Football, Green Bay links Bisons 70 years apart

The old man cradled the ball like it was his first child, perhaps hoping to squeeze a few memories from the pebbled leather of the old Spalding J5V.



But Len Bookbinder doesn't need much help remembering his football playing days.

Those memories, still sharp in the mind of the former University of Manitoba halfback, came flooding back last weekend in a twist of fate as delicious as a last-minute, game-winning touchdown out of the wishbone.

No doubt one of the oldest surviving Bisons, if not the oldest, the 91-year-old Bookbinder was reading a Winnipeg Sun story about Manitoba offensive lineman Geoff Gray, when the light bulb came on.

“Because he was 22 years old, and I was 22 years old when I was playing for the Bisons,” Bookbinder began. “And I was an engineering student, and he was... so his path and my path were very similar.”

The path doesn't end there.

In fact, it goes all the way to Green Bay, Wisc., and the land of the cheeseheads.

* * *

Young Leonard Bookbinder wasn't built like your typical football player, even in the 1940s.

The son of a fish buyer, he grew up poor in Selkirk in the wake of the Great Depression, getting no bigger than 5-foot-7 and 150 pounds.

But he could run.

“We ran through the bush trying to tag each other,” Bookbinder recalled.

He was bitten by the football bug through listening to the radio, where he stumbled upon University of Wisconsin football broadcasts.

The Badgers were loaded with talent, names like Elroy “Crazylegs” Hirsch and future NFL star Pat Harder.

But it was an end named Dave Schreiner who captivated the young Bookbinder.

A two-time All-American and the Big-10 most valuable player in 1942, Schreiner was the co-captain and MVP of the Badgers team that finished 8-1-1, defeated No. 1-ranked Ohio State and was awarded the Helms Foundation national championship, Schreiner was smooth as silk, tough as nails – and had a soft spot for a boy from Manitoba, it turned out.

“I wrote him a letter,” Bookbinder said. “He wrote back and sent me a postcard with the formations on it, and even a University of Wisconsin pennant. He described the formations the University of Wisconsin was using

“Oh my goodness, can you imagine -- he's taking the time to write to a boy in Selkirk and encourage me to play football.”

Schreiner would leave university and get killed in World War II.
More....
http://www.winnipegsun.com/2017/05/0...70-years-apart