One of the joys of working at a newspaper happens when someone calls to compliment you on a story you’ve written. Occasionally the call isn’t at all complimentary, so when one takes place that is friendly in tone, it is a real joy.

Such a call came through earlier this week when Sid Micek of Champaign-Urbana, Ill., called the office to seek me out and then passed along his phone number for me to call at my convenience. My schedule hasn’t been really crowded of late, so I called him back the same day.

I had mentioned Micek in a column I recently wrote about the passing of football great Gale Sayers. I had had brief contact with Sayers during our freshman year at the University of Kansas and later on when we both were working in Illinois.

To set the stage, I mentioned having taken a physical education course in basketball with Sayers. Micek was in the same class and at the beginning of the first class told everyone who would listen that we were going to hear a lot about Sayers, because he was a superb football player. Micek was on the football team and later would start at quarterback for the Jayhawks.

He said he came across what I had written through a daughter, who had told a friend at Sayers’ passing that her Dad had played football in college with the Hall-of-Fame running back. They searched on the internet for stories about Sayers and came across the piece I had written. Micek’s daughter passed along the link to him.

When I called him I had no idea that we would visit for about an hour. It was a pleasant time full of the reminiscing of two guys who had shared a PE class almost 60 years ago.

He remembered the class, but had forgotten that Sayers shared it with us. He also identified with a reference to Joseph R. Pearson Hall, the dorm where the three of us lived at the time.

“I remember Ponca City,” he said. He mentioned that the KU football team stayed in Ponca City overnight before busing into Stillwater the next day for a game against the OSU Cowboys. When I asked if he remembered where they stayed, he couldn’t come up with a name.

“It was the familiar routine. They would feed us, take us to a movie and then go back to the motel. As I remember we had a couple of players who didn’t make it back to the motel with us. We never knew where they had gone,” he said.

He said he had fond memories about playing OSU and had especially admired the play of Cowboy star Walt Garrison.

“Gale Sayers was a great athlete,” Micek said. “He was quiet and unassuming, but he was a great person, one of the nicest persons you would ever meet. I would later tell people I had the privilege of handing the ball to him in a game and then I would get out of the way. He heard me say that once and said ‘You were supposed to be blocking.’ I told him, ‘no, remember we ran the option. I would pitch it to you and then get creamed.”

Micek came to KU from Scottsbluff, Neb, out in the panhandle of the state not far from the Wyoming state line. Sayers was also from Nebraska, from Omaha at the eastern end of the state. Micek mentioned that a number of times he would ride with Sayers to Omaha, and then hitchhike the rest of the way to Scottsbluff.

“Do you remember Curtis McClinton?” he asked at one point in our conversation.

I remember Curtis McClinton. In fact, the first week I was on campus at KU I was in line at the student union ready to order some food. McClinton, who was a big burly football player, was ahead of me in line. He turned around to me and advised me to order a hamburger, which he said was the best burger in Lawrence. I was in awe of the fact that this famous football player had spoken to me, just a freshman from a little town in North Central Kansas.

Micek had his own memory of McClinton. “When I was a freshman, we played a game with Syracuse. They had Ernie Davis (the eventual Heisman Trophy winner who died his first year in the NFL from leukemia) and a guy by the name of Art Baker. Baker was an NCAA wrestling champion. In the game, Baker ran the ball around end and he and McClinton hit head on. There was this big collision and the stands went quiet. They both got up and shook their heads and continued to play. It was quite a sight.”

Micek’s red shirt season was the year that the Jayhawks finished with a 7-3-1 record after starting 0-2-1 in their first three games. One of the wins was a big victory over Rice in the Bluebonnet Bowl in Houston. Members of the team were McClinton, quarterback John Hadl and running back Bert Coan. Although Micek was a redshirt, he accompanied the team to Houston for the game. After the game, McClinton and Hadl knelt under the goal posts and signed their pro contracts, he recalled.

Hadl was one reason that Micek had chosen Kansas over other schools.

“We had met at a YMCA Camp at Estes Park. He encouraged me to visit Kansas and when I did, it was so much fun, I didn’t want to go anywhere else,” he said.

The football coach in Lawrence in those years was Jack Mitchell.

“Mitchell was quite a guy. My junior year, I think it was, our kicker had his problems and coach said ‘anybody who thinks they can kick off show me what you can do.’ I stepped out and got the job. I kicked with regular cleats, no square-toe shoe, and kicked it straight on, but I could kick pretty well. The first game was against Kansas State and no one told me they were known for going head hunting after the kicker. I kicked off and was headed down field to make a play when I got blindsided. The ball went out of bounds and I had to kick it over. But I had learned quickly, I was alert the next time.”

He remembered a 15-14 victory over Oklahoma, a rare time that the Jayhawks defeated the Sooners.

“Sayers ran the opening kickoff back for a touchdown, but OU scored twice later to lead 14-7. On the last play of the game, Sayers was on the sideline having been tossed for getting in a fight. Bob Skahan was the quarterback and he was supposed to be the recipient of a pass from the fullback. But Skahan wasn’t open and the fullback ran the ball in for a touchdown to make the score 14-13. The clock read 0:00. I was the quarterback as we went for two points and we ran a double reverse and scored to win the game 15-14.

Micek is somewhat retired although he has the title of President Emeritus and Senior Advisor for the University of Illinois Foundation, which he said “is an acronym for fund raising.” Before retirement he was President of the Foundation. He and I visited about Decatur, a city about 50 miles from the U of I campus and where I once lived. We spent some time discussing the towns in which we grew up.

But our conversation always returned to his years at KU and some common memories we had. Most of all the conversation kept coming back to Gale Sayers.

“I was honored I got to play with this guy. He was a great, great person,” was his parting comment.