Former Uniontown star Machinsky remembered
Word finally reached Uniontown last week of the passing of one of the all-time greats in Fayette County football history.
Former Uniontown star Francis “Moose” Machinsky, age 79, passed away Friday, September 5, 2014 peacefully in his sleep.
Machinsky, a Buffington, Pennsylvania native, was a big part of the glory years of Uniontown High School football. He was a key member of the Red Raiders undefeated team in his senior year 1951, when he earned first team All-State honors.
In Machinsky’s sophomore season in 1949, the Red Raiders posted a record of 7-3, and were Fayette County Double A champs. In 1950, Uniontown went 9-1. The lone loss was a 20-7 loss to Latrobe in the final game of the season in front of 7,000 fans at Latrobe. The Red Raiders bounced back in Machinsky’s senior campaign in 1951 to post the first undefeated season in school history at 10-0. They avenged the Latrobe loss in 1950, swamping the Wildcats, 46-0. Uniontown didn’t win the WPIAL title because of the Gardener points system. Monessen beat the Red Raiders out by a few points.
As he looked back at back at those teams in a Memory Lane article, Machinsky had fond memories of his teammates.
“The whole team was just outstanding. We had Ronnie Manning, Frank Henderson, Eddie Santore, Bill Hunt — all of them were good. I think we had eight or nine guys that went to college my senior year and either got full scholarships or partial scholarships — that’s unbelievable,” said Machinsky.
Former Uniontown Herald-Standard sports editor Tod Trent remembers Machinsky vividly.
“Being a newcomer to Uniontown,” Trent recalled. “As the 1951 football season approached, a lot of people kept telling me about this big kid from Buffington, and I got to watch him. He was a big sturdy kid and very likable except when he put that uniform on. He was a machine on the football field, he really was. I’ve always thought that Moose was my first, with that I mean I was very lucky to be able to follow a lot of All-State players through the years with various schools and teams. I was able to watch a few undefeated teams play, which I think is a hard thing to do in any sport at the high school level.
“And then got to see them play on a major stage and be successful. I think about Moose on that 1951 team, he was the All-State guard on the Pennsylvania All-State team and that was back when they only picked 1. There was no offense and defense, it was only 11 players, and Moose was the guard. Moose was one of the leaders on that 1951 team that went undefeated and uninvited. He was one of the best to come out of Fayette County. Then when he went to Ohio State he played in the Rose Bowl game.”
Machinsky’s Uniontown teammates were saddened with the news of his death.
Big Chuck Zawacki who followed Machinsky to Ohio State, remembered him fondly.
“Moose was a good friend of mine, and a super guy,” Zawacki stated. “I don’t think he had an enemy in the world. He had a great sense of humor and was fun to be around. I sure am glad our paths in life crossed.”
Former Red Raiders quarterback Ed Santoro chimed in with his thoughts.
“He was quite a player,” Santoro said. “He was a great guy, all those years he came to the class reunions, very nice, he and his wife Judy. I can’t tell you anything bad about him, he was a great guy and a great teammate.”
Machinsky was highly recruited by the likes of Notre Dame, Penn State, Pitt and West Virginia, but decided to go to Ohio State.
“The summer before I was a sophomore I was playing baseball for one of the patch baseball teams — I was playing for Buffington,” Machinsky stated. “The first day of practice our coach said does anybody need a job — well all the guys either worked in the mines or the steel mills, Regis Burns and I put up our hands. John Galbreath was remodeling all the coal towns. He was adding a room on and putting a bathroom in and septic tanks because we had outside toilets. I was told to go see a guy who would put me to work. Galbreath had agreed to hire two ballplayers from each patch because he loved baseball and he owned the Pittsburgh Pirates.
“I cleared $48.50 a week — I’ll never forget it. After football season I get a call from the guys in Galbreath’s office in Uniontown — I go in and all three of the guys had gone to Ohio State and I eventually had dinner with Mr. Galbreath and that’s where it started. I worked for them again the next summer and when I was at Ohio State if I went home on weekends I would go in the office and clean the office and they would pay me, which took care of my expenses for the weekend. I committed to Notre Dame and Ohio State said you come up one more time. I went up there and I came back and said I’m going to Ohio State.”
After a season of freshman football, Machinsky made the varsity squad for three seasons. The Buckeyes went undefeated in 1954, beating Southern California in the Rose Bowl to claim a national title. Mackinsky was named an All-Big Ten selection at tackle that season and he was named the team’s co-captain in 1955. He played for the legendary Woody Hayes.
He played in the Hula Bowl and East-West Shrine all-star games after graduating.
The Washington Redskins selected Machinsky in the fourth round (No. 41 overall) of the 1956 NFL draft.
He went north to Canada to play for the Toronto Argonauts in 1956. Military service in the United States limited his professional career to that single season in the CFL.
After that single season, he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, during which he was stationed in Austin, Texas, and Washington, D.C. After two years of service, he returned to Columbus, Ohio, where he started several businesses.
Later, Machinsky survived a serious industrial accident on a construction site in which he was badly burned on his left side by a gasoline explosion. He had a janitor’s supply business, a beer distributorship, a trash company and an insurance agency.
Machinsky was inducted into the Ohio State University Sports Hall of Fame in 1999 and the Fayette County Sports Hall of Fame in 2010.
Machinsky is survived by his loving wife of 57 years, Judy; daughter, Wendy (Bill) Shewalter; son, Mike Machinsky; grandchildren, Conrad and Lindsay; brother Stan; sister Doris Machinsky; sisters-in-law Millie (John) Watkins; Joyce (Mike) Konrad and Jodi (Dean) Colombini; many favorite nieces, nephews and great friends.
George Von Benko’s “Memory Lane” column appears in the Monday editions of the Herald-Standard. He also hosts a sports talk show on WMBS-AM radio from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.