Back in mid-December, a man named William Thornton died in Columbia, Mo. A succinct newspaper obituary mentioned he had once been an assistant football coach at Missouri University.

That was about it. Until more than a month later when someone in Nebraska realized who that William Thornton was.

He was Bill “Thunder” Thornton, a former standout running back for the Cornhuskers.

You have to be pretty long in the tooth to remember Thornton, a senior on Bob Devaney’s first NU team back in 1962, so I’m showing my age when I tell you his death brought back a wave of memories.

Back in the fall of 1962, I was a senior at Missouri and was rooming with the school newspaper’s football beat writer, a guy I had met a couple of years earlier in junior college named Tom Morris.

As October wound down, it was apparent the early November game between Missouri and Nebraska in Lincoln, Neb., was going to be a titanic. The Cornhuskers were unbeaten, and Mizzou had just one defeat.

The school paper couldn’t afford to send a writer on the road, but Morris was determined to cover the game on his own. And, unlike most college students in those days, he had a car — an ugly green Studebaker.

Morris asked me if I would go with him for moral support and to help him drive. Sure, I said. I had never been to Lincoln and was glad to have an excuse to escape Columbia on the weekend.

So we made our initial foray into the Cornhusker State where Morris covered the game, and I watched from a seat in NU’s Memorial Stadium which probably had half the capacity it has now.

And what do I remember most about that game?

Thunder Thornton. I couldn’t believe how time after time he would take a handoff and blast into the line, each time striking a blow against Missouri defenders who had to gang tackle to bring him down.

After watching Thornton play, I realized how he had acquired the nickname Thunder. He had earned it. He hit the line like a tank. I was in total awe of his brute power.

Missouri had a couple of good running backs, but they were finesse players compared to Thornton. The guy was a human battering ram.

I have to admit after all these years I couldn’t remember who won the game. I had to look it up. Missouri won, 16-7, handing the Huskers one of only two losses in what historians would hail as the beginning of the Devaney Era.

In retrospect, too, that game was full of ironies.

At the time, who would have known Thornton would wind up living in Columbia? Or that four years later I would be working in Lincoln and helping cover Nebraska football games for the city’s afternoon paper.

And what of Morris, my old roommate? Well, after working for a few years in the newspaper business, he decided he wanted to go to law school, and he’s now a federal magistrate judge in Jacksonville, Fla.

He still can’t believe I’ve been encamped in the home of Missouri’s arch-rival for the last 40 years. And I can’t believe we made it to Lincoln and back in that old Studebaker.