HISTORY RESERVED an extraordinary niche for Emery "Swede" Larson, who enlisted in the Marines, graduated from the Naval Academy, but remained loyal to the cause of the corps ... on the battlefield and football field. Semper fi.
He was the only Marine to both play and coach at Navy. And he came away a winner every time. Six-for-6 in games won against Army. Turn the pages of the dusty history books. No coach in more than a century of Naval Academy football ever achieved such success.
Larson had been an enlisted man who received an appointment to the Naval Academy because of his academic and athletic achievements. Every graduate who came out of the academy, via the Marine Corps, holds him in special regard. Larson made it on his own.
Eight days after the Japanese tried to eradicate Pearl Harbor, he coached his last game. Football, fun and frivolity were shelved.
In the Navy locker room in Philadelphia, with only a few brief words, he put the outbreak of World War II in personal focus when he said, "This will be the last football game for me for a while. There's a bigger game coming up and I'm going to be in it."
Then it was off to the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., and preparation for a life-or-death scrimmage in war zones that could only be measured by the sacrifices he witnessed, the valor and resolve displayed by the men he was leading.
The following is a brief but powerful letter, giving insight to the man himself, that he wrote aboard ship while heading for invasion action:
At Sea
5/17/1943
Dear Sons:
On leaving home to join the Marines in 1917, Dad gave me the following written advice, which I have always carried with me. I pass it on to you as the best guide possible for your conduct and approach to a full life.
Be cheerful. Be patient. Obey. Be a man. Trust in God and talk often .
A message of hope, kind of the prayer of a father intent on seeing that his sons followed the straight and narrow and, when called upon for a decision, would make all the right ones. Larson never let down his team, his family or his country.
The Marines didn't pick any soft landing spots for Larson. He went to the Aleutian Islands to establish a defensive deterrent. It was, in the language of football, known as protecting the flanks.
