Vestaburg’s John Kreamcheck looks back
It is not often that an athlete doesn’t play high school sports and then goes on to have a college and pro career. John Kreamcheck who hails from Vestaburg is the exception to that rule. “I tell you what happened in high school,” Kreamcheck said. “In high school the war was on. Everybody was in the military, I had three brothers in the military, and a lot of my friends were in the military. All I ever thought about was going into the military, and another thing, I don’t think we had football my senior year at Centerville High School because there was a gas shortage.
I did play one year, maybe six or seven games, but it wasn’t a priority.”
Kreamcheck reports that he did play baseball at Centerville, but then it was all cancelled because of the war.
Kreamcheck graduated from Centerville High School in 1943.
“I went to Detroit, Mich.,” Kreamcheck explained. “I didn’t want to go work in the coal mines, and I ran away to Detroit. I got a job with General Motors and stayed a few months. When I turned 18-years old, that’s when you are going to get drafted. You registered for the draft, and usually a month later you were in the military.
“I registered and then went down and joined the Marines instead of waiting for the draft. I was in the Marine Corps for 59 months – five years. I went overseas during my time in the Corps, serving in the Philippines and China. When I got out, I came back to Vestaburg, but we were in a recession, and I couldn’t get a job. That’s when I decided to check this football out at William & Mary.”
Kreamcheck learned to play football in the Marine Corps.
Recalling his high school days, Kreamcheck at the time offered this: “Just never had the desire to play football. Then I enlisted in the Marines and was talked into giving it a whirl. I was pretty awkward in the first couple of years, and then I began to get the hang of it.”
Kreamcheck played football at Cherry Point, N.C., while he was in the Marine Corps.
“We had a football team,” Kreamcheck stated. “There were some pretty good football teams in the service. We had good football players because a lot of them came from the Naval Academy and some went into the Army and had played at West Point.
“It was a good brand of football. I was awkward and the coaches told me I was clumsy. There was a colonel in the Marine Corps that went to William & Mary, and he recommended me to William & Mary.”
Kreamcheck was actually pursued by several schools.
“I went up to William & Mary in the spring,” Kreamcheck recalled. “They put me in a scrimmage with their first string. I went to visit some others schools. I went down to Tennessee, and they worked me out. I had offers from as far away as Santa Clara.”
After going back home to Vestaburg, Kreamcheck waited to hear from the schools.
“I’m back in Pennsylvania and I couldn’t get a job in the coal mines,” Kreamcheck said. “There were no telephones in my hometown; nobody had a phone. The company nurse for the mine in my hometown had a telephone. She got a phone call from William & Mary. Luckily I was home that day. She came up and said you got a phone call. I went down and got on the phone, and it was a coach at William & Mary. It was Rube McCray, and he told me to come down to school. He told me to get a transcript from my high school and send it in and, ‘we’ll let you know if you’ve been accepted.’ A week later McCray says, ‘come on down; you are enrolled at William & Mary.'”
After making a name for himself on the freshman squad, Kreamcheck earned three varsity letters for the Indians. The Tribe posted records of 4-7 in 1950, 7-3 in 1951 and 4-5 in Kreamcheck’s senior season in 1952.
“We had a scandal at William & Mary, which led to coaching changes,” Kreamcheck reported. “There was cheating going on, and we had guys playing football and not going to school. The head coach had to resign.”
The William & Mary scandal of 1951 was a transcript-altering scandal. Prior to World War II, William & Mary tried to become a formidable NCAA Division I athletics powerhouse, despite its incredibly tiny size (fewer than 1,000 males attended the school in the late 1930s). Although the school had always been known as a top-tier liberal arts university, pressures to be as equally successful in sports – especially football, men’s basketball and baseball – had been mounting for over a decade by the time the scandal was discovered in 1951.
Kreamcheck played for three head coaches: McCray in 1950, Marvin Bass in 1951 and Jack Freeman in 1952.
“They had turmoil,” Kreamcheck stated. “But I had a good deal. I was on the G.I. Bill. I got $75 a month from the government, which was very good. Everybody else, all the football players, they had to wait tables for a buck an hour. It was like a free education. The schools didn’t have to give you a scholarship because you went to school on the G.I. Bill.”
One of the highlights for Kreamcheck came during the 1951 season. He is credited with making the tackle which gave William & Mary the impetus to beat Penn that season.
The Indians took the kickoff and lost the ball on the first play on a pass interception deep in W&M territory. It looked like the Tribesmen had odds against them to start. However, on Penn’s first play, Kreamcheck nailed the ball carrier, Joe Veraitis, so ferociously that he fumbled, and the inspired Indians went on to a 20-12 upset win.
“We were 21-point underdogs in that game,” Kreamcheck recalled. “They used to run the single wing. They came at me, and I knocked two Penn guys on their butt and hit Veraitis. I hit him and he fumbled. It was a real nice win.”
Kreamcheck was named honorable mention All-America by the Associated Press in 1951 and by UPI in 1952. He was named honorable mention All-Southern Conference in 1952.
“The honors meant a lot to me; the Bears drafted me,” Kreamcheck said.
Looking back on it, Kreamcheck feels he made the right choice in going to William & Mary.
“That’s the greatest decision I ever made in my life,” Kreamcheck opined. “I really liked it down there. Boy there was good fishing down there in the James River. That was my deal + go fishing, and there was a big lake right on the campus.
“I got through that school. I had about 15 tutors. I had a tutor in everything because they didn’t want me to flunk out.”
Kreamcheck was drafted by the Chicago Bears in the 8th round (89th overall) of the 1953 NFL Draft.
“It was a great honor for me,” Kreamcheck explained. “I thought, “where am I going now?’ I’m going to go play for the Chicago Bears. To me the Bears were like Notre Dame or the Yankees.”
At first, the Bears wanted to turn Kreamcheck into a center.
Assistant coach, Bulldog Turner, an ex-Bear star, was grooming Kreamcheck, a 225-pound William and Mary tackle, to play center. “He’s going to be a great center. All he needs is practice,” Turner said.
The experiment didn’t last long, and Kreamcheck was shifted to the defensive line.
“I would have played center,” Kreamcheck offered. “But they made a tackle out of me because they thought I’d be better on defense.”
Kreamcheck played three-seasons for the Bears. In 1953 the Bears posted a 3-5-1 record, in 1954 they were 8-4 and in 1955, Kreamcheck’s last pro season, they went 8-4.
Injuries brought Kreamcheck’s career to an end.
“I got hurt, I had two injuries and that’s when I quit,” Kreamcheck recalled. “I had a bad shoulder and a bad knee and I couldn’t run. I told Coach George Halas that I don’t want to be deadwood floating around Wrigley Field.”
Kreamcheck has strong loyalty to Halas.
“George Halas was the greatest guy in the world,” Kreamcheck opined. “A lot of guys said he was cheap, but I would have played football for nothing. I liked George Halas. He gave me a chance to play pro football with the Bears.”
Kreamcheck played with some very good players with the Bears, guys like George Blanda, Bill George, Rick Casares and Harlon Hill.
Hill remembered Kreamcheck in a 2006 article in the Coffin Corner.
“I can remember a big defensive tackle we had named John Kreamcheck,” Hill said “He’s became a policeman in Chicago. He came out of the coal mines of Pennsylvania. He was a great football player. But he, like me, sort of had been in an environment. He was not well versed in the ways of the world. He came to training camp and did not have a coat or tie. One of the rules was that on all trips we had to wear a coat and tie. I think George Halas went out and got him a dress shirt, tie, and coat.
“We went to Pittsburgh to play an exhibition game. John had all his family there. Like me, he was real excited about making the team and playing with the Bears. In the lobby of the hotel he had about 15 or 20 of his relatives with him. He called George Halas and asked him to come down. He wanted his family to meet him. So when he introduced Halas to his family, he told them, “I want you to meet a millionaire.”
“Another time John was on the field goal and extra-point team, and he went to sleep on the bench. We scored a touchdown and were lining up for the extra point when John realized he was supposed to be out there. He took off. About the time he got to the 40-yard-line the center was getting ready to snap the ball. So in front of fifty or sixty thousand people John just got down in a three-point stance on the 40-yard-line!”
When he left the Bears, Kreamcheck stayed in Chicago.
“I became a Chicago cop for 26-years,” Kreamcheck reported. “Best move I ever made. I retired in 1984. I liked what I did; they took care of me because I was a former Bear. I was married for 47 years. My wife Dorothy passed away four years ago. We did not have any children.”
Kreamcheck, 84, still resides in the Chicago area and occasionally gets back to visit relatives in Pennsylvania.
“I look back, and I loved every minute of it,” Kreamcheck said. “It’s been a great life.”
George Von Benko’s “Memory Lane” columns appear in the Sunday editions of the Herald-Standard. He also hosts a sports talk show on WMBS-AM radio from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.