1942 The Sport Highway With Al Warden Dec. 19, 1942 Romney’s Doing Red Cross Work Two former athletic marvels in Utah, Lon Romney and George Ottinger Romney, are doing themselves proud these days with the American Red Cross in England and Scotland. Back in 1910-11-12 Lon Romney was one of America’s greatest football stars. He later coached at Ogden high school and served as secretary of the Ogden chamber of commerce in 1939. Lon used to carry the pigskin in one hand and straightarm his opponents with the other while traveling at top speed. Ott was a brilliant all-around athlete at Utah university and Montana State and did post graduate work at Harvard. He coached East high of Salt Lake, Montana State and Brigham Young university. Until just a few months ago he was in charge of recreation for Uncle Sam and had headquarters in Washington. Both Ott and Lon are polished after dinner speakers. Lon recently addressed the Edinburgh Rotary club. Lon writes this corner from Edignburgh where he is assigned to Red Cross Work with Uncle Sam’s fighting forces. He writes in part as follows: ‘Ernie Pyle gives here a true and unbiased account of what’s what in club work. Since this is the thing, I am connected with and further, since this will be news to the mothers, fathers, and others of the servicemen, I would be happy if you would devote a little pace to this good cause and purpose. This will be most helpful to the Red Cross. “have seen Ott Romney twice. He is at headquarters in London as director of the club operations, a big job to which as you must know he is the equal. The club which I am part of is one of the nicest. This is great work. Remember me to Abe, Bill, Ross and Blaine Glassmann, Frank Francis, Glen Perrins and the gang.” Schubert Dyches, former Montana State coach, is also on duty in England under Ott Romney, They were buddies together at East high in Salt Lake and later at Bozeman. Space will not permit the publishing of all the pamphlet Lon sends along on “The American Red Cross in Great Britain” but we are providing some of the highlights. The pamphlet is a masterpiece and was written by Ernie Pyle, American Newspaperman. We quote as follows: “For a few days now I’ll be writing about the American Red Cross. And I warn you don’t say to yourself, “Oh that stuff; I’ll stop reading until he gets onto something else.” You’ll be making a mistake. For the Red Cross in this war is doing something brand new and wonderfully interesting. The Red Cross is actually running a large chain of hotels all over the world for American troops on leave. It isn’t running them for profit, and it doesn’t hand out any sermons with its bed and board. It is running them to help keep the soldiers happy. “Some months ago the war department designated the Red Cross as the one and only civilian organization to serve American troops abroad. It was a wise decision. It eliminates the services you get with Y.M.C.A, the Salvation Army and a half dozen other volunteer outfits all in the field together. Instead of a lot of little organizations doing lot of halfway things, one immense organization is doing one big thing in a colossal way. “The Red Cross funds seem to be almost unlimited, and there is no penny-pinching. And because the Red Cross is a relief organization and not a spiritual one, it completely absolves the soldier from having to pray for his chocolate bar. You can be sure that after the war there won’t be any complaints about the way the Red Cross took care of the men. The Red Cross has not set up canteens or entertainment facilities in the camps. This is handled by the army itself. The Red Cross is almost solely concerned with soldiers on leave. The Red Cross is home and fireside when they come to town to rip and roar. The Red Cross has set up these ‘leave hotels’ all over the world, wherever we have large numbers of troops abroad. But we will concern ourselves only with the European area. When I started to gather material for this series two weeks ago the Red Cross had ten big clubs open in British Isles. When I inquired last night there were 17. Before this short ends there will be two dozen. B Christmas there will by the time it is all over there will be 100. “They are called ‘clubs’ but that it a poor word for them. They are actually huge hotels where you have a room and clean sheets and all of your meals and a hundred other things. Nearly all of these hotels were regular commercial hotels right up to the moment the Red Cross took them over. Usually they were good sized second string hotels-a little old fashioned, but a couple of months of intensive carpentry and painting makes them modern. “To show you what an immense operation this chain of Red Cross hotels-for-troops is, the Washington club alone has 130 paid employees. They are all British. “In addition there is a staff of British volunteer women who work without pay. There are 185 on the Washington club list. They don’t all work at once, of course. Some work two hours a week, some work 12 hours every day. There are always at least 20 on hand. “Heading the whole thing is the Red Cross staff of five from America-the manager, two assistants and two hostesses. Practically every hotel is set up the same way. “Multiply the Washington’s staff by 50, and you see that by Christmas they’ll have more than 15,000 people helping the Red Cross cater to our soldiers, sailors and marines. “The idea behind the Red Cross ‘hotels for troops’ program is this-when soldiers go on leave, they come to a strange city and have to shop around for a hotel. There are now so many American troops in the British Isles that hotel rooms are almost impossible to find. And if found, the prices are usually above a soldier’s pocket-book. SO the Red Cross provides him a hotel, and at a fantastically cheap price. A night’s lodging, with breakfast thrown in, costs only 50 cents. Lunch and dinner are 20 cents each and they are real meals, too! There is no other such bargain in England, probably not in the (Continued on Following Page) Patrolling Sports Highway (Continued from Preceding Page0 World. But that’s what you and I gave our money to the Red Cross for. ‘the Red Cross limits any soldier’s stay to five days. They do make exceptions when exceptions are justified. The clubs are open to any American soldier, sailor, marine or merchant seaman. Because of hotel shortages officers are allowed to stay in them. They provide the other kind; but it doesn’t take him long to get to Piccadilly circus and find what he wants there.” “Every Saturday night there is a club dance. These dances are a sight to behold. You can’t tell whether you’re at a dance or at rack meet. They jump and jerk and whirl and sweat and puff until you think they’re going to have apoplexy. Jitterbugs certainly have wonderful times.” Doggone it, it’s too bad we can’t reprint the entire pamphlet. The Red Cross is doing a terrific job for our men of the Armed forces, just another reason why we will win the present world conflict.