Football Brings a Moment of Clarity

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, a veritable national pastime in this country.  I'm married to a football fanatic, it would be unheard of to not watch football.  You can win or lose, but it's still an exciting time.

Being that I am not like minded, I endure football as best I can.  I know names of players because my husband tells me since I am his captive audience.

 A few years ago I read the story of a football player in WWII and the Philippine death march.  I like to recount the story on Super Bow Sunday because it reminds me that people can find common ground no matter how vehemently one disagrees. Now in this tension charged climate we are in, it might be good to reflect on that.

The Story of Mario G. `Motts' Tonelli, 1916-2003: Former Football star who survived Bataan

In 1942, Tonelli was an Army sergeant, only 25 years old, battling the Japanese in a steaming Philippine jungle.

He tells the story:

“ We knew we couldn't win. We didn't have ammunition. The ammunition that we did have was old and there were duds.”

Only two grenades in 25 worked. Finally, 12,000 GIs gave up—the largest single surrender in American history. Men too weak to defend themselves were made to march 70 miles. It was a death march. Ten thousand American and Filipino soldiers would die.

“ You'd see them get shot. You'd see them get killed.”

On the first day, a Japanese guard demanded Motts' class ring.

“ And he kept pointing at it, and I said, ‘No, I'm not going to give it to you,’ and a couple of guys said, ‘Motts, give him the ring. He's going to kill you!’”

The Bataan Death March is not known for any act of kindness. But there was one, because of something that happened five years before, in Notre Dame Stadium.

Motts Tonelli was a fullback then with dazzling speed. Two minutes left in the game against Archrival University of Southern California, he ran 76 yards for a touchdown. It was a moment one USC student from Japan would never forget. Five years later, on that jungle path, the student, now a Japanese army officer recognized Tonelli.

“And he said, ‘Did one of my men take anything from you?’ And I said, ‘Yes, he did. It's in his pocket.’ And he said, ‘Is this it?’”

It was Tonelli's Notre Dame ring.

“I went to the University of Southern California,” the officer said. “I graduated the same year you did. In fact, I saw the game when you made that long run that beat us. You were a hell of a player.”

 “He gave me my ring back and wished me good luck,” Tonelli recalled many years later.

 “When you're talking about a war, you're talking about life.”

That extraordinary gift helped Motts do something most of his buddies did not, he survived the ordeal, with the ring and the memory of a single act of kindness. He still faced four years as a prisoner of war until the Japanese surrendered.

It was one moment where of all things, a football game brought two sworn enemies together.

Let’s not make football political.  It’s one of the few times people of different stripes get together and drink beer, talk players and referees and get off the grid, so to speak.