Centre Sports 66-69

  During my senior year at Watchung Hills Regional High School (WHRHS), I had to choose where to attend college. Or rather the colleges would decide that for me, given my undistinguished academic record.  I was not a shoe-in for acceptance at any college held in high regard. Ivy League colleges, where my grandfather and my namesake attended at Cornell and Princeton respectively, were out of the question. My father went to Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, but even admission there was exclusive and would have been problematic.   College coaches were not beating down my door to offer me scholarships like they presumably did with Frank Rossi, Norm Hewitt and Ed Nicholas, my teammates at Watchung Hills. I was a shoe-in only for state colleges in New Jersey.  Private colleges would be more selective.   i had become enamored of the South   I had studied the Civil War in depth for a teenager and was impressed with the chara...

  I was scheduled to begin work at Hefler and Snyder road construction company in Plainfield, N.J. on Monday, July 17th, 1967.  Unfortunately, there were race riots in Newark and Plainfield starting on Friday, July 14th, a day after I had played for Dreiers' Sporting Goods at Greenbrook Park, Plainfield, N.J.  (I went 2 for 3 and drove in a run.)  On Saturday, the violence spread and by Sunday Plainfield was under siege by heavily armed insurrectionists.  An arms manufacturer in nearby Middlesex that made M-1 rifles for the civilian market was broken into and 46 semi-automatic rifles were stolen.  These were immediately distributed among the conspirators.  At one point the Plainfield Police Department building was peppered with gunfire for five hours.  The building still shows bullet holes in its exterior to this day.  There were snipers across the city but mostly located in the West End of the city.    I was going t...