“Papaw, can you tell me about your college days?”
It’s a simple enough question, but dementia complicates things for my Papaw, Don Sparks. My Grandma, Mary Lynne (we call her “Mum”), has to remind Papaw of most things: when to take his medications, when and what to eat, and sometimes, when it’s time to go back to the hospital or physical therapy clinic. But Papaw’s memories from 70 years ago are always readily available – as a former member of the Western Kentucky University football team from 1951-1955, his memories of that time are borderline sacred.
“I was a team captain and all-state in high school, and got a full scholarship to WKU,” he recalled. “I’d been to Eastern [Kentucky University], where a lot of guys from my hometown, Ashland, went, and I was looking into Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky. And one of the coaches was from Ashland, so I said ‘I’ll take that scholarship from Western… the Hilltoppers.’”
Mum is as bubbly an extrovert as they come and she juggles as many roles as she has friends–far more than I can count. One such role is Papaw’s personal memory defibrillator, jolting old memories back to life when his fades. “And who came to visit you and your mom?” she asked. “There was a man who came to visit before–”
“Ah yes,” Papaw says when the memory hits him with Mum’s assist. “There was a guy who came to talk to us. And after he left, my mom said, ‘he’s a nice fella.’ And so I knew where I needed to go.”
After being recruited, Papaw hitchhiked nearly 300 miles from Ashland to Bowling Green to start his collegiate athletic career. Scholarship aside, there’s a reason he didn’t take much convincing–there has always been a lot to like about WKU for students, athletes, and sports fans alike, and that much is consistent over time.
Today, WKU is a humble mid-major athletic program in Conference USA with a volleyball team that is regularly nationally-ranked, upset-hungry basketball teams that pull off a miracle every once in a while in March, and an impressive NIL store that caters well to athletes and their fans.
It’s also home to Big Red, arguably the most lovable mascot in the world, an impressive broadcasting program, and a forensics team that regularly wins national championships. The campus itself is lovely, with its green grass and brick buildings–especially in the spring when the cherry blossoms bloom–and the “old campus” is built on top of a hill, which is why WKU’s sports teams are called the Hilltoppers.
Back when Papaw was playing football for WKU, the football field was located right next to the buildings where I took my communication studies classes in undergrad and graduate school from 2012-2018.
Pictured: Upper: Three generations of Hilltopper athletes: Don Sparks (football), my mom, Theresa Lever (track & field and cross country), and me (track & field and cross country) standing where Papaw’s old football field once stood after my cross country practice in 2016. Lower: Us at the W-Club brunch during WKU homecoming the following day with youngest grandchild, Eliza, in the back.
Papaw has been back to campus many times to catch up with his friends at homecoming, or to watch me race for WKU when I was competing in college. He remembers what campus looked like before the construction of the new student center, dorms, and statues, and noted how much has changed over the years.
But what else is new? In college sports and life, change is the only constant. And so much is in flux within the college sports industry lately. Of course there’s conference realignment, NIL, and dozens of recent lawsuits filed against the NCAA. But Papaw also lived on the other side of changes in the industry that were so fundamental, we don’t think of them at all.
Take bowl games, for example. Papaw is a proud member of the WKU football team that won the 1952 Refrigerator Bowl. Yes, you read that right—it wasn’t the Ace Hardware Bowl or the Lowe’s Bowl or the Whatever-Huge-Warehouse-Store-You-Can-Buy-A-Refrigerator-From Bowl. It was just the Refrigerator Bowl, no brand name required. The Refrigerator Bowl was WKU’s first-ever bowl game, and it took place in Evansville, Indiana. (Papaw remembers it as “a little town across the river that made refrigerators.”)
Although it’s common today for companies to sponsor bowl games, it wasn’t always the norm, and Papaw’s memory of his first bowl game serves him well: the Refrigerator Bowl was named such because Evansville is a city that was known for manufacturing refrigerators. Papaw remembers winning that game in a blowout (WKU beat Arkansas State 34-19 after “Peru Teachers College of Peru, NE turned down the invitation because they believed the Hilltoppers were too tough.”)
The 1952 Refrigerator Bowl champions (Don Sparks circled in red). Photo credit: Jerry Passafiume via the WKU Digital Commons
Since then, WKU has also gone through its fair share of modern changes, whether it was a transition to FBS football in 2009 that came with a massive stadium renovation, the shift from the Sun Belt Conference to Conference USA in 2014 (decades after moving from the Ohio Valley Conference to the Sun Belt in 1982), or a sponsorship switch from Russel to Nike in 2017.
So, too, has college football. Of course there’s the obvious changes: six-figure NIL deals for football stars, pyrotechnics and flyovers as in-game spectacles, chartered flights, and green dot technology to name a few. But the sport itself has also changed vastly since the ‘50s.
For instance, Papaw played multiple positions on both offense and defense, a practice that was relatively common in the ‘50s. The WKU Archives list him as an “end.” Not an “offensive end” or a “defensive end,” but just an “end” because Papaw did both in addition to a handful of other positions like wide receiver.
Three Hilltopper seniors photographed in 1954. Photo credit: Jerry Passafiume via the WKU Digital Commons
To this day, Papaw remembers his teammates. There was William Ploumis, born to a family of Greek immigrants, who went on to play for the L.A. Rams before becoming an orthodontist and father of four. Whitey Sanders, who played quarterback, held the national record in passing yards in 1954 nearly went pro, but was called to serve military tours in Korea and Japan before becoming a renowned political cartoonist. Jerry Passafiume played tackle and chronicled his and his teammates’ football careers in a 156-page scrapbook that has since become digitized.
A newspaper clipping featuring Jerry Passafiume and Don Sparks, pulled from Passafiume’s digital scrapbook. Photo credit: Jerry Passafiume via the WKU Digital Commons
There was also Jimmy Feix, who played quarterback before Sanders, and eventually became the winningest football coach in WKU history. Today, like most colleges, WKU’s football stadium is named after a sponsor–local grocery company Houchens Industries to be exact.
But the stadium, which wasn’t built until 1968, was originally named Jimmy Feix Field before it was rebranded Houchens Industries–L.T. Smith Stadium in 2008 when the company donated $5 million to expand the stadium’s seating capacity in preparation for WKU’s move from FCS to FBS football. But the turf field itself is still called Feix Field.
WKU’s football stadium is located directly across from WKU’s basketball court, E.A. Diddle Arena, which is named after another Hilltopper legend. When Edgar Allen Diddle retired in 1964, he was the winningest men’s basketball coach in NCAA history and still ranks fifth all-time on that list. Papaw knew him, too, even if it takes him a minute to remember.
“I had a dislocated shoulder playing football in college,” Papaw recalled, trailing off as his memory faded. Mum filled in the rest: “And you were sitting on the sidelines, and Mr. Diddle…”
“He was a basketball coach with a really good record, always up in the high rankings,” Papaw remembered. “But I was sitting watching [football practice], and he took me down to the gym, he made a program, with the weight machines and everything.”
“Did he put your arm in an ice bucket?” Mum asked.
“He did,” Papaw said. “He put my arm in an ice bucket and he said ‘you do this every day for 25 minutes.’”
Like several of his teammates, Papaw served in the military after college and rose to the rank of Colonel before he retired (so did my mom, Theresa Lever). He remembers how football prepared him for his Army service, both in terms of physical fitness and camaraderie. And that’s also what he remembers loving the most about the sport itself.
“The camaraderie, the teamwork,” he said when I asked him what he liked most about football. “There’s a lot to like. Running down the field and catching passes. A little bit of everything.”
Papaw and Mum (far right) and family after my mom, Theresa (fourth from left), was promoted to Colonel in 2007.
We never really know how long Papaw has left with us. He’s flirted with death several times and made more Hail Mary comebacks than any of us can remember. A lot of Papaw’s longevity can be attributed to Mum, who still looks at him like a teenager in love. Today, Mum is the MVP, doing everything she can to care for Papaw and, in her words, “do what love requires.”
Over the years, we’ve learned that dementia requires a lot. It’s a cruel disease, but thankfully, Papaw still remembers us, his family, even if the details from his daily life, past and present, are sometimes fuzzy. And, although WKU football has one of the most special places in his heart, whenever he goes, we will always remember him as so much more than just a football player: he’ll always be a loving husband, father, and grandfather, a soldier, and a Christian who lived out his faith more than most, in addition to an outstanding “end” for his beloved WKU Hilltoppers.