It's hard to forget the date when you're part of the first team that ever played in the arena.
The promise of playing in a 12,000 seat arena before he graduated was one of the major selling points for the wing from Fort Wayne, Ind., when he decided to play for the Hokies. And after playing varsity games in War Memorial Hall, which he estimates could have maybe had 300 people watch their games on its best day, getting a chance to take on a big school like Alabama in a full arena was the culmination of the vision he bought into.
"It was just across from the open drill field," Fleischman said of War Memorial Hall. "And no one would come there. So we would average about six games a season (at home)."
But on that January day in Blacksburg, there was just one problem with the opening of Cassell, which still stands today: the 12,000 seats weren't installed. They, in fact, had not even arrived in Blacksburg. The fans had to sit on the concrete slabs the seats were to be drilled into.
Oh, also, the coliseum's doors weren't on their hinges yet. Visqueen and plastic covered the entryways for when the fans entered the arena.
"There's no doors, it was cold out, no seats, and it had 12,000 fans, and they were told to dress up warm," Fleischman said. "The teams dressed in the old War Memorial, and got on a bus and ran in from the outside onto the court."
Fleischman and the Hokies used the Appalachian cold to their advantage that day, taking down the Crimson Tide 91-67. An exclamation mark on a career where he went 54-19 over his three years on varsity from 1958-1962 (back then, NCAA rules didn't permit freshmen to play for the varsity team).
And on this coming Saturday, Fleischman will return to Blacksburg to see Lane Stadium for the first time, but not to cheer on the Hokies. He'll instead be a part of the Middle Tennessee fan base traveling six or so hours east, watching his son-in-law's team take the field.
"As long as we can create a couple of turnovers and capitalize on them, and not have any turnovers ourselves, and play with a little passion, I think we can surprise them," Flesichman relayed this week ahead of the game, in case anyone was questioning his allegiances this week.
His third oldest, Sara, is married to head coach Rick Stockstill, but she's never made it to Blacksburg herself to visit her dad's alma mater.
Fleischman said he's not one to really reminisce about his past, for what it's worth. Everywhere he's lived—his hometown of Fort Wayne, his college home in Blacksburg, his time working in Orlando, and even his current home in Murfreesboro—was good to him, he said, so it made sense to live in the now.
But despite the fact he's only visited a couple of times since he and his wife Nanette left for Fort Wayne with two kids in tow in 1962 after his graduation, that's only made this upcoming weekend more exciting.
"We've got a couple places," Flesichman said when asked where he was visiting. "We lived right above the theater downtown on College Street, and that's what we're anxious to see if it's still there."
The homecoming for the Fleischman family in Blacksburg comes with a tiny bit of irony on John's part. When he graduated high school in 1957, he was sure he was going to be a West Virginia Mountaineer, thanks to a friendship he struck with their head coach, Fred Schaus, back when Schaus played his hometown Fort Wayne Pistons in the NBA.
Scholarship limits made incorporating Fleischman into the 1957-58 roster tricky in Morgantown, so Schaus told Fleischman to enroll at Greenbrier Military School, a prep school in Lewisburg, W. Va. There, he met Virginia Tech assistant William Matthews and connected with him, making his decision on where to go to school suddenly much tougher.
"When I left home in my 1952 Chevy from Fort Wayne, I wasn't sure where I was going," Fleischman said. "I hit the road and in Princeton, West Virginia I put ten cents in a phone booth and called Coach Schaus and said 'Coach, I'm not coming to Morgantown.'"
His Hokies had their moments on the court as college basketball transitioned into the "era of the big centers," in his own words, knocking off Southern Conference foe West Virginia for the regular season conference title in 1960, just one year after guard Jerry West (yes, that Jerry West), led the Mountaineers within one point of the NCAA title. Flesichman had met West on a recruiting visit when he was in high school, but best remembers guarding him in the 1960 Southern Conference tournament, when West was a senior and Fleischman a sophomore.
"We tried to play a Box-and-1," Fleischman said. "And we would alternate every five minutes on the one guy. And I had (West) for about half the game, and I'll tell you something: he was phenomenal."
He laughs when asked how different college athletes are now than when he was one, pointing out that he was told to "never lift a dumbbell" as a basketball player for fear he'd get "muscle bound" and lose his speed.
"The stupidest thing," Flesichman said. "Now, you've got a strength coach AND you've got two assistant strength coaches. And thank goodness for them, they know what they're doing."
Mostly, though, he's thankful for the education Virginia Tech provided for him that helped propel him to a long career in manufacturing, ending with his retirement from Lockheed Martin in 2002. Though he gives credit to all of his success to his wife, Nanette, with whom he celebrated a 61st anniversary this summer and raised four kids together.
And, of course, he's thankful he gets the chance to reminisce a little, even if that's something he doesn't do too often, driving down U.S. Route 460 to get into town on Friday, to watch a game on a cathedral of modern college football that was merely some "wooden bleachers" on a field when he walked on campus six decades ago.
"I'm just glad that my wife and I are as healthy as we are at this age that we can get in the car and go," Fleischman said. "A lot of people can't do that."
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Saturday will be a homecoming that's been a long time coming for John Fleischman - GoBlueRaiders.com
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