Blankenship Extends NRA Pistol Championship Win Streak To Five: 1964 National Matches

The 1964 National Matches offered up a combination of familiarity and firsts under the watchful eye of Col. Sidney Carpenter who, in his second year as Match Director, welcomed more than 7,000 competitors to the revered Lake Erie shooting grounds at Camp Perry.

The government designated an impact area off the shores of Camp Perry and the adjoining Erie Industrial Park to be used for the firing of various weapons. During periods of firing activity, boaters, fishermen and aircraft pilots are to stay clear as this area is restricted under Title 33, United States Code. Naturally, many fishermen contend that the best fishing is in the impact area.

Well before the first shot was fired, the National Board’s appropriation request was approved and included increased travel funding that allowed for more civilian teams. And though growth and progress continued to reaffirm the mission of the National Matches, the 1964 budget allotment was actually lower than what was granted in 1963, since the 25-year lease arrangement of Camp Perry—approved in 1960—provided that after the first four years the annual payout to the state of Ohio drop from $150,000 to $50,000.

It didn’t take long for the sense of the familiar to set in because Sgt. 1st Class Bill Blankenship, Jr., continued his reign as national pistol champion with an unprecedented fifth consecutive title, including wins in the Preliminary Aggregate and Center-Fire Championship. And for good measure, the five-time Harrison Trophy winner accomplished a rare feat two days later, when he also garnered the Custer Trophy for National Individual Trophy Match honors.

Over his shooting career, Bill Blankenship won the NRA National Pistol Championship six times, including five consecutive wins from 1960-1964. For nearly 40 years, his record six wins was unmatched by any other competitor.

The Army influence spread into the women’s category in 1964, too, as Capt. Sallie Carroll earned national honors, while the seniors were led by the legendary Marine Col. Walter Walsh. In team competition, Marines claimed just one leg of the aggregate (.45) as the Air Force repeated its accomplishment from the year before and won two matches on its way to the national title. Some balance was added to the service spoils when an Army foursome won the Gold Cup in the National Team Trophy Match.

It was not by chance that many Olympic hopefuls were on the firing lines as the National Matches provided a fitting tune up to the XVII Olympiad in Tokyo in 1964. Marine Warrant Officer James Hill proved worthy of the challenge and with an Olympic background that included a silver medal in prone at the 1960 Rome Games, he established himself early as a national champion contender with a prone metallic sight victory. And though he was four points down after the iron-sight aggregate, which went to fellow Olympian John Foster with a 1598-122X, Hill responded with the perfection that is demanded in scope shooting.

After dropping just one point across the any-sight aggregate, Hill claimed victory with a 1599-121X while Marianne Driver occupied her traditional position as the women’s any-sight victor with a 1595-99X. The matches that made up the Prone Team Fund Aggregate were all won with perfect scores and though Hill was not perfect, his National Match record 1599-126X sewed up the national prone championship. For Hill, his victory marked the first time that a National Service Rifle Champion (1956) had crossed disciplines and earned a national title in smallbore. Additionally, Inez Sargent managed to pass Driver in the third 1600 for the women’s title while the 1941 national champion, Rans Triggs, topped the civilian category.

Warrant Officer James Hill, USMC, is another National Champion who can claim multi-discipline excellence: the Service Rifle Championship in 1956 and the Smallbore Prone Championship in 1964. In between he won the silver medal in smallbore prone at the 1960 Olympics. He would later serve many times as match director high power at the National Matches.

Army Capt. Presley Kendall was an aggressive young rifleman with an impressive National Match resumé. He won the junior title in 1954 and the open prone title in 1962. He was an experienced international competitor who was as skilled at position shooting as he was at prone and in 1964, he made his move into the National Match record books by winning the national position championship.

At first it appeared that Kendall would have to put his dream on hold. National Guardsman Lt. Gary Anderson, as talented a position shooter as there ever existed in the United States, won the first metallic-sight match, while the Army’s Don Adams blocked Kendall in the second match. Lt. Thurston Banks shut him out of the first any-sight match and Capt. John Bertva’s stupendous 397 blocked a win in the last position match. But despite not winning a single match, Kendall managed to pull off an aggregate score that bested the field; thus, he became just the third shooter in National Match history to win both a prone and position title. (Art Cook and Lones Wigger were first and second, respectively.)

Jilann Brunett, five-time Women’s Smallbore Position Champion, was also a skilled prone shooter and made the Randle Team four times.

Jilann Brunett reclaimed a title she had won four times before when she was named women’s champion in 1964, while John Writer graduated from junior champion to collegiate champion. In addition, Phil Bahrman earned his second junior title and Robert Dorian of Independence, Missouri, took the senior honor.

“Both the M1 and the M14 rifles will be fired in the 1964 National Matches. Determination of the rifle fired by service members will be made by the service concerned, civilians may fire either rifle.”
—1964 National Match Program

Air Force reservist Middleton Tompkins won his second consecutive high power championship with a National Match bolt record score of 794-81V that included a victory in the Scott Trophy Match. Tompkins’s 100-12V in the 20-shot, 200-yard contest was one off the record score he posted in the event six years prior. And with his successful title defense, Tompkins became the second competitor to repeat as national champion (Loyd Crow won in 1955 and 1956) and the first to win the championship a third time. Tompkins then took his shooting prowess a step further when he moved to the 1,000-yard firing line and won the Leech Cup shoot-off on the same day he secured his national title.

Lt. Col. Sam Burkhalter, USAR, (left) was the first winner, in 1964, of the Sutton Trophy donated by Maj. Gen. W. J. Sutton, USA, (center) for the High Army Reservist in the Service Rifle National Championship. Franklin Orth, executive director of the NRA is to the right.

With M1 in hand, Navy Chief Petty Officer Daniel Morine, Jr., claimed the national service rifle title after posting his own record 792-76V in a year when the service rifle championship and National Board Trophy Matches were conducted with both M1s and M14s. National Guard Lt. Gary Anderson held court in the service rifle championship among the collegians, while the senior title went to Col. Emmet O. Swanson, a former NRA President (1948-49) and Olympian.

Air Force Staff Sgt. Bobby Smith beat out 2,325 others to win the Daniel Boone Trophy as the National Individual Trophy champion, while the Marines put an end to the Army’s seven-year seize of National Team Trophy victories and preceded it with a win in the Herrick.

During the 1960s, a demonstration match by teams of the North-South Skirmish Association was a featured part of the National Matches. Competitions were between four-man teams equipped, then, with predominantly original Civil War firearms. As an added treat, the winning N-SSA team traditionally went up against an Army four-man team equipped with National Match semi-automatic rifles and ammunition, each team attempting to break a number of regulation clay pigeons on cardboard backers at 50 yards.

A field of 2,462 entries competed in the President’s Match and for top 100 recognition, and it was Army Staff Sgt. Leonard Byers who finished atop the pack for the honored distinction and the 1964 trophy gun award of a Remington Model 700. Lawrence Rackel of Saginaw, Michigan, won the Wimbledon Cup, while the Farr Trophy for high service shooter in the match went to Army Spc. 5 Earl Waterman, Jr., who fired an M14 rifle.

“The National Rifle and Pistol Matches are the acme of marksmanship training in America.”
—The American Rifleman, October 1964

1964 National Matches Fact

Cabins and motel units were offered in the Squaw Camp area at Camp Perry. This was the first year the motel was available to National Match competitors. The cost: $8 per day vs. $3.50 per day for cabins.