CHAPTER 12

Captain French and the War Years

In July of 1942 Walter French packed up his wife and two daughters, now teenagers, and headed south to Miami Beach. Beginning in February of 1942, Miami Beach was transformed from being America’s foremost resort area to a military training site and home to 78,000 enlisted men and officers. Under Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson, who had attended the 1942 Army–Navy baseball game, in announcing his plan to use Miami Beach’s vast number of resort hotels for military training facilities declared that “The best hotel room is none too good for the American Soldier.”¹ Oddly enough the hotel and apartment owners in the area quickly began to see the benefit in a lease arrangement with the U.S. Military. In the months leading up to the military takeover of Miami Beach, bookings had been down due to the government-imposed gas rationing and the fact that the beaches were stained from tar from German U-boat attacks on ships in the Atlantic. Having Uncle Sam as a tenant was a very attractive option. “Resort hotels became mess halls, bachelor officers’ quarters and crowded army barracks over the course of the next year.”² Eventually some 300 hotels and apartment buildings became military facilities, eventually servicing nearly half a million trainees.

Among those assigned to the Miami Beach training site were the movie actor Clark Gable and Franklin Roosevelt, Jr. the president’s son. There were a number of famous athletes from the time that were also sent to Miami Beach, most notably the great baseball slugger, and future Hall of Famer, Hank Greenberg of the Detroit Tigers. Relying on his experience as an athlete, coach, and West Point Cadet, Walter French’s job in Miami was that of a “physical instructor.”

It was not until the start of World War II that the U.S. Army finally instituted a physical fitness test. Many of the men being called up to fight were not in the best of shape so the Army relied on men with a background like Walter’s to put them through their paces and to prepare them for combat. To get the men into the best possible condition, the Army implemented a systematic physical development program as part of the Combat Basic Training course being offered at the Miami Training Center. “Soldiers marched on the beach, they marched on the golf courses, they marched down Lincoln Road and up Collins Avenue. Gas masks were used to peel onions. Airports stocked up on bomber jets. A mess hall could be anywhere from a grand art deco ballroom to a palm tree shaded park. Miami Beach was the center of basic training ops for hundreds of thousands of our brave boys, and we pulled it off in style.”³ Ocean swimming was also a key element of their training.

Walter and his family settled into an apartment on Alton Road, which was situated along the Biscayne Bay, and marked the western boundary of the area of Miami Beach being utilized by the military. Alton Road apartments were one of the areas in which officers with families were housed. One of their neighbors was Navy Captain Howard H. J. Benson and his wife. Benson had served in World War I, winning the Navy Cross, the branch’s second highest award for valor. Also stationed at the Miami Training Center was Walter’s friend and teammate from Rutgers and West Point, Don Storck.

Sports provided a needed diversion from the non-stop training activities taking place in Miami Beach. In September there was a baseball game scheduled, pitting a team from MacDill Field in Tampa against the home team made up of players stationed at the Air Forces Technical Training command. The pre-game festivities included “a platoon drill,” the Miami Herald reported, “the platoon will be in formal dress, with white gloves and leggings. Officers believe that it will be one of the neatest exhibitions of the season. These pre-game ceremonies will be in the charge of Captain Walter French, former All-American football player at West Point, and an outfielder with the Philadelphia Athletics from 1923–1929.”⁴

Walter’s wife Beth kept busy while in Miami attending to her daughters as well as the social responsibilities expected of an officer’s spouse. In October, the Miami Herald reported that “Mrs. James L. Kaufman, wife of the Rear Admiral began a series of ‘diminishing bridge parties’ this week to raise funds for Navy Relief. She invited three Army wives and two Navy wives, making a total of six. Each guest will in turn give a party for five and those five will entertain for four, etc. Mrs. Kaufman’s guests from the Army were Mrs. Paul Wing, wife of General Wing, who was taken prisoner at Bataan, Mrs. Walter E. French, wife of Captain French, and Mrs. Henri DeSebour, wife of Captain DeSebour.”⁵ The Miami Herald also listed Beth among the officers’ wives that had joined the St. Patrick’s Guild which sponsored tea parties for newly arriving military wives to the Miami Training Center.

As for Walter’s two teenage daughters, Mary Frances and Ann, it seemed like Christmas had come early. They were surrounded by thousands of young men, some just a little older than they were. The two young women spent their free time at the beach watching the soldiers go through their training regimen. Life magazine did a multipage story on the transformation of Miami Beach into a training site. Photos taken by Myron Davis and William Shrout “capture the juxtaposition between Miami’s picture-postcard surroundings and the seriousness of the Army’s mission. Soldiers cram into a baseball stadium stands, to take a course on chemical warfare. Future mess hall cooks learn their trade in resort kitchens. Palm trees sway in the background as soldiers are pushed through the exercises meant to toughen them up for combat. The few pictures that might be mistaken for classic beach vacation photos are the ones of shirtless soldiers rushing into the water. In those shots, there is no hint of the hell they could be headed for once they were done in Miami.”⁶

In April of 1943, Walter was reassigned to Basic Training Center No. 10, which had only opened the previous month in Greensboro, North Carolina. So he packed up his family once more and took them 800 miles north to yet another home.

As other training centers, such as No. 7 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, became overcrowded the Army built new facilities throughout the country. Trainees at the site typically were there from four to eight weeks and received training in weapons, drilling, physical fitness, and chemical warfare. From there the airmen would be sent to other bases for more advanced training before they were sent into combat.

After only seven months in Greensboro, the French family was on the move again, this time to Casper, Wyoming. The Casper Army Air Base was activated in September of 1942 and during its construction period, which was less than four months long, over 400 buildings were built. The base was the home to the training of bomber crews. Once their training was completed in Casper the men were given overseas assignments. Over 16,000 bomber crew members received their training at the Casper site.

For Walter’s wife and daughters, Casper was a long way from the palm trees and ocean breezes of Miami Beach. John Goss, director of the Wyoming Veterans Memorial Museum, writing in an article on the history of the base for the Wyoming Historical Society described the site as a “high, flat, sage brush covered terrace located nine miles west of town on US Highway 20–26 and adjacent to the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad.”⁷ Photos of the facility taken at the time show a place even more desolate than that described by Goss.

The French family’s stay in Casper was brief. Three short months after his arrival he received orders sending him overseas to serve in Italy in January of 1944. He sat his family down at the kitchen table and broke the news of his new assignment to them and told them that they could live wherever they wanted while he was away. Without a second’s hesitation both Mary Frances, who was 18 at the time, and Ann, who was 16, simultaneously blurted out “Highland Falls, New York.” The West Point area was home to Walter’s daughters. They had spent seven years there while their father was coaching the baseball team, which was a longer stay than any other place they had ever lived. Walter arranged for them to live in the Onodera Estates section of Highland Falls, which was the same neighborhood they lived in before moving to Miami in July of 1942.

Walter and his fellow officers boarded a B-24 for their trip to Italy. The flight was scheduled to make a stop in Brazil and then Africa before reaching their final destination. The U.S. military maintained a number of bases along the eastern portion of Brazil. Originally created as a defensive measure, these bases eventually became a major launching point for the South Atlantic airway to the fighting forces in Europe, however the airspace in and around Belem was particularly dangerous for the flight crews of the Army Air Corps. Engine failures, navigational errors, and the ever-present severe thunderstorms posed a constant threat. On the night of March 5, 1944, the Army B-24 with Walter, and his crew mates, was planning on stopping in Belem. The plan was for the plane to stop at the base to refuel before heading to Africa and to its eventual destination in Italy when it was caught in a thunderstorm. “The pilot battled the storm and fought the controls. For more than an hour the plane sailed on. Then the fuel ran out”⁸ according to a Philadelphia Inquirer article written at the time. There were seven men on the flight, in addition to the pilot. Certain the plane was going down; the pilot ordered the men to bail out. One by one the men jumped from the plane landing in the tall jungle grass. Before jumping from the plane, the men made a plan to yell out when they hit the ground so they could meet up and await a rescue together. Walter recalled that when he hit the ground his “yell sounded more like a shriek.”⁹ Getting to his feet he felt a wetness in the vicinity of his shirt pocket. His immediate thought was that he had been injured and that the substance he was feeling was blood, however it turned out to be ink which had spilled out of a pen that he had in his pocket that snapped when he landed.

Walter had this photo taken of his wife and daughters and he carried it with him while serving in the Armed Forces during World War II and in the Korean War. Seated are his daughter Fran, age 18, on the left and her mother, Beth, on the right. Ann, age 16, is standing. (Courtesy of French Family)

As he was making his way to meet his crew that he could hear off in the distance, he heard a rustling in the brush and he soon found himself surrounded by a group of machete-wielding locals. Walter discovered that he could communicate with them in French, which was one of his better subjects at West Point. He explained that he was an American and, with that, the men let down their guard. Walter met up with the rest of his crew and his new friends led them to their village where they spent the night.

None of the men were seriously injured in the jump, and remarkably the pilot even “found an open spot and contrived to land the plane,”¹⁰ according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The pilot made their whereabouts known, the search for the missing crew was called off and the Navy Airship K-114, a dirigible whose crew included Philadelphian Jack Glickstein was dispatched to pick up the men and a few days later they were back in the air headed to Italy.

The incident, reported to the local press by Walter’s younger brother Cooper French, received a great deal of coverage. Walter’s younger brother was a star football player at Penn State and in 1944 was the Athletic Director at Germantown Academy in Philadelphia. The headline in the Philadelphia Inquirer read: “Escape from Death in the Jungle … Captain Walter French ‘Safe’ in Italy.” In the article the Inquirer incorrectly listed Penn State and West Point as the two schools attended by Walter French. A reader called the paper out, in a letter to the editor, for its inaccuracy. “In your story about Walter French’s escape from death in the South American jungle,” wrote Clarence Tucker, “you got him confused with his brother Cooper, giving his college as Penn State. But it was all right as I won $10 from a friend who insisted that Walter had not gone to Rutgers.”¹¹ Even though he was far removed from his playing days, he was still front of mind to the sports fans of Philadelphia.

Walter served in Italy for approximately one year. His military records from this period were among those destroyed in a fire in 1973 at the National Personnel Records Center, so his specific role is unknown. However, throughout the war over 2.4 million men served in the Army Air Corps in Italy along with 80,000 aircraft. The primary function of the Air Force in Italy was the strategic bombing of enemy positions in Europe.

The war in Europe ended with the unconditional surrender of Germany in May of 1945. As Walter French, now a Major, was preparing to return to his family in Highland Falls, the Army Athletic Association Board, who earlier had rejected his request for a leave of absence, were meeting to determine his future at West Point. Coach Paul Amen, who succeeded Walter as the baseball coach when he re-enlisted in the Army in 1942 had coached Army to three very successful seasons. The Cadets had a record of 36–4 from 1943 to 1945 inclusive, including victories over Navy in 1944 and 1945. Amen was also only 29 years old in 1945, which made him 18 years younger than Walter. Over the three years that Amen had coached Army he also emerged as a leader in the coaching community and in 1945 he was a founding member of the American Baseball Coaches Association.

The Army Athletic Association’s board, assuming that Walter would leave the Army once the war was over and he was released from active service, made the determination that they would not offer Walter his coaching position back.

In 1944, Congress passed, and President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the GI Bill of Rights. The law was meant to prepare the nation for the return of thousands of soldiers and sailors, who would need medical care, education, and jobs. One of the most controversial parts of the bill was the provision which gave unemployment compensation to returning veterans for up to one year, to give them an opportunity to be retrained. Many felt that paying unemployment benefits would serve as a disincentive and keep people from seeking employment, but once in place only a small percentage of the funds that had been put aside for this benefit were ever used.

As the A.A.A. board deliberated the fate of Walter French, along with that of Fred Canausa, who had coached the Army golf team for 20 years, they considered “all moral obligations which may exist under the service man’s bill of rights.”¹² At their meeting on December 7, 1945 the board recommended that “these coaches now in the service be advised by letter that their services will not be required. The board recommends that in the above-mentioned letter it be suggested that Mr. French and Mr. Canausa, after their release from active service, come to West Point so that we may talk matters over with a view to making a substantial payment in recognition of past services.”¹³ The board was prepared to make the payment equal to a full year’s pay which they felt would be comparable to the one-year unemployment payment called for in the Bill of Rights.

Walter would never see the one-year salary payment because he had already made the decision to stay in the military. Whether he took the rejection of his request for a leave of absence by the Army Athletic Association as a warning that they might go in a different direction after the war or he simply felt it was in his best interest to remain in the military he informed the officials at West Point that he intended to stay active.

While he was waiting for his next assignment Walter remained in the West Point area, living with his family in Highland Falls from March until August. He was granted official leave for this period and while he did not receive the year’s pay being contemplated by the Army Athletic Association, he was paid, with “allowances” $2,350 over this period, which coincidentally was pretty close to what the year’s pay would have been. It was also during this time that his two daughters were married to West Point graduates in the first “double ring” ceremony ever held in the chapel at West Point.

Over the next few years Walter French moved from station to station as a member of the Army Air Corps. In August of 1946, he was named director of training at the Army ground forces physical training school in Camp Lee, Virginia. It was while he was stationed at Camp Lee that Walter made a splash on the college football scene when he submitted a formal proposal to change the way college football games were being scored.

Walter felt that it was unfair for a team that held the lead by a small margin for three plus periods, to lose the game when the opponent scores a touchdown at the very end of the game and converts the extra point. He submitted a plan to Harvard Athletic Director, William Bingham, who was chairman of the intercollegiate rules committee, early in 1947 and asked for it to be considered at their next meeting. The Associated Press reported that under his plan “French would continue to give the boys six points for every touchdown they score and one point for a successful conversion but there is an added feature in this Army major’s proposal.”¹⁴ Under Walter’s plan a team would be awarded one point for each quarter in which it held the lead in the game and adding those points to those made by touchdowns and conversions. “French thinks this system would eliminate a lot of tie games,” the AP reported, “and guard against ‘fluke’ plays which win games in the final seconds and provide more and faster action for the customers.”¹⁵ Walter was quoted as saying that “tie games are the plague of modern football and they have been the cause of much concern among those who are close to the modern-day grid games.”¹⁶ He concluded by saying that “such a system as I have proposed would keep the teams at their offensive best at all times and would place less emphasis on the presently all-too-important point-after-touchdown.”¹⁷ It was a testament to the fact that his standing in the sports world had not diminished in the years since he had been an active player and coach, that his proposal received so much coverage and serious consideration from the rules committee.

Bingham and his committee instituted seven rule changes in 1947 including moving of the hash marks, restrictions on the shift play, changes to the substitution rules, and others but Walter’s proposal was not adopted.

Later that year Congress passed and the President signed into law the National Security Act of 1947. The act created the Department of Defense, which was composed of five military branches the Army, Navy, Marines, the Coast Guard, and the newly established Air Force, which replaced the Army Air Corps. Most of the men who were serving in the Army Air Corps, including Walter French, moved over to the new branch and over the next two years he worked at a few short-term stations, including one year overseas. However, in the fall of 1949 he was moved to a position, which must have seemed like a dream job, at Michigan State University. In November of 1949, he was made a member of the school’s faculty as part of the Air Force R.O.T.C. staff. The Lansing State Journal reported the new faculty member is “nationally known in the field of athletics having starred in football, baseball and basketball and played pro-baseball with the Philadelphia Athletics in 1929, the year they won the World Series.”¹⁸ His specific role was that of the public information officer, a position he held until 1953.

In 1954, Walter, who had been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel, was required to complete a Department of Defense form 398. DD398 is a personal history statement used to screen individuals seeking to obtain a specific security designation so that a person could be “allowed access to classified information, sensitive areas, or permitted assignment to sensitive national security.”¹⁹ Over the next few years, he would serve in a variety of locations throughout the world, including Korea. Although the specifics of his assignments were lost in the fire at the National Personnel Records Center in 1973, his role at this time was later described in newspaper stories about Walter as an intelligence officer.

This much we know, after serving in Korea in 1954 he was transferred to Tokyo, Japan, to serve on the staff of General Earle Everard “Pat” Partridge, who was the Commander of Far East Air Forces. “Pat” Partridge was Walter’s classmate at West Point. When Walter called Beth to see if she would like to join him in Japan, according to their daughter Ann, she told him “That noise you hear in the background is the sound of me packing.” Oddly enough, Beth French, even though her husband was an officer in the Air Force, was deathly afraid of flying. She traveled to Japan by boat to join her husband.

Lt. Col. Walter French serving in the Far East, circa 1954. (Courtesy of French Family)

While he and Beth were in Japan, his old classmates from the West Point class of 1924 were gathering for their thirtieth-class reunion. Included in the book published for the event, which profiled all of the members of the graduating class, was Walter French. His former classmates had agreed to make him an honorary member of the class. “West Point classes don’t often make honorary members of their foundlings” the program read and “it is a rare mark of esteem and affection that has to be deserved. In Fritz’s case, he’s always been something special to us … from the first day of Beast Barracks. When he lost his two-year feud with the English Department, it left a gap in the Herd that we remedied the only way we could … Fritzie French and the years 1920–1922 in West Point sports history are indivisible. He was already a finished athlete when he came in and won three major sports ‘A’s with the ease and grace of a natural. On the football field and baseball diamond especially, he did much to lift the Academy out of the bushes and into the big leagues. As one of our most successful grandparents, Fritz is getting small pleasure from this, immolated in the Far East, but hopes by now that his Beth will at least help fill the gap by joining him over there. Despite his head start with an ‘early graduation’, he refused to get the jump on his classmates and waited to join the benedicts until ’24. Both his boys being girls has not prevented him from continuing the Long Gray Line he loves, both of them married classmates of ’46 in a double ceremony at the Chapel. Come home soon Fritzie and catch up on your babysitting.”²⁰

Over the next five years, Walter and Beth moved to a variety of stations, both foreign and domestic. One of his roles near the end of his military career was helping soldiers returning from the Korean War who were suffering from what was described as “battle fatigue” which was what we would today call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

In 1959, Lt. Col. Walter French announced his retirement from the military. He and Beth settled in La Selva Beach, California, which is located along the Pacific Ocean in Santa Cruz County.

After leaving the Air Force, Walter took a job as a security guard at the local Lockheed Martin facility near La Selva. It was while working at Lockheed that he first began to experience dizzy spells and hearing loss that was later diagnosed as Ménière’s disease. The spells come and go without warning and while no single cause has ever been identified for this condition, in his case, likely culprits are the concussions he sustained playing for Rutgers and later with the Maroons, combined with his exposure to loud noises while in the military.

In retirement Walter kept in touch with some of his old teammates. His daughter, Ann, recalled that her parents visited Ty Cobb at his lodge on Lake Tahoe on a number of occasions. He also corresponded with Joe Zacko, who was keeping the fight alive to restore the 1925 NFL Championship to the Pottsville Maroons. In February of 1963 Zacko wrote to Walter to invite him to a team reunion taking place in June of that year back in Pottsville. Walter wrote back and declined saying “There is nothing I would rather do than to say ‘yes I will be at the reunion in June,’ but I just can’t afford such a trip, I’m retired and though I work, I have to watch my pennies every month. I don’t just live around the corner. Thanks for the reunion program—it arrived today.” He concluded, referring to Zacko’s crusade to have the title restored to the Maroons by saying “Sure hope your efforts are successful.” Later in that same month, Zacko wrote Walter to let him know that the date of the reunion had been pushed back to which he replied “Sorry but the change in dates does not change my situation. I appreciate all the efforts you and your committee is putting forth. I’ll probably be east in 1964 and if my trip materializes, I will make it a point to drop in on you.” After he came across an article in the Washington Post by Dave Brady making the case for the restoration of the Maroons’ title in 1965, he clipped the article and sent it to Joe. Like the other surviving members of the Maroons, he was still smarting over the stolen title some 40 years later, writing “Maybe our luck will change one of these days.”

He also continued to stay in contact with his classmates from West Point. He attended Army–Navy football games with Dennis Mulligan, who was the captain of the Army football team in the years Walter played, as well as other former teammates like Sam Smithers, George Smythe, and Don Storck.

After living such an active life for over 60 years Walter settled down to a slower pace in retirement. He took up gardening and enjoyed growing fruits and vegetables.

He also took up golf, and as with every other sport he tried, he became an accomplished player. He played at the golf course located at Fort Ord in Seaside California which was located about 30 miles from his home in La Selva. The original 18-hole, challenging course, was built in 1954 and was described as “as mean as can be.” A decade later another 18-hole course was built on the site. The courses are now known as the Bayonet and Black Horse golf courses. Typically, Walter would make the trip over to Fort Ord three days a week to play golf and had two holes in one to his credit on the difficult course. One of his golfing buddies was retired Brigadier General William N. Gilmore, who was in the class behind Walter at West Point and his teammate on the 1921 Army football team. Among other roles in which Gilmore served, he was the Commanding General of the 101st Airborne Division during World War II. The two former teammates played golf together three times a week starting in 1963. “The money bet was small, but the competition was hot,” Gilmore later recalled.

When his older brother William passed away in 1972 Walter became the last surviving member of his immediate family. His sister Esther died in 1952 and his brother, Penn State football star Cooper, as was the case with his brother Joseph, took his own life in 1962. Walter became the patriarch of the French family and was a hero to his grandchildren and many nephews and nieces. His niece, Mary Jo Walsh, the daughter of Esther French, once wrote about him that “he was my hero, no doubt about it … When thinking about marriage I made a list of the things I was looking for in a husband and realized the perfect person would be just like Uncle Walter.”

In 1973, while helping members of a church, to which he and Beth belonged, build a drainage system, he suffered a heart attack. He recovered and was soon back out playing golf, although now making use of a golf cart. However it was in 1979, while playing golf at the Fort Ord course that he suffered his second, and this time nearly fatal, heart attack. Once again, he recovered and was soon back to his old routine. On days when he was not playing golf, he made it a point to walk two or three miles to stay in shape and was proud of the fact that he never gained one pound above what he weighed in his playing days.

In 1980, shortly after recovering from his second heart attack, he reported, in a letter to a friend, “I shot my age in golf last week—80.” Often described as the toughest accomplishment for the average golfer, shooting one’s age, is just that, shooting a score that is equal to or less than the player’s age. It is estimated that for every million rounds of golf that are played, only nine will result in the player shooting his or her age.

His interest in baseball never waned in his later years. His granddaughter recalled how she would see him reading the newspaper’s sports section, while listening to one ball game on the radio, and watching another game on television, during her visits. He provided a scouting report on the 1980 St. Louis Cardinals, to a friend who was a big fan of the team writing “Now as to your first love, the ‘Cards’, their pitching must be pretty terrible for they sure have the hitters. Maybe the change in managers will help. It seems to be for a short period.” He was referring to the fact that the Cardinals had just replaced Manager Ken Boyer with Whitey Herzog. In August of 1982, he wrote a letter to syndicated columnist Murray Olderman to complain about the way balls and strikes were being called in the majors, especially against the San Francisco Giants and their manager Frank Robinson. After laying out his bona fides on the subject, that is having played for the Athletics from 1923 to 1929, he went on to say “there are three or four National League umpires that have it in for Frank Robinson. His beefs at San Diego—and Johnny Lemaster’s called third strike and Sixto Lezcano’s third strike that wasn’t called were legit … too bad they don’t have some old-time umpires to call strikes on pitches six-to-eight inches above the belt.” Always getting the last word in his columns Olderman wrote “I can’t buy any theory of prejudice against the San Francisco Giants’ Robinson. You never win any arguments on balls and strikes anyway. Also, the strike zone has become smaller since French was playing baseball.”

There was one practice that is common for old, retired ballplayers in which Walter French refused to engage. He found it off-putting when old-timers spent their time reminiscing about how things were better “back in their day.” It was so evident that he felt this way to his children and grandchildren, that they never asked him anything about his playing days. He would be more than happy to discuss his golf game, and remark on the accomplishments of current day athletes but that was the extent of it.

Over time the damage caused by his heart attacks began to take a toll on him and eventually he and Beth decided to move to Arkansas to be near his daughter Ann and her husband C. F. Horton, who lived in Oakland, Arkansas, where Horton, after retiring from the military, was a fishing trip guide. Just a few days after settling into their new home, Walter got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and not wanting to wake up his wife kept the lights off. After feeling his way along the hallway leading to the bathroom instead of stepping through a doorway he turned the wrong way, ran into a wall, took a bad fall, and broke his hip. A reoccurrence of Ménière’s disease, for which he was successfully being treated, was ruled out as a cause and it appeared that he just got disoriented in his new surroundings. He was taken to the hospital and operated on for his broken hip.

The risk for pneumonia for people of Walter’s age hospitalized for a fractured hip, especially for someone with his history of heart problems is significant. Several studies, conducted well after Walter’s accident, have shown that lower respiratory tract infection is the primary cause of death in elderly patients with hip fractures.

On Sunday, May 13, 1984, three weeks after his fall, Walter French passed away at the age of 84. The cause of death was listed as pneumonia.

When he died, Walter was the last surviving member of the “Team That Time Forgot,” the 1929 World Series Champion Philadelphia Athletics. His passing also left Russ Hathaway as the lone surviving member of the 1925 Pottsville Maroons.