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He never lost: Remembering Abe Rodkey, Lewistown’s unbeaten quarterback

LEWISTOWN -- In the summer of 1957, Lewistown High School needed a quarterback.

Abe Rodkey wasn't playing football.

Coach Alex Ufema asked him to come out for the team.

Rodkey sat in Ufema's office during gym class and memorized the playbook. He learned the offense well enough to call most of his own plays. He won the job.

Then he spent two seasons doing something few quarterbacks ever do.

He never lost.

Rodkey, who died Aug. 12 at age 85, quarterbacked Lewistown's 1957 and 1958 Western Conference championship teams. The Panthers went 9-0 his junior season and 10-0 his senior year, giving Rodkey a 19-0 record as the starting quarterback.

For a teenager who hadn't planned on playing football that summer, it became one of Lewistown's great football runs.

"Those years he played on the championship team were like a story or something you see in the movies," said his wife, Judith "Karen" Stafford Rodkey.

She had a good seat for it.

Karen and Abe began dating in ninth grade. They graduated together in 1959 and married in 1962. During their senior year, an opening came up on the cheerleading squad. Karen had a cousin and friends on the squad who decided she should join them.

"They managed to make a passable cheerleader out of me," she said.

It put her on the sideline for every game of her future husband's final unbeaten season.

Rodkey played quarterback in an offense built to run the football.

Lewistown didn't ask its quarterback to throw the ball 30 or 40 times a night. Ufema had a backfield loaded with runners. Rodkey's job was to direct them.

Ralph Baker, a Lewistown graduate who played with Rodkey before going on to letter three years at Penn State and spend 11 seasons with the New York Jets, remembers exactly what made Rodkey work.

"I only played with him for one season, but he was the perfect quarterback for the type of offense we ran, which was heavy run," Baker said.

Rodkey knew the playbook and protected the football. More than anything, Baker remembers him as a leader.

The names around Rodkey help explain why he didn't need to fill the air with footballs. Junior Powell, Fred Stoicheff and Gary Sprout were part of a group Lewistown's yearbook later called a "dream backfield."

Baker said Rodkey understood what the offense required.

"He was confident in the huddle," Baker said. "He didn't have to pass much. He wasn't a passing quarterback."

When Lewistown needed Rodkey's left arm, Baker said, it was there.

"When he needed to make a pass, it was there," Baker said. "He was accurate."

The first season began with a 26-0 victory over Sunbury. Tyrone came closest to stopping the Panthers, falling 13-7.

After that, nobody came within a touchdown.

By the end of 1957, Lewistown had outscored nine opponents 291-13. Seven games ended in shutouts.

The surviving statistics belong mostly to Lewistown's runners. Stoicheff, for example, rushed for 927 yards on just 64 carries in 1957.

Rodkey stood in the middle of it all. He took the snap and made the decision. The Panthers came back in 1958 and did it again. Ten games. Ten wins. Nineteen straight victories across two seasons.

Rodkey's high school career left something simpler behind: nobody beat him.

Baker remembers the person as clearly as the player.

"He was a good leader for the team and the perfect quarterback, like I said, for what we did," Baker said. "He was a good guy."

Rodkey attended Pillsbury Baptist Bible College and later Philadelphia College of the Bible, earning a bachelor's degree in 1966. He eventually earned a master's degree through Moody Bible Institute in 1993.

He spent 42 years as a pastor, serving churches in South Jersey, Chester, Parkesburg, Havertown and Claymont, Del.

Retirement didn't end the work. He later served as an interim pastor at three churches. He also taught Bible school.

The quarterback who once had to memorize Ufema's playbook became a teacher and preacher.

Karen said communication came naturally to him.

"Abe was a great communicator as a teacher and preacher," she said. "He liked people, and he liked helping people."

At home, she saw another side.

"He was quieter at home and mostly listened," Karen said. "Kept a lot of deep thoughts to himself."

He also worked with his hands, building furniture and smaller pieces in his workshop that remain with the family.

He loved traveling, and he and Karen took family vacations with their children and grandchildren. They were married for 64 years.

The football stories never disappeared, but they became one part of a much longer life.

The 19-0 record gets your attention.

Rodkey wasn't headed toward the quarterback job when the summer of 1957 began. An opening appeared. Ufema asked him to try. Rodkey learned the offense and earned the trust of the men around him.

Then Lewistown kept winning.

The boy who called most of his own plays eventually became a man who spent decades speaking from pulpits and classrooms. The teenager Karen watched from the sideline became the husband who listened more than he talked at home.

Old photographs and yearbooks document the football years. So do the trophies and the scores. The people who knew him remember something else, too.

Baker remembers the calm presence in the huddle. Karen remembers the man who listened. Both knew the same Abe Rodkey.

For two autumns in Lewistown, he stood behind the center. Nineteen times his team walked onto the field. Nineteen times it walked off a winner.

And for the rest of his life, nobody could ever say he lost one.