(L-R): Dustin Grutza, Don McMillan, Josh Katzowitz

I called the number one Sunday morning – on Jan. 11, 2009 to be exact – and the 87-year-old man who lived in Cleves, Ohio, answered the phone with a pleasant hello.

We proceeded to talk non-stop for the next two hours. I hadn’t planned to be on the phone with him that long – I figured an hour, tops – but he was such a good storyteller, had so many interesting memories to recount, that he took up most of the rest of my day.

His wife, Patricia, was by his side the entire time, and every once in a while, she’d whisper to him to remind him of something from days long gone. At one point, she actually took the phone away from him and started answering my questions herself.

She was Patty – a red-headed Irish girl – and she was the love of Don McMillan’s life. It was obvious then on the phone. It was obvious a few months later when I met Don and Patty face to face at the opening kickoff/book signing for Bearcats Rising – my first tome.

When my publisher and I were trying to figure out who we should invite to be guests at my first book signing – who would sign books along with me – we wanted to go with a current player (Dustin Grutza) and we wanted an older guy, a guy who had been around the program a very long time and who had a long-reaching perspective. Since I had such a great conversation with Don, we asked him if he could make it. He said he’d be glad to attend.

I was honored to have him there with me, and he obviously was proud to be there as well, answering my queries during the free-for-all discussion between the audience and the three of us that led into the actually signing.

Don was a guy who had much to say.

He had served in WWII on the aircraft carrier San Jacinto, and he worked underneath the runway in the catapult, which basically shot the airplanes off the ship and into the sky.

“I can remember when they told me I was going to be a catapult aboard the carrier,” McMillan said, “and I asked, ‘Would you please tell me what the hell a catapult is.’”

Many years later, he would meet George H.W. Bush – one of the fighter pilots on the San Jacinto – and when the two saw each other, Bush asked, “You shot me off, didn’t you?”

The San Jacinto was a magnet for Japanese kamikazes. Time and time again, the crew would see enemy pilots attempt to destroy the flight deck by crashing their planes into the ship, but they never finished the mission. But those guys got close. Close enough to where, one day, McMillan found a severed finger on the catapult track. Another day, he looked inside the gun mount and saw a lifeless Japanese body who looked ready to jump out and continue the fight.

Said McMillan: “There was a catwalk all the way around the flight deck, and when you stand on it, you’re shoulder high to the level of the flight deck. When all that commotion is going on, you want to jump over the side of the boat, for crying out loud. That’s the last resort. You don’t want to do it. But you don’t get used to it, no matter how many times they came after you. When we started hitting the Philippines, that’s when they started coming. That was their last hurrah. They knew they were going to lose the war.”

After the war ended, McMillan, a 24-year-old freshman, played quarterback at the University of Cincinnati. More than 60 years later, he told me his best tales and gave me so much help for my first book. He told a fantastic story, and from what I’ve gathered, he was a fantastic man.

Today, one of his old teammates told me McMillan died last month at the age of 89. He left behind Patty and a wonderful, full life – he was a former high school football coach in Northern Kentucky who impacted many, many young lives – which he shared with his greatest love. When I heard the news, I went to the copy of Bearcats Rising I keep on my bookshelf, the one where I gathered signatures of all the former UC players who signed with me at various appearances, to look at what Don wrote.

Dear Josh, What a great pleasure it was to be with you and Dustin. You made an old man feel young again. God Bless, Don McMillan

Don, thank you, my friend. The pleasure was all mine.

These three grafs pretty much sums up what Jones is talking about when he’s discussing book-writing:

I get a lot of e-mails, and the great majority of them have something to do with writing and how to do it for a living. Strangely — or at least it seems strange to me — a lot of people seem to think they can write a book. Nobody thinks they could start plumbing a house tomorrow; nobody thinks they could sit down first thing in the morning and spay a cat. And yet a lot of people think they can write books. “They’re just words,” someone once said to me.

There’s a story up here, probably more legend than truth. The famed novelist Margaret Atwood was apparently at a party, talking to a brain surgeon. He told her that he was going to write a novel when he retired. “Oh, that’s funny,” Atwood said. “I was thinking of doing brain surgery.”

Book-writing is a mean business. They’re just words, but they’re 100,000 words assembled in some beautiful and logical order to tell a story that keeps a reader plugging along from beginning to end.

I don’t get offended when people say things like that to me – hell, maybe these people can write a book – but to me, it’s not about saying you’re thinking about doing it. It’s about actually putting fingers to keyboard. Bearcats Rising took me about a year to write. I put my soul through the wringer for the final product. I fried my brain so hard on it that I haven’t read the book since it came out in Aug. 2009 (I might never read it at all). But sure, go ahead and write yourself a book. I’d be happy to copy-edit it.

You know, I guess I am offended a little bit.

*The first four statements they made about me and my book are definitely true. I might have made up that final part of the paragraph.

The auction lasted for 2 minutes, and though I listened hard for a ringing phone, I never heard anything. It started at $9 and ended at $9. Took me a year and a half to write. Couldn’t get a $10 bid.

Tough business, eh?

He told me he really enjoyed the final product, but he also said that – partially because of quotes like the one above that he gave me – he couldn’t let his 10-year old son read the book quite yet. I laughed, and after I said goodbye, I thought to myself, “Is that a good thing? Or should I be worried that I’m losing a small piece of my readership because I didn’t censor the tawdriest of quotes?” I’ve actually heard from a few people – my wife, for one – who thought my book had too many curse words in it (all of which, I should point out, were contained by quotation marks).

But I don’t feel bad about it. That’s what the people said. That’s how college football players talk. That’s how college football coaches speak to their players (Brian Kelly to UC quarterback Ben Mauk after giving him the starting job before the 2007 season: “Now don’t fuck it up.”). That’s real life.

If 10-year-olds can’t read the book right now, so be it. But I’ll add this: I read Ball Four and The Bronx Zoo when I was young. I saw the Breakfast Club when it came out in movie theaters in the mid-1980s. I curse around my parents now, and they laugh.

None of that made me a lesser man. None of it f—-d me up.

Come on out. It’ll be good times.

Seriously, what could be better? Thursday, Nov. 5, 7-9 p.m.

Come out and meet Coombs in his element. Here. Should be a good time.

No. 2, I’ll be in studio with Mo Egger next Monday at 1530 Homer at 5 p.m. Mo said he’s giddy about it. I feel the same way.

Back to regularly-scheduled programming.

“Have you been to Joseph-Beth?” he asked.

“Nope. Why?

“Because your book is all over the place.”

Then, he was kind enough to send me photos. Here they are for your enjoyment.

And, then there was this. Unbelievable as long as it lasts.

I started reading the new book by Josh Katzowitz on the beach yesterday….fantastic. Must read for UC fans. It details the history and rise of UC football. Great stuff on each era of UC football….including Jim Tressel’s interest in the job, the condition of the facilities at UC(hilarious story of foot coming through ceiling above the weight room), why Tim Murphy took a 40% paycut to leave UC and coach at Harvard, the impact Rick Minter and Bob Goin had on the program, and the shadow of Huggins on the program, plus much more.

He doesn’t mention the salty language in the book. But it’s there.