SALAD BOWL

Faction of helping others, in this case needy youngsters.

The idea of a Salad Bowl game originated with Her-bert A. Askins, short, wiry, and decisive, who looks more like a retired welterweight than he does a highly successful businessman who became an assistant secretary of the navy under President Harry Truman.

It came to him during a meeting in 1940 of the Phoenix Kiwanis Club. A youngster by the name of Johnny, little and scared, was introduced to the club. He had to be carried before the group of men, because he had a club foot and couldn't walk. It was a scene full of pathos, and the club adopted Johnny as its project-today, he walks, tall and straight, because the club financed the operations necessary to remake his feet to the normalcy most of us enjoy.

At the time, Herb Askins reasoned that what might be done on a small scale could be done big-time with the proper promotion. He conferred with others and the Salad Bowl idea was born.

Thirty high school bands entertain 1952 Salad Bowl crowd.

His idea wasn't due for realization yet, though. World War II brought a stop to it. Askins tucked it in the recesses of his mind, and turned the mental key that kept it securely in place for the day when it might become an actuality.

Most servicemen had barely returned to their homes in 1947 when Askins corraled Martin Wist, a forceful, straight-talking Phoenix businessman and fellow member of the Phoenix Kiwanis Club. They sold their fellow club-members on the idea and started to work promoting the first Salad Bowl.

It was decided that the festival would be different. Kids were to benefit from it, hence it seemed proper that Arizona youngsters should stage the affair. Most professional promoters would have scoffed at their ideas: The festival would be promoted on a "straight" basis. Since high school youngsters were to provide the background, leg art would be at a minimum. There would be a Queen each year, yes, but she'd be chosen for true grace, not just the ability to expose herself to a photographer's camera. One thing was paramount, the Salad Bowl game was to produce the best football available.

Askins and Wist descended on newsrooms and cor-nered radio station executives. They harangued and har-assed every possible publicity outlet. They talked to other service clubs and to business organizations. They were pioneering, and they threw all their energies into the task.

The first Salad Bowl program was held on January 1, 1948. The first year's event, as many predicted, resulted in a $5,000 loss, but the sponsors overcame pessimism, made up the shortage from their own pockets, and immediately began plans for future activity.

For the 1949 affair, Askins and Wist talked their fellow sponsors into a "bigger and better than ever" production. Arizona on Parade was added, a morning event that attracted Approximately a quarter million jam the streets of Phoenix on New Year's Day to see the Salad Bowl's "Arizona on Parade."

bands and floats from 34 schools representing 26 Arizona communities. They served not only to advertise their communities, but the Salad Bowl as well. A national publicity program for the first time was beginning to take shape.

The game that year saw Drake University of Des Moines, Iowa, barely nose out the University of Arizona 14-13. But, more important, it realized a net profit of $15,000. Of that amount $4,000 went to the Phoenix club to reimburse its loss the preceding year. The remainder was allocated to clubs throughout oughout the state to promote their aid-to-youth programs.

Thus was born the Arizona Kiwanis Foundation for Handicapped Children. Today, profits from the festival are divided about 50 per cent to Kiwanis Clubs for their programs throughout the state, and about 50 per cent to the Foundation, which hopes eventually to provide physical facilities for some as-yet-unnamed youth aid program.

The actual division can best be illustrated by the profits from the 1951 game. There was a net gain of $26,500 from all events. This was divided about $16,000 to the Kiwanis Foundation itself, and about $10,500 to the individual clubs for use as they saw fit.

Just where do the individual clubs which split the Salad Bowl melon spend their money?

The money has been spent for children who needed psychiatric help, for youngsters with cleft palates and club feet, the hard of hearing, for those whose jaws were malformed because of tooth misalignment. It has been spent in towns, hamlets and cities all the way from Flagstaff to Prescott and Douglas, from Yuma to Phoenix and Glendale.

Looking through the minutes of various club meetings, there's a poignant story anyone can find. The story always is told tersely, but here's an example: "It was moved and seconded that the Club underwrite hospitalization for an operation on --, age eight. After a valiant try by coast physicians, she still is blind. The eyes are now quite painful, and the time has come to remove both of her eyes to give her the advantage of artificial eyes. The father has been dead for a number of years, and the mother is working as a maid at Hospital. There are either three or four children in the family, and, therefore, the family is unable to pay for hospital or medical bills."

Each year teams visit the Arizona Home for Crippled Children. There's always a small ceremony during which the players give miniature footballs to the youngsters there, who are suffering everything from crippling burns to bone structure abnormalities.

Lou Canarozzi, captain of the University of Dayton team that played in the 1952 game, is a case in point. A burly, yet pleasant mannered, guard, Canarozzi spent two hours at the hospital, giving his autograph to kids in casts, and found one nine-year-old youngster to his special liking. They'd both lost their front teeth the month previous.

Always good, Canarozzi outdid himself the next day. Although his team lost to a hustling University of Houston outfit, 26-21, Lou spent most of the afternoon in the Houston backfield. It was a bruising and bloody game, but again it produced a profit for the Foundation.

It was inevitable that the festival should be a success.

Back of its planning and execution were some of the canniest brains in the nation's fastest-growing state.

Take, for instance, the year 1951, when the National Collegiate Athletic Association ruled that any two of its member schools taking part in a post-season game would have to divide 75 per cent of the receipts.

It was a puzzling situation. Most promoters of the huge, 100,000 attendance post-season extravaganzas would be happy to retain their 25 per cent. But not so for the Phoenix Salad Bowl. Its promoters were money-hungry businessmen who acted solely on an unselfish motive. They wanted dough and lots of it.

The situation wasn't entirely fair. Many of the schools playing for the Salad Bowl had accepted a minimum charge for their share, realizing the nature of the enterprise. Moreover, it seemed right that a charity game, played for unfortunate kids, should be given some sort of special dispensa-tion.

But Kiwanis business brains prevailed. The problem was licked by a shrewd maneuver. Tickets selling for $6 were marked thusly-"$3 gift to program. $1 tax. $2 admis-sion." The 75 per cent of the receipts marked for the schools thus came from the $2. The program was a money-maker, anyway, and it was understandable that the game's amateur promoters were proud of their $14,000 net profit-without a twinge of conscience.

Not that the term "amateur" can be applied too strictly to these businessmen. One year, for instance, they placed a huge mobile cement mixer on Pierce Street right next to Central Avenue in Phoenix.

All one day, the mixer chewed up Arizona's prize lettuce, with tomatoes, celery and other salad ingredients. Thousands visited the publicity gimmick to have their fill of a tasty noon luncheon. Pictures of the affair were placed in newspapers ranging from New York to San Francisco, from Portland, Me., even to Miami, Fla.! On another occasion-and you count on Texas to provide this kind of promotion-Mayor Oscar Holcombe of Houston announced he had made the entire 60-piece band of North Phoenix High School official citizens of the state of Texas. Simply because the band was to represent the city's university at the annual game.

Bands just naturally seem to gravitate to the Salad Bowl. Of course, between 200,000 and 250,000 persons each New Year's Day watch the parade that draws more than 30 high school outfits from the state. That's a great incentive to any of the small schools in this state. But others come, too. The 1953 game drew the San Diego Navy band that is touted by many as the finest service outfit in the nation.

They had a Jubilee program at Montgomery Stadium in Phoenix for those who wanted to watch the parade without having to stand. The entertainment program there was more than sufficient to satisfy the customers who paid a slight admission fee to sit in the stadium until Arizona on Parade arrived. The procession always passes once around the stadium track before disbanding.

Each year they were realizing profits ranging from $14,000 to $26,000-all of it to be spent on worthy, handicapped youngsters who needed nothing but care or surgery for a normal future life. And the youngsters are considered only from need, not Kiwanis connections.

The festival and the game itself have captured the fancy of all Arizona. Perhaps this feeling was best expressed by the taxi driver in Phoenix who was asked what his expenses were for transporting Salad Bowl Queen candidates from one part of Phoenix to another: "You don't owe me nothing," he said. "If this town's big shots can work as hard as they do, I can too. This thing belongs to all of us."

Maybe that's why there will always be a Salad Bowl.