By Dennis MolluraI never wanted this blog to be about death and dying, but at this point, it’s difficult to escape.
My Tannery Row and neighborhood friend Don McGarvey (CAHS Class of 1960) died at his home in West Decatur on Monday, June 6.
His death notice provides the usual details. He leaves his wife, Patricia (Lumadue) McGarvey, whom he married in 1967; a daughter and two step daughters; eight grandchildren and one great grandchild. Two sons preceded him in death. He retired in 2000 after 35 years at PennDOT. He then worked with Greenhorne and O'Mara Engineering Consultants of Harrisburg. He was a Methodist by faith and a PIAA basketball referee and baseball umpire.
As is the case when a good friend passes, there’s so much more to say, so many memories to relate. Since they don't appear to be written anywhere, it’s up to his cousin, Kathy McGarvey Rose, wife of our classmate Robert Rose, and me to fill in the palatte of his life.
First, Kathy:
“We are at Wolf's campground in Knox, Pa at our camper,” Kathy wrote in her condolence message at the Kevin A. Beardsley Funeral Home website. “ We are here for the summer. I was shocked to hear of Don's passing. … I have such cute pics of Don and me growing up. I always thought he looked like "Spanky" on the Little Rascals.”
In his death notice, there is no mention of his studying drafting at Indiana Tech in Fort Wayne, which accounts for his long career at PennDot.
There is no mention that he was a fine basketball player and football lineman at CAHS.
There is no mention that he coached Clearfield’s American Legion youth baseball teams to success and led the Clearfield Indians to JC League championships in 1971 and 1972 (the first since 1957) and runners-up in 1973 and 1974 as a power-hitting player-manager and first baseman.
Finally, there is no mention that he was an ex officio member of Tannery Row in the East End of Clearfield. He was the grandson of Miles and Annie McGarvey. Miles worked at the tannery and Annie was a seamstress of some note. They lived at 711 Elk Avenue. Although he didn’t actually live in the neighborhood, Don was around a lot. My earliest recollections of him are at the age of five or six. Ultimately, he and his parents, Clair and Thelma McGarvey, settled at the corner of East Fourth and Daisy Streets, just a few blocks from our neighborhood. He was a polite, well-mannered playmate, and we claimed him as our own.
And, yes, he did very much look like “Spanky” of the Our Gang and Little Rascals comedies. We called him “Donny" -- never Don -- until junior high.
Don always was taller and heavier than the rest of us, save for Terry Howell and Eugene Myers at a comparable age. In his early years, he was quiet. Very quiet. He also was slow afoot and not much of an athlete, usually chosen third from the bottom in pick-up baseball games -- ahead of only Jack Diehl and me. Although not a star on the tannery field, Donny soon matured, slimmed down, got into great shape, and surpassed all of us in his athletic prowess and achievements.
We were a tightly knit group on Tannery Row. In the summers of the early Fifties, Glenn Myers, Don and I traveled to the "Y" each afternoon to swim and play table tennis, always stopping for a Clearfield Dairy double or a triple-decker along the way. But by 1956, Terry and Denny Howell moved uptown, Glenn was focused on his band music and social life, and Denny Howell had a paper route. That left only Don and me to maintain the neighborhood passion (some would say obsession) with baseball.
Since there no longer were enough players to field even a four or five-man pick-up game, we made up our own two-man games and played them through a full nine innings, keeping score with the actual lineups of teams such as the Pirates, Red Sox and Phillies. The games we created were either highly creative or a sign of demented youth, depending on your point of view. For example:
We bounced a rubber ball off the brick wall of a nearby church or wooden shed or fence. One player had to field the ball cleanly and throw to first – to the other player. And you could not “pull him off the bag.”
We threw the ball over our house, from one player in the front yard to the other in the back. Because you couldn’t see the other player, you never were sure when the ball would be coming or from what height or angle. Sometimes the ball would just miss bouncing off the roof overhanging the porch, and you had to dive for it. At other times, the ball would bounce on the porch roof and fly over your head. Great fun until a couple of Don’s throws struck the electric power line serving the Hoshko house. Boing! I can still see Bill Hoshko leaning out his upstairs bedroom window and, in screech owl-like fashion, shouting to Don: “You (expletive deleted). I’m going to call the cops!” That ended that.
We played after dark under the street lights at the intersection of East Fourth and Daisy streets, throwing ground balls toward the other and requiring a clean pick-up and throw to first. The bouncing ball had to stay within the curbing; otherwise, the thrower would be charged with a walk. Bouncing or spinning the ball past the other player was difficult. You could toss the ball high in the air, requiring a catch with no bounce.
We played Wiffle ball while calling balls and strikes. There were designated distances for singles, doubles, triples and home runs. Calling balls and strikes kept the pitcher honest. A fair number of outs were by strike-out, and only few hits “left the park.” It was a delicately balanced game. Winning was not easy.
To most, these games were trivial, even silly. To us, they were serious and meant to be played with passion and integrity. Case in point: One day, on a rocky, clay parking lot of an East End church, we were playing the bounce-the-ball-to-the-other-player game. In this scenario, the player who throws the ball is both the "batter" and the "first baseman." Tight game. Bottom of the ninth. Don ahead by one run. I'm at bat, throwing toward him. Two out, two on in scoring position. I spin the ball to his right. Bad hop. No way he gets it. But he does! Backhands the ball and throws off-balance, low and off the bag to first.
I win!
Wait! I lean to my right, stretch out on the clay, spear the ball backhanded in the web of my glove, foot still on the "bag." Don wins! I get a scraped elbow and Don wins. I make the play of the game but Don wins. Would he have done the same for me? Of course.
Day after day, week after week, mornings and evenings, we played these games.
Afternoons usually were reserved for trips to Clearfield Dairy and swimming and table tennis at the “Y.” If anything consumed us nearly as much as baseball, it was table tennis. I started playing the game first and take some credit for helping to develop his game. Our matches were close and fast-paced. Over time, he became the better player -- better nerves and less likely to blow a lead. I once had him down 20-13, needing only one more point to win. He scored nine consecutive points and won, 22-20.
On Tuesday evenings, we attended Boy Scout and later Explorer Scout meetings at the Trinity Methodist Church. We achieved the respectable rank of First Class Scout and earned a fair number of Merit Badges.
For some reason, Don was a Red Sox fan – a team that he could not reliably follow on radio, TV or even in The Progress. Why not the Pirates or Phillies? I believe it had to do with the Howell boys’ unmerciful disparagement of any team other than their favorite, the Philadelphia A’s. We fans of the dreadful, last-place Pirates bore the brunt of their ridicule. By avoiding the Pirates and choosing the Red Sox, who were in those days far better than the A’s, Don found safe harbor. By and by, we Pirates and Red Sox fans had the last laugh when the A’s shipped out to Kansas City in 1955 and the Pirates won the 1960 World Series.
One of the great things about hanging out with Don was the kindness and generosity of his parents, Clair and Thelma McGarvey. They always watched out for us, welcomed us into their home, occasionally fed us lunch, and generally looked out for us while we were in their range of vision.
One summer evening in 1960, Clair pulled us off our game at the East Fourth and Daisy Street intersection and said: “I’m thinking about taking a half day tomorrow and driving us to Pittsburgh to catch the Pirates and Dodgers. What do you think?” For a poor boy from Tannery Row, whose family did not own a car and who seldom traveled outside of town, it was Christmas in July.
As fate would have it, a fairly consistent rain started overnight and continued through the following day. Game over, right? Not quite. When Clair came home, he offered the following;
“I’ve been checking on the radio and the game is still on. I think we should attempt the trip. We’ll head toward Pittsburgh, go at least as far as Indiana, and see what happens. At least we’ll have a good meal at Bruno’s. If the rain stops, we’ll be early enough to get some good seats at the ballpark.” What a guy!
So we headed out. We had the good meal and traveled on to Pittsburgh. The rain stopped a few miles down the road, and the sun shone brightly on us and Forbes Field. We obtained good seats behind home plate and watched a 2-2 pitchers’ duel between Pirate ace Vernon Law and the Dodgers’ Johnny Podres. Both pitched into the tenth inning.
Here's how the Pittsburgh Press described the action the following day:
Baseball is a game of inches all right but it’s also a game of feet -- flying feet. The inches were charged against the Dodgers last night (a reference to the close plays at first and the plate) and the feet -- flying feet -- belonged to Joe Christopher and Roberto Clemente, who turned an almost certain 3-2 defeat into a positively breathtaking 10 inning 4-3 Pirate victory on sheer speed alone.
The stadium was rocking, and we waited until most of the fans had cleared out. Any “rational” person would have hustled to the car and immediately started on the 115-mile trip to Clearfield. But Clair McGarvey was not your typical rational person. Instead, he said: “Let’s walk around outside the ballpark and soak up the celebration." And we did, even at one point sharing a crosswalk with Podres. Although the Dodger pitcher seemed in a pretty good mood for someone who had gone nine strong innings only to see his team lose in the tenth, we decided not to intrude upon his privacy or ask for his autograph.
It was a long, late trip home, but we were happy and wide awake.
My last adventure with Don was the summer when he returned from Fort Wayne. I unexpectedly met him on the curb in front of the YMCA during the Clearfield County Fair Parade. We had a nice chat and decided to get together the following evening. I don’t recall what we did, maybe cruise around town in his 1958 Ford. Before going home, we decided to get some, you guessed it, Clearfield Dairy milkshakes -- not beer like “normal” young men, but milkshakes. We hadn’t progressed much past our youth.
On a back road heading somewhere toward Goshen, Don unsuccessfully tried to juggle his milkshake and light a cigarette. He secured the milkshake but finally dropped the cigarette between his legs. His immediate reaction was to take both hands off the wheel and stare into the disaster zone. Oh, my!
The road went uphill and turned sharply left. We went straight, cleared the crest, and rolled completely over, landing on four wheels. Neither of us wore seatbelts. I’ll never forget the slow motion-like sights of our headlights first flashing into the sky and then bouncing off narrowly missed trees -- followed by the feeling of being punched in the stomach, the harsh sounds of collapsing metal and shattering glass, and the illusion that the rolling-over never was going to stop. I ended up in the back seat with only a small cut on the right earlobe. Don was unhurt except for his pride and total loss of a good automobile.
After surveying the wreckage, we walked all the way back to Clearfield, happy to be alive and sad about the car. Shortly after starting out, Don whipped out his Zippo and heaved it into the woods. I'm not sure whether it was a moment of anger or a vow to quit smoking, but I will tell you this: He sure zipped that Zippo a far piece.
We walked through the night for maybe two hours or so and finally hitched a ride with the Clearfield police near Dead Man’s Curve. We informed them of the accident, but they weren't too concerned since we were unhurt and the crash was outside their jurisdiction. For us, it was a night to remember.
I was with Don only a few times after that. He came to Rosemary's and my wedding in 1965 and had a good time. His gift was a set of TV tray tables with colorful autumn leaves. Years later, around the mid-Eighties, I unexpectedly ran into him and his wife, Pat, on Market Street in center-city Philadelphia. I was working with Bell Atlantic. He and Pat were attending a conference at the Philadelphia Convention Center. It was great to reconnect after 20 or so years.
Years later, my brother Dan and I met him at the former County Market in Clearfield. By this time, he had retired from PennDot and was working with the Harrisburg engineering firm. We spoke at length about the reconstruction of Route 322 through the Lewistown “Narrows.” He was thoroughly familiar with the project and related the environmental concerns and the history and resolution of the long-delayed project. He seemed in good spirits, and we promised to get-together soon. We never did.
Now, 13 years later, I am shocked and saddened by his death. He was only 68. As is the case in long-neglected friendships, I wish I had seized the many opportunities to keep in touch and savor even more of those great moments together. Too late now. Way too late.
Rest in peace, Donny McGarvey. You are in my memories and my heart. Always.
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