Manville Grammar School Basketball Team

Manville Grammar School Basketball Team • Click to Enlarge

I got another great Manville sports photo from Art & Gary Carmon. Again, I was pleased to find that my great uncle Tony is in this one. Another thanks to the Carmon family for this great shot… the photos they have been submitting are excellent quality. Here is Gary’s original message…

“In this MGS basketball photo (circa 1948), my father named these players…

 From left to right, in the back: John Brennan, Art Carmon, ?, Emily Potopowitz, John Terriciano, Pete Wejkus, Tony Polnasek.

 In the front: Vic Czyprevitz, Charlie Siatta, Willie Crycherik, Bob Lupine, Bob Passerello.

Also, he mentioned that this building had a low ceiling, so long shots were not possible!

 This structure (now Rhythm’s) was built by my great-grandmother Mary Bobrowski’s 2^nd husband Arlan Koval.  He also built the white brick building (Classical Glass) across from Gatto’s, where my mother grew up.  That building is shown in your Manville Buildings blog (Middlebrook Encampment marker).”

Evans Field / Manville Yellow Jackets

Evans Field (1953) • Click to Enlarge

The fact that Manville had a tremendously talented semipro football team was totally unbeknownst to me until I started turning over the stones of Manville’s history. No one that I can remember in my years as a young boy growing up in Manville ever spoke of it. Not the teachers, the gym teachers, the history teachers, not even the many sports organizations I was involved with as a very young man. We even have a street named after the old sports field, where so many great memories and histories were achieved. Still the term Evans Field, literally meant nothing to me all my life. I find this to be slightly discouraging. I guess we can chalk it up to a young town not valuing it’s historical assets.

Evans Field was located right off Main Street between the Royce Brook and Fucillo Street, behind the current Steve’s Tire. As you can see on the 1953 map above from HistoricaAreals.com, the current Manville street “Evans Drive” runs basically straight through what used to be the old Evans Field… the old practice site of the Manville Yellow Jacktes from the 1920′s to sometime in the 50′s. Gary Carmon sent in this great team photo and the accompanying caption…

Started in 1928 when a group of JM workers began playing Raritan and Bound Brook teams. They also played up in the coal mining towns of PA, where many Manville residents originated. The home games were played at Evans Field, currently where Evans Dr is near Weston school. I believe they played up until sometime in the 40′s.

This picture shows the 1930 champs -

Left to right, front row sitting: Andy Batcho, Mickey Repka, Ralph Stanley, William Pilla, Jake Zimney

Middle row kneeling: Leo Piskowski, Steve Zydiak, Adam Sandusky, Jim Kelyman, Frank Sobchinsky, Andrew Shutack, George Hallad, Andy Lapotsky

Standing in the back: Joseph Shutack, Joe Rosky, Chester Myskowski, Charles Golcheski, Andrew Menzak, Pete Menzak, Leo Traney, Jerry Deto, Frank “Ham” Dudash, Henry Waida, Pete Semenick

Adam Sandusky is my grandfather Vincent’s brother, and owned Sandusky’s Bar in Finderne.  Adam’s son Mike played for the Pittsburgh Steelers 1957-65.”

IF you are unfamiliar with the Yellow Jackets you can see an earlier post with some action shots HERE. But Gary also, submitted this great article from the Manville News, which is a great abridged history of the team. This article will enlarge if you click on it.

But Evans Field was more than just a football field, it also doubled as a baseball field. Home plate was the current corner of Newark Ave and Fucillo St. Gary also, sent in some great photos of the Manville Grammar School baseball team from 1946, which I was pleased to find out included my great Uncle Tony Polnasek, and Gary’s father Art. Anyway let me get right to the photo followed by another caption from Gary.

This picture was featured in a Manville News article, dated Feb. 2, 1989:

“Art Carmon remembered the lineup”

Standing, from left to right, are Art Carmon, John Dinsmore, an unknown player, Lloyd Wade, Pete Weichkus, John Terraciano, Ed Wolenski, Tony Polnasek, John Brennan.

Kneeling, from left to right, are Bob Lupino, Charles Saitta, Bob Passarello, Steve Ziegler, Julius Smolinka, Vic Czupprewicz, Frank Vayda and Charles Hladun. “

Art is my father.  He played at the many baseball fields of Manville over the years, including:

-          Dukes Parkway Park

-          the current site of the Rustic Mall bowling alley

-          the current site of the MHS parking lot

And here are a few more MGS player photos… You can click on them to enlarge them. Gary Carmon has been a long time supporter and contributor to the blog. I just want to thank him, Art, and the rest of the Carmon family for all of their help.

Manville Ladies Bowling League 1940′s

Here is the second of some great photos submitted by Tom Kopczyk. This one is the ladies bowling league. He was kind enough to do a little write up on each one, so I’ll let this be expressed in his own words. But as always, we love the comments. Thanks Tom!

“Ladies Bowling League, circa early 1940′s. Standing center right, holding a bowling ball is my Aunt Pauline Perun. Kneeling third from right is my Aunt Mary Zielonka & forth from right is my Mother, Veronica Kopczyk. Parkway Lanes near Walt’s Inn first came to mind but after some discussion my brother Mike and I believe this photo was taken in the old bowling alley in the Polish Home.” – Tom Kopczyk

Manville News, September 12th, 1941

It’s hard to imagine that Manville would still be struggling to get their streets in order 12 years after it originally became a town. Especially since the bad condition of the roads was a main reason that the borough made a bid for it’s independence. In this digital September 12th, 1941 issue of the old Manville News, it’s clearly still a big community issue. The big stories also include a fire at the Polish Home and opening day of the Manville Yellowjackets football season. This is a pretty good one! Manville News 9-12-1941

Johnny ‘Legs’ Welaj (1914-2003)

Being an avid baseball fan, I was ecstatic to learn that late 30s, early 40s Washington Senator outfielder Johnny ‘legs’ Welaj was an ex – Manvillian. I’m so embarrassed. How could i live the first 34 years of my life, being a baseball fan without realizing that Manville, N.J. had M.L.B. representation? Making his major league debut on May 2, 1939, Johnny played with the Senators for 3 seasons before being traded to the Philadelphia Athletics in 1943. In 793 total at bats he averaged a career 250 batting average, with a 298 On base percentage. Johnny ended his short 4 year Major League career in September of 1943.

John continued to play Minor League baseball until 1954, became a Minor League manager until taking a job as the Senators sales and promotional chief in 1957. Johnny stayed on board with the Senators through their expansion to Texas, where he was eventually promoted to Director of stadium operations & spring training director. He eventually retired in 1999. He stayed in Texas until his death in 2003.

Jonathan Eig remembers John (and the loyal Manville fans) in his book “Luckiest man: the life and death of Lou Gehrig”…

You can see Johnny’s complete stats HERE.

Manville vs. Somerville 1958

MANVILLE VS. SOMERVILLE SEPT. 27, 1958 PROGRM COVER

I have a feeling that this blog is starting to drive the Ebay market a little, at least in terms of Manville treasures. I’ve been noticing more and more random Manville stuff popping up since the inception of this blog. I had another stellar Ebay find this morning. The program from the Manville vs. Somerville football game from september of ’58. The first thing I would say about this is that the cover design is awesome! Unfortunately the line up pages are not legible from the photos. I can never read the line ups on these when I find them online. Seeing this got me thinking about sports programs and how it would be sweet to archive them on this site. I think it would be great for people to have local sports info at their fingertips… So, you know… thats a hint. If you have any laying around that you could take clear digital photos of, or, if you would allow me to borrow them, scan them, and return them that would be incredible. Then I can host them on here for anyone to view or download. Wouldn’t it be awsome to have a Manville sports game/score/program/photo archive?!

Woah, We Made It To Post 50!

“The picture of the baseball team is back in the sixties the coaches are Frank Janoski and Larry Petrone”

Thanks to Joe Polak for the update!

Wow, so this is officially my 50th post. Its been such a crazy ride so far… I mean this blog is really only 9 moths old and already it has gotten 34,253 web hits, 362 comments, and 32 subscribers. We’re getting almost 300 hits a day now. There are people reconnecting on here that haven’t heard from each other in decades. We are linked up to other great blogs, photo sites, sites about old movie theaters, Wikipedia, My Manville, NJ.com. We’ve had writes ups by newsapers. There are actually people walking around town sharing printouts of the pages. How do I express my graditude for this? You all helped it become so successful by just taking an active interest and now that a resource like this exists future Manville townfolk will have a place to see how their parents and grandparents done before them. It’s all pretty incredible. Despite the fact that I had to vanish for a little bit to take care of some things I am committed to keep this thing rolling.. I feel like we have barely tapped into the available resources. Keep those photos rolling in! and THANKS!

The South 5th Ave Shutack Family Archive

I was pretty excited on Thursday when I received an email from Richard Onderko. Not just because I was being contacted by one of Manville’s current Councilman candidates. It was rather the content of the email which was something to the tune of “Hey Mike. Meet me over on South 5th I found some great stuff”… and I mean who am I to stand up a possible future Manville Council Seat holder, so I went.

I arrived to meet Richard and a guy named Kevin Shutack, who explained to me the far reaches of his family participation in the towns history. The Manville Police, The Building Commitee, and most thankfully owner of the Manville Print Shop that was right next to the Krausers. I remembered the print shop as a kid… we used to peer into the windows there to find out what went on inside of it. But not to get off track… it seems the print shop handled most of Manville printing needs going at least as far back as the early 40s including the printing of The Manville News. Kevin gave me all sorts of printed goodies that were produced by the shop including A LOT of issues of the paper from 1941-1943. Just as soon as I work out the best way to archive these I will be posting digital copies of the issues just as fast as I can get them up. They are in a super fragile state, with much discoloration and edge damage, but they are brilliant and contain tons of great stories and history including some key Manville events like the building of the row homes, robberies and the Manville train derailment in the 40s in Lost Valley. That’s not even the tip of the iceberg… there are tons of wedding and birth announcements. Deaths, car accidents, reports from the war involving Manville residents, honor role lists, sports scores. I can’t wait to get these up.

This marks the most fruitful batch of town history I have found since Neal Ranauro’s photo archive. I feel like so many mysteries have just been solved. On behalf of the town of myself and Manville’s lost history we definitely own a huge debt to the Shutack family, Kevin, and Richard Onderko for making the connection happen. None of the afore mentioned ever had to waste their personal time to help me communicate this stuff to everyone, but they did. That’s awesome. I also got to spend some quality time with Rich and Kevin who were both very knowledgeable and very willing to share some information with me. Overall I couldn’t think of a better way to spend Saturday morning than striking another victory for my perpetual quest for Manville’s past.

MANVILLE YELLOW JACKETS / SCHOOL PHOTOS

Before there was the Manville Mustangs, our football team was called “The Yellow Jackets” I guess we carried on yellow or “gold” as out preferred athletics color. One of the team photos I’ve seen has them posing with a football that says “1930 champs” and in general, it’s rumored that the team was amazing. These photos though, date sometime in the mid 1940′s… you can see the Manville water tower looming in the backround alluding to the fact that this top photo was taken somewhere in the niehborhood of the current Manville High School despite the faact that it wasn’t even built yet.

Joe Pafero just contacted me with some great additional/correctional information on the Yellow Jackets… this is awesome. he wrote…

“THE 1ST PICTURE OF THE YELLOW JACKETS IS NOT ON THE NORTH SIDE IT IS IN WESTON BY ROYCE BROOK THEY PLAYED AT THE MANVILLE AA FIELD. MANVILLE CENSUS IN 1940 WAS 3300 PEOPLE. I WAS LUCKY TO SEE SOMEONE’S SCRAP BOOK AND I READ AT SOME GAMES THE ATTENDANCE WAS OVER 8000 WHEN THEY PLAYED TEAMS FROM PA. I ALSO SAW A FOOTBALL PROGRAM THAT SHOWED THE SCHOOLS THAT THEY PLAYED AT. MANY HAD MANVILLE HIGH SCHOOL WHICH WAS NOT BUILT YET YOU HAVE TO REMEMBER A LOT OF THEM HAD TO LEAVE SCHOOL EARLY AND DID NOT GRADUATE GRAMMAR SCHOOL”

The next 2 photos are just random classroom scenes. The bottom one is dated 1948. I’ve been told the the top one is more recent… If you have any more info on these I’d love to hear about it.