My turn: Remembering Ted Kennedy

Just enough snow was falling to track a deer during a gray, Southeast November day. The air was wet, cold and still. It wasn't Southeast Alaska; it was the Yale Bowl in New Haven during the Yale versus Harvard football game of 1955. The Game was a significant social event in the Northeast. Special trains bringing partiers from Boston and New York pulled into New Haven. Back then, the Yale Bowl was one of the largest sports venues in the country with room for 60,000 spectators.

Juneau's Bob Boochever broke his leg playing in the Bowl as a halfback for Cornell in 1937. It was my freshman year, and I was playing trumpet in the Yale Band, which was about 120 members strong.

It was a Saturday afternoon and people could tell that "The Game" was about to begin. An explosion of drums and a fanfare of brass announced the band's pre-game entry at midfield. The Band marched through a tunnel onto the playing field amidst 60,000 cheering voices. I had never heard anything like it. Just before the kickoff, the public address system announced to the crowd that Senator and Mrs. John F. Kennedy and their guest, King Hussein of Jordan, were among the spectators. The announcement was received with a roar. The patriarch of the Kennedys, Joseph Kennedy, his brother, Bobby, and sister, Eunice, and other friends and family members were there too, including kid brother, Teddy, who was a starting end for Harvard. The Kennedys were all Harvard, and there were a lot of them. They were there for Harvard and for Teddy. That would be his last game, and against Yale no less.

At half-time, with Yale ahead by two touchdowns, the Yale Band took to the field, formed the traditional "Y" and played the Yale fight songs. The Harvard Band, with its base drum six feet in diameter, would come on shortly to make its "H." Six big security types in white service station jumpsuits surrounded the base drum (no one was going to run off with the Harvard drum). Harvard sounded a bit stodgy. The drum was a quarter beat late. As I was marching in the Band playing "Boola Boola," a Cole Porter piece composed in Porter's undergraduate days, something glanced against the back of my leg, buckling my knee and almost knocking me to the ground.. Looking around, I saw several pigs running through the rank and file. They had been introduced by the Harvard cheerleaders retaliating for the Yale prank the previous year. That year in the fall of 1954, the Yale coach had suited up Charlie Yeager, the pint-size Yale football team manager, for a point after touchdown. Charlie scored. And so it could be said, "Even the manager can score against Harvard."

In the third quarter with snow melting down our necks, it was Teddy Kennedy's moment. Teddy ran straight out from scrimmage, cut left, evaded the Yale defense and was open. The pass was high but Teddy sailed through the air to snatch it. He was hit mid-air but it was too late. He had the ball. The Harvard side of the field erupted.

Teddy had pulled in a pass in the end zone for the only Harvard score of the day. The play was well executed, and there was a murmur from the Yale side, "That was Jack Kennedy's kid brother? Half the stands are filled with Kennedys." It was the only touchdown Ted Kennedy ever made, but it was not enough for poor Harvard to make a difference that day.

Ted Kennedy followed his brothers into public service and went on to other victories and defeats for which you may remember him. I remember him at New Haven on that gray day in November 1955, with the roar of the crowd and Teddy going high in the air and coming down with the ball. I can still see those pigs running around too.

• Bill Ruddy is one of the founders of the Juneau Volunteer Marching Band.