Both Sides of the Line

by Kelly, Kevin

  First to speak up was Paul Carouso.

  “My older brother, Richie, played with Kevin’s older brother on the ’69 team. So attending Bosco was an easy choice for me. I remember going to camp as a freshman weighing about a hundred and twenty pounds, and getting pancaked by Bruce McDonald.

  “By the end of my sophomore year, however, I never doubted that we could be something special. I simply loved playing.”

  But what kept our undivided attention wasn’t the power of Paul’s honesty, but the knowledge of Paul’s personal history. Paul had always been a gifted running back and an intelligent, hard-hitting defensive back. He’d served as captain his senior year and had had dreams of playing in college. But then the summer of his senior year, he was struck by a hit-and-run driver and left for dead. Both legs were amputated and, as if that wasn’t enough, his younger brother had died only a year prior, a young life taken by an arsonist’s fire. When asked if he held any bitterness to the hand he was dealt, he replied simply, “Are you kidding? Every day is a gift to me! I’m lucky to have lived, and I’ve never forgotten that. Never will.”

  “I was also driven by the worry I felt for my father,” Paul continued, captivating us all. “We had eight kids in my family. We lost our mother early, and my dad struggled to keep everything together. Then suddenly, within one year, we lost our brother and I lost both my legs. The look of worry and hurt on my father’s face was a constant, and it bothered me terribly. I was determined not to become a burden to my father. I was desperate to prove to him that I was alright. I biked, swam, skied, mountain climbed—I was driving my doctors crazy—but it gave me purpose and took some of the burden off my father.”

  Following Carouso at the rostrum was Abe Benitez. Abe’s father had been a factory worker in Boston for thirty-five years and, although there was freedom for him and his family in America that they hadn’t known in Cuba, it was still an economic struggle for his family of six. Being a non-white with a Spanish accent didn’t open many doors for the senior Mr. Benitez, either. For Abe, watching his father struggle in America was difficult, but sports, and especially football, gave him the opportunity to escape and vent his aggression.

  “It was therapy. It was stability. I mean, growing up at home was unnerving. My father, who has always been a good man, was a different person when he drank. His drinking brought fear to all of us at home, like being at the edge of a cliff on a windy day. I will always love my papa for all the good and realism that he taught me—I would not change my past for anything. I am who I am, in large part because of him. But those times—they were hard, and Bosco gave me what I needed. Bosco gave me a taste of how greatness is born from within and of how to keep that fire burning.”

  Abe always carried himself with class. After Bosco, he received his CPA from Bentley and now manages six billion dollars for an investment firm. What’s more, Abe’s married, and is the father of two daughters.

  Ski, our team’s quarterback, was next to speak. Ski entered Bosco during his junior year and, though he’d never played quarterback before in his life, he led us to our greatest football run in the school’s history, an 18-2 record, during the first two seasons of his career. Ski was also a standout baseball player, but it was hockey that landed him a four-year scholarship to Boston College. During his freshman year there, Ski was drafted by the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers, but upon his mother’s request, he stayed at BC and finished his college education.

  “Of all my accomplishments at the college level and of all the teams I played for, nothing has meant more to me than the ’74 season and winning the Catholic Conference Championship.”

  It was a statement that surprised many of us but, deep down, we got it. The championship had unlocked a well of confidence in each of us.

  Ski now works for an investment firm, is married, and has three children, all of whom are outstanding athletes.

  Next was Frank Marchione. By the time Frank arrived at Bosco, he had established himself as a clean-cut kid and a hard-hitting football player. Even so, he got himself into some trouble during his senior year and, not long before graduation, was expelled. Lost and confused, and with parents devastated by the expulsion, Frankie wasn’t sure where to turn. Once again, it was Dempsey who jumped in, feet first, to rescue one of his boys.

  Dempsey immediately took it upon himself to haul Frankie up to East Boston High and demand a diploma.

  “Hi, how can I help you?” asked the school secretary.

  “We’re here to see the assistant principal, Johnny Bartiloni,” Dempsey said.

  “Is he expecting you?”

  “No ma’am, but you can tell him that Jack Dempsey needs to see him.”

  Just like that, Dempsey was meeting with the assistant principal.

  “Jack, how the hell are you? It’s been what? Ten years? What in God’s name are you doing here?”

  “Listen, I have a good kid here who got into a little trouble. He just got kicked out of Bosco. You need to take him in for the last few weeks of the semester so he can graduate from East Boston.”

  What else is there to say to such a demand but: “Are you nuts? There’s no way he can receive a diploma with just three weeks of school left—you know that. He needs to be enrolled for over thirty days or he has to repeat next year.”

  “Johnny, listen, that’s not an option,” Dempsey said flatly. “You need to work with me on this. I’m not taking no for an answer. This boy is bright and has a future, and I don’t want to lose him to the street.”

  Frankie, meanwhile, sat uncomfortably, alone, outside the assistant principal’s office, listening to the slow escalation of voices out through the door.

  “All I heard was a lot of yelling,” Frankie later told me, “and most of it was coming from Dempsey. Three weeks later, I graduated from East Boston High School. I didn’t take a single exam, and most of my teachers were just getting to learn my name.”

  Frank subsequently embarked upon a colorful and fantastic journey, working as a bar owner in Arizona, a mud engineer in Wyoming, and then as a successful entrepreneur in the restaurant business.

  Peter Marciola, our tailback, went on to play hockey at Stonehill College. After Stonehill, he went to law school and became a military lawyer with the Air Force, achieving the rank of General. At the age of fifty-four, he became the oldest ranking officer serving in Afghanistan.

  “Football gave me my foundation,” Peter told us. “Football is very much like the military in some ways, except that, in the military, the consequences are real. But the togetherness―everyone with the same common goal and working together as a team―that leadership came to me from football. The synergy that makes a group successful is a powerful connection. The discipline I learned at Bosco, I took with me into the courtroom and into Afghanistan.”

  John Sylva stepped forward after Marchione.

  “I wasn’t sure how a freshman was going to be received by varsity players,” he recalled. “But I’ve never forgotten the support and endless encouragement you all gave me.”

  Chris Staub, along with teammate Eddie Trask, was thinking of joining the Marines. But when Dempsey found out, he demanded that Chris meet him at Bosco the following Monday. Dempsey, from the passenger seat of his old Chevy Impala, told Chris, “Get in,” and Chris hopped in without a word of protest. Chris had never met the guy in the driver’s seat. Dempsey and the driver were laughing while sharing war stories about a bar fight in Brighton from the night before. Chris just sat there and listened, clueless as to why and where they were going. Then, after a ninety-minute ride, they pulled into the University of Rhode Island and walked into the football coaches’ office. Together, Dempsey and the driver introduced Chris to the head coach.

  Dempsey and the URI head coach moved to the far corner of the office and spoke as Chris waited. They looked over at him periodically but never acknowledged him. After several minutes, the coach finally
came back, sat behind his desk, folded his arms, and studied Chris carefully. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, the coach spoke, “Alright, I’m going to give you a scholarship from September to January. If you can prove yourself on the field and in the classroom, I’ll extend the scholarship for your full freshman year.”

  Chris was dumbfounded.

  When he got home, his parents wanted to know where he’d been all day.

  “I was offered a football scholarship to URI!”

  Chris’ parents were floored. They had ten children and knew there was no way they could ever afford to pay all that college tuition. Chris made it through the entire four-year program and became a football standout, graduating with a business degree. Chris is now an international businessman, traveling and connecting with people from all over the world.

  “I can’t imagine how my life would have turned out if I had instead entered the military,” Chris told me. “What I do know is, if it hadn’t been for Coach Dempsey, I never would have had the life I have today.”

  Vinny O’Brien, who played line at one hundred and fifty pounds and later captained his college team as a running back, graduated from law school and opened his own firm. Vinny is highly successful, but has never forgotten where he came from. Generous, funny, and a talented musician, he’s simply a great guy.

  By the time he stepped behind the reunion microphone, Skip Bandini had coached football at both the high school and college level, and was then the head football coach of Curry College. An endless giver to his players, to his community, and to the sport he loves, he exemplifies the very best of what real coaches stand for.

  “One day after my senior year, Dempsey told me out of the clear blue that we were going to go for a ride,” Skip told me. “We drove three and half hours to Bridgeton Academy in Maine. Dempsey told me he’d played a postgraduate year at Bridgeton and knew the coach. I had no idea where or what Bridgeton Academy was, but Dempsey showed me around and, after meeting with the coaches, I decided I liked the place and was accepted. I was stunned and wasn’t sure exactly what to say. Dempsey told me they were going to give me fifteen hundred dollars towards the school’s $3,000 tuition. He asked me if my family could pay the rest, and I told him my mom made three thousand a year while trying to bring up two kids alone.

  “So I knew, and told him, that paying any amount towards tuition was simply impossible. Dempsey just said, ‘Okay, no worries. They’re going to have another meeting about your financial aid situation later this week, and I’ll be back in touch with you after I hear from them.’

  “That following Thursday, Coach Dempsey called me, ‘You’re all set! You don’t have to pay anything. You just have to work in the kitchen—you know, a work study grant.’ So, I headed off to Bridgeton thinking everything was hunky-dory. Later that year, Dean Whitney called me into the financial aid office.

  “‘Hey, Skip, great season this year. Glad to have you on board at Bridgeton.’

  “‘Thank you, Dean Whitney. I’m thankful for the opportunity.’

  “‘Skip, it appears we have a problem, however. You continue to have an outstanding tuition balance of fifteen hundred dollars.’

  “‘I’m sorry, Mr. Whitney. I know nothing about this.’

  “‘Skip,’ he said, ‘I don’t mean you in particular, but Coach Dempsey: He told me back in the fall that he would be paying the remainder of your tuition.’

  “‘Coach Dempsey? Really? I’m not sure what to say, Dean Whitney. I was told everything was all set and I just needed to work in the kitchen to pay off my tuition.’ So, after an awkward silence, Dean Whitney excused me.

  “Later that summer, walking into Sammy Whites’ bowling alley in Brighton, I bumped into Dempsey.

  “‘Hey, Coach, what happened at Bridgeton? They said you owe the school fifteen hundred dollars for my tuition.’

  “He just laughed and said, ‘I knew they would never kick you out. You were too good a football player. Congratulations! I hear you’re going to be playing ball at Mass. Maritime Academy!’

  “Dempsey never had any intention of paying that balance! He was banking on Bridgeton stepping up and taking care of me.”

  Skip would become an All-American football star at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy and graduate with an engineering degree.

  “I owe everything to Dempsey,” he said. “I started out as a young boy and ended up a man.”

  I was next, though I knew I wasn’t (and couldn’t) compete with Skip’s words and message.

  But, of all the things I could have said, what I felt most was the astonishment that we were all actually together again. So I started off with an observation I’d had while listening to the players talk—so many of us were happily married, with kids. Considering where many of us had come from, we should’ve had a high divorce rate and been lousy parents. Yet player after player spoke highly of the joys of being a parent and of the love and pride they felt for their children.

  Due to the snow, we’d all just assumed that Al, our captain, hadn’t been able to make it. But as I was finishing up, Al entered the room wearing his Don Bosco Championship jacket.

  “When I think of Science Park,” he said, “no athletic facilities, and the fact that we still won every game in one of the toughest conferences in the state—it allowed me to come to this conclusion: If we could survive playing football at Bosco, we could survive anything in life.”

  It was the perfect closing statement.

  Everyone stood and cheered.

  To cap off the night, we all sat back and watched film footage of our big win over CM and of our championship game victory against Archies. There were occasional comments, compliments, and even some applause for particularly great plays. But mostly the room was silent, transfixed by the power of the moment. We were being transported back in time, four long decades ago. It was magic.

  When the lights came back on, there was another round of applause followed by a deep, natural silence. Any additional words would have been inappropriate or inadequate.

  As we sat in silence, the light of the screen illuminated our faces, and the DVD player stopped with a click. None of us said a word. I examined the weathered faces of the men sitting around me, the faces of my teammates, the faces of old friends. We hadn’t seen each other for decades and yet, in this moment, time wasn’t a barrier any more. A common experience had bonded us together—an experience that had transformed us from young boys to young men.

  After a few moments more, we all knew it was time to go our separate ways. We had spent seven hours together and the time to leave had come. Each player made sure to say his goodbyes with promises of staying in touch and of seeing each other again soon. When the room was nearly empty, I walked over to Skip and said, “We couldn’t have done this without you. No one could have united us together like you did tonight.”

  When I stepped outside into the dark February night, the cold wind blasting against my face and my adrenaline still flowing, I realized that it was the same sensation I’d once felt after a hard-fought football game. I smiled. It had stopped snowing. In the end, our “big storm” had produced only three inches of snow.

  I laughed. Thank God for Frankie!

  Warming up my car for the long drive home, I took a moment to reflect. The day had been perfect. Everyone had had their say, and we were all truly brothers again. And yet, in the back of my mind, I was still very much aware that a towering presence had been missing. Listening to my teammates that night, it became abundantly clear to me that while Dempsey’s boys had been striving to do good with their lives, Dempsey had been self-destructing.

  For years, I’d struggled to find an answer that would satisfy me, that would answer all my unanswered questions and erase all my doubts. After that night, it became clear to me that in some way we were truly Dempsey’s boys, his sons. He had no family, no wife, no kids—everything outside of foo
tball had been a struggle or a failure for him. But on the football field, he was at home, confident, complete, respected, and admired. He did more than coach his boys; he cared for and nurtured them, and gave them opportunities he’d never had. He wanted the best for us, just like any good father. Right or wrong, I once again made the explanation work for me.

  After that night, I knew my search was over. No more wondering, no more speculation, no more pain.

  For one glorious season, it was Dempsey who cast a wide net over a group of raw, undersized, inner city boys, who together accomplished the unthinkable. He gave us something that could never be taken away: The belief that hard work and togetherness could trump size, speed, and talent. The belief that we could accomplish and achieve anything in life if we had the drive and commitment to do so. The belief that even we could be champions.

  Sitting in the car, running the heater, I pulled out our team photo. I no longer had to wonder about what had happened to my teammates, how they’d made out in life, or what the ’74 season had meant to them. I no longer looked at the faces in the photo as young boys from long ago. I now saw men—men who had lived good lives, men who had never forgotten their roots, men who had never forgotten their school, men who had never forgotten their teammates, men who had never forgotten Michael Monahan, and men who had never forgotten a very special coach who’d lived on both sides of the line.

  Epilogue

  In 2014, Max Williams returned to Boston. He wanted to walk our practice field and visit the public swimming pool at Science Park. The last time I’d walked the practice field myself had been back in 1982 when I’d spent a year coaching for Bosco. So I jumped at the opportunity to also pay the ol’ stomping grounds a visit. It was July, so I had visions of hundreds of inner city kids swimming at the MDC pool. I knew we wouldn’t be able to walk into the girls’ locker room, but we could certainly still get a feeling of what it’d all been like back in 1974. I was excited to point out to Max the Lechmere clock that hung across the Charles River, to see the torn up grass, and to see everything that had changed. Little did I know just how much it had all changed.