Born September 16, 1908
Died September 3, 1999
God saw you were getting
tired
And a cure was not to be,
So he put his arms around you
And whispered, "Come to me."
With tearful eyes we watched
you,
And saw you pass away.
Although we loved you dearly,
We could not make you stay.
A golden heart stopped
beating,
Hard working hands at rest.
God broke our hearts to prove to us,
He only takes the best.
A Kid Named Matty
by Dan Rennus
I want to tell you about a young man I met recently. I have known him a long time really, but only in the last couple of years have I really gotten to know this tough young guy On a warm Indian Summer Sunday afternoon in the early Autumn of 1920, in a field at the edge of a little village named Schoentown, a skinny young boy who had just celebrated his twelfth birthday a couple of weeks before, ran as fast as he could toward his house. The kid had helped his father and older brother and uncles build the house only a few years before by carrying lumber and running errands.
The kid saw his father on the front porch and yelled, "Pop, hey Pop!" His dad looked up and watched while young Matty ran to him at top speed. As he ran, Matty pointed to the sky and shouted, "Look Pop an airplane!" There, maybe two hundred feet above the far end of the field, a veteran of the Great War (World War 1), a Jenny bi-plane, wobbled as the pilot made a wide turn.
When he reached the porch out of breath, Matty sat on the step and watched his father stand up and wave to the plane. Surprisingly, the pilot saw young Matt and his dad and waved back. In those days pilots were everybody's heroes and they heartily welcomed the accolades of their earthbound fans. Of course, young Matt had read stories about the Great War and remembered vividly when all three church bells in Schoentown and in nearby Pottsville, Pennsylvania had rung all afternoon on November 11, l918 to celebrate the armistice that had finally ended the fighting in Europe. And of course he had read about the Red Baron, Eddie Rickenbacker and all the other "knights of the sky" who had battled in the clouds over Europe, flying airplanes that were barely stronger than large kites. But Matt had never seen one this was his first.
His father explained that some day airplanes would be quite commonplace and In fact he told Matty that some day men would fly to the moon and that regular non-pilot people would fly all over the world on commercial airlines. Matt wondered if this would actually ever happen, but since he loved and trusted his coal miner lather he just shook his head in understanding and agreement.
Matt was the second oldest of eight children including his four brothers and three sisters. A younger brother had died a couple of years earlier. His father, Martin, had married his mother, Eva, after Eva's first husband was killed in a coal mining accident. The family lived in the heart of Pennsylvania coal mining and everyone in that part of Pennsylvania was in some way employed by the coal mines or they worked in businesses that supported the mines. A few years later, when he was sixteen, Matt was still a skinny young man, but fairly tall by the standards of those days - he stood just under 6' 1", but weighed barely 150 pounds. He could run like the wind but didn't have the strength to participate in any of the other favorite sports in the area - football, baseball, boxing and wrestling. He ran up and down Cemetery Hill every morning and afternoon on his way to and from school, but he ran alone - few of his friends liked running.
One day Matt saw an ad in the back of a magazine and sent away for a book by Charles Atlas that promised a great body based on a program of exercises utilizing "dynamic tension" in which one group of muscles works against another group. It worked. By the time he was seventeen, Matt weighed in at 196, a weight he would maintain for the rest of his life. And he became as strong as the proverbial ox. Matt worked out every morning doing a series of exercises that developed every muscle group in his upper and lower body. Later in his life Matt developed very strong arms, hands and wrists to go along with all his other well developed muscles. He could not put his thumbs in the middle of a ten penny nail so that the ends touched. Try it yourself, it is just about impossible with anything but super strength.
Matt left school early and worked in the coal mines to help support his large family. One day the mine collapsed and he found himself on the wrong side of a cave-in. Fortunately the other miner he was with, and the mule they were employing to pull a cart of coal up the track, were saved when the other miners risked their lives to dig Matt and his partner out. Another time, the chain that connected the mule to the cart broke and a cart with a couple of tons of coal raced back down the track out of control. Matt was crushed against the wall of the mine and spent several weeks in the hospital.
The regular doctors at the hospital gave up hope and told Matt's parents that he would never walk again. Fortunately a friend of the family heard the story and sent a man from another town to the hospital to see young Matty. The man had no medical degree but understood bone structure and he "manipulated" Matt's hip. As if by a miracle, Matt was up and walking within a short time. He completely recovered, but because the doctors had let him down, Matt developed a lack of trust for doctors. He maintained his "what do the doctors know?" attitude for many years.
In coal mining country in Pennsylvania, football was the big sport - it still is today. Back in the mid- 92()'s, the National Football League was in its infancy and the great powers were the Canton Bulldogs, the Frankford Yellowjackets, the Chicago Staleys (later the Bears), the Green Bay Packers, the New York Giants and the Pottsville Maroons. In fact, the Maroons won the championship in 1925. They then played a game ("World Championship" is what they called it) against Notre Dame, the college powerhouse that employed the famous Four Horseman and a coach named Knute Rockne. Unfortunately for the Maroons, they played the game in Philadelphia, the nearest city with a large stadium. It was unfortunate because Philadelphia was within the territory of the Frankford Yellowjackets. The punishment by the league office for this violation of territorial rights was to rescind the NFL championship the Maroons had just won. Many observers believed this punishment to be far beyond what would have been fair and a war broke out between Maroon supporters and the rest of the league. The feud continues to this day. In fact if you visit the sleepy town of Pottsville today you can visit Pottsville Maroon headquarters. The team has been disbanded for over fifty years and most of the players from that 1925 team are dead but the fight goes on to try to get the championship reinstated (I have copies of the newspaper articles from 1925 if you have an interest in seeing them).
There was no formal minor league for professional football in those days and far more players came from local amateur teams than from college. One of the teams that the Maroons recruited from was the New Philadelphia Panthers. New Philadelphia was a town - the team didn't replace an old Panther team.
The starting right tackle for the Panthers was a young stallion named Matt. Yes, the same Matt who had been a skinny little kid. As the tackle for the Panthers, Matt played both ways - offense and defense - and never missed a game. Matt was a tough kid on a team of tough kids who all worked in the coal mines. The team owner supplied uniforms and transportation to the games. The Panthers drew decent sized crowds - several hundred supporters was average. Playing especially well on defense, Matt became one of the team's key players. He wasn't afraid to step up and make tackles when they counted. His happiest recollections revolve around making tackles in the Opponent's backfield, just alter a hand-off. He picked up a number of fumbles, although he never returned one for a touchdown. They didn't wear face masks in the 1920's and Matt's nose was broken more than once.
Matt was offered a football scholarship to the University of Pennsylvania. This was back in the days when SAT scores and grade point averages had nothing to do with attending college if you could play football. Matt turned them down he had to help support the family and college was a concept that was totally alien to the simple folks of Schoentown - Matt never considered what a college education could have done for him He made his decision to stay put and help the family and never looked back.
Matt took up baseball and boxing when he was seventeen also. He could hit real well but he had trouble fielding so baseball fell by the wayside, but it turned out that he had a real talent for boxing. In fact he won all of his lights, most by knockouts and he was asked by a local promoter if he would like to step up in class and fight in Harrisburg. Matt accepted, although his mother was dead set against the idea. The story goes that Matt remembers going into the ring against this "big Irishman". His next memory is waking up in the dressing room. He discovered that the lads in Harrisburg could throw punches a bit harder the guys in Pottsville, regardless of the coal mine heritage the Pottsville boys enjoyed. Actually, Matt was purposely matched up with a real bruiser in the first fight to see if he could take a punch. The guy weighed about thirty pounds more than Matt and had several years professional expertise. Matt went back to boxing later in his life but stayed at the amateur club level because he was told his neck (16") was too small for a heavyweight.
With football and boxing, Matt found a great deal of happiness in Pottsville. After the coal mines, he worked on the railroad as a "gandy dancer" and gave his mother all he earned - she in turn gave him a small allowance. As his brothers got a little older, the weight of helping out shifted to them and before he turned 20, Matt decided tat he should break out on his own and traveled to New York City. That was 1927 and New York was the center of the world.
You may wonder what happened to Matt in New York. Well that's a different story and not one Matt recalled quite as well as his youth in Pennsylvania. But I can tell you that he met a cute young flapper named Margie and fell in love. If you happen to see Margie, you might want to ask her about that dashing young guy she met in New York - she has many wonderful memories of the life they spent together.
In 1998, Matt recovered from his third stroke and a blood infection that kept him in the hospital and a rehabilitation facility for six months at age 89; but he lost a great deal of tile strength he had exhibited as a young stallion. This August, Matt landed in the hospital again this time with a gall bladder problem. If you visited him, you would have found it curious that he didn't read or watch television too much. Most evenings the TV played in the background with either a Mets or Yankee game on. But a good deal of the time he just enjoyed his memories - memories of sports and strength in the 1920's.
As you have guessed, Matt is my father and I am very happy to have been able to visit him every day at the hospital during his most recent illness. We talked about boxing and football and how smart his father must have been to know so much about airplanes.