Copyright © 2017
John F. Oyler
November 30, 2017
Bridgeville High School, 1939 through 1941
This month the Bridgeville Area Historical
Society “Second Tuesday” workshop returned to its review of the history of
Bridgeville High School, this time focusing on the Classes of 1939, 1940, and
1941.
The discussion actually began in the middle of
1938. The football team was on the upswing that Fall and celebrated a thumping
of Clark High 12 to 0. The Senior dramatists presented a comedy, “The Nut
Farm”, with a cast that included Gloria Lutz. Too bad we didn’t have that
knowledge to tease her about when she was our teacher ten years later.
The basketball team was quite successful, led by
Clair “Tay” Malarkey. They topped Bethel 31 to 25 to win the championship of
their section. The star center for Bethel in that game was Robert Hast, who
would make history at BHS a decade later. Their run through the WPIAL playoffs
ended with a decisive 41 to 32 loss to Springdale.
There were 74 graduates in the Class of 1939.
They included Alex Asti, Bridgeville’s first fatal casualty of World War II;
future coach and teacher Clyde “Tiny” Carson; and Bob Weise, elder brother of
Society President Mary Weise. Their May Queen was Betty Crawford; the Maid of
Honor was Mary True. Flower girl Sally Russell would reign as BHS May Queen ten
years in the future.
BHS’ football team met a lot of success in the
Fall of 1939. They were unbeaten in Class B with a clear path to the WPIAL
championship when they met South Fayette in their annual rivalry game. Their
opponents, winless in eight games, once again proved the old adage that past
records are meaningless in rivalry games by pulling off the biggest upset in
the history of this long series, 6 to 0. The result was a series of fights on
the sidelines between fans of the two rivals, an event that was recorded for
posterity in a newspaper photograph.
Two class presidents, Joe Halloran (Senior
Class) and Arthur Spriggs (Junior Class) were honored by the Merit Parade, as
was Faust Rosa. Mary Weise pointed out that Rosa had gone on to a distinguished
career as a nuclear engineer. Sure enough, a search in newspapers.com turned up
a series of articles in 1977 quoting Nuclear Regulatory Commission official
Faust Rosa.
The Juniors presented a class play “New Fires”
starring Anne Bowman and John Sigmann. We are inclined to forget how popular
these plays were in an era when the high school was the social and cultural
center of the community.
After a hiatus of several years BHS fielded a
soccer team in 1940, one of six schools in WPIAL. There were lots of familiar
soccer names on the team including
Sypien, LaSota, and Pawlik.
The facilitator showed a lovely photograph of
the 1940 Senior Ball which he found in a scrapbook in the Society’s archives.
The gymnasium in the high school is lavishly decorated. The girls all look like
May Queens; their escorts, like Lochinvars. Two years later they would be
wrapped up in the horrors of war. The Class of 1940 included 108 graduates, by
far the biggest group for the high school up to that time.
High School principal Martin Fowler left to
become Superintendent of the Pennsylvania Industrial Training School at
Morganza, a fancy name for a Reform School. Fowler was shocked at the way the
students were treated, so he tore down the fences and initiated a “trusty”
policy. Within a week the school’s inmates were scattered all over Western
Pennsylvania. Fowler resigned shortly thereafter, citing “policy differences”
as his reason for leaving.
The 1940 Fall football team was powerhouse
featuring halfbacks “Smiles” Perkins and Perry Hackley. They capped an
undefeated season with a 12 to 0 drubbing of South Fayette, avenging the
previous year’s loss. BHS and Masontown ended in a tie for second place in
WPIAL Class B and were forced to play an elimination game to earn the right to
the playoff game, a game that the locals lost, 6 to 0.
The Historical Society is fortunate to have the
original scrapbook that Coach Neil Brown kept while he was at Bridgeville. When
his wife was a client at the Guild for the Blind, Coach Brown gave the
scrapbook to Nancy LaSota, believing it belonged in Bridgeville. The
facilitator was able to show a number of photos of individual players that were
in it.
Roy Delaney and Peter Calabro were honored by
the Merit Parade. According to the newspaper article Calabro was hoping to
convert his hobby of recapping automobile tires into a vocation (which he
eventually did quite successfully). Don Toney pointed out that Calabro was one
of three Bridgeville airman shot down in separate incidents in World War II and
ending up in the same Prisoner of War camp. The others were cousins George
Shady and George Abood.
The BHS basketball team repeated as Section
champions before losing to Sharpsburg in the playoffs 33 to 23. The track and
field team fared much better, winning the Class B WPIAL title. John Pesavento won the 100 yard
dash; Bill Camp, the 880. A relay team of Fillippi, Copeland, Adams, and
Perkins won the Two Lap Relay: the team of Adams, Phillips, Hackley, and
Fillippi took the Four Lap Relay title. In the Field events Smiles Perkins won
the Shot Put and Jim Patter the High Jump. Coach John Graham turned out
powerful track and field teams in those years.
Pattee Kelley provided a wealth of information
on the Class of 1941 by bringing in programs from their Class Night and Commencement
that her mother, Margaret “Pat” True, had lovingly saved. Class Night was a
series of skits and musical productions performed by the Seniors. A highlight
certainly must have been Guy Russell singing “He’s the Man Who Broke the Bank
at Monte Carlo”.
There were eighty six Seniors in the Class of
1941. Commencement featured valedictory addresses by Judith Rosa, James Knold, Helen
Colton, Frank Rizak, and Nina Whitecap. Their subjects were the various aspects
of “Our Part in the American Crisis”. I suspect their advice would still be
relevant today.
The next “Second Tuesday” workshop is scheduled
for 7:00 pm, December 12, 2017 in the History Center. We will attempt to cover
the Classes of 1942, 1943, and 1944.
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