Friday, Sept. 9, 2005 | 5:32 a.m.
WEEKEND EDITION
Sept. 10-11, 2005
It was a time when Las Vegas did not have its world-famous Strip.
UNLV was more than a decade away from being founded at its original site, a second-story room at the old Las Vegas High School on Seventh Street.
It was a time of world war and uncertainty, and practically the only thing the small town of 20,000 had to rally around in the fall of 1944 was its 37-member Las Vegas High football team.
So dedicated were the fans that many of them donated their World War II gasoline ration stamps to the school so the team could travel to games in Kingman, Ariz., San Bernardino and Needles, Calif.
And coach Harvey Stanford's squad did not disappoint the faithful. Not only did the team win the state championship, it also went undefeated and was unscored upon. No opponent was even able to get two consecutive first downs against the Wildcats.
When the Las Vegas High Class of 1945 gathers at 1 p.m. Friday at the Italian American Supper Club of Southern Nevada, 2333 E. Sahara Ave., for its 60th reunion, conversations among alumni will gravitate to the football team that during their senior year put the school on the national map.
"At the time, we never thought about going undefeated and not being scored on," said team captain and star running back John Mendoza, 77, who went on to become an attorney and a Clark County District Court judge for 23 years.
"We just wanted to play our best to win each game. Looking back, yes, what we accomplished in the process was remarkable."
From that legendary squad, only eight players, student trainer Bill Perry and student manager Leslie Smith are known to be alive. Of the remaining alumni of that team, 15 are confirmed deceased. The whereabouts and status of 14 others are unknown, as classmates have lost touch with them.
The surviving team members say that while age has deteriorated their once athletic bodies, the lessons learned from a simple game of their youth gave them the tools they needed to address the challenges of more complicated adult lives.
"My senior year was the most fun and interesting year of my life," said quarterback and linebacker Rheen Call, 78, who went to the University of Nevada, became a dentist and still operates his local practice.
"What I most recall about that season is what Coach Stanford meant to us. He was a great motivator and was like a father. He gave us the incentive to do what was right."
Charles Miles, 78, another member of the squad who also became a lawyer, said, "the discipline I got from playing on that team and from coach Stanford made perhaps the biggest impact on my life."
Nowhere was Stanford's presence more evident than in the second game of the season at San Bernardino High.
The Wildcats were underdogs against what was then the top team in Southern California. The Cardinals were much bigger than the boys who went to what was then the only high school in Las Vegas. Stanford observed the awed look on the faces of his team as they watched the Cardinals warm up.
"I know you are all scared -- you have a reason to be," Stanford, a physics teacher and Oklahoma native who was born in a covered wagon, told his players during the pre-game pep talk.
"Well, I'm going to give you a lesson in physics. Even though they're about a foot taller and outweigh you by 20 pounds, when you hit an object first and you hit it harder than it hits you, it offsets the size and weight factor."
Hit them they did, as several Cardinals, including star quarterback Bill Rainbolt, a future star at the University of Southern California, had to be helped or carried from the field.
When the final gun sounded, Las Vegas High had handed eventual California Four-A state champion San Bernardino what would be its only loss of the season, 14-0, before a crowd the Associated Press had estimated at 5,000.
Las Vegas High's 8-0 record and 215-0 scoring differential was featured in a "Ripley's Believe It or Not" nationally syndicated cartoon.
The '44 squad also was nicknamed the "Dream Team."
Each member of the team that season signed Stanford's Code of Honor, taking an oath that, among other promises, they would conduct themselves as gentlemen, maintain at least a C average and not drink alcohol, smoke or eat candy.
"Harvey trained us for life," said Mendoza, the coach's longtime lawyer.
Stanford coached at Las Vegas High through the 1949 season and, in subsequent years, was written up in national publications for his coaching philosophy. His teams won greater than 70 percent of their games, but the game also took a heavy toll on the perfectionist coach.
"After we won the (1944) state championship game, we took dad directly to the hospital because of his ulcers," said Jerry Stanford, the eldest of Stanford's three children, who for more than a decade has tried to get Hollywood to make a movie about the '44 team and his father, who died in 1991 at age 87.
"Dad believed in teaching the fundamentals. He did not like to pass because he used to say so many things can go wrong when you throw the ball and only one thing can go right, which, of course, is catching it."
All of the touchdowns scored during the 1944 season were on running plays, yet the team's star end, Tom Bell, who would go on to be billionaire Howard Hughes' local attorney, made the Nevada State Journal's All-State first team.
In the 37-0 victory over Basic High, Bell caught a dump pass from Mendoza and got two front teeth knocked out when he was tackled. In those days, there were no face masks and the helmets were made of leather.
There were few action photographs taken of the historic squad because of film shortages during World War II. And there is no known movie film of the team's games, said Jerry Stanford, noting it was not customary back then to watch film of opponents to prepare for games as it is today to watch video footage.
While Stanford encouraged his boys to be excellent football players, he also inspired them to reach their full potential beyond their football days.
In addition to Mendoza and Bell, at least six other players on the 1944 team became lawyers. One of them, All-State first team guard Bill "Wildcat" Morris, was an owner of the old Landmark Hotel. Myron Leavitt, a freshman on the '44 team, became a Nevada Supreme Court justice.
Bell, Morris and Leavitt all have died. So have attorney brothers Gene Matteucci and Al Matteucci. Gene Matteucci was an All-State second team center. Their teammate "Squirmin' " Herman Fisher also became an attorney and North Las Vegas Municipal Court judge. He died in 2003.
Miles, who has retired from practicing law, played the biggest role in keeping the unscored upon record intact in the Dec. 10, 1944, state championship game against the Sparks High Railroaders -- the only time that season an opponent got inside the Las Vegas 20-yard line.
Miles, a reserve safety, tackled Sparks' All-State first team halfback Henry Baker at the 19 after Baker broke into the open field on a naked reverse and was on his way to the Wildcat endzone.
"Everybody else was chasing the pack thinking that was where the ball was," Miles said. "I simply went in the other direction, which at first I thought was the wrong way."
That winter, Miles also scored the winning basket in the 1944-45 state championship basketball game.
Also, that spring, Las Vegas High won the 1945 state track and field championship, with Mendoza's best friend, football teammate and his longtime bailiff, Al Rivero, winning the pole vault title. Rivero died two years ago.
In addition to Call, the football team also produced another medical professional, Bobby Schofield, who became a psychiatrist in Pasadena, Calif., where he has retired.
Other Dream Team notables included late Las Vegas City Commissioner Phil Mirabelli, late Marine Col. Frank Smoke and late California sports writer Frank Wolverton, who was an All-State second team tackle.
Martin Hardy, who made All-State second team halfback, went to the U.S. Naval Academy and became a pilot. Teammate De Ray Eyre became a schoolteacher and football coach.
All-State first team guard Bob Wengert and All-State third team fullback Don Benson both became engineers and are retired.
Mendoza was an All-State first team halfback who earned a football scholarship to Notre Dame. But he suffered a career-ending knee injury prior to the 1946 season in which the Fighting Irish went 8-0-1 and won the national title.
Mendoza went into the Army and returned to Notre Dame on the GI Bill. After graduating, he returned to Las Vegas and still practices law in an office across from where Las Vegas High's Butcher Memorial Field used to stand.
It was there that estimated crowds of 5,000 came on Thanksgiving Day 1944 to watch the Wildcats beat Boulder City High 21-0 in a conference game and to see the 19-0 win over Sparks, in which Mendoza scored two touchdowns.
The old Las Vegas school, a block down the street from Mendoza's law office, now is the Las Vegas Academy. Las Vegas High moved several years ago to the foothills of Sunrise Mountain.
Miles, Call, Mendoza and their fellow surviving Dream Teamers said they did not let their heads get too big over what they achieved so long ago.
"I was glad to have contributed to the effort and proud of what we were able to accomplish," said Call, who like many of his teammates never again played football after high school. "But I had no intention of living my entire life in just that glory."
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