The Daily Alaska empire., 1944-05-18
FOOTBALL PLAYING AND J1TTERBUG DANCING

It IS stating the obvious to say
 that the most pleasant of all the
 many attractive features of USO staff members job is the chance
 to make new friendships every day.
 Literally not a day goes by without affording the privilege of beginning
 a friendship with at least three or
 four (sometimes several times as
 many) possessors of winning smiles and likeable personalities among
 the servicemen coming into the clubhouse for the first time. We
 hope that these new fellows find
 it uniformly pleasant to make their initial visits to our USO. We know
 that it is a real treat for us to vel
 come them.
 A whole group of men may hap pen to walk in together Perhaps Htlley may be in town for only a day or two. In such a case al-
 though we try to become acquaint- ed with each individual we're al-
 ways afraid we may miss some man Iof outstanding Interest. Doubtless
 this is largely matter of luck.
 Our luck was good, for example,
 last Sunday. A dozen fellows had arrived in a bunch the day previous
 from a nearby post. Collectively
 they'd made good impression at the very start But they were stay ing in Juneau only two days, and until Sunday afternoon we saw little of them around the club.
 Then it was that one of the num- Ger began to stand out a bit. Play ing the piano he revealed a con- spicuously good sense of rhythm and the long slender fingers you usually associate with a born musician Those same fingers, however, to- gether with that Irish face and those penetrating eyes and that rangy build equally quickly sug- gested football backfield men in general and forward passing quarterback in particular. On our State Register we checked up to Ind that he had signed Pvt. Fran cis Callahan, Chicago and his hobby r sure enough was Foot ball"
 Then we asked some questions and we found that Car had played quarterback on one of the best of the High Schools there and that when drafted taged l9) he had just completed the football season as A freshman at Notre Dame.
 Muscular coordination. of course is prime requisite to success on the athletic field-coordination in loot work as we'll as with the hands. That Cal qualities in this respect is easy to believe after see- ing him on the dance floor and hearing a story about his ability as a Jitterbug. Certainly on Sunday night tdancing with Emma Niel- sen) he was the most rhythmical Jltterbug stopper we've ever seen at our club, no doubt about it. And last autumn in Boston one. night (his buddies told us) Cal found himstf ln a jitterbug contest with a lot of competition. All of sud- den the Colonel announced that a three-day pass would be first prize in the contest Next morning Pvt. Francis Callahan was using that pass enroute to Chicago to pay surprise visit to his mother.
 Ask any football coach how im- portant it.. is. for championship team to sAaye an opportunist as it's quarterback Coach Prank Leahy of Notre Dame is no exception, cer- tainly. So it's an intriguing bit of speculation to wonder whether in the fall of l945 or 1e46 those Irish of Notre Dame might by chance find themselves sparked by a keen-eyed, long fingered, fast stepping quarterback named Fran cis Callahan, opportunist extraor- dinary both on the gridiron and the dance floor. If this happens we're sure it will be happening to good man.