The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football

Great motivational book and the author did a great job writing the book! it starts off kind of slow but works into the meat of the story rather nicely I definatly recomend this book to anybody that liks sports and good motivation!

This was an absolutely wonderful book. I couldn't put it down. It was extremely well written. The story is one everyone should know about. It is not just for football fans but has a history lesson as well. I would highly recommend this book.

I purchased this book for my father for Christmas--he's a huge football fan, played high school ball in Texas years after the depression. He'd never heard of the Mighty Mites, and, were it not for a review I heard on the radio, we may never have. Turns out, he has a lot of ties to the people in the book.

The book itself is well-written, easy to read historical and personal account of the coach, the home and the boys who lived there. We get background on some families, a real history of the coach and the real-life look at the way life was in the home. IT was not pretty, it was hard indeed, but these boys were given a chance to do something beyond the school's fence. Their coach taught them how to play football, but more importantly, how to be a team and how to be men. His love for the game and the boys jumps off the page and you can feel it in every move he makes, every sacrifice he makes for the school. It follows several years of the "Mighty Mites" team, from their inception to their ultimate conclusion.

This is a wonderful story of the human condition, of overcoming odds and expectations, and how one person can make a huge difference in the lives of others when he is truly committed. Football fan or not, this is a wonderful telling of the lives of some special kids and the man who led them.

I bought this book thinking it was just another Texas High School Football book. You know, the typical book that has the local town hero and their trip to a state championship. Well those are all fine and good and I enjoy reading anything about the passionate sport of high school football and as it is played in Texas.

This book however, dives much deeper into the struggles of a team, the successes of a coach and the tradition that it builds for a special school, during a special time to create a very interesting read. When I was a senior in high school we played this school for a Bi-District Football Championship, little did I know at the time that this was one of the most historic programs in the State of Texas.

Now the school has closed it doors forever, yet locked behing those doors are hundreds of stories about hundreds of children that faced tough personal times during the toughest of times in America. Those personal stories and that esteemed tradition is released in this book. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I highly recommend this book to everyone. You don't need to be a football fan to enjoy the events and the story. I have even heard that someday they will make a movie and this book will be the screenplay and I hope they do not change one thing.

It will fill your heart with joy, revitalize your youthful competitive juices and take you back to a mystical era when everyone worked together just to exist. Jim Dent does a remarkable job writing this book and this page turner will put you in the rumble seat of history. So sit back, relax, read and enjoy the ride.

This is a great high school sports book and more. A book about a rag-tag group of orphan boys from back in the Depression era who lost their fathers, or both parents and were sent to the Masonic Home in Ft. Worth, Texas. This is an amazing story how these boys overcame ALL the obstacles to dominate Texas high school football. From physical size all the way to weather conditions (I had no idea Texas had that much snow and ice!). A book I couldn't put down, and felt as if I was right there with them. Traveling to games in a barely running old flat bed truck, on the field, and more. They played against, and overcame some of the biggest, richest schools in Texas. This group of orphans, their genius coach, Rusty Russell, and loyal "Doc" Hall stole my heart. It's easy to love the Mighty Mites!!

Better than what my title suggests - it is just a great book aboout people overcoming through grit, determination and basic values. As usual, Dent offers a superb story about the boys at the Home, a Texas orphanage during the Great Depression. Working with no equipment, being vastly undersized, dealing with tremendous emotional traumas and initially knowing very little about the game of football, these boys mature through the guidance of Rusty Russell who could have coached elsewhere for greater glory and money. Instead, he took the boys under his wing and they collectively rode to well deserved glory. Fabulous book!

Once again, captivates his audience with a very obscure story of a group of orphans at the Masonic School in Fort Worth, TX, who became the darlings of the gridiron in the 1930's and 1940's. The lives, trials and tribulations of football playing orphans are told in an outstanding way the the yearly success of the teams. Dent is so superb with his narrative form and easy way with word choice that his audience is captivated with the ups and downs of a high school football team. Reading a Dent novel, i.e. THE JUNCTION BOYS, is like a breath of fresh air as the story unwinds through the difficult years of the depression.
This novel is just not a book about high school football in Texas, but also one about beating the odds to be a success in a very difficult situation.
In conclusion, I have read both of Dent's novels and certainly relished the stories of Bear Bryant and Texas A and M, and the Masonic School.

Loved, loved, loved this book since I grew up around the area in Texas where this true story happened. I couldn't stop reading it. I identified with characters in the book (Abner McCall, one of the orphans, was President at Baylor when I was there, and I had family in several of the areas mentioned throughout the book). So much insight into how things used to be and how much we take for granted these days.

I have read many fictional and real-life stories related to sports. This story is one of the best ever written, ranking right up there with the Pulitzer Prize winning "Boys of Summer" by Roger Kahn. Dent's book is much more than just a story about a schoolboy football team. It is a look inside of the human soul, an explanation of what it means to lose your parents at an early age and what it means to overcome that loss with the help of others; it is an authentic look at what mentoring and teamwork really mean, especially in the lives of young men, and it provides all of this against a clear and compelling backdrop of the Depression and post-war eras. I received this book from a friend, picked it up and started reading, and could not stop until I finished it. I do not know Jim Dent and have no connection to him, but as a professional writer myself, I can tell you that his book had to be researched for months and months. The facts, the history, the details, the anecdotes, and even the closing epilogue reveal an incredible commitment to this story. He was clearly meant to write it, and if you read this story, I am certain that you will never forget it.

Twelve Mighty Orphans certainly captured not only my attention but my heart. Dent brought to light not only a completely different era of high school football but a story of underdogs fighting for glory. I fell in love with the story line and the individuals who made this a must read. This team and school epitomized the era in which the story took place.On a side note I loved the discussion and the political nature of high school athletic associations which Dent related as well as the manner in which the football players were treated in comparison to the rest of the student body.

While I hesitate to call this hoosiers or seabiscuit it certainly falls in that 2nd tier of quality sports books.

Before today's glamour, headlines, and high school state championship games played in the Dallas Cowboys stadium, Texas high school football has always been about teams, communities and individuals bonded by an internal drive to be the best you can be on the high school gridiron. It is the stuff legends are made of - at all levels - and where for just a little while you can lose your worries in life and cheer for the kids giving it all they have. No matter what the odds, the Mighty Orphans, lead by a caring coach, focused on the task at hand - playing good football. If it took their mind off the crappy hand that life dealt them for a few hours a week, then so be it.

If you like high school football, you will love this book.

A TEN STAR PUBLICATION, NEARLY OUR BACK YARD, [NOT THESE EXACT INDIVIDUALS] BY FORTUNE ONE BECAME A PARTNER,FORMER U.S. ARMY, ANOTHER A BEAUTIFUL LADY SENIOR V.P IN THE BANKING & FINANCE INDUSTRY, [MY COMPANY WAS A VENDOR]

Set in depressing (but not necessarily economically depressed) Fort Worth, Texas 1928 to 1943, this is a initially heartwarming high school football story about a disparate, desperate crew of orphans that never really warms your heart. Dent opens with the murder of the father of four orphans in 1928. And then it's off to the school. Being outweighed, ill-equipped orphans, the Masonic Home Mighty Mites football team has three strikes against them and immediately deserve and earn a lot of sympathy. But the details make the orphans more unsavory and unsympathetic than one would imagine. They pride themselves on being mean, not just to opposing players, but also to each other. Their most reknowned pro football player earned recognition for being the "meanest" player to ever play pro football, not something I'd frame and write home about. They are brutal, blocking to injure. They perfect an almost lethal, lip-splitting hit - the Humper - that marks many of their opponents with split lips, missing teeth, and players carried from the field. Playing without faceguards, they exploit vulnerabilities of their much larger opponent, but the reader sometimes must wince at the thought of the clash. Dent repeatedly refers to "Twelve Mighty Orphans" but it was not clear to me that the team always or usually suited up only twelve players. He writes about the orphans being shoeless through half the year, but it is not clear that they ever played football that way. Their highly successful, quite humble coach, Rusty Russell, builds a lean, mean, fighting machine, but the team and their later lives show that building character may not have been so successful. Survival skills, yes. Character? I'm less sanguine. Maybe call them the Spartans, not the Mighty Mites.

On the dust cover, Brent Musburger says that the coach and team "steal your heart as they overcome every obstacle imaginable," but that is hyperbole. Yes, the odds were strongly against them. The rich and the powerful disdained the Mites and, more importantly, the Mites' success. The best teams earn resentment and that often turns into revenge, and I can easily imagine other obstacles. Plus, as other coaches noted, Russell had the advantage of 24 x 7 year-round access to and complete, absolutely authoritarian rule of the boys. Vince Lombardi's Packers had a summer idyll as compared to the training and school life the orphans suffered. Apparently, all of them started out hating the place (and, of course, missing their dead parent or parents), but they all seemed to convert to a love of the place based on a defensive, almost psychotic stance towards the more privileged, meaning the rest of the world.

The dialog often sounds like a bad Bowery Boys script. The physical and psychological abuse almost steams off the page, along with some of the excessive testosterone. One last note on poor copyediting: On p. 131, a missed kick by Jeff Brown leaves the Mites tied with Lubbock, 6 -6. Dent reminds us of that score, 6-6, on the following page. But when Lubbock's Shakespeare Sewalt scores and Lubbock converts the extra point, the score somehow becomes 13-7. Another Lubbock TD and PAT and on p. 134, the final is 20-6. Huh?

Texas football is like a religion. The story of these orphans is interesting in itself and as part of the historical context of the twenties-forties in America and Texas. Coach Russell loved those boys and always had faith in them. It's a great story.

I enjoyed this book for the portrayal of many elements of Fort Worth during the time period - the Masonic Home, the football culture in Texas at the time, the movers and shakers of Fort Worth society, and the individual stories.

This is an entertaining and inspiring true story about a football team composed of orphans from the Masonic Home during the 30's. Though scrawny and poorly equipped, they were able to defeat many of the top high school teams in Texas due to a brilliant coach who was totally devoted to his boys. This underdog team inspired great enthusiasm around the US during the bleak Depression.

A must read for the truth about high school football in texas. Anyone that loves kids will fall in love with the orphans and the game that shaped their lives outside the walls. A historical picture of the passion for high scholl football that is still shared by Texans today. Read it and go watch a game because you will be hooked on high school football in texas.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Dent does a great job of taking you back to another era and captures the spirit of these orphans who went against all odds to prove themselves. A bit of "Little Rascals" and a lot of character. You don't have to be a football fan to like "12 Mighty Orphans" - if you have ever rooted for the underdog, you will love this book. I'm getting one for my mother!

This account of a mighty football team in the 1930s in an orphanage in Texas brought back memories I have of tough times in those days and of the wonderful job football did of bringing a bunch of kids together. Being over 70, I can vaguely recall some of the events. I strongly ecommend the book.

A terrific read. Could not put the book down. I have traveled to Ft Worth numerous times over the years and had never heard of the Mighty Orphans. I will sure go out of my way next visit to see if the orphanage is still standing. A remarkable group of kids.

A great read, especially if you are from this area. I had two uncles who were raised at the Home so heard many stories. I just wish they were still alive so they could read this book. I do wish I knew where to go for additional history. JB