Pilgrimage Leaves Winter Behind : Hawkeye Fans Warm to the Challenge

Six years ago, Wally Taylor, then the principal of Dunkerton Elementary School in the tiny, 750-person farming community of Dunkerton, Iowa, made a promise to four of his sixth-grade students.

One day, he told them, “I will take you to a bowl game.”

On Tuesday, the students--Troy Neil, Darren West, Chris Stumme and Brett McMahon--collected on that vow.

Standing in the vast asphalt savanna outside San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, the youths, all now seniors at Dunkerton High School, were filled with anticipation, their winter faces burned red by three days in the radiant Southern California sun.

In only a few more hours, their beloved Iowa Hawkeyes would be playing San Diego State University in the 1986 Holiday Bowl. As they dug into their suitcases in the trunk of Taylor’s large Cadillac and grabbed their T-shirts and sweaters emblazoned with Go-Iowa slogans, Neil, 18, announced simply and triumphantly: “It’s great to be a Hawkeye.”

Never mind that immediately after the game they and Taylor faced a 36-hour return journey--with a stop in Missouri--back to Iowa, and the familiar cold and fog. For now, all that mattered was the game and the memories of visits to the San Diego Zoo, Sea World and, of course, the beach.

“There was a group I promised in the sixth-grade . . . to take to a bowl game,” explained Taylor, who is now retired. The boys were just about ready to get out of school now, and they figured it was about time to take him up on his old promise, he said.

There was no mistaking Taylor’s enjoyment of the moment or his allegiance to his home-state football squad. His late-model car was plastered with black-and-gold stickers of a hawk’s head, the team’s emblem, and mottoes such as “My two favorite teams are the Hawkeyes and whoever is playing the Cyclones,” a reference to arch-rival Iowa State.

Soon after the parking lot gates opened in the early afternoon, thousands of ubiquitous Iowa fans--in cars, vans, and recreational vehicles and dressed from head to foot in vivid black and yellow, like so many lost trick-or-treaters--descended upon the stadium. Tailgate parties began in earnest, and a watchful Dottie Snow, a committed San Diego State fan of 30 years, observed:

“They want to get all the sun they can. They don’t want to go back to where it’s cold.”

For Gary Smerdon and Bill Block, the pre-game happy hour provided an opportunity to renew a friendship forged in Rockwell, Iowa, more than 40 years ago.

“Our dads knew each other, and we grew up together and kept in touch,” explained Smerdon.

Smerdon left Rockwell in 1944, settled in San Diego, where his father bought the small Sentinel newspaper in Pacific Beach, and then graduated from San Diego State. Block stayed home and today is a grain farmer outside Rockwell, population 2,500.

The men, their wives and friends stood around a folding card table serving as a makeshift bar dispensing white and rose wines, Bloody Marys and beer. They good-naturedly traded jokes.

“I think it’ll be a real good game,” Block said, pausing before delivering his zinger. “I’m just saying that because I’m trying to have him (Smerdon) give me 40 points.”

“There’s nothing serious here; we’re just having good fun,” Smerdon said. The biggest event at the Smerdon-Block tailgate party was the expected arrival of former Dubuque Mayor Wayne Moldenhaur, who at 3 p.m. was still nowhere in sight. “Come back later,” said one of the revelers. “He’s someone you’d want to meet.”