This is the fourth in a series of articles commemorating the 50th anniversary of Butler High School’s 1963 undefeated varsity football team.BUTLER TWP — The era was golden. And Ed Codi remembers it well.Codi was an end on the 1963 Butler varsity football team that put together a 9-0 regular season — only the second perfect regular season in the program’s history — before losing to West Mifflin North in the WPIAL championship game.“That season started a major run for us,” Codi said. “From 1963-65, we were 26-1 in the regular season. Tack on 1962 and that’s 33-3 over four seasons.“Butler had a bunch of big, strong kids playing football through those years. For that era, we were physically bigger and more powerful than most of the teams we played.”Ten players from the 1963 Butler team — Bill Quigley, Bill Rettig, Terry Rettig, Mike Zaccari, Terry Hanratty, Mike Giunta, Tom McGrath, Codi, Rich and Ron Saul — along with coaches Art Bernardi, Paul Uram, Walter Lonchena and George Bistransin, are in the Butler County Sports Hall of Fame.“I don’t know that another team from the county, in any sport, has that kind of representation,” Codi said.I remember our first scrimmage against Penn Hills. They were loaded ... and we just pulverized them. We knew then how good we had a chance to be.”After beginning the season with convincing wins over Erie Strong Vincent, Ellwood City, Farrell and Har-Brack, the Golden Tornado fell behind early against Beaver Falls.“They were up on us 9-0 in the first seven minutes,” Codi said. “But there was never a sense of panic anywhere on our sideline.“Giunta took a pitch-out left, then ran around right end 30 yards for a touchdown. Bill Rettig wound up rushing for 140 yards and our ground game just chewed them up.”Butler took a 41-21 victory that night.“We threw the ball maybe six times a game — and three of those were during warm-ups,” Codi said, laughing. “Zaccari was our option quarterback and he ran it to perfection.“Couple that with our talented backfield and physical offensive line. We just controlled games.”Two weeks later, Butler hosted Aliquippa in a battle of 6-0 teams at Pullman Park.Codi said the bus ride from the high school to Pullman for home games was always special, but this was a different scene.“We couldn’t believe what we saw when we got there,” he said. “We pulled up to the gate at Pullman Park and there was just a sea of people.“They had to move people out of the way to get our bus in there. Pullman Park held maybe 4,000 people and there were 10,000 there that night. People were climbing up on the roof at Pullman ... The authorities were afraid it was gonna cave in.”By the fourth quarter, Codi said, “we had just pounded them into submission.”When time expired on a 21-13 Butler victory, the crowd stormed the field.“We couldn’t get to our bus for the longest time,” Codi said. “We were giving away our chin straps to all of the kids. The bus ride back up the hill was phenomenal. The whole town of Butler must have shut down that night.”Codi recalled the excitement of playing the WPIAL championship game in front of 21,000 people at Forbes Field.“For a bunch of high school kids to step on that field, it was such an honor,” he said. “It took 23 buses to bring all of the fans in from Butler.“That game was trench warfare. We were good and they were good. We lost Ralph Beck to a leg injury, Miie Giunta to a hip pointer — the next guys stepped in and did the job.“We had three goal-line stands inside our own 7-yard line in the second half,” Codi added.Butler wound up taking a 12-6 loss after missing out on a potential game-winning interception by Terry Hanratty on a play that resulted in West Mifflin’s game-winning touchdown.“It wasn’t that we lost, it was how we lost,” Codi said. “That game ate at us for a long, long time.”Fifty years later, only pride remains.“We were just a bunch of kids who grew up playing football together,” Codi said. “Ninety percent of us played midget ball for South Side, up on the hill, Penn Street, Lyndora, the island, wherever.“We played with pride. We fought for our school and for each other. To this day, I’d fight alongside any of those guys in a fox-hole anytime.”The 1963 Butler football team will be honored prior to the Golden Tornado’s football season opener Aug. 30. Anyone knowing of players, coaches or trainers from that team who have not been contacted are asked to call Kevin Vogel at 724-822-5291.