As part of their Fort Worth Bowl experience, Kansas University football players will visit Cook Children’s Hospital one week from Wednesday.

Sadly, it’s one of those sentences you read, and it doesn’t really sink in.

And then you listen to Don Fambrough, the man who has more bowl experience than anyone in Kansas University history, talk about his greatest memory in football, and it takes on greater meaning. It serves as a reminder that making a bowl game is a special accomplishment and comes with special moments that extend beyond the football field.

Fambrough, who will be on the team plane for the bowl trip, played for KU in the 1948 Orange Bowl, was an assistant to Jack Mitchell for the 1961 Bluebonnet bowl and to Pepper Rodgers for the 1969 Orange Bowl and was head coach of the Jayhawks for the 1973 Liberty Bowl and 1981 Hall of Fame Bowl.

He had a hand in five of the eight KU bowl appearances.

Yet, his greatest memory came when he represented KU as a player at the East-West Shrine Game, an all-star game played in Palo Alto, Calif., at Stanford Stadium. Proceeds from the game fund a Bay Area children’s hospital.

As the juicy prime rib special from Don’s Steakhouse sat in front of him, Fambrough traveled back in time nearly 60 years. He was hungry. But he had a story to tell, so his meal could wait.

Legendary former Kansas University football coach Don Fambrough, left, greets current KU coach Mark Mangino prior to a practice from early this season. A regular at KU's practices who will be on the team plane for the Dec. 23 Fort Worth Bowl, Fambrough had a hand in five of KU's previous eight bowl trips as player, assistant coach and head coach.

“As we drove up to the junior college where we worked out, a huge banner stretched out from tree to tree,” Fambrough said. “And it said, ‘Strong legs run so weak legs can walk.’ We were just college kids and didn’t really know what that meant.”

Soon, they would find out.

“We went to the hospital. God, I’ll never forget that day,” he said. “What an experience. They didn’t have much space at all between the beds. Kids all over everywhere. Each player was to find the one from his state and go sit beside the patient. So I looked and looked. Here’s one from Texas. Here’s one from Michigan. Here’s one from New York. Here’s one from California. Finally, I saw this little blond-headed, blue-eyed girl way back there. She’s decorated in KU colors. Found out she was from out west in Stafford.

“My job was to sit down there and cheer her up. It didn’t turn out that way. I can’t handle anything like that.”

They reversed roles.

“She put her arm around me and told me not to worry, she’s going to be all right,” Fambrough said. “After that, we knew what that sign meant. The next day, boy, you talk about ready to play. The next day we went to the game, and they had the baskets there for us with the equipment in it, and on top of my basket, she had written a note. It said: ‘Play this one for me.’ Later on, I got home and I’d send her Christmas cards and other things, and she would send me cards, beautiful little cards. And one day I got a call from out there, and they said she didn’t make it.”

More than 35 years after meeting the girl with the blue eyes and blond hair, Fambrough made it back to the East-West Shrine Game, this time as a coach in 1973.

“We went back to the training camp and everything’s the same,” Fambrough said. “Looked at the sign again: ‘Strong legs run so weak legs can walk.’ Same sign, and we went through the same hospital again and one thing was missing. There was not one polio patient. Not one. Between the time I played and the time I went out there to coach, (Jonas) Salk had invented (in 1952) the serum that for all practical purposes knocked it out.”

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None of Fambrough’s football memories can match that of the dying little girl comforting the shaken football star, but a mention of each of his bowl experiences triggers a story:

Hall of Fame Bowl, Birmingham, Ala., 1981: “We had a doctor, a KU graduate, that was team doctor for this high school team down in Alabama. He was always sending me film of kids down there, and most of them couldn’t walk and chew gum at the same time. I would call him and tell him he’s not quite fast enough, but we appreciate what you’re doing for us. I’m sitting there in the office and the coaches came in and said, ‘We have a film here from Dr. So and So.’ I said, ‘Well, look at it and send it back to him.’ They said, ‘You better come in and look at this one.’ I looked at it and called his mother, and I told her who I was, said we’re playing in the Hall of Fame bowl and I know your home is about 80 miles away and I said would it be all right for me to come and visit and she said yes it would be. Auburn and Georgia and Alabama all thought he was too short to play for them. They must not have looked at the film I looked at. He could have been two feet tall and I would have taken him. We got a commitment from this kid and his mother that day. Two weeks later, they had the Alabama high school All-Star Game, and he’s picked the Most Valuable Player. The next day, Alabama and Auburn and Georgia are all there on his doorstep wanting him. His mother said, ‘Absolutely not, we made a commitment to coach Fambrough at the University of Kansas, and that’s where he’s going.’ You know who the player was.” Who? “Willie Pless.”

Liberty Bowl, Memphis, Tenn., 1973: “Nolan Cromwell was the best player I ever recruited. He was a freshman on that team. From a tiny little town called Ransom. He announced he was going to go to a school in the state of Kansas, so that eliminated 200 other schools that wanted him. They kind of lived up on a hill. They were dairy farmers. Out below his house was a big old tree, and I’d be up in the house talking to him, and I had him almost, but I couldn’t quite get him over the fence. I’d leave, and I’d see Vince Gibson, the Kansas State coach, parked down under that tree. I started back to Lawrence, and I’d be worried about what Vince was telling him, and I’d turn around and go park under that tree. Then Vince would leave, I’d go up and talk to him, and when I came out, Vince would be parked back under that tree. So I tell this story, most of it’s true. I get out there one day, and it’s milking time, and I was from Texas, so I knew how to milk cows. I went out there had a suit and tie on and started helping them milk the cows. Boy, were they impressed. Head football coach at the University of Kansas out there milking cows. This was what I had been waiting for, this will get me over the hump. So I got my pail of milk, went back up to the house, back up on the porch and there sits Vince churning. Now that part I added, the part about Vince being there when I had the pail of milk, but the rest of the story, the part about both of us parking under the tree, that’s true. Nolan’s mother worked at the county hospital, and this is the truth, I spent so much time at that hospital, patients were coming up to me asking for prescriptions. They thought I was one of the doctors.”

Orange Bowl, Miami, 1969: “Greatest team I’ve ever been associated with. John Riggins, Bobby Douglass, John Zook. Out of the starting 22 players, 17 of them were from the state of Kansas. Penn State needed two points for the win, so they went for two. We stopped ’em. Everybody comes charging off the sideline. I see one of the little striped-shirt guys back there in the back, waving his flag. We had 12 people on the field. They got to do it over, and they got it this time. Pepper swears to this day we had 12 people on the field from the middle of the fourth quarter on. He says it’s the officials’ fault we lost the ballgame. If they had called it when they should have, we wouldn’t have had to call it at the end.”

Bluebonnet Bowl, Houston, 1961: “We were struggling, couldn’t get anything going. John (Hadl) did the punting for us, along with everything else, and we had fourth down and about a half a mile. He was back to punt and takes the ball and runs something like 55, 60 yards (41 yards). From then on, it was our ballgame.”

Orange Bowl, Miami, 1948: “(Then-athletic director) E.C. Quigley was probably the tightest individual I’ve ever been around. He told Coach (George) Sauer he would make reservations for 17 players. Coach Sauer said, ‘Quig, you make reservations for 17 players, you better damn sure be ready to coach them, because I’m not going.’ It turned out we took all 55. We only played 17, but if we took 17 people to the Orange Bowl, we’d have been a laughingstock. He put us in some damn hotel that was so far inland the only time we saw the ocean was when we were coming in and leaving. He put us up in some retirement hotel he got real cheap. Every day we’d pick up the paper, and here’s the Georgia Tech players in the water.”

Fambrough’s prime rib long since had turned cold, but it tasted so good he couldn’t resist another bite. Then he put his fork down and stared off into the distance. All the way back to the 1940s. All the way back to the East-West Shrine Game.

“I think she was the most beautiful child I’ve ever seen,” Fambrough said. “I’ll never forget that little girl. … Never.”