COLLEGEVILLE, Minn. - It was a time for celebration, but also to mourn, when Homecoming returned to the Saint John's University campus after a three-year absence 80 years ago.

The game itself – which the Johnnies lost 21-6 to a heavily-favored St. Olaf squad on Oct. 27 – was not as important as the chance it offered the school community to pay tribute to the 63 Gold Star Johnnies lost in World War II, a large number of whom were former student-athletes.

The war – which officially ended when the Japanese surrender was signed on Sept. 2, 1945 – had directly impacted football at Saint John's and so many other schools across the country. The Johnnies did not play in 1943 and scheduled just two games – both against Macalester – in 1944.

But there was again a full schedule in 1945, and the season's final home game against St. Olaf (then nicknamed the Vikings, not the Oles) was designated as the first Homecoming game since the war's early days in 1942.

"Game time is set for 2:30 p.m. Saturday, and the Homecoming Committee promises a traditional afternoon," wrote The Record in advance of the game. "Band, cheerleaders, hot dogs and a stadium filled with students, faculty and alumni. Also present for the afternoon, cheering for a Cardinal and Blue victory, will be the (St. Cloud) Cathedral High Girls Drum and Bugle Corps.
 
"The Home eleven will have a fight on its hands against the powerful team from Northfield, but whether they win or not, the more important fact is that St. John's once again has a team in the field and is building up the old traditions. Hope is high that many alumni will be able to attend this year's event, since it honors our 63 Gold Stars."

The Record had summed up the mood of many on hand in the crowd that afternoon in an editorial that ran in the same issue.

"Home is St. John's and St. John's is home, and the mention of the name brings back glad memories of family life experienced at St. John's," the editorial read. "It means for us a second home, a continuation of the parental family, where we eat together, pray together, work together, think many of the same thoughts, live together, play together and experience the same sorrows and the same laughter. When we, as Johnnies, speak of Homecoming, we mean coming home to this family of which we are always members, coming home to renew old acquaintances, whether they are students or the Fathers who direct the family in the paths of wisdom and ideal family principles.
 
"But there are some of our large family who won't be back to their parents, to their wives or to St. John's," it continued. "They have gone to war to wage battle as our representatives. We, too, put up our service flag. When the day of our Homecoming arrives, we number those who have gone ahead to the eternal Homecoming, buried on the beach at Anzio, in a cave on Iwo Jima or on the battlefront of Germany. In the same way that we can never forget our own brothers lost in the darkness of this war, we will always mourn the loss of our fellow Johnnies who gave their lives in this same conflagration."

The SJU football team that took the field that day was bolstered by a pair of players who had just returned from military service. John Heimann – who'd flown bombing raids over Germany during the war – and Ken Schoener – a St. Cloud Cathedral graduate who served as a Navy pilot.

Schoener, who would go on to earn Associated Press Little All-American honorable mention distinction despite missing the season's first three games, had SJU's only touchdown – a 3-yard touchdown catch from Chuck Forbes in the third quarter.

But it was those service members who didn't return home that were at the forefront of everyone's minds.

"It is with reluctance that I write these dedicatory lines to mothers of the St. John's boys who made the supreme sacrifice for their country; for I cannot suppress the fear that it will be also, and more effectively, another arrow shot into their hearts like unto the one that pierced them when they received the news of the death of their boys," wrote Fr. Alcuin Deutsch, the Abbot of Saint John's Abbey and president of SJU, in his dedication message in The Record.
 
"It may be even a sharper one, for coming from the school to which they had entrusted their boys, it will inevitably be associated with the memory of the day when they brought them to St. John's and with the fond hopes they then entertained for their future. Gone now are those hopes. To evoke the memory of that day and of those hopes by this dedication to them seems cruel. However, we trust the mothers will find comfort in the knowledge, conveyed by this issue of The Record, that St. John's, which was a fostering mother-Alma Mater, grieves with them. 
 
"But we find consolation in the thought of God's wisdom and mercy and love – a thought with which we sought to inspire our boys, and in the hope that, in their last moment, a vision of St. John's Twin Towers, surmounted by the Cross, the token of God's merciful love, came to them, and with it the desire of falling by death into loving embrace and eternal union with their Father in heaven."

1985 (40 years ago)
Mike Zumwinkle had 22 carries for 230 yards and scored three touchdowns as the Johnnie football team beat Hamline 21-7 on Oct. 26 in Collegeville.
 
One of Zumwinkle's touchdowns came on a 70-yard run with 3:04 to play in the fourth quarter.

1995 (30 years ago)
Jeb Myers finished third and Ryan Steines finished fourth as the SJU cross country team ran to a second-place finish at the MIAC Cross Country Championships on Oct. 28 at Como Park Golf Course in St. Paul.
 
2005 (20 years ago)
The SJU rugby team defeated Winona State 22-20 on Oct. 23 to win its first Minnesota Final Four title.