Former football star takes walk down memory lane
Reading last December's sports feature on former Mount Pleasant All-State football player Joe McOsker inspired Warwick's Noel Vient to take a trip down memory lane. A former All-Stater himself, Vient also played in the 1944 Rhode Island Interscholastic All-Star Football Game.
He shares these reminiscences:
"I enjoyed the article on Joe McOsker and the All Star Football Game as I also played in that game! He was a right end and I was a left end. A picture of the 7 man line, with Joe on one end and me on the other, appeared in the Providence Journal and we were referred to as "The seven blocks of granite". I still have the picture from the Journal and the glossy that the Journal sent to me. My wife has the sterling silver charm in the shape of a football that Tilden Thurber donated to each of the players. This was later inscribed with the date and "All Star Game". I also have the glossy picture of both teams on the field, Joe Cronin's team and Ed Stebbins team in addition to 50ft of 8mm amateur movie film of the game. I represented Lockwood High School from Warwick."
Click here to read the Joe McOsker feature.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW? - All-star event evokes fond memories
BY CAROLYN THORNTON Journal Sports Writer
Source: The Providence Journal
PubDate: Tuesday, 12/5/2006
Joe McOsker recalls how a high school football game produced an amazing show of patriotism back in 1944.
* * *
"The crowd was given occasion after occasion for cheering, and the affair was a complete success for all concerned," Journal-Bulletin sports writer Herb Murray Jr. wrote the day after Jack Cronin's Bombers defeated Ed Stebbins' Rockets, 7-6, on Dec. 2, 1944.
Ten thousand fans filled Brown Stadium to watch the Rhode Island Interscholastic All-Star Football Game, an exciting battle between the state's top high school players.
But it was more than just a game.
World War II was still raging, and proceeds from the game were going to be used to support the war effort.
In a tremendous show of patriotism, the spectators raised $511,000 in war bonds that afternoon. (That is the equivalent of nearly $5.9 million in today's dollars.)
The honor of being a part of that game wasn't lost on Joe McOsker, then a lanky 16-year-old from Mount Pleasant High School who was among the All-Staters selected to play. And 62 years later, he still reflects on the amazing experience.
"It was really exciting," said McOsker, who kicked the extra point for the Bombers after former La Salle star Don Panciera connected on a 40-yard touchdown pass to Burrilliville's George Menard. "It was exciting to be meeting and then playing with so many of these guys I had played against. And it was exciting that we were raising money. To have that many people come out and put up that much money, that was so significant."
Although McOsker rates the War Bond game as the greatest moment in his high school career, it was far from being the last of his athletic achievements.
Upon graduating from Mount Pleasant in 1945, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy -- "My friends and I were all mad we weren't old enough to go earlier," he said. "We were all anxious to go." -- and served in the occupation of Japan.
"I was in Tokyo less than a year after the war, so it was really destroyed," said McOsker. "It was unbelievable."
McOsker returned to the states in the summer of 1946 and finished his tour of duty in San Francisco, where he had an opportunity to play baseball at the receiving station.
Then it was time to turn his attention to college. Holy Cross was offering McOsker a scholarship to play football there, but he says that then Brown football coach Rip Engle convinced his mother that it would be much nicer for him to attend school just a few blocks away from their Elmgrove Avenue home.
McOsker had a successful season with the freshman football team at Brown in 1948, but he never tended to a shoulder injury he suffered in the last game against Harvard and that spelled the end of his football career.
However, McOsker's throwing arm - which drew interest and even a visit to his home by the Boston Red Sox when he was a sophomore in high school -- was still as strong as ever, and McOsker enjoyed some success on the baseball diamond under then Brown head coach Lefty Lefebvre.
Described by late Journal sports writer John Hanlon as "an amiable guy of 23 and a loose man in a tight pitching situation," who was successful in relief because of his "medium-paced trickery," McOsker helped Brown to a league runner-up finish in 1951.
The talented reliever -- who was featured with starting pitcher Bill Hayes as one of "Brown's Flinging Twins" in a drawing by late Journal cartoonist Frank Lanning -- then helped guide the club to its first and only Pentagonal League Championship the following year.
After college, McOsker went into the textile business, starting the Bradford Textile Company in 1967. The business is still going strong -- operating now as High Society Linens of Newport.
At 78, McOsker is still going strong, as well.
He and his wife, Sarah, -- who have seven children and 12 grandchildren -- make their home in Orleans on the Cape, but McOsker continues to run the company, in addition to being involved in a number of charitable ventures.
From time to time, he thinks back to the War Bond Game and all of his other athletic achievements that he says had a profound affect on the way his life has unfolded. He looks at what he has already accomplished and what he would like to accomplish next, and to all of it, McOsker says simply: "I'm a very fortunate man."
