Marshall University Athletics
BOGACZYK: Shoebridge Legacy Woven into Herd-Rhode Island Game
9/2/2014 12:00:00 AM | Football
Shoebridge/Peavey Photo Gallery
By JACK BOGACZYK
HERDZONE.COM COLUMNIST
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. - When Louisville requested to move a 2014 football date at Edwards Stadium to 2016, Marshall found a replacement foe in Rhode Island.
Yes, it's another of those FBS versus FCS dates, but there's more of a connection deep within it than anyone in these parts realized.
Is there any way when the Herd scheduled the Rams that anyone could have seen how the Marshall home opener would rekindle memories of one of the Herd's most cherished quarterbacks?
No way. Not now. Not hardly.
Yet, in the stadium Saturday night, there will be intertwined a relationship between two families and two quarterbacks. It's the story of the Shoebridges and the Peaveys.
Tom Shoebridge has become pretty well-known in these parts. His older brother, Ted, was the starting quarterback for the 1970 Herd, and Ted was one of the 75 victims of the Marshall football team plane crash that November.
Jack Peavey is a former college football coach who is now an assistant athletic director at Oklahoma Baptist University. He played offensive tackle for the 1984 NCAA Division II champions at Troy State, and played briefly in the NFL. Peavey's son, Kolt, is a backup quarterback for Rhode Island, a transfer from South Alabama. Another Peavey son, Rafe, is a freshman quarterback at Arkansas.
Tom Shoebridge, 61, and Jack Peavey, 51, will watch Saturday night's game together. Their friendship of twenty-something years was partially forged by memories of Ted Shoebridge, a college QB of more than 40 years ago, but a player to whom Kolt Peavey can relate.
"It was 1992 and I was an assistant coach at Millersville (Pa.) University," Jack Peavey said, beginning the Shoebridge-Peavey story. "I'd go to Lyndhurst (N.J.), where Tom was the offensive coordinator, to recruit. They had some good teams, some tough, hard-nosed football players."
The two men's friendship grew when they worked summer camps together, and Peavey said he really appreciated "the football guy" that Shoebridge was. They remained in touch, and after Peavey made assistant coaching stops at Rhode Island and Brown, he got the head coaching job "a few miles down the road" from Lyndhurst at Division III William Paterson College.
"We were trying to build something out of nothing, and I asked `Shoe' if he'd come and talk to my team because I knew he was the kind of guy who would talk about toughness, success, tradition," Peavey said. "He said he wasn't sure about doing it, but he did."
When Tom Shoebridge first came to speak to the 1997 William Paterson team, he brought with him a helmet. It was the helmet his late brother had worn in that final game for Marshall at East Carolina before tragedy struck.
There was a shrine to Ted Shoebridge in the family's home. His last-game jersey was there, too. Those remembrances had been delivered to the family from Marshall sometime in the week to 10 days after the crash - when Tom Shoebridge was a high school senior, age 17.
"I don't know who delivered it, whether it was somebody from Marshall or somebody they had do it," Tom Shoebridge said. "There's the helmet, the jersey and the bag it came in. I do still have the bag, too."
Peavey said when Shoebridge began speaking to the William Paterson team about the helmet, "there wasn't a dry eye in the place. He talked about Teddy and how he chose Marshall, and what a great place it was for him, about the crash, and about character and leadership, and all those things he felt his brother represented to him."
The Peavey-Shoebridge relationship was rooted in football, but it was about much more. It was like family. The Peaveys would go to the Shoebridges for dinner, regular Italian feasts prepared by Ted and Tom's mother, Yolanda.
Ted's gear was ever-present, too.
That's how the quarterback connection that is part of Rhode Island-Marshall was made.
"When I was in first grade, my family went over to the Shoebridge house for dinner, and Mrs. Shoebridge had this big homemade meal for everyone," Kolt Peavey said. "They are some of the nicest people I have ever met, and I learned so much about family and how to treat people by being around them.
"I remember Tommy showing us the basement in the Shoebridge home, and it was a shrine to all the great achievements of Ted Shoebridge. I got to see so much about the history of Marshall football and what Ted Shoebridge meant to the school, not just as a player, but as a person. Everybody loved the Shoebridge family because they were great people who were truly a part of their community.
"I had just started playing football that year, and I remember standing in the Shoebridge basement and deciding that I wanted to be a quarterback. Ted Shoebridge became the model for the type of player and the type of person I wanted to be.
"Even though I was young, I remember just wanting to step back and take it all in. Seeing what Tommy had done with the basement made me realize how special Marshall football was, and how special Ted Shoebridge was."
The Peaveys moved away from Clifton, N.J. in 1999, but the friendship endured - as do memories of the messages on Ted Shoebridge's green Herd helmet.
"You know how they used to have those things where you could make your own labels and they'd stick?" Tom Shoebridge said of the pistol-shaped DYMO Labelmakers. "Ted's helmet has those. Back in those days, they'd do what you called a Kansas City huddle - two rows of five players with the quarterback facing the other 10 guys.
"Teddy's helmet had two labels. One was `No Mistakes.' The other was W.W.P.I.T. (Former Herd assistant coach) Red Dawson explained it to us back then, I think. That was for `We Will Put It Together.' I told Jack about Marshall, that there were tough times when Teddy got there, even before the accident. Recruiting violations that set them back ... it was a struggle. That's what W.W.P.I.T. was about."
After Ted Shoebridge's helmet was delivered to his home in Lyndhurst, Tom was inspired to get a piece of tape and write WWPIT on it and affix it to the front of his own Lyndhurst High helmet for the team's season-ending game on Thanksgiving.
"Jack Peavey is a guy I've always been able to talk to," Shoebridge said. "And I distinctly Kolt coming to our house and looking at Ted's helmet and saying he wanted to be a quarterback. And his little brother is a quarterback, too.
"I remember Rafe in the crib at those dinners we had, and he and Kolt and all that blond hair. For Kolt and Rafe to pick up on what Teddy's life means, it's a great story. It's going to be great to see Jack and Kolt again."
Tom Shoebridge said he plans on trying to stay about nine days in this trip to Huntington, hanging around for the Lajterman brothers' golf tournament dedicated to their late brother and Ted Shoebridge's Lyndhurst and Marshall teammate, place-kicker Marcelo Lajterman. Ted Shoebridge and Lajterman's younger brother, Mo, were high school teammates, too.
"You know, sometimes it's hard to talk about, what happened in our town with Teddy and Marcelo after the accident," Tom Shoebridge said. "Here Teddy's an unbelievable athlete, great kid, great person and I'm his younger brother, a teenager, following in his footsteps.
"There are times when things happen to kids and parents wonder, `Why?' I know my parents did. But sometimes you have to sit back and reflect. We all grieved, still do. But there's another part of it, and those people who died, their contribution is enormous.
"What that tragedy did was help in so many ways, with scholarships, foundations, starting charities. Without the tragedy, so many good things would not have happened, and I have to believe that goodness, those great things, that was their calling."
And on Saturday night, Jack Peavey and Tom Shoebridge will get together - again -- because of a deep connection with quarterbacks.
"Playing football at the University of South Alabama for two years, I got to see a lot of great football stadiums, but I am looking forward to seeing Marshall the most," Kolt Peavey said. "Knowing the history of the program and being close with the Shoebridge family, this is going to be special for me.
"My father and Tommy will be in the stands watching together, and I'm excited to be able to see both of them after the game. It's been more than a decade since I've seen Tommy. This trip is a big deal and I am more than looking forward to being able to compete with a program like Marshall."
For these two families, it's certainly not just another FBS versus FCS game.
"Really," Jack Peavey said, "what we have is a pretty awesome thing."
