As the Oconto Falls School District abandons Memorial Field for football and track, one Oconto Falls man set out to capture those last moments on the gridiron and preserve the history of Memorial Field.
Stevan Bacon has spent his fair share of time snapping photographs of the action at Memorial Field for the Oconto County Times Herald and the school district. In 1997, he started photographing community events for the Times Herald and expanded to sporting events in 2002.
Now the photographer-turned-historian is preparing a five-minute video clip to post on his Panther Tracks Facebook page to commemorate the shifting of sporting events to ST Paper Stadium.
He set out on a journey with one simple goal.
“I just wanted to know how Memorial Field was named,” he said.
That goal led him to the Oconto Falls Community Library in August, where he spent much of his weeklong vacation from his job as a machine operator at S&M Machine. He figures he has more than 40 hours devoted to the project, including 30 hours of research. He delved into school yearbooks and newspapers, jotting down information and collecting about 200 pictures along the way.
“I started digging and digging,” he said.
One article led to another, and he eagerly read anything that caught his interest.
“It all started to be just one of my goofy little videos. It ended up I learned a lot about Oconto Falls,” he said.
Without referring to notes, he retold a few details of what he considered the milestones of Memorial Field, beginning with the first media report of a football game he traced to 1915, exactly a century before today’s departure from the field. At that time, the Oconto Falls High School football club (football was a club sport until 1921) played at what was called the fairgrounds, located slightly north of where the field is now.
“The community center was the fairgrounds, back in the 1900s, 1910. Big things happened there,” he said.
The county fair was held there, but in about 1922, the fair board went bankrupt, and the city took ownership of the property. In the late 1920s or 1930s — Bacon couldn’t pinpoint an exact year — the field was moved to its present location. It was called Washington High School Football Field and was referred to in sports stories simply as Washington Field.
By that time, a notorious rivalry had developed between Oconto and Oconto Falls. In the late 1920s, the Oconto Falls police chief asked the school not to schedule any home games against Oconto because he couldn’t control the crowd. As many as 20 fights broke out after the game the previous year.
On a fun little note, Bacon discovered the 1920s football teams had a lot of “ringers,” boys who worked on farms or in factories and did not attend high school yet played on the team.
In the late 1930s, people started to call the field Panther Field.
In 1944 or 1945, the oval track was placed around the football field, surfaced with cinders from the paper mill. One of the track’s features was a 200-meter straight stretch separate from the oval. Lights were added soon afterwards.
Then in 1946, five trees were planted in honor of the five local veterans killed in World War I.
“From what I understand, some of the trees they cut down for construction (of state Highway 22) were those trees. They planted five in a row along Chestnut that were taken out,” he said.
The first mention of Memorial Field was 1947, as reported in the Oconto Falls Herald.
“They actually had a dedication, and two former Green Bay Packers were there,” Bacon said.
More trees were planted that summer to honor the World War II veterans.
The largest gate count, of over 2,800 spectators, occurred in 1964 at a championship game between Oconto and Oconto Falls. Bacon said Bob Shellman, former editor of the Times Herald, told him people were five-deep at the end zones. As for the outcome of the game, Bacon was a little fuzzy.
“I can’t remember who won the game!” he said, laughing. “I was not much into stats, and it was just an interesting article. I want to say Oconto won the game, but I can’t be sure.”
To collect research between 1900 to 1920, Bacon had his own box of Oconto Falls Farmer newspapers given to him by Shellman. Some were so fragile he slid a piece of paper under the newspaper pages to hold them open. He also looked through other newspapers and school yearbooks.
Bacon, originally from Eagle River, moved to Oconto Falls in 1994. He knew nothing about the community, only to learn his family had deep ties to the area. He’s been researching these ties and collecting “tons of stories” from the old-timers to include in a book he’s writing, “History of Oconto Falls With a Side of Bacon.”
He said he came up with the title while eating his usual Saturday morning breakfast, served as always, with a side of bacon, at Falls Family Restaurant. He’s collected enough historical information about Memorial Field to fill one chapter.
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