badger Varsity teams engaged in a lengthy scrimmage with the yearlings, yesterday afternoon at Camp Randall,” Hank Casserly wrote in the Oct. 11, 1928, Capital Times.

“The sensation of the scrimmage was the punting of a pair of the frosh backs, Russ Rebholz and Arnold Herber. The younger Rebholz got away a number of punts that spiralled more than 85 yards while Herber practically duplicated these kicks later in the melee.

“Besides his punting, Herber played a sterling defensive game, stopping the fast-running Badger backs. When he was the only man between the ball carrier and the goal line, the former Green Bay high school star hurled one pass while on a dead run straight into the arms of one of his mates, the play resulting in a touchdown. It was a great pass, one of the best ever seen at Camp Randall and it caught the varsity napping.”

“Herber, who is hailed as a second ‘Jim Crowley’ at Green Bay, performed as a quarterback berth against the varsity, and while he didn’t get a chance to carry the ball himself, he flashed the best tackling even at Randall Field this season, and tried but two forward passes.

One was smothered by the varsity linemen and while running backward to escape these rushers, he uncorked a pass that sailed straight and true into the waiting arms of one of his mates who scampered [passed] the varsity goalline for a touchdown,” Casserly wrote.
But his time on the Camp Randall field was short-lived.

As a freshman, he likely didn’t any of the playing time he was used to, and according to Macht, Herber wasn’t one to focus on his studies.

“[He} spent more time in the pool hall, and after football season he dropped out,” Macht wrote.

Herber returned to Green Bay.

To be continued