Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football
Where to buy Twelve Mighty Orphans: The Inspiring Right Tale of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football books online?
- ISBN13: 9780312384876
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Jim Dent, leader of the New York Times bestselling The Junction Boys, returns with his most powerful tale of human courage and determination.
More than a century ago, a school was constructed in Fort Worth, Texas, for the purpose of housing and educating the orphans of Texas Freemasons. It was a humble project that for years existed quietly on a hillside east of town. Life at the Masonic Home was about to change, though, with the arrival of a lean, bespectacled coach by the name of Rusty Russell. Here was a man who could bring rain in the midst of a drought. Here was a man who, in virtually no time at all, brought the orphans’ tale into the homes of millions of Americans.
In the 1930s and 1940s, there was nothing larger in Texas high school football than the Masonic Home Mighty Mites—a group of orphans bound together by hardship and death. These youngsters, in spite of being outweighed by at least thirty pounds per man, were the toughest football team around. They started with nothing—not even a football—yet in a few years were playing for the state championship on the highest level of Texas football. This is a winning tribute to a courageous band of underdogs from a time when America desperately needed fresh hope and huge dreams.
The Mighty Mites remain a notable moment in the long history of American sports. Just as significant is the depth of the inspirational message. This is a profound lesson in fighting back and clinging to faith. The real winners in Texas high school football were not the kids from the largest schools, or the ones wearing the most expensive uniforms. They were the scrawny kids from a tiny orphanage who wore scarred helmets and faded jerseys that did not match, kids coached by a devoted man who lived on peanuts and drove them around in a smoke-belching ancient truck.
In writing a tale of unforgettable characters and fantastic football, Jim Dent has come forwards to reclaim his place as one of the top sports authors in America today.
A remarkable and inspirational tale of an orphanage and the man who made one of the greatest football teams Texas has ever known . . . this is their tale—the original Friday Night Lights.
“This just might be the best sports book ever written. Jim Dent has crafted a tale that will go down as one of the most artistic, one of the most unforgettable, and one of the most inspirational ever. Twelve Mighty Orphans will challenge Hoosiers as the feel-excellent sports tale of our lifetime. Naturally, being from Texas, I am biased. Hooray for the Mighty Mites.’’
—Verne Lundquist, CBS Sports
“Coach Rusty Russell and the Mighty Mites will steal your heart as they overcome every hindrance imaginable to become a respected football team. Take an orphanage, the Depression, and mix it with Texas high school football, and Jim Dent has authored another winner, this one about the essential underdog.’’
—Brent Musburger, ABC Sports/ESPN
“No state has a roll call of legendary high school football tales like we do in Texas, and, admittedly, some of persons tales have been ‘expanded’ over the years when it comes to the truth. But let Jim Dent tell you about the Mighty Mites of Masonic Home, the pride of Fort Worth in the dark days of the Depression. Read this book. You will reflect it’s fiction. You will reflect it’s a Hollywood speech. But Twelve Mighty Orphans is the truth, and nothing but. It is powerful stuff. Some eighty years later, the Mighty Mites’ tale remains so sacred, not even a Texan would dare tamper with these facts. And Jim Dent tells it like it was.”
— Randy Galloway, columnist, Fort-Worth Star Telegram
—Verne Lundquist, CBS Sports
“Coach Rusty Russell and the Mighty Mites will steal your heart as they overcome every hindrance imaginable to become a respected football team. Take an orphanage, the Depression, and mix it with Texas high school football, and Jim Dent has authored another winner, this one about the essential underdog.’’
—Brent Musburger, ABC Sports/ESPN
“No state has a roll call of legendary high school football tales like we do in Texas, and, admittedly, some of persons tales have been ‘expanded’ over the years when it comes to the truth. But let Jim Dent tell you about the Mighty Mites of Masonic Home, the pride of Fort Worth in the dark days of the Depression. Read this book. You will reflect it’s fiction. You will reflect it’s a Hollywood speech. But Twelve Mighty Orphans is the truth, and nothing but. It is powerful stuff. Some eighty years later, the Mighty Mites’ tale remains so sacred, not even a Texan would dare tamper with these facts. And Jim Dent tells it like it was.”
— Randy Galloway, columnist, Fort-Worth Star Telegram
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Set in depressing (but not automatically economically depressed) Fort Worth, Texas 1928 to 1943, this is a initially heartwarming high school football tale about a disparate, desperate crew of orphans that never really warms your heart. Dent opens with the murder of the father of four orphans in 1928. And then it’s off to the school. Being outweighed, ill-equipped orphans, the Masonic Home Mighty Mites football team has three strikes against them and immediately deserve and earn a lot of sympathy. But the details make the orphans more unsavory and unsympathetic than one would imagine. They pride themselves on being mean, not just to opposing players, but also to each additional. Their most reknowned pro football player earned recognition for being the “meanest” player to ever play pro football, not something I’d frame and write home about. They are brutal, blocking to injure. They perfect an nearly lethal, lip-splitting hit – the Humper – that inscription many of their opponents with split lips, missing teeth, and players carried from the meadow. Playing lacking faceguards, they exploit vulnerabilities of their much larger opponent, but the reader sometimes must wince at the thought of the clash. Dent repeatedly refers to “Twelve Mighty Orphans” but it was not clear to me that the team permanently or usually suited up only twelve players. He writes about the orphans being shoeless through half the year, but it is not clear that they ever played football that way. Their highly successful, reasonably humble coach, Rusty Russell, builds a lean, mean, fighting machine, but the team and their later lives show that building character may not have been so successful. Survival skills, yes. Character? I’m less sanguine. Maybe call them the Spartans, not the Mighty Mites.
On the dust take in, Brent Musburger says that the coach and team “steal your heart as they overcome every hindrance imaginable,” but that is hyperbole. Yes, the odds were fervently against them. The rich and the powerful disdained the Mites and, more importantly, the Mites’ success. The best teams earn resentment and that regularly turns into revenge, and I can easily imagine additional obstacles. Plus, as additional coaches noted, Russell had the advantage of 24 x 7 year-round access to and perfect, absolutely authoritarian rule of the boys. Vince Lombardi’s Packers had a summer idyll as compared to the training and school life the orphans suffered. Rumor has it that, all of them ongoing out hating the place (and, of course, missing their dead parent or parents), but they all seemed to convert to a like of the place based on a defensive, nearly psychotic stance towards the more privileged, meaning the rest of the world.
The dialog regularly sounds like a terrible Bowery Boys speech. The physical and psychological abuse nearly steams off the page, along with some of the excessive testosterone. One last note on poor copyediting: On p. 131, a missed kick by Jeff Brown leaves the Mites tied with Lubbock, 6 -6. Dent reminds us of that score, 6-6, on the following page. But when Lubbock’s Shakespeare Sewalt scores and Lubbock converts the extra point, the score somehow becomes 13-7. Another Lubbock TD and PAT and on p. 134, the final is 20-6. Huh?
Reader’s Rating: 3 / 5
I painstakingly loved reading this book. Dent does a fantastic job of taking you back to another era and captures the spirit of these orphans who went against all odds to prove themselves. A bit of “Small Rascals” and a lot of character. You don’t have to be a football fan to like “12 Mighty Orphans” – if you have ever rooted for the underdog, you will like this book. I’m getting one for my mother!
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Jim Dent is in BAD need of an editor. Maybe several of them! As much as I like his books Dent really takes liberties embellishing his tales. In “The Junction Boys” he has people in the early 1950’s talking like they were from the 1990’s, students with transistor radios, mentions fire ants in Texas decades before they would have any impact, and Bob Wills singing(!) “Faded Like.” In “Twelve Mighty Orphans” I came to a screeching halt on page 77 where he has a Fort Worth officer attempting mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the drowned Dean Frank Wynn in the early 1930’s. That sounded fishy (no pun proposed). Sure enough…Google “CPR History” and you’ll find that mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was invented by Peter Safar and James Elam in 1956. Not to mention getting the score incorrect in the Lubbock game. Nit-alternative? Maybe. But poorly researched and edited stuff like this sure takes away from what is otherwise some pretty excellent sports tale-telling.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
Brilliant tale of the hardships, triumphs, and traditions of the Masonic Home. Particularly enlightening was a look at life in Ft Worth during the Depression years, and how a city and state rallied to support these underdogs. Classic sports tale with some twists and turns. A real page-turner!
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
I have not read the book but am ordering it now. I am to some extent a product of the home. My dad was raised there and played football for them and have heard his tales and the dread that they once place into their opponents. They played 11 man football sometimes with 15-20 players and still outplayed the larger and better teams from Fort Worth and around. I am looking forwards to the book. PBS also did a tale on the Home and it was wonderful – hope to see the movie when it comes out.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5