Bio: Larsen, Colonel (Football Star - 1974)

Contact: Dolores (Mohr) Kenyon
E-mail: dolores@wiclarkcountyhistory.org 

Surnames: Larsen, Van Gorden, Lukes

----Source: Clark County Press (Neillsville, Clark Co., WI) 9/05/1974

Larsen, Colonel (Football Star & Rifle Champ -1974)

Rifle Champ Dies; Coach Here

Colonel Larsen, one-time All-America football star from (then) La Crosse State College, and a former coach of the Neillsville High School Football Warriors, lost his battle to adversity in Rochester, Mn., last week.

Larsen gained world fame after leaving Neillsville, over-coming the ravages of paralytic poliomyelitis to become first the world quick draw champion, then the world champion professional rifle marksman.

While he was in Neillsville, though, in 1943 and 1944, Coach Larsen only indicated great interest in the showmanship that later was to engulf his life. His football team of 1943 had a record of 0-3-1, at least that is what the Warrior yearbook for that year indicates.

Heron (Pink) Van Gorden, who played tackle on Larsen’s teams, does not recall the exact record for 1945 (and no year book was immediately available in the school’s archives); but, according to Pink, “it wasn’t very good.”

Pink recalls the event which he believes in reflection brought Coach Larsen’s resignation here. One of the players during these war years had showered and dressed after a workout. Some of the other boys were in a playful mood and dumped him back under the showers - street clothes and all.

That incensed Larsen, and the coach suspended the whole lot of boys involved, with only the final game against Medford still to be played. Van Gorden recalls that he “called all the signals” for the Medford game, and “that probably was the only time in history when a Neillsville tackle directed the attack for the forward wall.”

After he had left Neillsville, and during that period when parents hereabouts anxiously watched their children as a polio epidemic covered this area, both Colonel Larsen, in Whitehall, and his daughter, became inflicted with the paralyzing type of bulbar polio.

Both lived; and the story of Larsen’s determined fight to regain not only the use of his arms and legs, but to go on to become the world’s quick draw champion, was emblazoned on the feature page of nearly every daily newspaper in the nation.

It was during a few years later that Henry J. Lukes, now high school principal, remembers Colonel Larsen giving an assembly featuring his sharp-shooting and quick draw abilities.

Just a few short weeks ago the writer, a friend, and acquaintance dating back to Colonel La3rsen’s days in Neillsville, sat with him at the bar in the Whitehall Country Club. We were not aware of it, but already leukemia has taken the toll of one eye. Sight in the other was fast fading; but not one word of acknowledgement or complaint was spoken as they talked of old times, and mutual friends.

In fact, even at that late date, Larsen sketched the busy season ahead, a season which was to take in on a circuit covering a large area of the United States.

If Larsen had any thought of giving in to his deadly disease, he did not show it in the slightest. But that was like Colonel Larsen. He had taken his misfortunes one-by-one and battled them until he conquered.

But Leukemia was a battle he could not lick. He died at age of 60 and was buried at Whitehall, where for many years a sign at the entrance to the city proudly proclaimed:

“Whitehall – Home of Larsen, Marlin Champion Rifleman.”