Gordon Leslie Kennedy (27 May 1919- 17 August 2012) was born on his parents' ranch in Sunshine Valley, Taos, New Mexico. He lived in Colorado much of his life, and retired to Phoenix, Arizona, where he passed away.

Like many 1947 grads, Gordon left New Mexico A&M, also called State College at that time, to go into the service. Gordon joined the Navy in April 1941, volunteering for Naval Air Corps cadet training. By September 1941 he was taking advanced flight training in Florida and Texas. He was commissioned in March of 1942, and became a Navy pilot. In April of 1943, when his mother died, he was in the "southwest Pacific" with the Navy. He was on the USS Indiana as a Lt. JG in July 1943, home in New Mexico on a brief leave in September of that year, and transferred to the USS Wake Island in December 1943.

In November 1943, Gordon was awarded the Air Medal for "meritorious achievement as a pilot of a torpedo bomber during the aerial action against enemy Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands." In all he received five Air Medals, the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Navy Presidential Unit Citation. His call sign was, "Powder River." He was discharged from active duty in January 1945, remaining in the Naval Reserve after the war. He was promoted to Commander in 1955, and retired at that rank in December 1967.

One of his citations resulted from action around the Bonin Island Group when his section leader was shot down. "Powder River" disregarded personal safety, so the citation read, to guard his downed section leader until a rescue could be completed.

Gordon graduated from New Mexico A&M in 1947 with a BS in Agriculture. He stayed on to earn a Masters Degree.

Gordon took a job with Prudential Insurance Company in Denver after college and married a girl from Grand Junction, Gloria M. Kochevar, in 1954. He and Gloria lived in Grand Junction most of their lives, and raised a family there. Gordon remained with Prudential as an appraiser. By 1986 he had retired to Lake Havasu city, Arizona.

Buddy Wilborn, born John Gillis Wilborn, 29 January 1923 in Alamogordo, NM, was a star football player for the NM A&M Aggies in the early 1940s in his freshman and sophomore years. He joined the Coast Guard after Pearl Harbor and starred on their Berkely California team during the war. While in the service he met a young nurse from Colorado, Susan Townsend, and married her on 16 November 1944.

Bud rejoined the Aggies in the spring of 1946 and again starred with their football team during the 1946 and 1947 seasons. Susan had been attending college in Grand Junction, Colorado, and now transferred to NM A&M. She earned her degree in July 1948, and Bud finished his BS in education at the end of that year. They then moved to Grand Junction where Bud earned his MS in education in 1950. Their son, Mike was born in 1949 in Colorado.

Bud seems to have returned to Las Cruces at that point. It appears Susan remained in Grand Junction. Her obituary indicates she lived in Grand Junction from 1950 until she married her second husband in 1961. Bud's obituary indicates he and Frances Hargrove moved from Las Cruces to Artesia in 1951, and were married there in 1956. Bud's son, Mike, seems to have lived with Bud and Frances, and attended high school in Artesia.

News accounts from the early 1950s mention Bud as the coach for the junior high in Artesia. He seems to have coached all major sports there.

By the 1957-1958 school year, Bud was mentioned in press releases as the football Line Coach at the high school, under Reese Smith. That was the year of the Bulldogs first-ever state championship in District AA.

Interestingly, Bud was not listed in the yearbooks as part of the faculty in that year or any other. He appears to have remained in the Artesia Jr. High, perhaps on loan or filling in during the championship year.

In 1955 he was one of the founding members of the Artesia School Employees Credit Union.

Bud's son, Mike, appears in the Artesia high school yearbooks in the late 1960s, graduating in 1969. He was a popular athlete and student.

As a side note, there was a John Welborn, sometimes identified as John Wilborn, coaching football at the Artesia high school in the late 1960s while Mike Wilborn was a student there. This John Welborn appears to have been another person. He moved on to become head football coach at other southwestern high schools in the 1970s. Our Bud Wilborn apparently spent his career at the Artesia Junior High, with maybe some special assignments at the high school.

A teammate of Bud's, Jerry Nuzun, was as well known as Bud during their college days. Jerry went into the NFL with the Pittsburgh Steelers and played several seasons. He was involved in an infamous New Mexico case of prosecutorial misconduct when he was accused of murder.

He was eventually acquitted, a verdict directed by the judge, and his accusers convicted and jailed. They had also, in those pre-Warren Court days, attempted to force a confession from another local resident with physical torture. The whole sorry mess was revealed by an enterprising reporter in El Paso.

Read the story linked at left or the one linked from the main site.

From the El Paso Times 18 April 2015

Trish Long: The railroading of Jerry Nuzum - NFL player faced trial by fury after murder of Las Cruces waitress

This article first appeared in the Dec. 13, 2010, edition of the El Paso Times. It was part of "Hidden El Paso," an occasional series by former Metro Editor Milan Simonich.

Long before O.J. Simpson and Rae Carruth, another professional football player stood trial for murder. His name was Jerry Nuzum, a star halfback at New Mexico A&M (now NMSU) before being drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1948.

Nuzum, in the words of one Steelers' employee, "had a face that looked like a monument." His chiseled features and his size — he stood 6 feet 1 inch and weighed 205 pounds — made him easy to remember.

He became New Mexico's most publicized suspect, linked by the Doña Ana County sheriff to a murder that shook Las Cruces.

The victim was Ovida Coogler, an 18-year-old waitress. Everybody called her "Cricket." She vanished during the early morning hours of March 31, 1949, not long after witnesses saw her in a bar with Nuzum and another man.

Rabbit hunters found Coogler's body 16 days later on a plateau near Mesquite. The killer or killers dug a shallow grave and threw a few shovels of dirt on her corpse.

Sheriff A.L. "Happy" Apodaca said Coogler had been raped and murdered. But forensic science and common sense were absent in the Coogler case. Apodaca refused to authorize an autopsy.

This cast doubt on how thorough the sheriff cared to be, and it prevented any meaningful investigation from gaining momentum.

Then Apodaca arrested Nuzum and tried to obtain a confession using any means he could, fair or unfair. The sheriff told Nuzum he would be charged with murder if he tried to hire a lawyer.

Nuzum's arrest remained secret for three days.

Nuzum, then 26, caught a break when El Paso Herald-Post reporter Walt Finley looked into the case. Finley had no car, so he rode the bus to Las Cruces to follow up on tips that something odd was afoot in the Coogler investigation.

Finley did some digging, found Nuzum in jail and interviewed him. Nuzum said he was innocent but feared he would be railroaded to satisfy the public's demand for a conviction.

A black man, Wesley Byrd, said he also had been targeted in the Coogler case. Byrd, then 27, told Finley the sheriff kept him in jail for 10 days without allowing him to notify anybody.

Byrd dropped another bombshell. He said members of the sheriff's staff and the state police took him to the desert, then tried to elicit a confession from him by squeezing his testicles with a bicycle lock.

The stories Finley wrote shed light and heat on the law-enforcement machinery of New Mexico. The sheriff freed Nuzum after 12 days.

Then the district attorney issued a statement saying: "Jerry Nuzum has definitely been cleared of in any way being at fault or having any guilty knowledge of the death of Ovida Coogler."

Nuzum's nightmare was only beginning, though.

Edwin L. Mechem, a Republican who ran for governor of New Mexico in 1950, made solving Coogler's murder a centerpiece of his campaign. He called it "the Nuzum case." Mechem won the election, and Nuzum once more was a suspect.

Police arrested him in April 1951 at his home in suburban Pittsburgh. Two years had passed since he had been "cleared" by T.K. Campbell, the Doña Ana district attorney.

Steelers owner Art Rooney and head coach John Michelosen stood by Nuzum.

"I can't imagine such a thing as the Cricket Coogler deal. Jerry has always been a well-behaved boy," Michelosen said.

Nuzum went on trial that summer in Las Cruces, then a town of 13,000. Attorneys Charles B. Owen of El Paso and W.A. Sutherland of Las Cruces defended him. They knew the prosecution's case was circumstantial but explosive.

Four witnesses said they saw Nuzum with Coogler the night she vanished. She had been talking to a trucker at the Del Rio Bar when Nuzum walked in. Her attentions shifted to Nuzum, a married man with two children. But her interest in Nuzum faded as quickly as it began.

One witness testified: "Jerry wanted to take Cricket home. Cricket said she didn't want to go with him."

Perhaps the most damaging testimony came from a witness who said he stopped Nuzum as the football player tried to force Coogler into his car, which was new and maroon.

Nuzum said he drove away, alone. He arrived home at 2:55 a.m., according to his wife and landlady. The trucker also left the bar alone.

A Las Cruces policeman offered a detailed story that seemed to help Nuzum. He said he and his partner saw Coogler get into a cream-colored 1941 Chevrolet coupe at 3:05 a.m.

These accounts and Nuzum's alibi were known to prosecutors two years before. The state had nothing new, but Nuzum's lawyers did.

They called a witness named Mary Foy. She told a startling story, saying she had watched two state police officers chase and beat Coogler before putting her into their car.

Her vantage, Foy said, was a seat on a parked bus bound for White Sands Proving Grounds. Foy testified that she had gone to Sheriff Apodaca with her story. For its part, the prosecution said it found no corroboration for her account.

Even so, the case against Nuzum was damaged so much that it never made it to the jury.

Judge Charles Fowler ruled that the prosecution had failed to meet its burden of proof. He gave Nuzum that rarest of courtroom decisions, a directed verdict of acquittal.

"There is a complete lack of evidence to connect Nuzum with the death as charged," Fowler said.

Spectators in the courtroom applauded. Nuzum's wife, Mary, wept. He leaned over to comfort her, then broke down himself.

Nuzum was free at last, but his life would not be easy. His career with the Steelers ended after the 1951 season. He stayed in the Pittsburgh area, where he worked for and eventually owned car dealerships.

Few people in Western Pennsylvania seemed to focus on his murder trial in Las Cruces.

Still, Nuzum said, the case haunted him. He told the Herald-Post in 1983 that it took him 20 years to pay off his legal bills. The stigma of being a murder suspect remained.

"It was so embarrassing to be accused of a crime like that," Nuzum said. "You can't ever live it down. It's a shame that people sometimes hear my name and they don't say anything about my being a car dealer or playing four years for the Steelers. They say, 'He was the one in that case.' "

Nuzum died in 1997 at age 73.

A federal court jury in September 1950 convicted Sheriff Apodaca and New Mexico State Police Chief Hubert Beasley of violating Wesley Byrd's civil rights by torturing him. Each served a year in prison. President Harry Truman later pardoned them.

Paul Rader (11 July 1923 - 31 December 1985) was a junior in 1947, a local boy with interesting family ties, and a member of Who's Who in American Colleges (see citation here ). His sister Rhodanelle, better known as actress Sharon Douglas, was living with her first husband, film producer Edward Nassour (married in August 1946).

Hedda helped Sharon, and Sharon's husband worked with Paul.

Sharon went to Hollywood in 1938, and her mother Lydia went with her, becoming a member of the screen mothers organization. Sharon was befriended by Hedda Hopper, and appeared on several of Miss Hopper's radio broadcasts. Sharon's mother lived in Hollywood the rest of her life, passing away in 1986.

Paul transferred to UCLA in 1948, took his BS degree and went to New York. He earned a masters degree at Columbia, and began publishing short stories. In 1950 he went to Hollywood and San Francisco as a movie writer and editor, working with his sister's husband, Edward Nassour, on multiple projects.

Paul's first book received some gentle reviews.

Paul returned to the southwest in 1952 as writer and producer for KROD TV in El Paso. He moved on to WGBH TV in Boston in 1954. At some point he was hired by New York University as the director of public relations, and director of developmental planning, which is translated as fund raising.

During these years he wrote novels, short stories and scripts (movie and TV). He published at least five novels, some of which are still available. His book, "The Fraud," has been republished at least once, and the movie rights purchased. Another, "Dr. Wilmess Must Die," caused a stir at NMSU when published during his stint there in the 1960s (see review here ).

In 1967 Paul returned to Las Cruces as the Vice President of development for the University of NM A&M, by then called New Mexico State University. He is credited with naming the school's new multi-purpose activity center "The Pan American Center." He left in the early 1970s and was appointed to the New Mexico Highway Commission. Political conflicts led to a high profile imbroglio in the press and he resigned in 1979. He went on living in Messilla and passed away in 1985 of Lou Gherig's disease.

Paul was married to Rosalie Veitch, also a person of considerable interest. Her passion was music and she sang with the Dessoff Choir in New York City, singing Carmina Burana at Carnegie Hall. She became Mayor of Mesilla after she and Paul returned to New Mexico and was a force in local civic life. The Rader's had one son, who died at an early age.

Rosalie's great-grandfather was Albert J. Fountain, a local Mesilla legend, the victim of a famous unsolved murder(see more here ). She collaborated with Dr. Gordon R. Owen, NMSU professor emeritus, on his treatment of the Fountain murders.

A few weeks before 1947 started, my parents packed my brother and I into a 1935 Plymouth, and drove across the Sierra Nevada Mountains, across the Continental divide, and all the way, almost, to the Mississippi river. It was a great adventure. My father had worked at the Standard Oil Refinery in Richmond, California, and the trip was his way of escaping the air pollution that threatened his lungs, scarred by the 1918 flu.

My Great-Grandfather started a family pattern in 1854.

For my mother, a native of Missouri, the trip was a generational echo of a trip her great-grandfather had made from Missouri to California and back in the 1850s. She was following her father in his own slow-motion echo of his grandfather's trip. He'd moved from Missouri to Nebraska to California over a twenty-year period, and had just returned to take up farming in his birth state a few months before us.

We stopped off in Rangely, Colorado to visit my dad's parents, Joe and Glenn Trachta, who were building a house there after a lifetime of wildcat drilling across the northern states.

Joe Trachta driving into Rangely in 1912.

Rangely was a boomtown. A deep well through the Mancos Shale in the 1930s had turned it into a liquid gold-rush by the 40s. The town was shacks, tents, mud, deep ruts, and wildly disparate, some desperate, people from all over the world. My grandfather was among them. He and George Eldred, had drilled the first cable-tool well in Rangely back in 1902, but failed to get through the Mancos Shale.

He'd recently retired, but there were plenty of active drillers, roustabouts, managers, executives, vagabonds, main-chancers, and con men crunching through the frozen streets. I was four years old, and have never seen anything like it in the seven decades since.

This is Rangely, 1946. Add a little snow, and it's the sight my Dad saw in his rearview mirror when he left in early 1947.

I've recently learned the multifarious gaggle watching the Rangely Christmas Parade that year probably included George De Mohrenschildt, professional spook, and subject of a staff report by the Warren Commission (see here or his testimony here). He went to Rangely in 1946 on a mission of hazy purpose, married his second wife, reportedly took a side trip to Haiti in 1947, and moved to Denver in 1950. He went to Haiti again five months before John Kennedy died.

First class accommodations in 1947 Rangely.

It was an event-filled visit to an exotic location, and at the end we rang in the New Year, 1947. It was my first awareness of time measure. It seemed like a very big deal, almost as big as Christmas, perhaps because of my Trachta grandparents, who'd lost a son in the closing months of the war, my Uncle Eldy (see here ), and may have been eager start a new chapter.

We went on across Kansas and most of Missouri, and lived for a while with my other Grandparents, the Staseys. They'd just completed my Grandpa Stasey's generational echo in a Chevy school bus adapted as an early-days mobile home. I'm guessing he followed his grandfather's route from California, by then called the Lincoln Highway. My grandmother was a loving, patient woman, much consumed in starting up a long neglected farm, but she paid a lot of attention to her young grandsons.

My Grandma Stasey was a patient woman.

I was proud of my knew chrono-knowledge, and asked frequently, "What year is it now?" Everyone but my grandmother exhausted themselves trying to explain how long a year is. She just patiently replied, "It's still 1947." I didn't know the day of the week or the hour of the day, but I knew the year, and I was flummoxed that it never changed. It had changed once before in my memory, and I didn't want to miss the next one. Nevertheless, her answer was always the same. "No honey, it's still 1947."

1947 went on forever.

This key to yearbook symbols was included to redefine the swastika.

The first challenge for the 1947 yearbook was its name, "The Swastika," a Native American good-luck symbol chosen in 1907.

Neither the name nor the symbol appeared on the cover from Germany's invasion of Poland, until the post-war issue in 1946 when the name reappeared without the symbol.

Gwynne Guthrie had a long association with NMSU.

The 1947 staff, probably influenced by sponsors Gwynne Guthrie and Lionel Haight, rescued the innocence of the misused swastika. The 1947 students included ex-POW's held in NAZI camps, veterans mortally threatened, and sometimes wounded, by soldiers under this banner. Their willingness to snatch the abused symbol from the maw of nihility is admirable. Its ever-misunderstood use went on for decades. Generations of students and observers were calmly educated.

Swastika Explanation

Eventually, lamentably, NMSU gave in and renamed its yearbook, "Phoenix." The enlightenment of modern semantics notwithstanding, distinguishing the "name" from the "thing" became a lost cause. Perhaps in the long scope of history the swastika will recover, but NMSU has now abandoned its yearbook altogether, thus removing itself from the battle.

The Swastika story illustrates the germinal tension of 1947. After the collision of ancient tribal impulses with twentieth century technology, 1947 was the first step back from annihilation. The jury is still out on all that, and it remains the dawn of our current day.