Peter Onuf: This is BackStory with us, the American Backstory hosts. In Peter Onuf, 18th century guy.
Ed Ayers: I’m Ed Ayers, 19th century history guy.
Brian Balogh: And I’m Brian Balogh, your 20th century history guy.
[music]
Brian Balogh: It’s that time of year in American, when the holidays start to come fast and furious. Thirty-five years ago, Charlie Brown just about summed it up to his sister, Sally, and his good buddy, Linus.
[Charlie Brown Clip] “We’ve got another holiday to worry about. It seems Thanksgiving Day is upon us. I haven’t even finished eating all my Halloween candy. Sally, Thanksgiving is a very important holiday. Ours was the first country in the world to make a national holiday to give thanks.”
Peter: Each week on BackStory, we take a topic from the here and now and explore its historical roots. This week, we’re getting out the carving knives and taking on Thanksgiving. Like Linus said, it’s a very important holiday; but why is it so important and why did the U.S. Declare a national holiday to give thanks. By the end of today’s show, we hope to have some answers.
Brian: hosts, I know that when it comes to holidays, Thanksgiving is really the big enchilada for historians; I mean, what other holiday do people get out and actually re-enact an episode from American history, but I get excited about Thanksgiving for an entirely different reason.
[football commentary]
Brian: Now, when we were planning today’s show, I made it clear how I felt about this to our producers, and as usual, they didn’t listen to me, they said I had to do an interview anyway, so I said, “All right, you find me someone who values what I value about the holiday, and I’ll do your interview.” Peter, Ed, our producers, once again, came through.
Roger Staubach: “I’m Roger Stabuch, I was a former quarterback for the United States Naval Academy, and I also spent 11 years as a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys”
Brian: Roger Stabuch a/k/a/ “Roger the Dodger”, a/k/a/ “Captain Comeback”, a/k/a/ one of my favorite football players – ever. During those 11 years when Stabuch played for the Dallas Cowboys, I probably spent every single Thanksgiving with Roger. You see, for many years, the Cowboys have been one of the two NFL teams to play home games on Thanksgiving Day.
Roger: It really got started when I first joined the team; Detroit started it, and the NFL decided that they were going to have a double-header, so, Tex Fram, who was our General Manager, volunteered and Coach Landry told us we were going to start playing on Thanksgiving.
Brian: And do you remember when he told you that?
Roger: Yeah, you’re thinking about, usually it takes a few days to heal, and if you get beat up and bruised after the Sunday game, we had to kind of get back into it immediately to get ready for Thursday game, and we took Wednesday off, so really, we only had two days to put in normally what would be a four-day of game plan.
Brian: Did he ever say anything to you, or tell you about Tom Landry, now the great coach of the Dallas Cowboys, did he ever say anything to you about Thanksgiving; did he even notice that it was Thanksgiving, except, of course, the different prep time.
Roger: No, when he called me the night before, he always called me the night before the game to maybe go over a few things; I’d literally have the game plan by the phone, and he wouldn’t even say “Hey Roger”, I’d just pick up the phone, and he’d say on that 16, that red slip on motion, we want to run a different name out on; so, I’d just take some notes down, and of course, Thanksgiving would be better because our game plans could get pretty complicated, but he didn’t have enough time to complicate them by Thursday. And then he’d also look at the other guys, they’d be at a little bit of a disadvantage, because we’d have our Thanksgiving Day at home. No one really wanted to play on Thanksgiving, and when Tex volunteered, as long as we’d play at home and we’d do it every year.