Our Journey

We returned from holiday Monday with sad news that my Grandmother, Myra Oliver, had passed away on December 19.  When I think of my grandma, I think of the word “dignity”.  And the article below written by Bob Hartman does a great job of capturing this.  Those of you who knew her from Culver will smile as you read this.  And those of you who didn’t might enjoy knowing a little something about her.

Myra Oliver

THE  QUEEN  OF  FANS – THE  FINAL WHISTLE

by Robert B. D. Hartman

The 16^th of October 1993, was hardly the picture-book day the Academies wished for a Fall Festival football game. It had rained incessantly since dawn and Oliver Field was a veritable lake by the 1:30 kick-off between the Culver Eagles and Scecina High School from Indianapolis.

Though the skies had cleared slightly by game time, there was a distinct threat of more precipitation and the gathering crowd looked anxiously at the scudding clouds.  Undeterred by the weather, Myra Oliver, the “Queen of Fans,” arrived early and settled into her favorite seat midway up in the stands overlooking the field named in honor of her late husband. She greeted parents and visitors, always cognizant of her status as the senior citizen of the Academy’s athletic community.

For 37 years, Myra was not simply the wife of a head coach, but very much a part of his professional life and Culver’s number one fan. She accompanied Russ on the long train trips to Minnesota, West Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, when the Culver competed with the likes of Shattuck, Greenbrier, Memphis Tech, and the Kentucky Military Institute. When competition with these old line schools began to change in the late 1950s and 1960s, Myra occupied a reserved seat on bus rides to countless small towns across Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. She was always gracious, remembered faces and names, and served as an unofficial Academy ambassador.

No one can calculate the number of football, basketball, and baseball games Mrs. Russell Dwight Oliver viewed since she and Russ were married in 1937. During 29 football seasons, he coached 232 football games. His basketball and baseball tenure was not as lengthy, but during the “iron man” years when he coached all three sports, his teams played 348 basketball games and his baseball squad 181. No other person in the history of the Academy will ever match that record – a total of 761 games. For most of those contests, Myra was an ever-present fan. She knew each player and was a true part of each team, not just a face in the crowd.

On Sunday afternoons, during the football and basketball seasons, she would prepare bowls of batter for her famous waffle dinners. Team members would arrive at the Oliver home, slip out of their Dress A’s or athletic sweaters, make some small talk, and then take seats in the dining room for a feast of waffles, drenched in maple syrup and melted butter.

Following the 1969 football season, Russ surrendered his coaching duties to become the Alumni Director. He and Myra also began to plan for retirement, including his appointment by George Steinbrenner ’48, as a scout for the New York Yankees. His sudden illness and subsequent death in December of 1974 was a shock to everyone. The king had died but, in passing, he left a very dedicated queen.

Myra remained in Culver and close to her friends, the Academy and the teams she loved. A place on the top row of the Reuben H. Fleet Gymnasium was tacitly “reserved” for her during the basketball season and when spring arrived and the click of bat against ball could be heard north of Highway 10, Myra would usually be holding court in the third base bleachers.   But age was creeping up. Because of failing eyesight, Myra decided to move into a retirement community in Fort Wayne where she would be near her son, Bruce ’56. For the first time in more than six decades, young athletes missed her smiling face and supportive applause. She never wavered in her loyalty to the teams her husband coached, nor the students who made up Culver’s new generations of athletes.

Today, December 19, 2009, Myra Oliver heard the Almighty’s Final Whistle.  She was 94.  We won’t forget our memories of this petite, gray-haired lady. “God’s Blessings” to Culver’s “Queen of Fans”