Remembering Randall Cramer
Submitted photo
Raider Champs: Five Uniontown High School trackmen headed to Penn State to compete in PIAA meet in 1963. Left to right are Randall Cramer, Clark Dearth, Alynn Curry, John Manning and Gary Coldren.
Submitted photo
Randall Cramer is shown during his high school days at Uniontown.
The Fayette County Sports community was deeply saddened by the passing of former Uniontown High School track stalwart Randall Cramer, 76, on Thursday, Dec. 23.
Cramer was featured in a Memory Lane column in 2014. Here are some excerpts from that column.
Randall Cramer was an unlikely athlete at Uniontown High School during the early 1960s.
“I was the only member of my family in sports,” Cramer stated. “My family was not oriented to sports at all. It was just something that I had a love for and pursued. The only way I was able to do sports was my dad had a nine-passenger Ford station wagon, and I talked Coach Abe Everhart into letting me drive that my sophomore, junior and senior year, and I would recruit guys from Bittner and Smock and I would drive nine kids from track practice. The booster club paid my dad so much a mile to drive these kids. Otherwise I would never have been able to be on the track team.
“We had some real good athletes in track. But in my time in the 1960s track was really considered as a minor sport, there was very little publicity on track. We had rubber spikes on football shoes on a cinder track. We didn’t have the latest equipment. We just had the heart to go out and compete.”
Cramer turned into an outstanding track ace for the Red Raiders.
“The 880 was my specialty,” Cramer recalled. “I also anchored the mile relay team for the Raiders.”
Cramer first started to run track in junior high school.
“I ran as a freshman,” Cramer said. “That was my first year of eligibility because I was a bus student from Smock. My ninth grade year at Ben Franklin Junior High was my first year in sports, that was my first opportunity. That was under Coach Bill Baron. He actually started me out in the 440, I was a 440 man back in junior high school. I continued on with that in high school, but the 440 is actually considered a sprint. I did okay in the dual meets and triangular meets, but when we got to the big meets I had some problems. I was just trying to figure it out.
“My focus really didn’t come until my senior year. I really wanted to focus on one event and that was the 880. I got pretty good at it.”
Cramer captured the 440 and the 880 at the Fayette County track meet during his junior year in 1962.
“The Fayette County track meet was a big deal back in those days,” Cramer stated. “We ran the meet at Connellsville and they had the best track around. They had that real hard pack. It was still cinders, but it was the best cinder track in the county. We always looked forward to it.
“They had that 220 straightaway. Now I was not a sprinter, but that 220 straightaway was just awesome. Seeing guys like Bo Scott and some of the other guys coming, running down there, they just sounded like a truck.”
Cramer did not make a splash at the WPIAL track meet in 1962.
“I don’t think I made it to the WPIAL meet as a junior,” Cramer explained. “I tell you what my problem was, back in those days there was one event between my events. I would run the 440 and there was one event between that and the 880. Then I would run the 880 and then there would be one more event and I run the mile relay. I would throw up at every meet.”
Cramer ran with a purpose coming into his senior year in 1963.
“I just wanted to do well and get a scholarship,” Cramer stated. “That’s what I wanted to do and I wound up getting a scholarship.”
In 1963 Cramer once again won the 880 at the Fayette County track meet. He ran the 880 and anchored the Red Raiders mile relay team that took gold. That mile relay team consisted of John Manning, Gary Coldren, Allyn Curry and Cramer. They finished on top with a time of 3:27.
At the WPIAL meet Cramer won the 880 and anchored the mile relay team to a first-place finish.
“I won the 880 as a senior and almost broke the record,” Cramer said. “Uniontown’s Joe Thomas had the record then at 1:57.5 and I ran it in 1:57.8, then when I went to the PIAA meet I actually set the school record, I ran a 1:56.6 at that meet, but I finished second to Pottstown’s Bruce Carter who ran 1:53.9.
“After the state meet Coach Everhart came into the locker room and said you ran a great race out there. I just want you to know that you were beat by the No. 1 guy in the nation. Carter was ranked No. 1 and you are ranked No. 6.
“We won the mile relay in 1963. We ran 3:27 and in the PIAA meet we finished fourth with a time of 3:26 and the winning time was 3:25. We were all right together at the line. We, all of us, had our best quarter mile run. I still think about that race maybe once or twice a week. It was a lot of fun.”
Cramer achieved his goal when West Virginia offered him a track scholarship.
“The scholarship entailed not only track, but cross country as well,” Cramer explained. “I had no experience in cross country, but I did okay with it. Coach Stan Romanoski had me specialize as the their half miler in track. In my freshman year I had the then freshman record in the 880, but I had to drop out after I developed some breathing issues. They said I had an acute sinus problem and I had to give it up because I couldn’t breathe. Just a few years ago when I was cycling, I had problems and it was discovered that I had exercise induced asthma. They gave me an inhaler and I was fine.”
Cramer left WVU and graduated from California University of Pa. He taught school at Frazier. He went to Westinghouse Electric as an engineer and then Rockwell International. He formed his own company in 1970, a home building business, Northern Builders. He retired in 2010.
The sudden death of Cramer evoked fond memories from classmates and teammates.
“We ran track together,” former Red Raider Curry said. “I think that team just came together. We had John Manning running leadoff, I ran second, Coldren ran third and Cramer was the anchor. He was good and he also ran the 880.
“Cramer was good, he was consistent. He was tough. You look at him and you didn’t think that much of him as an athlete, but he was hardnosed and worked hard. He could run.”
“I was a sophomore on the track team and when we ran cross country that year everyone talked about Cramer,” Chris Cluss recalled. “But he had to work on the farm, his dad made him work on the farm. Then he came out for track. Cramer was ahead of his time given the equipment they used. In those days running 1:56.6 was unheard of, that was really fast.”
“He was a great runner,” classmate Larry Bush stated. “Later in life he became a pretty good cyclist and qualified for many senior games in different states and also a couple of national events.”
“He was a guy that there were no false airs about him. I know when he was inducted into the Uniontown Area High School Academics, Arts and Athletics Hall of Fame he really was very nervous about the short speech he had to make, because he didn’t like that kind of attention.”
Cramer was inducted into the Uniontown Area High School Academics, Arts and Athletics Hall of Fame in 2019.
George Von Benko’s “Memory Lane” column appears in the Sunday editions of the Herald-Standard. He also hosts a sports talk show on WMBS-AM radio from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays.