09/28/2026
Remembering the Game That Never Happened: A Convocation Honoring Prep's WWII Alumni
Please see Dr. Ochs' exhibit here: https://app.flipsnack.com/private/georgetownprep/completed-remembrance-project-exhibit-20
The Veteran Aid Club hosted a convocation on September 18, with leaders setting up a moving assembly, after prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance, with Carter Sweeney ’27 playing "America the Beautiful" on violin and veteran Prep historian and Lawler Chair of History Dr. Stephen J. Ochs presenting on his curated exhibit "The Game That Never Happened," the latest installment of The Remembrance Project.
The exhibit centers on a Christmas Day 1944 football game that paratroopers of the 101st Airborne had planned to play in Reims, France, only to be rushed to Bastogne when German forces broke through in the Ardennes. The young men who trained for a game were called back to war, and the game was never played.
Through that story, Dr. Ochs traces the path from D-Day to victory in Europe and honors the more than 400 Prep alumni who served in World War II, twelve of whom gave their lives. Among them are Michael J. Daly '41, who landed at Omaha Beach at nineteen and rose from private to captain, earning the Medal of Honor, three Silver Stars, and two Purple Hearts before his twenty-first birthday; Captain Joseph L. "Joe" Egan Jr. '34, a P-47 Thunderbolt ace and three-time Distinguished Flying Cross recipient who was shot down over France in July 1944; and classmates and track teammates Andrew W. Mahoney Jr. '43 and William A. "Bill" Roberts Jr. '43, who were killed in the Netherlands and Germany, respectively, in the fall of 1944.
The exhibit also carries two close connections to Prep's football rivalry with Eastern High School. Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe, the Eastern graduate who famously answered a German surrender demand at Bastogne with "NUTS!", commanded the besieged defenders. And the story of Tom Paro, an artilleryman who fought in the Battle of the Bulge and later witnessed the liberation of the Ohrdruf concentration camp, is that of the father of Prep's own head football coach and athletic director, Dan Paro ’79. In a speech to the School community on the day of the opening of the exhibit and the game with Eastern Senior High in the William V. Bidwill ’49 Stadium, Dr. Ochs urged the Prep community to remember and honor these men, and all veterans. Alumni veterans attended the evening game on 9/18: Sean Feeley '83 and classmates at the viewing party on Flanagan Terrace, Matt Speicher, '98 flipping the coin, and on the field Ken Crim '69, Sean Feeley '83, Ken Keane '62 and Mike Brown '89.
