SAN ANTONIO — "It appears something has happened in the motorcade route," said a Dallas-area radio reporter on Nov. 22, 1963. "Something, I repeat, has happened in the motorcade route."
"President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time," said legendary CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite.
Most of us remember that sad day in American history—the day that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. The president had been in San Antonio the day before as part of a Texas swing before Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed him in downtown Dallas.
It was one week later that two San Antonio high schools matched up in the state playoffs. LEE vs. Brackenridge faced off in a gridiron battle still remembered to this day as simply The Game.
The country was still healing from the assassination, and it was also the early 1960s, a tumultuous in our nation's history. The game that night, on Nov. 29, 1963, was epic on the field.
LEE outlasted the 4A defending champion Eagles, 55-48. But the ripple effects of that victory went beyond the field.
"The City of San Antonio needed emotional relief," said legendary LEE running back Linus Baer. "I think this game provided that. It took everybody's mind off the assassination and let everybody focus on the game, which turned out to be historical."
The game sold out the day before in a matter of hours. Twenty-thousand fans would fill the stands of Alamo Stadium.
It also became, due to growing interest, the first Texas high school football game to broadcast on television around the state.
"I think (former KENS 5 sports anchor) Dan Cook once said that if everybody was at the game, there would have been 200,000 people there," said Baer. "It was an impactful part of my life. I just didn't realize it at the time."
Given the racial climate of the day and the national sorrow surrounding the president's assassination, San Antonio football fans from opposite parts of town were able to come together to celebrate the game and unite in the face of the prior week's events. It was a display of the power of sports, in a moment of particular hardship for the country.
"It can help heal the relationships with players, coaches and fans," Baer said. "It just kind of brings everything together."
Warren McVea, the star running back who played for Brackenridge, offered his perspective upon looking back at the game six decades later: "There was lots of scoring going on, but I didn't think about the significance it had throughout the state."
So storied is the Volunteers-Eagles showdown that the Dallas Morning News in 1999 voted it the best Texas high school football game of the 20th century.
"None have been talked about like 'the 55-48 game,'" former University of Texas Longhorns Head coach Darrell Royal once said.
"The 'Big Game' was my senior year," said longtime KENS news anchor Chris Marrou. "Lots of people ask me if I was at the game, and yes I was."
"The press built it up to be this super game, and it lived up to all the expectations that were out there," said Baer.
Marrou put it simply: The game provided more than fans might've expected had the unthinkable not happened just a week prior.
"Joy was in short supply those days."