Two Kansas University football tickets which have been in one well-known local family for about 80 years will be used by somebody else this fall. But it was a lot of fun while it lasted, in good years or bad.

Dick Treece, 83, finds his health no longer allows him and his wife, Mary Beth, to navigate the confines of Memorial Stadium with any degree of ease. Dick got into the knee-replacement business some 20 years ago, when you never heard much about such. When he tried a re-do procedure recently, he encountered serious infections that still bother him. No walkee, no tickees.

His father was the late Dr. E. Lee “Cap” Treece, widely known bacteriologist who headed that department at KU before he died in 1961 at the age of only 68. A KU graduate, Cap spent 45 years on the faculty in a more tender time when people came, stayed and excelled rather than hitting and running as so many do nowadays.

Cap’s specialty was bacterial metabolism and he contributed much to the field of public health, including pioneering development of sanitary systems for swimming pools. He had honors running out his ears.

OK, the Treece family bought season tickets for the Jayhawks when the “new” Memorial Stadium opened in 1921 and have renewed and used them ever since. Dick, just an impressionable toddler, says he “learned to spit” while watching workers build the arena.

“We lived near old McCook Field where they were putting up the new stadium and I liked to watch a fellow who pushed concrete in a wheelbarrow. He’d get a load, then spit in it, and as a kid I figured that was pretty impressive. So I began to emulate him (much to the non-delight of his family). Funny the silly little things you remember.”

The Treece ducats were on the 45-yard line about 32 rows up, “which once was about as high as you could go,” Dick says. “No trouble then, though, because on most days you could move a little and be right on the 50, since the crowds were generally so small, often 3,000 or 4,000, almost never over 5,000.”

The Treeces have always been die-hard KU fans  football, basketball, track, Kansas Relays, the whole schmeer.

“But the time came when I couldn’t make it anymore,” says Dick. “I’ll still follow the teams but not when I have to climb steps.”

Dick Treece got his degree at KU in late 1940 and in January entered the Navy for nearly six years. He left with the lofty rank of lieutenant commander, once captained his own escort vessel and saw duty on wartime destroyers. While assigned as a damage control officer at the Navy base at Orange, Texas, he often had occasion to deal with the commanding officer’s secretary, Mary Beth Lindsey.

“I had to honey up to her for liberty permits and I guess I overdid it, because we wound up getting married in 1944,” recalls Treece.

There have been three children.

Mary Beth has a unique credential of her own, along with having been a school teacher. She at one time was secretary to Kansas basketball coach Dick Harp, while the fabulous Wilt Chamberlain was here. Mary Beth knows where a lot of bodies are buried and can tell innumerable intriguing stories about KU athletics.

After the war, Dick traveled as a school supplies and equipment salesman, then was with KU’s Division of Continuing Education organizing conferences, institutes and classes.

Like his dad, he has been involved in countless worthwhile local activities, including Sky Warn duties in foul weather.

The Kansas football team moved into Memorial Stadium in 1921 and defeated Kansas State, 21-7, on Oct. 29. There were 5,160 fans in the 22,200-capacity arena. The final game of the ’21 season saw KU down Missouri, 15-9, before 15,480 delirious fans. How about a doubleton like that this fall?

In 1947, KU beat Mizzou, 20-14, in a hair-raising battle that drew an estimated (and illegal) 40,000, at the time the largest crowd ever to see a Big Six game. That victory won KU an Orange Bowl bid.

The stadium that saw Dick Treece develop as the Splendid Spitter had its capacity boosted to 44,900 in 1963, then 51,500 in 1965. KU would love to jack the crowds to that level at least once this year.

Tradition? Memorial Stadium resulted from an emotional $200,000 drive after coach Phog Allen (yeah, the Phogger) led the Jayhawks to a 20-20 tie with Nebraska in 1920 after trailing 20-0 at halftime. Recently renovated again, with sky boxes and such, it remains the seventh oldest college stadium in America.

But when loyal old-timers like the Treeces are no longer among the spectators, a little something of value is lost.