DAVE MOREY, “MIDDLEBURY’S Miracle Mentor,” coached at Middlebury College from 1920 to 1925. His Middlebury team famously tied mighty Harvard before 25,000 fans at Harvard in 1923. Then in 1932, his team at Bates College “defeated” Yale 0-0. He specialized in “David and Goliath” affairs.
Photo credit/Bates College Archives

Last month, on the occasion of the Middlebury-Bates football game, I reminisced about growing up in Lewiston, Maine, and my attachment to Bates football, the result of my dad’s love of the game.

I mentioned that he himself was a football player at Bates and played on the team that famously “defeated” mighty Yale, 0-0, in 1932 in the Yale Bowl before 20,000 fans. His coach at Bates was a fellow named Dave Morey.

“Little Bates,” a Boston publication wrote at the time, “inspired by the dynamic Mr. Morey, held Yale to a scoreless tie and came close to trimming the Elis. Back in Lewiston they celebrated wildly, and the press of the country heaped praise on Bates and their coach.”

Why am I waxing nostalgic again in our local newspaper about sports nearly a century ago at a school over 200 miles from here?

Coach Dave Morey provides the connective tissue:

Morey also coached at Middlebury, before Bates, and provided Middlebury partisans (which is to say, everyone at the school and town) with similar excitement to that he gave the folks in Lewiston in his 10 years there (1929-39).

Nine years before his crowning achievement at Bates, Morey’s Middlebury team, the “Black Panthers” then, “defeated” the other national powerhouse, Harvard, 6-6, before 25,000 fans in Harvard Stadium.  Because of that game in 1923, and a close 16-6 loss to Harvard the next year, the Boston press called Morey “Middlebury’s Miracle Mentor.”

The next year, 1924, Middlebury had “the greatest team ever to represent Middlebury in any sport on any field,” according to the ’24 Kaleidoscope (yearbook), with seven wins and just that one loss against Harvard. Their 254 points that season were the most of any school in the East and third-most nationally.

Dave Morey came to Middlebury in 1920, served as an assistant for a year and then became head coach for the next four years. As an undergraduate at Dartmouth, he was twice an All-American halfback (and second leading scorer in the country to Jim Thorpe in 1912), an accomplished violinist in the Dartmouth orchestra, and a baseball player skilled enough to play professionally for Connie Mack’s A’s in 1913.

Morey left Middlebury in 1925, “because of the ill health of his wife, which could only be remedied by residence in a warmer climate,” and coached at Auburn University in Alabama, before returning to the northeast and Bates.

MIDDLEBURY FOOTBALL COACH Dave Morey with members of his Middlebury squad in 1923 when the “Black Panthers” tied Harvard, 6-6, at Harvard Stadium. Front left is star player Marshall Klevenow, who kicked the two field goals that allowed Middlebury to tie. The top senior athletic award at Middlebury for ability in athletics and achievement academically is named after Klevenow.
Photo credit/Middlebury College Archives

That 6-6 tie of Harvard in Cambridge in 1923 by his Middlebury team was “the greatest game ever played by Middlebury  . . . an outstanding exhibition of courage and determination (Kaleidoscope).” It appeared that Middlebury would suffer a dignified, tight loss, as Harvard scored in the first half and clung to a 6-0 lead into the fourth quarter.

However, the dashes of Marshall Klevenow and the line-bucking of Stone Holmquist (Stone!) kept Midd in Harvard territory. Middlebury tied the game on two field goals by Klevenow from the 23 and 30 yard lines — and the 500 Middlebury fans amid the thousands in attendance erupted “in ecstasy” at the outcome (Middlebury enrollment at the time was only slightly over 500 students, men and women combined).

My dad maintained a life-long connection with his old coach, who lived to be 96 and died in 1986. I met Dave Morey on a number of occasions, but what did I know — I was a kid. I’d love today to hear his accounts of the shocking Middlebury and Bates games against mighty Harvard and Yale.

Near the end of his life, Morey was divesting himself of valued possessions, making gifts to friends who would treasure them as he had. My dad, captain of his Bates team in 1934, was given a beautifully engraved pocket watch.

On one side, in elegant calligraphy, were the initials DBM, for David B. Morey, and on the other this inscription: “To Coach Dave. From his Middlebury football squad, 1923.”

With the gift of the watch, Coach Dave included a remarkable letter to my dad. “I hold for you, Milt,” he wrote, “a deep respect, admiration, and affection, and I am sure that the Middlebury boys would be happy with the manner in which I have handled the situation. I leave this watch, this token, with you because you have a definite tie-in with Middlebury.

“I feel sure that in talking about my coaching days at Middlebury, you may recall hearing me say that over my 45 years in coaching, the five at Middlebury were the happiest beyond description.”

I am, of course, that “definite tie- in” with Middlebury — and my dad gave me that watch and the letter. I still have the letter, but I lost the pocket watch. I should have kept it in a drawer, or on a shelf, but I put it in my pocket. It was my timepiece. I carelessly left it on a countertop once, and when I returned for it, it was gone, never to be recovered.

DURING THE 1923 Middlebury-Harvard game Panther running back Stone Holmquist kept the ball in Harvard territory, resulting in the game tying field goals.
Photo credit/Middlebury Archives

It’s a thing, the watch, and losing things is not like losing people. But that watch is one thing I truly miss.

It was a symbol, a “token,” as Dave Morey put it, that reminded me of the “tie-in” of my dad, there at Bates, and me, here at Middlebury.