From their founding, the Massachusetts communities of Leominster and Fitchburg have shared the same river. More than that, they have long shared a special football competition that has sometimes spilled beyond the field. In A Game That Forged Rivals, author and historian Mark Bodanza captures the human drama of one of the nation's oldest football rivalries; the high schools of Leominster and Fitchburg have met on the gridiron for 114 years. This long-standing competition has weathered many challenges, including major developments in the sport, wars, economic turmoil, an epidemic, and technological and social change not imagined when the teams first met in 1894. Through all the years and contests, thousands of athletes have competed for pride and a belief that this game was the pinnacle of their football days. A Game That Forged Rivals shares the stories, dramatic clashes, and challenges that tested these young men both on and off the field. Compiled from newspaper articles, school yearbooks, game programs, eyewitness accounts, letters, photos, and archival records, A Game That Forged Rivals not only chronicles the development of football from its earliest days, but also tells the story of two communities that saw, in football, a way to grasp civic pride.
A Game That Forged Rivals
How Competition between Two New England High Schools Created One of the Greatest Traditions in FootballBy Mark C. BodanzaiUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2009 Mark C. Bodanza
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4401-5648-9Contents
Preface............................................................................................ixAcknowledgments....................................................................................xiIntroduction.......................................................................................xiii1. The Nation, 1894................................................................................12. The Birth and Development of Intercollegiate Football through the Mid-1890s.....................73. Leominster and Fitchburg at the Nineteenth Century's Close......................................134. The 1890s Bring Football to Leominster and Fitchburg............................................185. The First Game between Rivals, October 20, 1894?................................................236. The Rivalry Gains Its Footing...................................................................307. The Rivalry Sputters as the Twentieth Century Dawns.............................................778. Football's Greatest Crisis......................................................................899. A Year of Triumphs and Tragedy, 1918............................................................10110. Doyle Field : Leominster's Time of Achievement and Loss........................................11211. Noteworthy Seasons and Games to Remember.......................................................132Afterword..........................................................................................153Table of Games.....................................................................................157Bibliography.......................................................................................161Index..............................................................................................167
Chapter One
The Nation, 1894
It was a pivotal year for America. It was a time of historic importance for football, especially in the New England communities of Leominster and Fitchburg.
In 1894, football held the imagination of the nation's youth while hard economic times took hold of the nation. How high-school-age boys perceived the economic concerns of their parents is merely speculation. Whatever they thought, the country reeled and convulsed from an economic downturn and the political upheaval that always follows a time of great uncertainty. The panic, which had its start in 1893, was a profound economic depression rooted in an overexpansion by the railroads and exacerbated by overextended financing. The federal government issued two large bond offerings in an attempt to alleviate the drain on the treasury. Populist political candidates questioned the power of monopolistic corporations, and striking workers sought more equitable wages. President Grover Cleveland, a Democrat, was blamed for the turmoil. America's industrial muscle spasmed and newspaper headlines captured the somber story.
Before the air turned cool and schools reopened for the new academic year, summer simmered with anticipation of the fall elections. In June of 1894, populist politicians and "Silver Democrats" convened in Omaha, Nebraska to advance a policy of silver and paper money. Silver and paper currency, as opposed to gold, was championed as the money of the common man. Labor and debt-laden farmers saw relief in an expansion of the currency that silver and paper money represented. Simply put, the Silver Democrats wanted the government to print more money to ease the repayment of debt and expand the availability of credit. Republicans, business, and eastern financiers clung to the principle of a sound currency backed by gold, the international standard of trade. William Jennings Bryan, the editor of the Omaha World-Herald, addressed the silver convention. Bryan ran for president in 1896 and two additional times, each time on a silver platform and each time unsuccessfully.
Before the midterm elections of 1894, more than six hundred banks and more than twenty-two thousand miles of railroads were in receivership. A quarter of the nation's heavy industrial capacity lay idle. When the unhappy electorate was heard, Republicans made historic gains in both houses of Congress. The Democrats and their president, Grover Cleveland, absorbed the ire of voters concerned about the direction of the American economy while Leominster boys rustled autumn leaves on their way to football practice during the fall of 1894.
In spite of the nation's difficulties, Leominster's industry weathered the economic downturn with a remarkable measure of resiliency. Piano-case companies were founded: Richardson Piano Case Company in 1891 and the Wellington Piano Case Company in 1895. These companies joined previously established firms in an industry that grew and prospered until the Great Depression came and family entertainment was more likely to include a gathering around the radio than the parlor piano. While Leominster's industry chocked smoke and steam into the October dusk, the town's earliest football players hustled to practice at the old militia training field, Carter Park. Leominster's first town center and proving ground once again welcomed a squad of young men ready to hone their skills on the brisk autumn evenings of 1894. Afternoons were reserved for after-school jobs in factories, which several of the high school players had to attend before gridiron maneuvers could be practiced and daydreams of football glory turned to reality.
The American economy would not begin its recovery until 1896, when the election of Republican President William McKinley and the Klondike gold rush helped restore America's confidence. A heady self-assurance, magnified by an attitude that envisioned great possibilities, would ignite a decade of rapid economic expansion once the American economy got back on its feet.
Leominster
The late nineteenth century was a period of dramatic population growth. The 1890 census recorded an American population that had nearly doubled since the start of the Civil War in 1861. A significant portion of this growth was the result of immigration from northern European nations. The fabric of Leominster's 1894 football team was in part woven with the sons of immigrants seeking social inclusion by way of a sport that was no less finished in its development than the assimilation of the human waves arriving at the shore. Mark O'Toole, who would anchor Leominster's line at right tackle during the fall of 1894, was born in Leominster on September 29, 1878. His father, recently arrived from Ireland, sought a promise of opportunity that could not be fulfilled in his native land. Patrick O'Toole was a comb maker living and working in Leominster's Morse Hollow, a neighborhood centered near the intersection of Exchange Street, Birch Street, and the Monoosnock Brook, that employed, housed, and fed more than a hundred comb makers in factories, homes, and a store built by the Morse family. Many of the workers in the factories of Morse Hollow were Irish immigrants. Even today, descendants of those newcomers still live in the homes their fathers built with a gritty determination, hard work, and sacrifice.
Life in New England, especially for the foreign born, was hard in the nineteenth century. Patrick O'Toole died prematurely on...
