Missing Brownsville High School trophies found in storage
When I answered the knock on my classroom door at Brownsville Area High School, I did not suspect that I was about to learn the whereabouts of the missing Brownsville High School trophies. The man at my door was high school custodian Edward “Ozie” Fajger. “Are you teaching class right now?” Ozie asked me. “Yes. What’s up?” I replied.
“I’ve got boxes and boxes downstairs for you.” “What’s in them?”
He grinned.
“Trophies.”
My eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“They’re very dusty,” Ozie continued. “I found the boxes stored in a crawl space here in the building. They must have been there for a long time.”
“Where are they now?”
“I put them in the receiving room.”
Later, I walked downstairs to the receiving room, poked my head in the door and spotted custodian Susan Zupic.
“Susan, are there any boxes of trophies in here?” I asked.
“There they are,” she said, pointing to a flatbed pushcart that the custodians use to move large items. On the flatbed was a stack of three large cardboard boxes, and beside it a stack of four more, all covered with lids. Next to the two neat stacks sat a tall, very dirty cardboard box. It had no lid, and protruding above the rim of the box I could see the top of an enormous two-foot high trophy . Trying not to touch the filthy cardboard, I gingerly lifted the trophy out of the box.
It was a tarnished, slightly dented loving cup. I wondered how old it was, and when I read the inscription, I realized that when it was won by Brownsville track and field athletes, the 1929 stock market crash hadn’t happened yet. Its fading letters read, “Carnegie Institute of Technology – Twelfth Annual Interscholastic Track And Field Meet – May 5, 1928.”
I turned to the seven stacked boxes and lifted the lid off one of them.
The box appeared to contain several trophies, each wrapped in yellowed newspapers that dated back to 1966, the year the old Brownsville High School on High Street was closed. The trophies had apparently been packed in these boxes when that building was emptied 36 years ago. Now they were finally going to see the light of day again.
I closed the lid and did not open any of the other boxes.
“I wonder if we could get these boxes upstairs to my classroom?” I asked Susan. “I think it would be great to have the students in my Local History course join me in opening them.”
Susan took the cart upstairs in the elevator and wheeled it to my classroom, and I placed the eight boxes in a storage area adjacent to my room. The next day I told the students in my Local History class about the search that had been under way for the pre-1967 Brownsville High School trophies, particularly for the missing 1940 and 1943 WPIAL Class AA football championship trophies.
Then I pointed to the door of the storage room and told them about the boxes that were in there. I said that I had not yet investigated their contents.
“Tomorrow,” I told them, “we will open all of them during class and see what is in them.”
The next day, some of the boys in my class carried the boxes from the storage room into my classroom and placed them on desks around the room. I divided the class into groups, assigned each group several boxes to open, and asked each group to write down the inscription that was on each trophy they unwrapped.
“Keep an eye out for anything that looks like a WPIAL championship trophy,” I said. We began opening boxes, carefully removing the old newspapers that concealed the objects inside.
About 45 minutes later, piles of crumpled newspapers lay scattered around the room. On the students’ desks stood 39 trophies of various styles and sizes, many of them won by Brownsville High School students who are now senior citizens.
Twelve of the trophies were earned by Brownsville/John A. Brashear High School debate teams, who established an amazingly successful record in the 1950s. Can you imagine the same high school winning the state championship in debate eight times in 10 years? That is what coach James Norman’s Brownsville debate teams did from 1951 through 1960, including a streak of six consecutive state titles from 1955 through 1960.
Several of those teams advanced to the national tournament, and the 1959 quartet of Herb Bowen, Michael Yonkura, Stuart Smith, and Alan Cazen nearly won the national championship. The 1959 team won the Fayette County championship in March, the National Forensic League championship at California High School in April, and then captured the Pennsylvania state debate championship at the University of Pittsburgh, thus qualifying two teams for national entry.
“This marked the second time in Pennsylvania forensic history that one school – Brashear in both cases – won a double state championship in debate,” declared the editors of the high school yearbook. “The Brownsville Board of Education sent the teams to Coral Gables, Florida, where Brashear represented Pennsylvania among 56 other state and N.F.L. district championship teams in the National Championship Tournament. The Brownsville team reached the semi-finals and officially placed third in the United States.”
Which of the 39 trophies that we unwrapped were the oldest? Five track and field trophies claim that distinction. All five were won before the 1934 consolidation of South Brownsville and Brownsville school districts into a single school system.
The oldest of the 39 trophies reads, “F.C.I.A.L. 2nd Annual Field Meet – Third Place School Award – Dawson, Pa. – May 10, 1924.” Unfortunately, the inscription gives no clue whether it was won by South Brownsville or Brownsville High School. The other track and field trophies are dated 1925, 1926, and 1928, and there is an undated trophy that is engraved, “Annual Grade School Track And Field Meet – Y.M.C.A. – South Brownsville.”
One of the two basketball trophies in the collection was won by Brownsville High School’s first section championship team in 32 years. The 1963 Class A Section 10 champions, coached by Frank Dankovich and assistant coach Dick Majernik, started a lineup of Charles Wheeler, Phil Johns, Don Turner, Rich Martello, and Chuck Dennis. The opponents whom the Brownies battled for that Section 10 title were South Union, German, Fairchance-Georges, Albert Gallatin, North Union, Redstone and Beth-Center.
We found two band trophies in the boxes. One reads “1952 – Awarded at Brownsville Battle of the Bands,” and the other was given in 1955 for participation in the California State Teachers College homecoming parade. Perhaps the Brownsville Area band boosters would be interested in adding these trophies to the band’s display cases at the high school.
Also in the boxes were three unengraved baseball trophies, a plaque listing the winners of the Mike Cesarone Award from 1947 (Lou Roberts) to 1958 (Robert Chuey), and an unengraved loving cup with no indication of what accomplishment it represents.
The remaining 13 trophies were all won by Brownsville football teams between 1938 and 1953 (although two are undated). The most impressive-looking of the 13 is not a WPIAL championship trophy. It is the Monongahela Valley Big Six Championship trophy awarded to Brownsville High School in 1940, after coach Carl Aschman’s team captured the Big Six title for the third consecutive year. Brownsville’s 1938-39-40 football teams earned permanent possession of the trophy by recording a 27-0-3 record, shutting out 21 of their 30 opponents, and yielding only 58 points in 30 games.
Four of the 13 football trophies represent Fayette County championships while seven were awarded for Big Five or Big Six championships. The Big Six consisted of Brownsville, Donora, Monessen, Monongahela, Charleroi, and Washington, and in 1946 no Big Six team scored a single point against Brownsville. Even though that 1946 team was 9-0-1, it did not win the school’s third WPIAL Class AA championship in seven years, because it played to a 6-6 tie against archrival Redstone High School.
The 1947 squad was another great team, but it did not win a WPIAL championship trophy either. Coach Andy Sepsi’s 1947 team was 10-0, shutting out all opponents except Monessen and Uniontown, but the Brownies were not awarded the WPIAL championship because under the WPIAL’s complex Gardner point system, Brownsville ranked fourth behind three other undefeated teams – New Kensington, Har-Brack and McKeesport.
There are two 1947 trophies in the collection. One reads “1947 – Big Six Champions.” The other, the 12th of the 13 football trophies we found, is a hardwood and metal plaque honoring the 1947 squad. It is engraved “Football – 1947 – Class AA – Undefeated – Brownsville.”
The 13th football trophy is inscribed, “WPIAL Football Champions – 1940 – Class AA.” This very special trophy was won by Brownsville High School’s first WPIAL champions, the 10-0 1940 Brownie football team coached by Carl Aschman.
Readers, there you have a summary of the 39 Brownsville and South Brownsville High School trophies that have been found, trophies that had not been seen since 1966. Now that they have been rediscovered, I am hoping that we can provide a fitting showcase for them at Brownsville Area High School, so that they may be seen by the public once more. I know that the high school would be proud to display these historic trophies, earned so many years ago by dedicated young people competing and representing their school with pride.
Before I conclude this article, there is one other item I must mention.
I said there were 39 trophies in those boxes, and I have accounted for all of those trophies in this article. But unfortunately, one mystery still remains.
None of the trophies in the boxes is the 1943 WPIAL Class AA football championship trophy. If it exists, it is still unaccounted for. Was there a team trophy awarded to the school in 1943? Or were the small individual trophies described last week by 1943 Brownie player Frank Davis the only trophies that were awarded that year?
Perhaps we will never find the 1943 WPIAL Class AA championship trophy, but we do have 39 other trophies. They are loaded with great memories, but they are still sitting in dusty boxes, waiting to be placed on public display.
How about it, Brownsville alumni? Who among you is willing to help me see that these trophies are proudly displayed once more?
Glenn Tunney may be contacted at 724-785-3201, glenatun@hhs.net or 6068 National Pike East, Grindstone, PA 15442. Comments about these weekly articles may be sent to Mark O’Keefe (Managing Editor – Day), 8 – 18 East Church Street, Uniontown, Pa. or e-mailed to mo’keefe@heraldstandard.com . All past articles are on the Web at http://freepages.history.rootsweb.com/~glenntunneycolumn/