Our Field of Dreams "Cowboy Memorial Stadium"

I was just a punk kid watching the Gunnison Cowboys at Mountaineer Bowl when Mike Dickenson was playing football for the Gunnison Cowboys. Mike shined pretty brightly as a star in my eyes, though he was just a high school football player. Lots of other names stick out in my mind, but I’m just focusing on Mike for the moment, because it was getting to know Mike later as an adult that inspired the creation of this page.

When we were putting the finishing touches on the stadium preparing for the inaugural game, Mike, in spite of having some difficulty with his balance at times, was right out there working along with us. On one occasion, he and I had to go get some boards to help support the flag pole while the concrete was drying. It was an opportunity to get to know one of the Cowboys from the past as an adult. I am certainly glad that I had the opportunity, because we lost Mike not long after.

After one of those work sessions, I was standing atop the new bleachers looking across the field and the freshly painted G and realized that this field had memories for everyone who ever played football as a Gunnison Cowboy since the school was first occupied in 1965. What is now Gunnison Cowboy Memorial Stadium was the practice field and JV football field.

This is significant for two reasons. The football players that are honored by the naming of the field would have played their home football games on that very field and it seems fitting somehow that it will forever be memorialized that way. The second reason is that the practice field is christened with blood, sweat and Jim Bohnsack and Russell Dick’s favorite “beanie weenies” or as we called it “planting flowers.” It was on that field that we actually turned each other into Cowboys.

I can’t even begin to tell you the thrill that went through me when we turned on the lights at Cowboy Memorial Stadium for the first time and the first team of Cowboys to play on the field ran out onto the field to play. Even as we wrapped up the last game of the season with temperatures hovering just barely above the freezing mark as the game ended, I knew that we finally had a home of our own to be proud of.

Keep it going Cowboys; young and old alike, this is your page for remembering the past and making new memories, “memories so thick that (you’ll) have to brush them away from (your) faces (James Earl Jones, Field of Dreams).”