With success and longevity come acclaim, and although many were hoppin’ mad to say the least over the way their beloved community was portrayed when recognition reached the national level, it was still noteworthy that Martins Ferry – the oldest settlement in the state of Ohio dating back to the 1770s – and more specifically its football team, the Purple Riders – achieved attention few high schools short of the Permian Panthers from Odessa, Texas who inspired a book, a film and the TV series “Friday Night Lights” ever have.

Combine the success of Ferry on the gridiron – they were basking in the glow of one of the longest winning streaks in state history at the time as 32 straight fell victim to the mighty Purple from the last game of 1958 through the first game of 1962 – with the appeal of highlighting an Ohio Valley mill town which was unfortunately beginning an economic decline, and it became the perfect storm for the nation’s premier magazine of the day – LIFE -to make a visit to the site of Ohio’s oldest settlement some 60 years ago.

The LIFE magazine article – which appeared on Nov. 2, 1962 in the issue that featured the Cuban Missile Crisis on its cover – was highly-anticipated but when it hit the newsstands, the tone quickly changed in Ridertown.

The article, written by John R. McDermottt with photos by Mark Kauffman, was entitled “Rocky Cradle of Football” and subtitled “The big play to escape from the mill town.” It put mostly a negative light on the area, depicting high school football at that time as a away to earn a college scholarship and hopefully escape the drudgery of a “grimy” mill town along the Ohio River.

Other focal points were the high priority put on winning football games on Friday night and the support of the booster clubs, but also the pressure they applied to the coaches at the time. Ironically, the article never even mentioned the historic winning streak of the Riders.

The series of photos that accompanied the article added greatly to the displeasure of Ferry faithful – the blast furnaces and soot-covered millworkers…dark, dank depictions of mud-splattered, injury-taped close-ups among them.

There were others, too – scenes from a Ferry-Bellaire game at venerable Nelson Field from the 1961 season….a shot of Coach Bob ‘Smokey’ Wion directing practice…fullback Gene Joseph and tackle Curt Ziegler sporting their hat of choice during practice…and even Mary Groza sitting in the kitchen with a photo of her son – Lou “The Toe” – in the background.

While much of the story was depressing, there were a few good spots, too.

There was reference to two of the “favorite sons” from rivals Ferry and Bellaire – Groza of the Purple Riders and Nick Skorich of the Big Reds among them. Groza, of course, became a Pro Football Hall of Famer with the Cleveland Browns while Skorich played for the Philadelphia Eagles and later coached the Browns.

Also a plus was mention that playing football kept countless young men from dropping out of school as well as building community spirit, noting that in a town of 12,000 at the time, there’d be 8,000 filling the stands at Ferry Stadium on a Friday night in the fall.

Among the most memorable quotes in the story came from Gene Minder, who offered this on raising his family and hoping for the best for each of them: “I raised them on love and spaghetti.”

Just how irate were the valley fans – and those in Martins Ferry in particular – who were proud of their heritage and of course, Rider football.

Several copies ended up being torched at the school’s season-ending bonfire and beloved teacher Miss Heloise Knapp took her displeasure a step farther by sending off a not-so-friendly letter to the LIFE editors….written entirely in Latin!

It also drew immediate backlash in the local newspapers, including a column penned by Bill Van Horne (MFHS Class of 1939) who was sports editor of The Times Leader at that time and one which voiced the ire of then head football coach Robert “Smokey” Wion.

Van Horne called the article “twisted, garbled, slated and deliberately aimed to make our area look as dirty, hard and blighted as possible” while Wion echoed those sentiments when he was quoted as saying “We feel that we have been done a great injustice. The high school football picture here in the Valley was grossly misrepresented.”

Another instance of what you might call “poetic injustice” in the eyes of Ferrians came when one of its own put his home town in a less-than-favorable light in one of his works.

This time, it was the poem “Autumn Begins in Martins Ferry, Ohio” written by James Arlington Wright (MFHS Class of 1946).

Published in 1963, it was one of a few renowned poems ever written with football as a backdrop.

Once again featuring dark overtones, it made several references such as the “Polacks of Tiltonsville” and the “Negroes in the blast furnace at Benwood” and talked of high school football players being “suicidally beautiful” and that they “gallop terribly against each other’s bodies.”

Wright, by the way, went on to win the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1972 for his work “Collected Poems” and was elected a fellow of The Academy of American Poets. He passed away in 1980 and was named to the Martins Ferry City Hall of Honor in 2008.

Fast-forward more than three decades and the convergence of these two came about thanks to ESPN when it produced a nine-minute feature segment on a program entitled “Why We Love Football”.

Filmed in the fall of 1999, the story talked of Ferry as a “town raised on steel and football” and one that has had a “90-year romance with the game of football.”

The importance of being a part of the Ferry football tradition came through in an interview with then Rider quarterback Zac Bruney (MFHS Class of 2000), who went on to a stellar collegiate career at the University of Mount Union and is currently the head coach at Wheeling University.

“You feel the presence of all the past greats…it just gives you chills,” he stated.

The story spoke of two famous “sons” of Martins Ferry – the aforementioned Groza and Wright – and of course the second reference brought back the poem and the LIFE article’s negativity resurfaced in the ESPN feature.

Poet Laureate Robert Hassed – called upon to interpret Wright’s poem – called it a “beautiful, but also tragic” depiction, offering “I don’t think it would work as a Chamber of Commerce slogan, but I don’t think it’s an epitaph, either.”

The ESPN segment did give a few of the townsfolk a chance to vent about the LIFE magazine article many years later, however.

“They degraded the whole town,” stated Carl Mamone (MFHS Class of 1942) who was both a former head coach and former mayor of the city. “Things like the only reason a boy played football was so he’d get a scholarship and wouldn’t have to go into the mill to work.”

“It wasn’t fair,” echoed Joe “Fatty” Joseph (MHFHS Class of 1937). “If I knew the guy (author) today, I’d choke him…I’d give him hell.”

Even beloved town historian, long time MFHS librarian and Rider “super fan” Annie Tanks was not happy, although she managed to put a positive slant on things in the end.

“Everybody was hepped up and expecting a nice write-up,” said Tanks, “but the write-up focused on getting out of town.

We look around and see people moving away and that the town is having difficulty paying its bills and so on, but we’ve got a winning team!

A winning team indeed – one that has sparked more than its share of national attention – but that’s LIFE in Martins Ferry, especially in the early 1960s.