Huskies for eternity
By Malamute, 9 May 2002

It was an awful day for football--rainy, windy and cold. Little did I know that the turbulent weather was a foreboding symbol for one of the most tragic days in Husky football history.

The date was October 28, 2000 and the Huskies were to play Stanford in Palo Alto.

We traveled to Palo Alto from our home in Southern California to see the game and then to visit with our daughter that night for her birthday. We attended the Husky pre-game function, saw Groinman, my old buddy, and met Taft, who was with another Husky friend of mine. Officer Groinman took my picture, shown on the left, alongside another malamute, Prince Redoubt, the mascot for Husky road games.

For most of the game, the Washington offense and defense had their way with the Stanford team, bullying them around. Stanford was slow to adapt to the rainy conditions, muddy field and wet ball.

Late in the third quarter, I moved from my seat on the Husky side to take some pictures of the game from the east end zone, where the Huskies’ defense had Stanford bottled up.

As I walked down the steps towards the end zone, I waved to members of nose tackle Larry Tripplett’s family and then that awful collision occurred. Strong safety Curtis Williams ran head on, literally, into Stanford fullback Kerry Carter, stopped him in his tracks and then lay motionless on the ground. As I watched him struggle to breathe, I knew his injury was serious.

Emotionally upset, fearing the worst had happened, I walked back up the steps and sat near the Tripplett’s, waiting for C-Dub to come around. It must have been twenty minutes or so before they loaded him into the ambulance.  

As we found out later, he suffered a spinal injury at his C2 vertebrae, which left him paralyzed. He couldn't breathe without a ventilator. Last June, a device was implanted that allowed him to breathe without a ventilator for up to 12 hours a day.

Nineteen months from that awful October day, Curtis Williams passed away. His memory will live on in the annals of Husky history, for he's a Dawg for eternity.