I never gave much thought to reaching the end of a journey because I was too immersed in the trip.
But it appears that I have.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart, everyone, for sharing with me the ever-evolving history of high school sports in New Orleans and its incredible passage through time.
I have enjoyed being the storyteller. But now it’s time to write my last chapter.
The archdiocese’s house organ will no longer include regular coverage of sports in its new format.
It has been a memorable 59 years of watching athletes grow; bearing witness to the rise of young men and women as they become high school sports legends, and capturing their accomplishments through prose, oratory and photography.
I consider myself fortunate to have grown up in the “Rock-and-Roll ’50s” and to have been raised by a small family that allowed me to navigate my way to adulthood. And my Gentilly neighborhood provided the first steps on my personal yellow brick road, because everything I needed to begin my journey was located just a few blocks away.
For a kid, a walkable city
Within walking distance were a grocery and drug store, my church, playground, bakery, movie theater and the schools I attended.
Canal Street, where all the great department stores were located, was just a 7-cent bus ride away.
I took full advantage of my afforded freedom during that simpler time in life. At age 12, I was trusted enough to take two buses and a streetcar across town alone to go to Tulane football or Loyola basketball games or to walk a mile up Esplanade Avenue to explore City Park. I enjoyed a feeling of independence, fostered by a trusting mother and grandmother.
I’m not one to dwell on the past, although I appreciate the lessons of history. Perhaps that’s why I felt compelled to preserve the precious past in my writings.
The road I chose to travel has often been strewn with as many ruts as a New Orleans sidewalk. All of those things I once enjoyed are gone – my church, the movie house, corner store and, yes, my schools and most of my classmates, who are just fond memories.
Over this long and rewarding writing career from which I move on, I was fortunate to have traveled the U.S. covering professional and college sports. I visited the great cities, dined in fine restaurants and tipped a few mugs in the pubs where writers of my ilk shared their stories.
I’ve interviewed the likes of Jim Brown, Sugar Ray Leonard, Jack Nicklaus, Elgin Baylor, Pete Maravich, Jim Piersall and Steve Prefontaine. I’ve rubbed shoulders with sports figures who were once my childhood heroes.
Enchanted by the preps
The list seems endless, but not so important anymore. That’s because my true course of endeavor was charted in 1952, when, as an 11-year-old elementary school student, I saw my first high school football game on a sunny but chilly Sunday afternoon in City Park. The bands, the colors, the cheering spectators, the action on the field, were shots of adrenalin. I wanted to be part of it … and I have been, first as an athlete, then as an observer from the press boxes and sidelines.
Serving the high school sports community (and in what better city to do so?) was where I wanted to concentrate my talent and energy. So I traded the more glamorous destinations and fabulous venues for the smaller arenas and stadiums where high school sports are played. It was like trading wealth for job satisfaction. And the journey with my journalistic peers proved to be more rewarding and just plain fun.
I discovered that a hot dog from the concessions stand at Kirsch-Rooney Stadium or a hamburger at Oscar’s with the football officials following a Friday night game were just as satisfying to my simple taste buds as a Kansas City sirloin.
I have lasted long enough to have covered high school athletes of the 1960s and their sons and daughters in the 1990s. The chain continues to add links as the decades pass.
Gender and race in sports
I watched with interest as girls’ athletics gained equal notoriety as the boys’ sports. I witnessed the end of separate athletic organizations for white and African-American athletes in 1970. I drove the dusty back roads of rural Louisiana, stood in ankle-deep mud to photograph games and watched cinder tracks transformed into artificial turf and all-weather surfaces.
Along the way I had many tutors, from editors to coaches to my older cohorts who preferred to be known as newsmen rather than journalists. And I am honored to have my image appear alongside theirs as plaques in two Louisiana halls of fame.
Unlike today, Louisiana had real newspapers back then. At one time, New Orleans had three competing against each other – The Times-Picayune, New Orleans States and New Orleans Item. They were all great because of the competition among their writers. And reading those historic accounts set me on my future course.
When Peter Finney Jr. allowed me to expand a sports section of the Clarion Herald, my intention was twofold: to attract a readership of teenage student-athletes, their coaches and prep sports fans. In doing so, it may have broadened interest in other elements of the Catholic faith the Clarion Herald had to offer.
Older readers have commented that they enjoyed reliving the past through “look-back” columns about historic events. It was a way to remind them of the great eras that are lost in time.
Hopefully, I have accomplished part of my mission representing the Clarion Herald through the publication of “The Golden Game: When Prep Sports Was King in New Orleans,” from scripting a television documentary series about the Catholic League, and through the creation of the Walls of Legends at Ye Olde College Inn.
History is perpetual. But I’ve crossed my personal finish line, although not to my choosing, and it’s apparently time to take my first steps on a new path, and if I’m fortunate, perhaps there is the mythical Emerald City out there.
So, once again I say, thank all of you who have given this spectator a front-row seat in the passing parade of high school sports. I’ll miss y’all.
