Frank Troutman awoke on Dec. 25, 1942, in an upper berth on a train called the City of Los Angeles. His Christmas present was draped across the bed. It was a red jersey bearing No. 21 – Frank Sinkwich’s number.
The train was bearing west. It carried the Georgia Bulldogs, who were bound for Pasadena and a date with UCLA in the Rose Bowl. It also carried Troutman’s parents – his dad Frank Sr. and his mother Mary Frank – and an 8-year-old who, 75 years later, recalls being the only child aboard.
The trek began in Atlanta, the Troutmans’ hometown, at the old Union Station near the old Rich’s. They rode to Chicago and caught the City of L.A. The journey took four days. Troutman, now 83 and an Atlantan still, recalls chugging through a snowstorm in Utah. He recalls seeing buffalo. Beyond that, his memories of the trip are these: “I watched as my parents had drinks … (and) I walked back and forth.”
Troutman became a Georgia fan at age 4. His father was a graduate of UGA’s law school and had become a trademark attorney at Coca-Cola. In Frank Sr.’s capacity as a Georgia fundraiser, he became friends with coach Wally Butts. Troutman Jr. – also known as Little Frank, though not lately – remembers spending the night at Butts’ house in Athens a time or two.
It was through Butts that the Troutmans were given the royal treatment on Georgia’s first excursion to the Rose Bowl. They stayed at the team hotel, the posh Huntington in Pasadena. (Now known as the Langham Huntington, it sits 4.7 miles from the famous stadium.) They ate dinner with the team. Little Frank had a room to himself.
The Georgia party arrived in the L.A. area on Dec. 26. On one of the first nights there, Troutman met Veronica Lake, who had just starred alongside Alan Ladd in “This Gun for Hire” and “The Glass Key,” in the hotel dining room. “I was taller than she was,” he says, which sounds fanciful until we note that the blonde actress with the swoop-over-one-eye hairdo was 4-foot-11.
In California, the Troutmans “saw everything you’re supposed to see.” They gazed at the stars on Hollywood Boulevard. His mother took him on a streetcar to see the Pacific Ocean. He also witnessed a grim morning for the Georgia team. The night before, one enterprising player had called the valet and said, “Bring coach Butts’ car around.” He and a few teammates took a ride into L.A., where they ran out of gas. The Bulldog mentor was not amused.
A scrapbook, lovingly preserved, features many photos of Little Frank with Georgia players, Charley Trippi and Mr. and Mrs. Frank Sinkwich included. (Mrs. Sinkwich wasn’t allowed to stay at the Huntington.) He’s also pictured with George Poschner, who in 1945 would lose both legs and the fingers of one hand in the Battle of the Bulge. Frank Sr. would set up a charity fund for Poschner.
In December 1942, the world was at war. In some of Troutman’s photos, the Huntington’s blackout curtains are visible. Troutman recalls having to pull off an L.A. road to allow Army troops to pass. He was of the age where he resisted his mother’s attempts to brush his hair a certain way because “I looked like Adolf Hitler.”
In the photos, the 8-year-old Troutman – looking nothing like Hitler, it must be said – is captured wearing the same T-shirt over the same suit. The Sinkwich jersey isn’t evident, though the Troutman archives do feature a signed picture of the Heisman Trophy winner dedicated to “a great little fellow.”
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Today Frank Troutman is a tall man in retirement. He resides in the house off Peachtree Battle in which has lived, off and on, most of his life. He points to a sofa in the den. He was sitting there after church on Dec. 7, 1941, when word came that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. “I wasn’t sure what was going on,” he said. “But I was sure it wasn’t good.”
Little Frank grew up to play quarterback at Northside High. He was recruited by Georgia Tech, though that was a non-starter. (“My father hated Tech,” he says.”) He recalls Frank Broyles, a Yellow Jacket star who became a Tech assistant before leaving to coach Missouri and then Arkansas, telling him: “Troutman, your problem is that you throw off-balance.”
Troutman landed at Georgia on a football scholarship. Owing to a back injury suffered against Chamblee as a high school senior, he never played for the Bulldogs. He graduated from the school and took a law degree – his family is loaded with lawyers – but didn’t practice. He spent 25 years in Augusta running a food service company. He moved back to Atlanta and became a management consultant. “What I really wanted to be was an architect,” he says. “I haven’t told many people that.”
He’s a member of Augusta National. Asked if he has one of the famous green jackets in his collection of memorabilia, he says: “You’re not supposed to have them outside the clubhouse.” Pause for effect: “But I know where some are.”
He still holds Georgia season tickets, though he didn’t make it to a game this season. There are no rails leading to his seats in Sanford Stadium, and he is on the high side of 80 and uses a cane. But he remains, forever and ever, a Bulldog. He’s wearing a logo shirt as he recalls the Rose Bowl of Jan. 1, 1943. A deflated football, signed by the 1942 team, sits on a table. Was this ball used in the game?
“That’s the myth,” he says, “and I’m sticking to it.”
As for the game: Troutman concedes he doesn’t remember all the details. He does remember Georgia’s Lamar Davis taking the opening kickoff and being tackled by UCLA star Bob Waterfield. Mistaking Hollywood Janes, his visitor asks, “Didn’t Waterfield marry Jane Wyman?”
“He married Jane Russell,” Troutman says. Then, arching an eyebrow: “There was a difference.”
The scrapbook includes the Troutmans’ ticket stubs. They sat in Tunnel 18, Row 15, Seats 18-20. There are many photos of Little Frank, still clad in suit and T-shirt, watching the game. One shot from behind shows a man wearing an Army cap. “There were military people all over the place,” he says.
The game was scoreless through three quarters. Georgia blocked a Waterfield punt for a safety. Then Sinkwich, who had hurt his ankles in practice and was hobbled throughout, scored a touchdown after a Waterfield interception. Georgia won 9-0. “Trippi did it all,” Troutman says, and if you don’t believe him, you can read the L.A. papers’ account of the game. They’re in the scrapbook, too.
Headline from an Al Wolf column in the L.A. Times: “Trippi hailed as best back.”
Full page from the L.A. Examiner: “Story of 1943 Grid Classic Told in Photos.”
Headline from the Times: “Rooters rabid during game.”
Evocative photo from the Times: The actor Joe E. Brown sitting between glum UCLA players on the bench.
On the bus back to the Huntington, Troutman sat with Bill Godwin, the Georgia lineman who weighed a team-high 230 pounds. Godwin held his sweaty game jersey. “They gave these to us,” the big man told Little Frank.
Troutman: “I thought that was magnanimous.”
In the L.A. area on business 20 years ago, Troutman made a pilgrimage back to the Rose Bowl. He told his story – he’d been here on Jan. 1, 1943 – and convinced a worker to let him have another look around. “I looked pitiful, I guess.”
He saw the same lush shrubs and the same majestic Mt. Wilson he’d seen all those years ago. His visitor asks, “When you were there as an 8-year-old, were you thinking, ‘This is just great’?”
“No question about it.”
He has no plans to make the trip for Georgia’s second Rose Bowl. (His grandson is going.) “I don’t think I could handle it,” Troutman says of another westward journey. “I don’t think it would match up.”
He has, after all, been once. That once was the trip of a full and happy lifetime.
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