Open Letter to All Western Football Alumni.

 August 1999

Dear Mustang Football Alumni:

Tradition.

You understand the tradition of Mustang Football - you built it,  you lived it, and you enabled future players to experience the legacy of Mustang Football.

As you may know, Western is constructing a new stadium, not far from J.W. Little, to be opened in time for the 2000 football season.   We, the Mustang Football Alumni have asked, and been given, the task of raising money for the Western Mustang Football locker room.

As Football alumni it is important to connect the heritage and tradition of J.W. Little stadium to the new facility, so that future Mustang Football players may enjoy the richness of the tradition of Mustang Football.

• Seating for 12,500
• An artificial surface - endorsed by Western’s medical staff
• Modern field lighting installed to meet television broadcast standards
• Superior public address/sound system
• Mustang Football dressing room with adjacent medical support quarters
• State-of-the art fully equipped media centre
• Full service concession area

We are now turning to you for your support with this fundraising effort.  Mustang Football players have never backed away from a challenge and we are entrusted with raising $500,000.00 for the new locker rooms.

All donations are tax deductible and may be paid over a period of five (5) years.

The Donation Levels are:

$500 - $2000  - will be recognized on a Western Football Alumni Plaque which will be placed in the Mustang Football Dressing Room

$2001 Plus - will be recognized on a Western Football Alumni Plaque in the Mustang Football Dressing Room, at another permanent site within the new stadium, and a permanent site in Downtown London. Receive two (2) tickets to the grand opening ceremonies of the new stadium; receive a limited edition 2001 Club pin; have name published in the London Free Press

$5,000 Plus - will have their name on a locker in the Mustang Football Locker Room and receive the same recognition of a $2001 Plus donors

The new stadium will be a focal point for the future. The locker room will be the bridge to the past. The tradition of Mustang football will come alive in this facility as it did for you in your years with the program. In the next few weeks, former teammates will be contacting you and asking for your support. We hope you that you can reflect on your personal connection to Mustang Football and contribute to furthering this experience to those who follow.

Sincerely,

Your Fundraising Teammates 1929-1998

P.S. If you would like to make an unsolicited donation please click on the link - Friends of the Games Pledge Form. You can fill in the form, print it, sign it and send it in to the address on the form. Please be sure to write in Bold Letters on the Form - Football Alumni and the years you played.

These are just a few of the Mustang Football Alumni who have agreed to help with the canvassing of the Football Mustangs: Dale Creighton, Lionel Conacher, Ron McNamara, Dimitry Kurilsky, Mike Kirkley, Blake Marshall, Jon Jurus, Nigel Wilson, Paul Callahan, Dan Hinschberger, Mike Sheffar, Dennis Hinschberger, Reg Richter, Jamie Bone, Brian Fortune, Rob Kochel, John Moffat, Steve Samways, Chris Marcus.

Little's big impact

It is time for a new stadium at UWO, but the one that has served the university for eight decades will live on in many people's memories

By JIM KERNAGHAN -- London Free Press  Like mortal ashes spread upon the ocean in accordance with a dear departed's will, the remains of J.W. Little Memorial Stadium will wind up strewn across London and beyond. It is fitting.
 This is it, the 71st and final year of University of Western Ontario's prime athletic field before major outdoor events move to a new facility on a plain directly south of the hoary old structure. The new playpen will rise on what is known as the Huron Flats, with further specifics to be announced next week.
 Little Stadium will never be gone, though. In memory or otherwise. When the last rites are observed it will be duly dissected into souvenirs. Once the grass sods are dispersed, north London lawns will be related to Old South yards and by the time the seating gets spread around, a rec room bench in Byron could well be one seat removed from one in Barrie.
 Just as bricks from Maple Leaf Gardens and Tiger Stadium will, suitably embossed, go for 100 times their value when those ancient sports palaces come down, seats and the like from Little will hit the memorabilia market.
 It is fashionable when aging sports stadia fall before the wrecker's ball to mourn their passing. But it is like mourning the extinction of the coal furnace -- quaint but not very user-friendly any more. Let's face it: Little Stadium is a crumbling concrete edifice that has outlived its time. There's no question it was quite a time, but a time that has passed.
 The structure was described at its opening in 1929 as "one of the finest stadiums in the Dominion," a 4,000-seat edifice culled from the designs of other stadiums in Canada and the U.S.
 "It is of concrete construction throughout and is an example of the newest ideas in stadium buildings," a report of the day expounded. "The site is ideal, being almost a natural amphitheatre and no setting could be more beautiful for the autumn sport than the oval. The manner in which it is built is an example of farsightedness and meant to endure for years to come."
 And so it was. But the time frame envisioned back then ended some years ago. Conducting elite Western and high school and elementary school events and the myriad other things that have gone on there is like staging a ballet in a warehouse.
 You need only try to squeeze through the stalls hawking Mustang goods. Or the narrow entrances to the seats. Concession stands are anything but amenable to folks who've become accustomed to the comforts of the modern sports arena.
 There was brief consideration given to some cosmetic surgery on the old soul. It would have been akin to putting earrings on a sow. In the end, the project would have been high-cost and short-term.
 So it's close the doors and move on to the home with no name.
 Unless it's a president or prime minister, there is always a problem with hanging a person's name on a structure. Later generations know it only as a name. In keeping with the new-stadium custom of putting its name up for commercial bids, the board of governors for the new oval seeks a sponsor.
 "The cost to a corporate body would be $2.5 million for the rights, renewable after a specified period of time," Western's vice-president of external affairs Ted Garrard said. "If it's an individual, it would be in perpetuity."
 Great West Life (or Great Waste of Life, jettisoned London Life folks wryly call it), was suggested as a candidate by more than one individual, the notion being the words West and Western present some graphics potential. The insurance odds-makers who absorbed London Life were distinctly disinterested.
 The successful contractor's bid and the design elements will be revealed next week. Once the stadium is up a year from now, it could have a generic name (Mustang Stadium? The Corral?), at least until one is sponsored. Come up with 2.5 mill and you can get your name on it.
 And speaking of names, who the heck was J.W. Little, anyway?
 Well, Col. John William Little was the son of Irish immigrant Francis Little. J.W. became a successful dry goods merchant, mayor of London and a member of University of Western Ontario's board of governors. More important in the stadium context was his wife, Kate. It was she, at the request of her oldest son, Arthur, who provided in her will the $142,266 required to erect the stadium. Arthur, the first of an unbroken line of die-hard Mustangs fans, saw to it that the stadium be named in honour of his father.
 To this day, London lawyer Tony Little, J.W.'s great-grandson, sits with members of his family in Section C, row X, seats 13-16.
 "It's a great place to watch football and I'm sorry an era is coming to an end," Little says. "I haven't missed many games."
 He is not alone. Dr. Bill Tew has been coming since 1937 and along with his wife, Anne, drives in from Grand Bend.
 "I give Western a lot of credit for remaining competitive year after year," Tew says. "The coaching staff has been excellent over the years and I've never seen a better organization."
 Many players among more than a thousand who've played over the years can be seen at games decades later. Jack Fowler, a guard/linebacker (they played both ways then) from 1949-53, has had six seats since 1957. He remembers watching plenty of exciting games but few as exciting as a championship game against the University of Toronto he played in.
 "In 1953, we didn't have that great a team but ended up winning (12-8)," he recalled.
 "Seven or eight of us shouldn't have dressed due to injuries. I'll never forget a Don Getty touchdown pass to Murray Henderson. My roommate, Ray Truant, was outstanding. Something (coach) John Metras taught us that remained with us was to focus on the basics, to practise and do them well or he'd knock us on our backsides."
 Other longtime fans got hooked when their sons played and just kept coming. Windsor couple Jim and Kathy McLachlan, for example, followed son Scott's 1981-83 Mustang career and figure the 100 games they've attended, home and away, have put about 40,000 kilometres on their cars.
 Equipment manager Clay Warner is in his 33rd season with the Mustangs, operating out of a cramped room where generations of players have come to love his crusty ways. Big, strong tackles weighing 275 pounds go from cringing rookies to veterans blasting insults back once they find not getting zinged by Warner is a form of dismissal.
 "Now, I'm getting second generations of them," says Warner, a 68-year-old former Canadian Army lance corporal. "There's four of them this year -- Darryl Fabiani, Cameron Rotondo, Graig Richter and Dave Knill.
 "I give it to 'em all over the years. I even give it to (head coach Larry) Haylor. They tell me to stuff it, but I get even."
 So much of Little's history has been framed by the football team, one forgets is has been the scene of many dramas in other sports. Legions of spectacular track and field athletes, from the McFarlane brothers (Bob McFarlane was named Western's athlete of the century in 1978) to Bruce Kidd and Bill Crothers through to recent Olympians Catherine Bond-Mills and Jason Tunks, have performed there.
 There was a time when all WOSSA high school championships were held there, but the track is like the rest of the place, its six lanes outdated in a modern world that demands eight lanes.
 Soccer games, convocations, rock concerts and religious gatherings have played there in a blood, sweat and tears history -- not to mention an ocean of booze -- over a life that officially began that late October day in 1929.
 "A plane floated down from a beautiful blue sky to bombard the field with a floral wreath," the Western Gazette of the day tells us of the ceremonies before the Queen's-Western game. It turns out Queen's did a little heavy bombing of their own, hanging a 25-2 defeat on the fledgling Mustangs, who were playing their first season in senior college football after competing 20 seasons in intermediate ball.
 Things picked up, as we know. Going into today's game at Guelph, Western has won 391 of 600 games, 225 of the 313 that have been contested at Little.
 There are a million memories for those who've competed, spectated, officiated, marched, performed and worked there. But if there's any mourning, it's not really for the bricks and stone. It's for the memories, good and even bad, many of them the bittersweet recollections of younger times when things only seemed less complicated.
 It is time to move on. Just a short jog south, a new stadium, a new century and assuredly, a new sports history will be waiting.

Bill Rozalowsky, the only two time recipient of the Ted Morris Trophy as the MVP in the Vanier Cup will be inducted into the W Club Hall of Fame Dinner on Friday evening October 1, at The Great Hall.

Rozalowsky was a running back for the Mustang from 1974-78 and was a member of three Vanier Cup winning teams.

Try to get out to the Hall of Fame Dinner to support our fellow Football Mustangs.