Bob Schmidt, a Special Fan

By Jim Joanos

If you are a college football fan, you get to read a lot about the players and the coaches. That is to be expected as they are the ones who are actually playing the games. However, often overlooked is the importance of fans to the game. It is the fans who fill the stands and cheer the teams on. It is the fans who wear the team colors and board buses and travel to away games. The fans also suffer the losses and enjoy the wins. This story is about an FSU fan that I have admired for many years.

In 1962, when I got back to Tallahassee after graduating from law school, one of the first things I did was get season tickets for the FSU football games.

Back in the 60’s, boy scouts and scout leaders served as ushers at the FSU games. Assigned as head usher to our area of the seating was a scout leader named Bob Schmidt. Each game when we got to the stadium Bob would greet us and help us find our seats. He was always dressed in his scout uniform with short pants. He was easy to get to know and we became friends. He was fun. I kidded him about his short pants. He told me that once he wore long plants and the team did not play well so out of superstition he went back to short pants.

Years went by. Our son became a boy scout. As a parent, I also got involved in the scouts. As such I spent lots of time with other scout leaders, one of which was Bob Schmidt.

Bob was as longtime scout master. He worked for one of the state agencies. He and his wife had 15 children. Yet, he found time to help raise lots of other peoples’ children. In addition to his love of FSU sports he was dedicated to his scout work. It became quite apparent to me that Bob was a really special person, one of those who went at great links to help those around him.

More years went by and while neither of us were as active with the scouts, I saw Bob at just about every FSU sports event that I attended. He seemed to be there and always in good spirits. Win or lose Bob would be there pulling for the FSU teams.

Sometime around 2003, my wife and I started going by buses to some of the FSU away football games, arranged for by one of Bob’s daughters and her husband, Penny and Jerry Scruggs. We have continued that practice and recently attended the LSU game with that group.

Until his death in 2018, Bob was passenger number one on those trips. He was always there early to get on the bus. By this time, Bob had aged quite a bit. His kids would pack his walker along with the luggage in the hold of the bus and see that he got on and into his seat. When we got to the motel where we would be staying his kids would see that he got off the bus and made it to his room. In the mornings, they would set him up in his walker in the breakfast room. In short, he was well taken care of. It was one of my real pleasures to spend time with Bob on those bus trips.

Bob never talked about it but it was on one of those trips that I learned from his family that Bob was a highly decorated World War II hero.

As a nineteen year old soldier, he volunteered for a special mission connected with the allied D Day invasion at Normandy. After a week or so of special training, he and several others on or about midnight the night before the invasion went by submarine and rubber rafts and planted explosives on Omaha Beach in several places to clear out some of the mines to make way for some of the landing craft that would be coming in on the invasion. Unfortunately, after planting his explosives and setting foot on the beach, Bob was confronted by a single German soldier who attacked him and stabbed him in the shoulder. Bob countered in hand to hand combat and managed to subdue the German. Plans had been for Bob and his fellow soldiers to hide out in an orchard near the beach and await the next day’s invasion. But because of the injury to his shoulder, Bob decided to swim back to the submarine from where he came and obtain treatment for his shoulder. Despite some difficulty he managed to do that and thereby survive his injury. For the rest of his life he bore the scar on his shoulder from he thirteen stitches that were necessary to shore up the wound. For his heroism, Bob has been decorated by not only the US Government but by the French government as well.

The trips on the buses are not the same without Bob to visit. However, each time I go I think about the fun guy in the short pants who helped me find my seats at Campbell Stadium who also happened to be one of our nation’s real, genuine heroes. We miss you, Bob.

About the author:

Jim Joanos

Memories of Garnet and Gold

Jim Joanos and his wife Betty Lou have deep roots at Florida State University. Avid sports fans, they have literally seen, and done, it all. Fortunately for us, Jim loves telling first-hand accounts dating back to FSU’s first football game, a 1947 clash with the Stetson Hatters on Centennial Field, where Cascades Park is today.

The Osceola will run a series of these colorful stories written by the former Tallahassee lawyer and judge, which we feel our readers will find enlightening and/or nostalgic.

Jim and Betty Lou, who was Associate Director of the FSU Alumni Association (1991-2003), have been married 65 years and are each listed as one of FSU’s 100 Distinguished Graduates. The couple were enshrined in the FSU Hall of Fame in 2015 as Moore-Stone Award Recipients. Ironically, both Deans Moore and Stone were instrumental in the Joanoses career development.

“Both Jim and Betty Lou Joanos have been exemplary fans and supporters of Florida State University, both academically and athletically,” said Andy Miller, retired President and CEO of Seminole Boosters, Inc. “You can’t go to an athletic event of any kind that you don’t see both Jim and Betty Lou Joanos together. They love their university as much as they love each other.”