by S. L. Price
That decision ensured that the program’s future would only become more difficult, but few argued against it. No place, after all, does difficult better. For further proof, the 15-0 Quips were heading back to Hershey—home of the candy empire, a throwback amusement park, the so-called Sweetest Place on Earth; and what better setting for a fairy-tale finish?
But now a savage wind has kicked up in Hersheypark Stadium, twenty miles per hour slicing through the thickest coats and long johns, the pouchy handwarmers shoved into pockets and gloves. The temperature reads a sunny 35 degrees, but nobody believes it; throughout the stands shoulders are tightening into a defensive hunch. Mayor Dwan Walker hunkers in the front row, 50-yard line. Peep Short, reduced by hip pain to using a walker, glowers on the sideline. Nearby, somebody congratulates schools superintendent Dave Wytiaz on Aliquippa’s sixth trip to the state title game.
“It’s a miracle that we’re here,” he says.
Short-term, he was talking about DiMantae’s absence, not to mention a state budget impasse, six months old now, that threatened to shutter schools across Pennsylvania. Only an emergency $2 million loan had kept Aliquippa doors open through the fall, and food and supply vendors were still waiting for their money. The buses to ferry the team here were paid with a credit card. “What else?” Wytiaz said. Long-term? Another two hundred residents had fled town since 2010, and the ever-shrinking tax base pointed to only one eventuality.
“We’re dying,” Wytiaz says. “Financially I just don’t see it. At some point the small schools have to become part of the larger ones. . . . It’s sad. You’re watching a slow death.”
By now all fifty-four players and fifteen coaches have filed past, down the stairs to their cramped confines under the Depression-era stadium. The mood there is hardly lighter. Short leans on a wall near a chalkboard, diagramming sets, shouting about meeting force with force; he bangs the wall with a fist and warns that they are all in for a long day. The smell of marijuana wafts in from an open window above the coaches’ lockers; eyebrows lift. Zmijanac stands, begins edging his way to the back toward his players. “Taj Mahal of a football stadium?” he mumbles to himself. “The place is a fucking dump.”
When he stops the boys gather around as they have forever, some taking a knee, others pressing in close with heads bowed.
“Nowhere else I’d rather be,” he says. “Come on! Slide in here, get in here, everybody. Step on a chair. I want to see your faces. This will be the last time this team gets to be in this situation. . . .”
A voice calls in from outside: “Two minutes!”
“Coach Short said it right,” Zmijanac continues. “Be quicker than they are, every position. Be quicker. It never gets out of style. It never gets old. THIS is the reason I do this: because of what it says on the front of your shirt. That’s all of us. We’re all from there. No matter where you go in your life. No matter where I live or where I go: I’m from Aliquippa—and I make sure they understand that before we talk about anything else. Play that way. Think that way. Deal with the situation that way. . . . Let’s get after this shit!”
Now there’s a push from outside the pack, and a path opens up: DiMantae Bronaugh, smiling, Nikes unlaced, guided from behind by Sherm McBride, tunnels toward the center. At the sight of his frail, 5-foot-7 frame, Zmijanac’s face changes. You can be years around the program and think you’ve seen every Coach Z: thoughtful, sardonic, angry, mournful, laughing, cocky, unreadably blank. But now he smiles. Now the jaw goes soft and his eyes catch a bit of light; Zmijanac pulls the kid into a tight hug, chin on a shoulder, looking at once very old and very happy. It lasts just seconds. When Zmijanac lets DiMantae go, his face has regathered itself, all the hard lines, and it’s easy again to forget how much he cares.
Zmijanac tries to resume. “Let’s get after it,” he says softly, but the momentum’s gone. A player’s voice cuts in, begins “Our Father . . . ” and they all mumblingly rush through the Lord’s Prayer, finishing as always with “One, Two, Three, QUIPS!” Then they’re standing en masse, making for the door. McBride grabs Kaezon Pugh by the arm, pulls his ear down to his mouth. “You understand?” he hisses. “We only go as far as you take us. You’ve got to be the man. You’ve already got a name; make a bigger name! You’re the man. . . .”
By the door John Evasovich, seventy-five years old, watches them pass. As always, just before walking out the door, he told his mom’s ashes that he was heading to the game.
“I’m going to need water, John, outside,” Zmijanac says over his shoulder.
“I have it, Mike,” Evasovich says.
For the coin toss Zmijanac sends out DiMantae, in street clothes, along with his four seniors. Earlier that morning the officials had told the coach that he’d be allowed only four Aliquippa captains. “Throw him off the field then,” Zmijanac replied. The officials do no such thing. DiMantae had been to other games, but this is his first time all season at midfield. The five boys hold hands.
The opponent, Southern Columbia from the eastern half of the state, is also 15-0, equal in enrollment, and wholly unknown to Aliquippa. Winner of six Class A state titles, led by their own legendary coach, the Tigers have been playing AA for only two years. Every local expert has predicted a Quips win. When Pugh scores on the game’s opening drive and Aliquippa recovers a fumble on the ensuing kickoff, it seems a lock that the Quips’ redemptive season, Wytiaz’s miracle, will indeed play out.
But now comes disaster, and in waves. Quips quarterback Sheldon Jeter, who threw just five interceptions in 138 attempts all year, gets picked off in the end zone; Southern Columbia drives, scores, and converts the extra-point attempt to take a 7-6 lead. Then Jeter throws another interception, and the Tigers drive and score. Then Jeter throws another, returned 39 yards for a touchdown; then he gets sacked and fumbles the ball away. Zmijanac gives Southern Columbia pause with a perfectly run trick play, a 44-yard hook-and-lateral and then a 2-point conversion that cuts the lead to 21-14. But the Quips can’t stop making mistakes, can’t stop the Tigers quarterback, and a 28-14 halftime deficit feels far bigger. Players and staff walk into the locker room, stunned.
Kaezon Pugh sits at his locker holding his left hand in his right. “This shit hurts,” he says. On the game’s second play Pugh felt something give there, became convinced a bone was broken; he still carried the ball 11 times for 47 yards. The trainer leans over him, lining up a makeshift splint, taping it in place. Pugh pops a few Tylenol, swallows, winces. “Damn,” he says, then stands and steps toward the door.
“Hey, Kaezon,” says a teammate, “It’s our last game. Let’s go.” Pugh doesn’t seem to hear.
“Nothing left to do,” Zmijanac says, “but play it out.”
But it gets worse. With Jeter’s confidence shattered, Zmijanac has no choice in the third quarter but to revert to down-the-throat football. Play after play, he gives the ball to Pugh, who scrambles for eight yards, five yards, six yards, four, who takes a pitch left for three more, then breaks loose for twenty to put the Quips inside Southern Columbia’s 30-yard line. King Carl would be proud. And for the first time in hours, there’s light, hope: Aliquippa is only down by two touchdowns. All they have to do is keep grinding. . . .
A flag flies. Aliquippa is called for a panic penalty, the worst kind: twelve men on the field. Then, on second and 18, Jeter drops back to pass, gets leveled from behind, and fumbles again. The Tigers all but race down the field and score again, each successful play dissolving what’s left of Aliquippa’s will. Midway through the fourth quarter, Southern Columbia leads 42-14 and the sky has gone gray and low; Hershey is a frigid nightmare. DiMantae Bronaugh is standing forgotten on the sidleline, hood covering his face. Another fumble: the Tigers score again.
Zmijanac stares out at the action, past the point of frustration or rage. Now it’s just absurd. “That’s the way that goes,” he says.
One by one, he begins pulling seniors in t
he final three minutes—out of respect. But in truth, it’s a worse torment for them to stop moving, to watch and think and begin to know what the town will say. With forty seconds left, the Quips fumble the ball away one last time; Aliquippa’s seven turnovers is a record for a state championship game. Southern Columbia’s 49 points is the most scored on Aliquippa in eight years, and the 35-point loss is the school’s worst since 1994. One defensive back doubles over moaning, as if gut-shot.
For two minutes Kaezon Pugh stands with tears flowing over his cheeks, mouth frozen in a silent wail. He finished with 109 yards, all of them nearly useless. Finally, the clock ticks to zero and he hollers, “We can’t get a ring to save our life, man!”
After the lineup, the shuffling handshake with Southern Columbia (“Goodgamegoodgamegoodgame . . .”), players gather around Zmijanac one last time. He’s crying, too. He says he’s proud. “They beat your ass today. Guess what? They beat all our asses,” he says. “That’s what life is about. If the worst thing that ever happens to you is you lose a football game, you’re going to live a really good life.” Then comes a final “Our Father,” and he tells the seniors to hurry over and collect the loser’s trophy.
Reporters from Beaver County and Pittsburgh, local TV, form a semicircle around Zmijanac. Southern Columbia players and fans whoop nearby, oblivious to the scrum; his hard shell begins regenerating fast. If someone had seven turnovers against us, they’d be in trouble, too, he says. Back in ’03, when Darrelle Revis led Aliquippa to its last win here, Zmijanac had said that he felt like the jockey riding Secretariat. Today? “Barbaro,” he cracks. “That’s the one they shot.” A band starts playing, tubas and trumpets blaring a slow goodbye. “Losing sucks,” Zmijanac says. “That’s just the way it is.”
But when he walks away from the pack of writers, his eyes tear up again. Part of it is the wind, blowing harder now. The rest is the day, the program, the town. Nothing lasts forever.
“I don’t know how long it will go on, to be honest with you,” he says. “I have two more years. I’m going to do it for two years, and then ride off into the sunset. It’s time. My wife’s time. We’re getting older, our kids are grown up. It’s time for us to be together.”
He’ll leave for good then, for the first time since he moved in as a boy during World War II. The high school’s future? Zmijanac is sure of only one thing. “No one will ever merge with us,” he says. “No one wants us. I don’t know. We can go the way of Wilkinsburg, Duquesne, the mill towns that got so small that they can’t sustain their school, their community. But I don’t think so. Aliquippa’s different.”
He walks off, toward the idling bus. One of few left in the emptying stands, DiMantae Bronaugh leans over a rail near the stairs to the Quips’ locker room, waiting for the last player. The team’s devotion, its nearness, all season kept him going, he says. He’s down to twice-a-month chemo sessions, and the nausea comes and goes; in a couple hours, in fact, his aunt will pull over on the way home so he can throw up again. But he has started training, insists he’s coming back to play—and win—next season.
Twenty minutes later Kaezon Pugh stands alone in the locker room, littered now with plastic bottles, cheap flattened equipment bags, a jar of petroleum jelly, sucked orange rinds, plastic wrappers. He hoists a backpack over his shoulder, grabs his shoulder pads in one hand and the silver trophy in the other. He walks up the tunnel and into a surprising light; the sun has broken through again, on its way down.
Pugh is nearly at the team bus when, abruptly, he stops, pivots, pauses just long enough to take in the field and the scoreboard and the final score one last time. Then he spins back, high school jersey stuffed away for good, looking for a moment like any of the millions to ever play football for neighborhood or town or region and move on. You can’t tell if the kid is hurt or whole. It makes it easier. You can watch him go and forget all you know, and think once again that it’s only a game.
Acknowledgments
When I first arrived in Aliquippa in the fall of 2010, I had no idea that I would end up spending so much time there, mentally and physically, over the next six years. It is a lovely place to be. The citizenry makes it so, in good times and bad, making up for any diminishment in size or stature with an unmatched warmth and generosity. I don’t know that adversity makes for better people. I do know that it makes for striking candor, stunning toughness, blunt humor, and a forbearance for nosy visitors. I do know that Aliquippa and its children deserve a better fate.
My introduction to the place, as it is for many, came through its high school football program. Head coach Mike Zmijanac, assistant head coach Sherman McBride and defensive coordinator Daniel “Peep” Short threw open their doors, put up with too many questions and impositions to count, and gave me carte blanche to write about their team, town, and lives. Except in matters involving student privacy, no subject was deemed off-limits. They have my profound thanks.
All the locals, ex-locals, county residents, and interested parties whom I met subsequently were equally insightful and patient, some putting up with hours of interviews, repeated follow-ups, and sudden impositions of time. They all took great pride in what Aliquippa was and is, and sensed its unique importance. Without the following, this book would not be possible:
Ernie Accorsi, Carl Aschman Jr., Harald Aschman, David Askew, Shanelle Askew Henry, Delois Baldwin, Jeff Baldwin, Jonathan Baldwin, Tezmalita Baldwin, Anthony Battalini, Marisol Bello, C. J. Betters, Charles Betters Jr., Mark Betters, Lew Bolli, Gil Brandt, Charles Brantner, Chris Briem, Carolyn Browder, Jamie Brown, DiMantae Bronaugh, John Calipari, Bill Casp, Joe Casp, George David, Della Rae Campbell, Tommie Campbell, Sonya Carter, Dave Casoli, Pat Colalella, Carl Davidson, Andre Davis, Lynda DeLoach, Marlin Devinshire, Rev. Lawrence DiNardo, Charlotte Ditka.
Mike Ditka, Anthony “Ali” Dorsett, Tony Dorsett, Larry Dorsch, Daphney Elder, Pete Eritano, Michele Equale, John Evasovich, Nick Francalancia, Dr. James Frank, Willie Frank, Reuben Fuller, Anthony Gaskins, Ernest Genes, Aileen Gilbert, Charlie Gilbert, Diana Gilbert, Mark Gilbert, Mark “Bird” Gilbert, Sean Gilbert, Greg Gill, J. R. Gilliam, Anita Gordon, Gary Grandstaff, Davion Hall, Mikal Hall, Barron Harvey, Tyrik Hayes, Dravon Henry, Roland Henry, Darnell Hines, Rick Hill, Don Inman, Rod “Hoppy” Jeter, Kevin Johnson Jr., Kaylan Kenney, Verquan Kimbrough, Erika Kreisman.
Fred Kuppinger, Ty Law, Jon LeDonne, Carl Legge, Rev. Chris Leighton, Gilda Letteri, Joe Letteri, Renee Lias Claffey, Brandon Lindsey, Dwight Lindsey, Rev. Ezra Lowe, Jerry Malesky, Bill Macroglou, Richard Mann, Frank Marocco, Carlton McBride, Grover McBride, Janice McBride, Roxianne McBride, George “Doc” Medich, Dan Metropoulos, Mike Milanovich, George Mistovich, Edward Mitchell, Lou Mott, Ed Murphy, Don Neill, Ralph Pallante, Timmie Patrick, Vashawn Patrick, Fred Peake, Anthony Peluso, Joseph Perciavalle, Robert Pipkin, Gino Piroli, Jonha Pollock.
Kaezon Pugh, Paul Radatovich, Dan Reeves, Darrelle Revis, Dequan Rupert, Eugene “Salt” Smith, John Stanley, Roger Staubach, Melvin Steals, Mervin Steals, Jesse Steinfeld, Dr. Pat Sturm, Larry Stokes, George “Juke” Suder, Stephen “The Poet” Suggs, Larry Taddeo, Torrie Taddeo, Townsell “T-Baby” Thomas, Ed “Junior” Thornton, Nick Trombetta, Rich Unen, Bill Vidonic, Fred Vuich, Sharon “Chedda” Casterlow Walker, Chuckie Walker, Devon Walker, Donald Walker, Dwan Walker, Willie Walker, Mike Warfield, Mike Washington, Bob Williams, Emanuel Williams, Connie Willis, Mike White, Dave Wytiaz, Don Yannessa, Elaine Yannessa, Gene Yannessa, Samuel Zbihley, and Michelle Zmijanac.
Four of them—Joe Casp, Charlotte Dikta, Joe Letteri, and Jesse Steinfeld—have since died. Dr. Steinfeld, in particular, made a heroic effort to speak to me twice despite great physical difficulty. May they rest in peace.
There were many others who proved helpful beyond measure in what became, in essence, an attempt to write the biography of one 100-year-old town. It’s only right, then, to give here my One Hundred Years of Gratitude:
To the indefat
igable Linda Helms and Cindy Murphy, guiding lights of the B. F. Jones Memorial Library on Franklin Avenue. Their equanimity in the face of endless requests and one balky microfilm machine, care in the maintenance of invaluable archives that include the Woodlawn News and Woodlawn Gazette, as well as insights into the town, its dynamics, and its history, made research a thrill. Their facility, against all odds, remains Aliquippa’s jewel.
To Alvin Gipson, principal of Aliquippa Junior/Senior High School, and firm presence over what has always been the great refuge, town symbol, and engine of change for untold generations. I also want to thank English teacher Cindy Feher-Cherico, for allowing me to disrupt class and rummage through her vast collection of yearbooks.
To Julie Mulcahy, director of Laughlin Memorial Free Library in Ambridge, for her sharp guidance and generous contribution of an invaluable copy of the Amalgamated Journal archive. To the staff at Pennsylvania State University’s Special Collections Library, especially James Quigel, head of Historical Collections and Labor Archives, for his wit, warmth, and hands-on engagement regarding issues of labor and Western Pennsylvania.
To the staffs at the Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg; at the Library of Congress Manuscript Reading Room in Washington DC; and the University of Pittsburgh’s Archives Service Center: my deepest admiration, along with gratitude. Anyone attempting a project like this learns very quickly that the librarians, researchers, and archivists in charge of America’s various collections are nonfiction’s unsung heroes.
To Sports Illustrated’s Mark Mravic, now executive editor of the MMQB, whose family is rooted in Aliquippa and who first suggested a story on the town for the magazine; to former Sports Illustrated managing editor Terry McDonell, who saw the book possibilities before anyone else, and to managing editor Chris Stone, who for many reasons is responsible for this book getting finished at all.
