And then there was the John who, come Saturdays in the fall, roamed the football field. The red hair stayed but John’s smile was replaced with a sneer. A standout halfback and cornerback for the Quakers, John was a punishing competitor who never let up on an opponent, his teammates say.

“I’m glad he was on my team because you didn’t want to be on the other side of the field when John played,” says Dillard Norman ’64, who played football with John and had him as an assistant coach for a year. “There just wasn’t any quit in him. He didn’t know how.”

There have been eight First-Team All-Americans to play football at Guilford, but John was the first, winning the honor in 1959. At 5-feet-10, what John lacked in size he more than made up for with his speed. He died Nov. 25 at his home in Kernersville, N.C.

By the time John graduated he had his name next to several of the Quakers’ individual football records. His 97-yard touchdown dash when he was a freshman still stands as the longest scoring run in the program’s history. 

Ben Rich ’59 transferred to Guilford and played two years with John. “There are a lot of adjectives Quakers don’t use to describe the type of player John was on a football field,” Rich says. “You were his enemy on the field, but after the game he went straight back to being your friend.”

John was also an outstanding sprinter on the track team. In 1974, he was inducted into Guilford’s Athletics Hall of Fame.

John came to Guilford after Herb Appenzeller, Guilford’s late football coach and Athletic Director, got a tip from a University of Virginia assistant football coach about a running back in Northern Virginia. Schools were reluctant to offer him a scholarship because of his size. 

As Herb’s wife tells the story, one school, the U.S. Naval Academy, was willing to take a chance on John. That’s when the Virginia coach called Herb. The Cavaliers weren’t interested in recruiting John, but the Cavaliers and Navy also played each other every year back then. 

“(Virginia) didn’t want John beating them over four years so they let Herb know about him,” Ann says.   

Herb offered John a spot in the team sight unseen. Years later he would write about John in two books — Pride in the Past and Legends from the Locker Room. “I felt later in life that John Meroney was the football player that had the greatest influence on me in all my years of coaching,” Herb wrote.

Jim says the players had a nickname for Jim. “We called him Howdy Doody,” Jim says, referring to the beloved American puppet on television at the time. “That red hair and that smile — he was always smiling and just so nice to be around.”

Jim earned his All-American status on offense, but he was just as accomplished on defense, earning the team’s best tackler award four straight years. 

Following his Guilford playing career, John was offered the opportunity to try out for the Green Bay Packers, who were then coached by Vince Lombardi. The legendary coach, Ann says, decided John was too small for professional football. John later became a successful insurance and brokerage executive for decades.

“He was determined to succeed no matter what he did,” Jim says. “And you know what? He did.”