COL Norman Jarock

COL Norman Jarock.jpg
Richard Nixon and Norman Jarock

Title

COL Norman Jarock

Subject

COL Norman Jarock

Description

In the fall of 1957, Vice President Nixon was greeted by the cadet battalion under command of cadet Lieutenant Colonel Norm Jarock. Mr. Nixon visited Green Bay to dedicate the new Packer stadium. He complemented the unit as "one of the finest I've ever seen."

Creator

Kelly Levenhagen

Source

SNC ROTC
SNC Magazine
http://www.snc.edu/communications/magazine/2010v42n1/soulmates.html

Publisher

[no text]

Date

May 2, 2012

Contributor

[no text]

Rights

St. Norbert College

Relation

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Format

Image

Language

English

Type

Image

Identifier

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Coverage

[no text]

Birth Date

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Birthplace

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Death Date

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Occupation

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Biographical Text

In the fall of 1958, Clarice (Krawczyk) Jarock ’58, better known as Boots, was voted Homecoming queen and Norm Jarock ’58, the football hero and record holder for rushing yards, was tagged the unofficial Homecoming king. When I interviewed them, Norm told me that Boots is still the queen.

After 51 years of marriage, they still adore one another. You can hear it in the way Boots talks about Norm’s accomplishments. She is sure to tell me he was named a Little All-America Football Team player, which got him an audience shot on the Ed Sullivan Show. She tells me he was the ninth player drafted by the Packers in 1958, only to have his football career cut short by an ankle injury during the Packers’ first major scrimmage that year. She proudly tells me of his three early promotions in the army. He retired at the rank of colonel.

At one point, when I express awe at Boots’ ability to pick up and move her family of seven to Korea, stay in a small apartment where she hand-carried the water and slept on the floor, and find a teaching job at a nearby international school, Norm raises an eyebrow and nods – his admission that, yes, Boots is an amazing woman.

One of Boots and Norm’s early encounters was in English class. Norm was reading from the poem “Sohrab and Rustum” by Matthew Arnold, and caught Boots’ attention with his deep voice.

Next day, Boots arrived early and purposely sat in the wrong seat so she could be next to Norm. The two of them sat next to each other for the remainder of the class. By the fall of their junior year, they were an item.

The place and the year they fell in love still hold special meaning for the couple. They had run across “Sohrab and Rustum” at an antique shop and purchased it in honor of the memory. They dusted off its cover for me to see. Since then, Norm and Boots have lived all over the world, only returning to De Pere in 1986 when Norm retired from the army.

When Norm and Boots began looking to move back to Wisconsin, Boots called up Abbott Pennings High School in De Pere to see if she could get David, their fourth child, on the waiting list. Boots gave the secretary her married name, Clarice Jarock. The secretary immediately asked, “Is this Boots?” Boots says: “I mean, after being gone all those years! It turned out that this woman’s brother went to St. Norbert with us.”

It’s that kind of small community atmosphere that has Norm and Boots glad to be back. They’ve got a lifetime pass to see all the college football games, they enjoy getting together with old classmates at Homecoming, they love the music theatre productions of Dudley Birder and, on warm summer nights, they still ride their bikes around campus.

Information taken from St. Norbert College Magazine

Bibliography

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