Remembering
Todd Davis

Jerry, your response reinforces why I have always known the kind of decent human being you are, but it didn’t need reinforcing. I will forward your two cents' worth to the Fort Wayne Rugby website, along with this, just for the historical record of our club.
 

I’m not sure how well you know who Arlie Hatch is. I can’t remember exactly how he became one of the original FWRFC members back in 1969, maybe Harold Faust, big Oscar, or Ronnie Culpher recruited him.
 

I think you’ve probably heard the story of our first match, played in an era when there were not many Black athletes on the few rugby teams around.

To reaffirm the record, during our four short weeks of practices next to the old Fort Wayne Coliseum, the former Wizards baseball site, I told the guys they were about to be hooked on a robust contact sport, one that also carried another appeal, sportsmanship and brotherhood, not only with your teammates but with the very opponents you battled on the pitch.
 

Sixteen of us met on Saturday, March 3, 1969, near South Lafayette and McKinnie at 8 a.m. Anticipation was high. We piled into five cars and headed out, planning to stop for lunch in LaSalle-Peru, Illinois, before our 2 p.m. match against one of only twelve teams in the fledgling Midwest Rugby Union. We were its newest member team.
 

The travelers included Arlie, Faust, Zima, Warner, Rocky, Bentele, Bob Hudson, Griz Benz’s brother Carl, Argentinian referee J.P. Maldonado, John McKay, Jack Hand, Mark Meintel, Ken Hover, first-ever recruit Rocky Petit, and the only two who actually knew rugby, South African Howard Holley and Princeton University’s Ed Diller. Two or three others couldn’t make the trip.

At 11:30 a.m., near LaSalle-Peru, we pulled into a small rural restaurant. We sat among maybe twenty other lunch customers, unnoticed at first. After several minutes, we asked, “Could we order?” The reply came, “Sorry, we can’t serve you. You’ll have to leave.” It took a few moments for that to sink in. It took every bit of restraint, and several “come on, let’s go” from my teammates, to keep me from turning over tables and smashing everything in sight. Snacks from a nearby gas station became our pre-game “meal.”
 

We arrived an hour before kickoff. The crowd grew, and several hundred spectators lined the field. I met the Illinois Valley captain, Al Alteri, the man I’d scheduled the match with. Spirits were high, but less than twenty minutes into the first half, our shallow rugby roots began to show. Big Oscar tackled a man hard and drove him into the ground, not hearing the whistle at first. As others stepped in to pull him off, someone from the opposition shouted, “Get that n***** off him.”
 

Silence. Then yelling. I shoved Alteri and told him if we heard one more word like that, he could send the spectators home, because that’s where we were going. He calmed his team, but the damage was done. We never invited them to Fort Wayne for a return match.
 

The rest of the game was hard-fought. We lost 6–3, packed up immediately, and drove home. A complaint was filed with the Midwest Rugby Union, and not long after, for various transgressions, the Illinois Valley RFC was denied membership and ultimately disbanded.
 

That was a small piece of the earliest history of the Fort Wayne Rugby Football Club. Nothing like it ever happened again for us, but we all know the deeper damages done to our culture and our humanity through greater injustices.
 

Arlie Hatch, a fine teammate and friend to this day, retired after a career with the VA in Fort Wayne. A graduate of Central High School, he lives near McMillen Park with his wife, Vivian. I treasure his friendship deeply.
 

I’d be proud to go into rugby battle, social danger, or even war beside mates like Arlie Hatch and Jerry Embry, too.
 

"Itz not what you look at….itz what you SEE!

ONWEGO"

— Todd Davis
Founder, Fort Wayne Rugby Football Club