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A Game That Forged Rivals
The word rivalry has its origin in the Latin rivalis, which means “a person using the same stream as another.” From their founding, the communities of Leominster and Fitchburg have shared the same river. In one town, the river drops precipitously, more than eight hundred feet, while in the other it rolls gently, flattening as it passes through enriched soils once farmed by the native peoples. The river takes its name from those ancient farmers who made their homes between its two branches. This tribe took the name Nashaway, which translated to “the land between.” A little more than two decades after the Pilgrims landed, other English settlers came to trade, settle, and convert the native people to Christianity. By the end of the seventeenth century, the Nashaway tribe had been virtually wiped out by white settlers and the diseases they brought and by powerful rival tribes, the Massachusetts to the east and the Mohawks to the west. When the devastation was complete, all that remained was the river and its name. Along the banks of the Nashaway, or Nashua River, as the name was also translated, the towns of Leominsterand Fitchburg were carved. The inhabitants of each relied on the natural riches God created: hills, forests, fields, and especially the river. The river powered mills in each town and gave birth to the earliest industries of both. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, the high schools of these two New England towns, which hadlong shared the same river, began one of the greatest modern rivalries in sport. Why these two towns developed a storied football rivalry is not entirely clear. When the ancient series began in 1894, the communities were different in many ways, and the distinctions have continued throughout the years... Chapter 8 - Footballs' Greatest Crisis From the front page of the Leominster Enterprise, Monday, November 13, 1902: In 1905, a staggering number of football players died from injuries suffered on the gridiron. Some estimates of player deaths, which included collegiate, interscholastic, and club football players across the nation, ranged as high as one hundred. Whatever the debate there might be over the statistics, it is clear that at least nineteen of America’s young men died playing intercollegiate football in 1905. The grim statistics were made worse when journalists brought to light the intentional nature of some of the violence. Early in 1905, Henry Beach Needham wrote a two-part article on the darker side of football for McClure’s Magazine. Chapter 9 - A Year of Triumphs and Tragedy, 1918 “Crocker Field” Workmen gazed over the large, flat expanse ringed by a substantial ornamental iron fence set in a running concrete base. The field house was nearly complete, and two permanent grandstands awaited spectators who someday would come to witness athletic events on the newly sown field. Laborers planted small American elms along the impressive fence, softening the encompassing barrier. In a matter of weeks, Fitchburg would unveil an athletic facility surpassed by few, if any, high school sports venues. The old Circle Street grounds, host to decades of athletic contests, had been transformed in a dramatic way... ...Just days after the Crocker Field dedication ceremony, the Associated Press sent a brief cablegram. “Brest, France, Wednesday, June 26, Captain Alvah Crocker of Massachusetts died suddenly Tuesday.” The Fitchburg Sentinel received the dispatch on Monday, July 1, 1918. When last heard from, Alvah Crocker 2nd was an army lieutenant serving with the U.S. Engineer Corps stationed at Brest, France. His parents had received no word of their son’s fate, despite the fact that he had died nearly a week before the Associated Press announcement. A swirl of questions and disbelief punctuated each passing hour after the newspaper ran the front-page story on Monday morning. Mr. and Mrs. Alvah Crocker received a War Department telegram that evening confirming their son’s death with the same cold shortness of the initial dispatch. “Deeply regret to inform you that it is officially reported that Lieutenant Alvah Crocker, Jr. Engineers died June 25.” In the span of nine days, the Crockers had experienced a grateful appreciation for their gift to the youth of Fitchburg for generations to come and the deep sorrow accompanying the loss of a child. Their son would never come home, never gaze upon the hills of Fitchburg, and never feel his parents’ embrace again. Chapter 10 - Doyle Field: Leominster’s Time of Achievement and Loss "We may express our hope that the Doyle Field will But we hope that they will never ask us to admit However Fitchburg is willing to grant at the Editor, Fitchburg Sentinel, Thursday, August 22, 1929 A proper athletic facility for the youth of Leominster was a natural outgrowth of his civic-mindedness, involvement in municipal politics, and love of sport. Raymond Middlemas and Bernard Doyle considered various sites for the athletic facility. The plan was ambitious. The plant, as sporting facilities were called in those days, would include multiple football and baseball fields, a soccer field, track, skating and hockey rink, tennis courts, playground, and parking. The men settled on a large twenty-acre parcel that would include the old Robbins driving park and adjoining land with streets already laid out for housing but still mostly undeveloped... On Monday evening, April 27, 1931, former Mayor Bernard F. Doyle formally gifted Doyle Field by deed to the City of Leominster. The city council, authorized by a special act of the Massachusetts legislature that permitted the acceptance of the gift and established a commission to maintain the field, voted to accept the gift. The vision Bernard Doyle shared with Raymond Middlemas more than two years before had moved from thought to reality... ...School was scheduled to open September 9, and the team would face its first opponent, Nashua High School, on September 19. Before the rigors of the new football season got underway, Ray Comerford traveled to Sunset Beach near Manchester, Massachusetts. Manchester was just a bit more than thirty miles from his hometown of West Roxbury. The coach relaxed in the sun and felt the gentle breezes of the Atlantic. Suddenly, the natural sounds of wind and surf were pierced by the cries of a young boy struggling against the waves. Instinctively, the coach plunged in the sea and swam feverishly to the boy. He reached the young lad and began the laborious task of swimming to shore with the extra load. Before long, the thirty-year-old coach tired and called for help. Two men reached the pair; one aided the young boy, and the other assisted Comerford. Comerford’s rescuer could not hold him against a crashing wave that separated them. The boy was saved. Coach Comerford was not... |