Lt. Colonel Ralph “C” (Rocky) Rosacker, USMC (ret.), was born on Jan. 3, 1918, in Stafford, Kansas. Ralph’s mother died tragically when he was eight. Ralph and his younger brother, Bud, were sent to live with Plum and Mary Ardrey, a foster family who owned a haberdashery in Stafford. The young boys shared a basement under the Ardrey’s home. Ralph divided his childhood between working at his adopted family’s store, his father’s farm, school, athletics, and learning to play the trumpet. Despite living through the Great Depression with almost no money, Ralph became a high-honors student, multi-sport athlete, the lead in school plays, singer in the glee club, trumpet-player, and community leader. In 1936, Rosacker earned admittance into the National Honor Society, and later, upon graduation, received a football scholarship to the University of Kansas.

In September of 1940, sensing the U.S. would soon be at war, Ralph withdrew from college and enlisted in the Marine Corps. He was soon on a train west to Boot Camp in San Diego, California. Rosacker distinguished himself for his leadership in 121st Platoon, graduating in October 1940. Transferred to Quantico, Virginia, he was selected for and sent to Officers Candidate School following which he was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant and attended The Basic School. In March 1943, Rosacker was ordered to report to the Commanding Officer of the newly commissioned USS WASP, CV-18 aircraft carrier, as Commanding Officer of the Marine Corps detachment. Rosacker took command of the WASP’s security detachment in August 1943. As a note, he had ascended from private to Captain in just over thirty-six months. Captain Rosacker would play a critical role on the WASP in the Battle of the Philippines’ Sea where he earned his first Bronze Star and Purple Heart which would be presented to him by Vice Admiral John. S. McCain Sr.

Citation:

U.S.S. WASP

In the name of the President of the United States, the Commander FIRST Carrier Task Force, United States Pacific Fleet, presents the BRONZE STAR MEDAL to

CAPTAIN RALPH “C” ROSACKER

UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS

Citation: “For meritorious service in an aircraft carrier stationed as Control Officer during a dive-bombing attack by enemy planes, on 19 June 1944, west of the Marianas Islands. He demonstrated exceptional courage and tenacity of purpose at his station in the face of falling bombs and strafing, and cooly directed the armament to contribute to the destruction of five Japanese planes and so disrupt the accuracy of their attack as to assist materially in the protection and preservation of the ship for important air operations. During the attack he was wounded by a piece of shrapnel from a near miss which hit him in the shoulder. With his left arm useless from the wound, he maintained his station without regard for himself and effectively directed fire until after the attack. His conduct throughout was in keeping with the highest traditions of the naval service.”

While on the WASP, Rosacker saw combat action at Iwo Jima, Saipan, Tinian, Guam, the Philippines, Okinawa, and Japan. Captain Rosacker ended the war in Japan along with some of his Marine detachment as they witnessed the signing of the Japanese surrender to Supreme Allied Commander General Douglas MacArthur and Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz aboard the USS MISSOURI, Sept. 2, 1945.

After World War II, Rosacker augmented into the Regular Marine Corps and made being a Marine his career. He was transferred to Great Lakes, IL and in 1947 was transferred to the Marine Barracks, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In 1951, Major Rosacker returned to combat in Korea. He received several more combat citations, including his second and third Bronze Stars and the Air Medal.

After Korea, from June 1952 to June 1964, Rosacker served at Headquarter, Marine Corps in Washington, DC, commanded 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment and was the Executive Officer of the 5th Marine Regiment with the 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton, California, In August 1960 he attended the Naval War College in New Port, R.I. and upon graduation he was assigned to the faculty.

An avid historian, Rosacker earned a B.S. degree from the University of Maryland in 1954. In 1963, he earned a Master of Political Science degree from Boston University, and in 1993, at the age of 75, Rosacker earned a second master’s in liberal arts from TCU.

In 1964, when a routine physical determined, he was not qualified to perform the duties of his grade, Lt. Colonel Rosacker, 46, was placed on temporary retirement. Still a young man, he considered his many options for the future. Reflecting on the influences of Hazen Richardson, his high school music teacher, and Stubb Mayo, his varsity football coach, Rosacker dedicated the remainder of his professional life to the education and training of young people.

In the fall of 1965, Rosacker took his first civilian job in teaching as the head of the History Department, as well as assistant coach for football, soccer, and track at the Casady School in Oklahoma City, OK. He remained at Casady until 1969 when he accepted an offer from Fort Worth Country Day School, a newly started private school, to be its first athletic director.

When he arrived at Country Day in the fall of 1969, Rosacker found a school struggling for an identity. Opening its doors just six years prior in 1963, Country Day’s tremendous potential was obvious. Rosacker saw that the school and students needed something to unify them to move past their adolescent stage of development.

Country Day’s athletic fields in 1969 were primitive: 80 acres of Johnson grass, rocks, goat’s heads, and stickers. The athletic teams Rosacker inherited were equally as raw, with losing records in all sports. Undeterred, the Colonel found his new school the perfect place to start a winning tradition. By encouraging maximum participation in all sports, the Colonel’s mission became to instill each team with a value system he’d formed in the Marine Corps and throughout his life.

In 1969, the Colonel’s inaugural middle school football team lost all but one game. Two years later, in 1971, Rosacker’s team achieved a perfect season, 10-0. Except for one mistake on defense, they were unscored on, amassing 304 points to the opponents 6. The same school year, Rosacker coached the high school boys’ soccer team to a Texas State Championship, a feat unprecedented for a private school. Within three years under the Colonel’s guidance, excellence in athletics and academics had become the standard at Country Day. Dissension and division amongst the students had dropped precipitously, while the school’s enrollment quintupled.

In 1973, with the school expanding, the Colonel proposed to turn Country Day’s substandard athletic fields from reclaimed ranch land to quality playing fields. Throughout the summer of 1973, with the support of a Country Day parent, Dr. James Anthony, who donated landscaping equipment and crews, Colonel Rosacker and Dr. Anthony personally oversaw, and constructed the new fields. In addition to scraping the surfaces and moving thousands of yards of dirt, the Colonel and Dr. Anthony excavated a large pond to irrigate the fields. When filled with water, the pond leaked, its floor too porous to hold water. After draining the pond, the Colonel and Dr. Anthony each carried hundreds of seventy-pound sacks of Bentonite into the muddy, mosquito-infested pit to seal the pond’s floor. Their next task was to dispose of thousands of yards of dirt. Dr. Anthony proposed to use the dirt to build a berm around the football stadium creating a natural amphitheater for fans to watch future events. To save money, the Colonel employed the services of his middle school athletes to plant Bermuda grass as part of their team’s conditioning.

With its fields leveled and cultivated, Country Day’s new crop of athletic teams flourished. Besides transforming the boy’s teams, Colonel Rosacker revolutionized girls’ sports at Country Day. In 1969, the Colonel made participation and excellence in athletics an expectation among the girls at Country Day. Soon the girls’ teams believed they were as tough as any boy. The result: Country Day’s boys and girls teams rarely lost. The Colonel was famous for exhorting his teams with sayings like, “I’ll tell you when it hurts!”, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all!”, and “Winning isn’t Everything, It’s the Only Thing!” From 1969-1981, in twelve years as Athletic Director and coach, the Colonel’s boys’ and girls’ teams won 106 championships.

From 1982-1985, the Colonel coached at the Oakridge School in Arlington, Texas. In 1985, the Colonel retired from full-time coaching.

In 1988, Colonel Rosacker was honored by a group of his former Fort Worth Country Day students, when they completed a fundraising activity that resulted in the naming of the football stadium he helped build, “Rosacker Field”.

The Colonel died January 18, 2001 in Fort Worth, TX. He was 83.

In 2016, a short film, “The Colonel” was produced, written, and directed by one of his students, filmmaker, Tim Williams. The film won Best Narrative Short and Best Trailer at the 2017 GI Film Festival in Washington, DC. In 2021, Williams made a feature-length documentary, THE COLONEL’S PLAYBOOK, featuring clips of Colonel Rosacker, his sons, and many of Colonel’s former students, teachers, and parents to tell the Colonel’s extraordinary story and the influence his teachings continue to have on their careers and lives. Williams is currently readying cast and crew to shoot the feature film in 2023, completing his mission to inspire a new generation with THE COLONEL.