Frank Sinkwich in 1941 with jaw mask
Frank Sinkwich in later years
Charley Trippi at Georgia
Carlos Brand
As Georgia and Texas Christian University get ready to play in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl Friday at noon EST in Memphis, the game will mark almost exactly 75 years since they first played in the Orange Bowl.
TCU had almost snuck into that major bowl following the 1941 season with a late-season upset of a Texas team that had been ranked No. 1, while Georgia had been a strong team for most of that year.
A big reason for the Bulldogs’ new success under coach Wally Butts that year was player Frank Sinkwich.
The junior and son of Croatian immigrant store and restaurant operators had starred at Chaney High in Youngstown, Ohio, before arriving in Athens in the days when a number of Southern schools had rosters stacked with players from the North.
He no doubt gave a lot of strength to the Georgia team that year while rushing for a then-SEC record 1,103 yards and passing for 713 yards from his halfback position. He was a consensus All-American and finished fourth in that year’s Heisman Trophy voting behind winner Bruce Smith of Minnesota.
He, in turn, was made stronger with the help of a man named Carlos M. Brand. A former Chattanoogan who was then living in Knoxville and helping the University of Tennessee team, he constructed a special jaw brace in those days before facemasks so that Mr. Sinkwich could continue playing with a broken jaw.
In a somewhat unprecedented event, Mr. Sinkwich even flew up to Knoxville during the 1941 season and socialized with some of the UT players while Mr. Brand fitted him with the special facemask.
Although Tennessee and Georgia did not play each other between 1937 and 1968, it was still somewhat unusual and a move of true sportsmanship for one Southeastern Conference team to be helping another. Today, in this era of extreme competitiveness and large medical and equipment staffs or support personnel, such a scene might be unusual, although Georgia last season tried to help Southern University player Devon Giles when he was paralyzed against the Bulldogs.
This unique, medically related visit to Knoxville occurred on Oct. 9, 1941, which was the Thursday after he had broken the jaw playing against South Carolina in Athens’ Sanford Stadium.
Georgia had started the 1941 season with a lopsided 81-0 victory over Mercer in front of 11,347 at Macon’s Centennial Stadium, and then beat South Carolina 34-6 in front of 17,000.
Quickly, Mr. Sinkwich was emerging as the star and was carrying some of the load caused after expected sophomore star and future Milton High coach Gus Letchas from Thomasville, Ga., was declared ineligible because he had attended summer school.
As the story said about Mr. Sinkwich after the Mercer game, “Frankie Sinkwich, the Bulldog’s fireball tailback, was the top man in running, kicking and passing.”
The short Associated Press story after the South Carolina game makes no reference to his injury, although it could have been covered in the Athens or Atlanta papers at the time.
When Mr. Sinkwich came to Knoxville to meet with Mr. Brand to get fitted, Knoxville News Sentinel sports writer Bob Wilson stopped by the UT equipment room and found him sipping chicken soup through a straw due to his jaw.
“I wish I had a couple of teeth knocked out in front so I could eat this soup better,” Mr. Sinkwich remarked about his physical troubles to UT players Bobby Cifers and Leonard Simonetti and Tennessee assistant freshmen coach Leo Petruzzi. Coach Petruzzi was from the Pennsylvania area and knew a lot of the same athletes as Mr. Sinkwich, Mr. Wilson wrote.
With Mr. Sinkwich, who was to turn 21 the next day, was his Youngstown friend, Georgia end George Poschner, who would go on to suffer a serious combat injury to his arm during World War II. Also accompanying him from Athens, the article said, were Ben Gunn and Bert Ewing, exact roles unknown.
According to lifelong Athens, Ga., resident and longtime Bulldog football follower Dave Williams, Mr. Sinkwich had reportedly ended up in Athens by accident. Former Georgia player and coach Bill Hartman was sent to check out another player there and stopped at a gas station to ask how to get to the player’s high school.
The employee then mentioned that he thought Mr. Sinkwich, who was at another high school, was a better player, so coach Hartman took his word, and ended up signing him and his buddy, Mr. Poschner.
Exactly where the UT equipment room was in 1941 might take more digging, but it was possibly either in what is now known as the Alumni Memorial Building or in the adjacent Neyland Stadium, then known as Shields-Watkins Field.
Coach Robert Neyland had already returned to military service that season and was not coaching the Vols that year, but he did see them play in a losing effort against Duke in Durham, N.C., while on brief leave from an engineering facility in Norfolk, Va.
After three great seasons from 1938-40, the Vols did go on to finish a respectable 8-2 in 1941 under Neyland aide John Barnhill, who later coached at Arkansas.
During his visit to UT, Mr. Sinkwich explained to the interested observers how he got hurt against South Carolina. “Aw, they were just out to get me, I reckon,” he said. “Maybe it was just one of those accidents. I got hit, but I don’t know how. I stayed in the game. And later on they piled on me and when I got up my jaw was hanging down.”
The Gamecocks were penalized 122 yards in the game, including 63 yards alone for roughing up Mr. Sinkwich, whose injury had occurred near the cheerleaders and the students in the northeast corner of Sanford Stadium.
Mr. Sinkwich also said while in Knoxville that he thought the Bulldogs could beat Ole Miss the next day. “Ole Miss is going to be tough,” he said. “But I think we’ll beat ‘em.”
While Mr. Sinkwich was known for the roundabout way he ended up in Athens, Mr. Brand had also circumnavigated a good part of the globe in arriving in Knoxville.
Although a number of details about his life do not seem readily accessible, a copy of the “Orthopedic and Prosthetic Appliance Journal” from 1957 found online sheds a few clues. It said Mr. Brand had begun his training in developing orthopedic appliances in 1917 at the University of Frankfort in Germany.
He later traveled the world and arrived in the United States in 1926 and continued his journeying, working in a number of leading hospitals and orthopedic appliance establishments.
Around the mid-to-late 1930s, Mr. Brand arrived in Chattanooga and began working at least some of the time for the Fillauer orthopedics and prosthetics firm that is still in business. He had apparently earlier also worked on braces to help polio victims.
He and his wife, Betty, evidently lived modestly in Chattanooga at such places as the Hotel Northern downtown, 862 Oak St., and even a residence by or in the Fillauer facilty, which was then located in the 900 block of Third Street.
Around the time Mr. Sinkwich visited and Mr. Brand had moved to Knoxville, he lived in an apartment in the 1600 block of West Clinch Avenue in the Fort Sanders neighborhood across Cumberland Avenue from the UT campus. His wife then was listed as Jewel.
Mr. Brand’s reputation for good work in developing braces was evidently grander than his residences, and the University of Tennessee had used his services dating back a few years before he arrived in Knoxville.
In 1939, another star – the Vols’ George Cafego, who would finish fourth, too, in the Heisman Trophy voting that year – came down to Chattanooga to be fitted with a knee brace. He had been accompanied by UT trainer Mickey O’Brien, who had grown up in the Highland Park section of Chattanooga and had been the University of Chattanooga trainer until moving to work at Tennessee before the 1938 season.
He was perhaps the connection between UT and Mr. Brand, although Coach Neyland also served some in Chattanooga with the Army Corps of Engineers or perhaps met Mr. Brand through Mr. O’Brien.
Unfortunately, on the way home from Knoxville a couple of weeks before losing to Southern Cal in the Rose Bowl, their car was in a minor accident on McCallie Avenue in Chattanooga.
Mr. Sinkwich also had a traveling crisis after leaving Knoxville. According to Patrick Garbin, who has written a number of books on Georgia Bulldog football history, Mr. Sinkwich’s plane had to make an emergency landing in the Northeast Georgia town of Toccoa, although everyone was safe.
“It was reported he not only did a radio interview, but was serenaded by a band as well before getting a ride to Athens,” Mr. Garbin said.
On the field the rest of the season, Mr. Sinkwich would enjoy clear sailing on the field, thanks in no part to his protective jaw brace. What seems a little bit of a mystery, though, is how many special protective guards he wore that season.
He apparently had initially been given a special helmet with a cross guard cage similar to those used by players in later years, but rejected it. The one Mr. Brand constructed was evidently a smaller bar that fit around his chin, and that was the one he wore against Ole Miss on the next Friday night “between the hedges” in Athens, when Georgia came back for a 14-14 tie.
But starting with the Columbia game the next Saturday, he appeared to have a slightly bigger bar around his jaw. Whether that one was made by Mr. Brand is not known, unless some old Georgia newspapers or school documents shed any light.
Mr. Williams said he heard the Athens Foundry made at least one of the facemasks, although which one is not completely clear. And Mr. Garbin said someone else concluded that a Sinkwich helmet and 1941 face mask on display at the Butts-Mehre athletic facility at the University of Georgia look different from those in the old photographs, so there apparently were several models he wore or tried.
What is clear is that Mr. Sinkwich was on his way to becoming quite a player.
No doubt slowed initially by the injury that forced his jaw to be wired shut, he went with the team to still nationally prominent Columbia and helped Georgia win 7-3 in front of 27,000 at Baker Field on the northern tip of Manhattan north of the campus.
The following Saturday, Oct. 25, Georgia lost to a good Alabama team, 27-14, at Birmingham’s Legion Field, spoiling a return to his hometown city for Georgia captain Heyward Allen, a future automobile dealer and the uncle of early 1970s Tennessee player David Allen.
Alabama was coached by former University of Chattanooga coach Frank Thomas.
The following Saturday, Nov. 1, Georgia got back on track against Auburn in a dramatic way that would begin to build the Frankie Sinkwich legend. Very late in the game in front of 17,000 fans at the Memorial Stadium in Columbus, Ga., with the game 0-0, Mr. Sinkwich decided to gamble.
He threw a long pass to Lamar “Racehorse” Davis, who caught it at the Auburn 25 behind such Tiger defenders as star Monk Gafford and dashed for the score and the eventual 7-0 victory.
He continued to impress, scoring 15 of the team’s points the following week when Georgia beat Florida, 19-3, in Jacksonville in front of a sellout crowd of 21,000.
The Bulldogs then beat Centre College of Kentucky, 47-6, in front of 5,000 at Atlanta’s Ponce de Leon Park baseball stadium, before beating another traditional Eastern School, Dartmouth, 35-0 in Athens. Some 31,000 then saw Georgia close out an 8-1-1 regular season with a 21-0 win over Georgia Tech at Atlanta’s Grant Field.
Georgia received its first-ever bowl bid to play Texas Christian University under coach Dutch Meyer in the Orange Bowl. And Mr. Sinkwich saved his best for last, passing for 243 yards and rushing for 112 in what is still an Orange Bowl total offensive record for an individual player.
“All-American Frankie Sinkwich, greater than ever, showed the way for his mates,” wrote Associated Press sports writer John Wilds of the game, which was then played in the afternoon.
His efforts had helped Georgia race out to a big early lead before an eventual 40-26 win in front of 35,505 fans at what would become the Orange Bowl stadium. Kicking for Georgia was Leo Costa, who had attended Baylor School for one year.
A freshman team member in 1941 and a player who would go on to be quite a star on the 1942, ’45 and ’46 Georgia teams was Charley Trippi. Now 95 years old, he recalled over the phone last week from his home in Athens Mr. Sinkwich’s special masks and how great a player he was.
“He had a great year in ’41,”he said. “He wasn’t exactly fast but he was fast enough to get the job done. He’d run over you.”
Mr. Trippi also had memories of their coach, Wally Butts, who would lead Georgia to several good seasons in the 1940s as an innovative passing coach. Mr. Trippi recalled that you did things the right way around him.
“There were no shortcuts with him,” said the 1946 Heisman Trophy runnerup, who played with Mr. Sinkwich against Chattanooga at Chamberlain Field in 1942. “We all respected him. We did whatever he told us to do.”
Mr. Williams said he has learned from studying Mr. Sinkwich and Mr. Trippi that Mr. Trippi was quicker and faster – and was a phenomenal defensive back -- but Mr. Sinkwich had a fast first step when the ball was snapped.
After leading Georgia to the SEC championship and the Rose Bowl the next year, Mr. Sinkwich enlisted in the Marines but was discharged due to his flat feet. He became the NFL MVP with the Detroit Lions before a knee injury cut short a pro career.
He later became involved in the beer/spirits distributing business that is now Northeast Sales Distributing in Georgia and Skyland Distributing in North Carolina and is headed by his grandson, Frank Sinkwich III.
Mr. Williams said that Mr. Trippi over the years has been more visible in the Athens community, while Mr. Sinkwich generally kept a lower profile before his death in October 1990, despite being the more outgoing of the two.
But Mr. Sinkwich had already spoken volumes as a player.
“He was the first really great player in Georgia history that people up North and out West knew about,” said Mr. Williams. “He was big not only for Georgia football, but football in the South, too.”
Mr. Sinkwich’s wife, Adeline, whom he met at Georgia and was a Broadway dancer, died in 2014 at age 92. A son, Frank Sinkwich Jr., who was an accomplished pilot and headed the family business, died in 2010. A daughter, Francine Sinkwich, who has lived in the Atlanta area, survives her father.
As for Mr. Brand, the maker of at least one of Mr. Sinkwich’s famous helmet braces, he went on to serve in the military during World War II and was assigned to the East Army football team at Yale University coached by none other than coach Neyland. One of the players on the team that played a brief schedule against pro teams was former Stanford star Norm Standlee.
Mr. Brand later served at the Percy Jones Hospital in Battle Creek, Mich., helping train people in orthopedic mechanics.
He then returned to work at the University of Tennessee for a few years before moving in 1952 to Albany, N.Y., to open his own business on Delaware Avenue there. He apparently stayed in Albany until his death, which was believed to be in 1972.
The 1957 article on him in the journal said he retained the energy and curiosity of his youth and had a special interest in the unusual type of orthopedic appliance.
The unusual piece of hardware Mr. Brand helped fashion for Mr. Sinkwich during that visit to Knoxville helped the star continue to perform well enough to pick up another rare piece of hardware the next year in New York – the 1942 Heisman Trophy.
To read the first part in this series on noted former college coach Dana X. Bible and his connection to East Tennessee, read here:
http://www.chattanoogan.com/2016/12/23/338599/Forgotten-Area-College-Football.aspx
Jcshearer2@comcast.net