Give Another Hoiah!

By John Gearan '65

The cranky relationship be-tween Holy Cross and the city of its birth seems as old as the Seven Hills of Worcester.

“Holy Cross is situated on a bluff and runs on the same principle,” was one curt quip often overheard in my youth.

A bluff, along with being an antique word for hill, is defined as “a display of confidence greater than the facts support.” Put another way, pretending to be better than you are. No doubt, many in the blue-collar Worcester community felt that out-of-town Crusaders were lace-curtain snobs from wealthy families who made their fortunes in faraway places such as Connecticut, New York and New Jersey.

Though not quite a townie, I grew up as a local yokel from Fitchburg. I arrived in 1961 as a day-hop, a guy from down below (as in the basement of Carlin). During my sophomore and junior years, I lived “on campus,” which meant being incarcerated in a tiny bunk-bedded cell with two other young men in a graveolent dorm. Senior year I was married and listed among the 214 day-hops (1964-65 total enrollment was 2,002).

Way back when, resident students rarely left their ivied towers and would only venture “downtown” for a basketball game at the Worcester Auditorium or for a Sloppy Joe at the Miss Woo. The daylight view from Mount St. James displayed smokestacks jutting up from ancient factories and railroad tracks crisscrossing a nitty-gritty “mill town.”

Students being students cared not a whit about the folks laboring in those factories. They were not curious enough to seek out the history and art museums, the churches and mansions that would demonstrate Worcester had some class.

Yet one thing the good folks of Worcester and its namesake county had in common with Holy Cross’ all-male student body was an ardor for athletics.

As some wag accurately observed, “sports is the front porch of a college.”

Indeed, the townies came to sit on “the front porch” and watch Crusaders perform at Fitton Field at the base of the mountain, or at the Worcester Auditorium in Lincoln Square. The locals would gather to discuss games and celebrate their heroes at long-gone landmarks such as the Bancroft Hotel, the Eden Gardens and Putnam & Thurston’s.

The Purple stirred regional pride. Football teams earned national headlines, competing in places like the 1946 Orange Bowl. The 1946-47 basketball team captured the NCAA Championship and a throng of 10,000 locals greeted George Kaftan ’50, Cousy ’50 and Co. as returning heroes at Union Station. The 1952 baseball team coached by the immortal Jack Barry ’10—with Shuffles O’Neill ’52 and Ron Perry ’54 pitching—won the NCAA crown and the basketball team, led by Togo Palazzi ’54 and Tommy Heinsohn ’56, made the College famous winning the 1954 National Invitation Tournament.

Sports put Holy Cross on the map. And the Crusaders were Worcester’s team. In the stands were Worcester’s working class, many who never had a chance to go to college. In a largely Irish Catholic region, mothers and fathers wanted their sons to go to Holy Cross and hoped their daughters would someday marry “a nice boy from Holy Cross.”

And if you played for “The Cross,” you were an instant local hero.

“Holy Cross was the only ticket in town,’’ remarks John Mullan, an ardent lifelong Crusader fan reflecting on the days of his youth. Fans like Mullan can still rattle off entire lineups from long ago. Worcester guys coached Holy Cross teams—legends such as Buster Sheary, Hop Riopel ’24 , Jack Whalen ’48, Frank “The Iron Major” Cavanagh; or transplants such as Jack Barry ’10, George Blaney ’61, Bart Sullivan, who lived here for most of their adult lives. College luminaries were often homegrown, players like Worcester’s Jack “The Shot” Foley ’62, Bobby Curran ’48, Bobby Foley ’63, John Tivnan ’48, Phil O’Neill ’69 and Leominster’s Ronnie Cahill ’40.

City folk knew the words to all the fight songs like “Old Mamie Reilly.” If the tiny college band needed to be filled out for a big Saturday game, much older local musicians would be recruited to play. From among the legions of day-hops came Worcester County civic leaders, educators, politicians, lawyers and doctors. Franny McGrath ’32 became the longest serving city manager in the country. Joey Early ’55, a local hoops hero and basketball captain, served as long-term congressman.

“A family would pray their son would go to Holy Cross, get an education and then work in the Worcester area as a teacher, a police officer, a lawyer, in government, whatever. That was the game plan. And you could afford to go,” notes Bill Loftus ’55, a longtime educator and a nationally prominent sports official. “When I was at ‘The Cross,’ tuition was $500 a year, and if you had very good grades the school might give you a $200 grant.”

Even though there may have been a bit of bluffing going on up above, Holy Cross and Worcester were intertwined culturally and emotionally, largely through athletics.

Today the Worcester connection is far looser. Mostly because Holy Cross is a far different college and Worcester is a far different city.

The College is no longer all male. The Hart Center’s basketball court and hockey rink draw the action back onto campus. Long gone are the days when Holy Cross played the Boston Garden and Fenway Park. Football de-emphasized to Division 1-AA and a system of limited athletic aid. There is no longer the excitement generated by big-time visitors like Syracuse and Boston College. Holy Cross opted not to make sports an entertainment on a national stage, turning down an invitation to the Big East. The Crusaders declined a chance to be a regular tenant at Worcester’s civic center.
A much smaller athletic department operated running three main programs—football, basketball and baseball. Now it runs 27 separate teams, and 25 percent of the student body plays a varsity sport. 

Hogan Campus Center, though popular for non-college events, serves most all of the student body’s needs. Students have less reason to go downtown. That said, volunteerism is far more aggressive than in days of yore. Students serve community nonprofits in a variety of programs.

The cost of college has created a greater divide between the community and Holy Cross. In recognition of that, the College’s Worcester Initiative will begin granting full tuition aid to city kids whose families make less than $50,000 (see story on Page 4).

To its credit, Holy Cross is emerging as a national power in academic circles while its reputation in sports is solidly aligned with Patriot League and the Ivy League schools. The upside is that Holy Cross, though not contending for national titles, does not get smeared by scandals that proliferate the realm of modern-day sports. Athletes are here to study and blend in perfectly. That is the good news.