This year, Thanksgiving fell on Nov. 22, which was also the 55th anniversary of the death of John F. Kennedy, our 35th president.

Those two events together offer some unique history. Kennedy loved college sports, especially Navy football. A Navy PT boat commander in the war, he regularly sent encouraging notes to the Navy coaches throughout the 1963 season.

In a final note to Annapolis before he left for his campaign trip to Texas, he told how he was looking forward to sitting on the winner’s side of the field (Navy) for the Army-Navy classic in Philadelphia. He never got to fulfill that wish, having been assassinated while riding in a motorcade through the streets of Dallas.

As the sports world mourned the loss of the charismatic president, college and football games were in limbo. The Pentagon announced the Army-Navy game would be postponed until Dec. 7. Mrs. Kennedy, the widowed first lady, concurred, noting that her husband was such a fan of the game that playing it in his memory would be a fitting tribute.

With the assassination fresh on people’s minds, the 1963 game lacked the usual floats and hoopla that marked the other classics. Thirty-six flags flew at half-staff around the rim of Philadelphia Stadium — later named for JFK — as a tribute to the slain president and to the servicemen killed in the attack at Pearl Harbor 22 years earlier.

For many fans of college sports in its purist form, Army-Navy is the best game of the year. It is the only college football game played each year that is attended by the entire student body of both schools.

Fred Goldsmith, an assistant coach at the Air Force Academy before becoming a head coach at Duke, explained the difference between playing football at the military academies than at the other 103 Division I schools. At every other school in America, he said the hardest part of any football player’s day is football practice, but at the academies, the rigors of practice is the easiest part of a football player’s day.

In his book, “Army vs. Navy: A Civil War” author John Feinstein puts the sport in perspective when placed against the Spartan lifestyle at the academies. Feinstein said the shared experience of fighting — and dying — together in war can only be found in the Army-Navy rivalry; only a midshipman can truly appreciate what a midshipman goes through, and only a midshipman has a clear understanding of life as a cadet.

He explained that the Army-Navy game may not decide national championships, but it means just as much to the players. The game is unique in its fervor since the players are doing something they love for the final time on the field, barring a bowl appearance or except in a rare instance when a player goes on to play in the pros after his military service.

Coaldale native George Welsh, who quarterbacked before graduating from Annapolis in 1956, is part of the great tradition. Author Jack Clary, who has chronicled the Army-Navy classic, told how Welsh ran Navy’s offense with a gambler’s instincts and a cunning that baffled opponents. His on-field leadership and competence later translated into a fine college career, first at the Naval Academy and then at The University of Virginia.

Welsh returned to Annapolis to resurrect the Navy program, producing five winning seasons in seven years and making three bowl appearances.

The game has also produced some memorable family moments. During the 1992 college football season, James Greene and his wife had two sons on opposite sides playing in the Army-Navy classic — Gaylord, a senior wide receiver for Army and younger brother Gil, a defensive back for Navy.

After Army’s 25-24 victory that day, James described the “joyous dilemma” that he and his experienced as football parents.

“We’ll try to pick up Gil’s spirits, he said, then celebrate” Gaylord’s great day.

In his book, Feinstein tells how West Point and the Naval Academy represent what our country can be.

He said when we look into the faces of the cadets and the midshipmen, we see the future and we see potential, he noted. We see in most of these student-athletes a willingness to die so the rest of us can go on living the way we have for nearly two and a half centuries.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com