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The City of Champions: Donora’s past dotted with athletic greatness

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A baseball signed by Ken Griffey Jr. sits in front of photos of him and his father, Ken Sr., at the Donora Smog Museum.

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Edie Jericho, an employee of the Donora Smog Museum, is shown with some of the museum’s Ken Griffey Jr. and Ken Griffey Sr. memorabilia.

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Baseball Hall of Famer Stan Musial is one of the greatest hitters of all-time.

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Donora’s Angelo Dabiero led Notre Dame in rushing in the 1960 and 1961 seasons. Dabiero, who played in the first Big 33 Football Classic, was a high school football coach in Illinois for nine years. His teams lost only eight games.

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The starting lineup for the 1945 WPIAL championship Donora football team. The Dragons are considered one of the best in Pennsylvania history. They outscored their opponents, 297-13.

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Louis “Bimbo” Cecconi played on WPIAL football and basketball championship teams at Donora High School and for four years at Pitt in both sports. He was an eight-time letterman for Pitt.

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Arnold “Pope” Galiffa was an 11-time letterman at Army and finished fourth in the 1949 Heisman Trophy balloting.

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Boxer Lee Sala won 47 consecutive fights and was ranked in the top 10 middleweights but never had a bout for the world championship.

DONORA – If the name of the structure – the Stan Musial Bridge, named after the native son and Baseball Hall of Famer – that spills traffic over the Monongahela River and into this Mon Valley community doesn’t make you think it’s a sports-minded community, then the large sign along McKean Avenue at the south end of town does so with its large letters:

Donora.

The Home of Champions.

Donora has seen better days, but few have been prouder for this community than Wednesday, when Ken Griffey Jr., a Donora native, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Griffey Jr., an outfielder who played for the Seattle Mariners and Cincinnati Reds, received 437 of a possible 440 ballots in his first appearance on the Baseball Writers’ Association of America ballot. Griffey’s 99.3 percentage is an all-time record.

Griffey Jr. is a son of Ken Griffey Sr., who was a multisport standout at Donora High School and played 19 seasons in the major leagues. The elder Griffey was the right fielder for the 1975 Cincinnati Reds that won the World Series.

Griffey Jr., will be inducted into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., July 24. He will join Musial, the St. Louis Cardinals legend who had 3,630 career hits – 1,815 at home and 1,815 on the road – in the Hall of Fame and give Donora the kind of bragging rights that make even large metropolitan cities envious.

“We did some research Thursday, and we couldn’t find another town in the United States, especially one as small as Donora, with two Baseball Hall of Famers as hometown boys,” Donora Mayor Don Pavelko said proudly while sitting in his office.

“The sign says it all. The City of Champions.”

It’s interesting that both Griffey Jr. and Musial were born Nov. 21, Musial in 1920 and Griffey in 1969 at Mon Valley Hospital. Griffey Jr.’s grandfather, Buddy Griffey, and Musial were high school teammates.

Pavelko said plans are being made for a “Ken Griffey Jr. Day” in Donora, though a date has not been finalized. He hopes to have both father and son back in Donora for the festivities.

Musial and the Griffeys are only a small portion of top-notch athletes with ties to Donora. The list is lengthy and covers an array of sports. Among them are Arnold “Pope” Galiffa and “Deacon” Dan Towler.

Galiffa was a multisport standout at West Point. An 11-time letterman for Army, Galiffa played quarterback and finished fourth in the Heisman Trophy balloting in 1949 and appeared on the cover of Life magazine.

Towler was another multisport standout at Donora High and is considered the best all-around athlete ever to play for Washington & Jefferson College. A late-round draft pick of the Los Angeles Rams in the NFL, Towler was a four-time Pro Bowler in his six-year professional career. The website “Cold, Hard Football Facts” described Towler as “the greatest running back you don’t know” and “the closest thing the NFL has ever produced to an unstoppable ball carrier.”

Towler led the NFL in rushing in 1952, twice was tops in rushing touchdowns (1952 and 1954) and averaged 5.2 yards per carry for his career, which ended after only six seasons. He walked away from professional football in the prime of his career and became pastor of Lincoln Avenue Methodist Church in Pasadena, Calif.

Donora has streets named in honor of both Galiffa and Towler.

Pavelko is quick to point out another Hall of Famer who wasn’t a Donora resident but spent much time there working on his craft as a football quarterback.

“Joe Montana was from New Eagle, but he played his high school football for Ringgold at Legion Field here in Donora,” he said.

And Donora’s athletic success isn’t limited to the stick-or-ball sports. Lee Sala was a middleweight boxer who won 47 consecutive fights and was ranked in the top 10 in the world. Legend has it Ezzard Charles and then-champions Sugar Ray Robinson and Jake LaMotta ducked Sala, who was never granted a championship bout.

“At one time or another, Charleroi has had outstanding athletes and Monessen always has and still does. Some towns go through periods with good athletes, but not to the elite level that those from Donora have advanced,” said Phil Pergola, the veteran boys basketball coach at Ringgold High School, the school district that now includes Donora.

Pergola coached Ringgold to the 1995 PIAA Class AAAA championship. Of the top six scorers on that team, five – Mike Horan, Jamont Kinds, Jeff Tyree, Czar Walsh and Tony Thomas – were from Donora. The other, Shawn Jurik, was originally from Donora but moved to one of the other communities in the school district.

Even with so many “elite” athletes, Donora was better known for much of the past century for its championship teams. Donora High School won three WPIAL football titles under coach Jimmy Russell and its back-to-back championship squads in 1944 and ’45 are considered among the best ever in the state. The 1944 team outscored its opponents 324-42 and the ’45 squad outscored its foes 297-13 and posted eight shutouts.

Donora also won the WPIAL basketball championship in 1945 under coach Jerry Wunderlich. Donora High went out with a bang in sports as its final two football teams, with Bernie Galiffa, who went on to be a record-setting quarterback at West Virginia, and Griffey Sr., his favorite passing target, went undefeated in its final two seasons, 1967-68.

Donora High’s tradition still runs deep in the community. On the roof of a new gazebo in a McKean Avenue parking lot is a weathervane topped by a dragon, the mascot for the school. Donora High merged with Monongahela High School in 1970 to form Ringgold.

So why has Donora, a community that now, according to Pavelko, has only “a little more than 4,700” residents, been able to produce so many elite athletes and championship teams? Steve Russell, the general chairman of the Mid Mon Valley All Sports Hall of Fame, has a theory.

“I think it had something to do with the community being tied to the school and kinds of people who were surrounding those kids,” Russell said. “The other theory is many of the kids had natural talent that wasn’t just run-of-the-mill talent. Elite is a good word to describe it.

“In that community and school, everybody rolled up their sleeves and took it upon themselves to help the kids. Donora had special-quality people who were in that school as teachers, coaches and administrators.”

Pavelko gave an explanation similar to Russell’s and added that strong family values contributed to the athletic success, especially in the case of the Griffeys.

“If you look at the Griffeys and their family values, it’s like those of the Brady Bunch,” he said. “Everybody I’ve dealt with in the Griffey family has strong family values, and those go back a long way. Back in the day, everybody took care of everybody else in this community.”

Pavelko added Donora might have had even more elite athletes leaving their mark in the professional ranks had they not been called to serve their country. He pointed out more than 1,100 young men from Donora served in World War II and many were in the prime of their athletic careers. Arnold Galiffa served in the Korean War and received the Bronze Star for valor.

“There’s not a community, in the Pittsburgh-area at least, that has produced as many elite athletes and teams as Donora. It does stick out,” Russell said. “You are amazed as you go through the list.”

That list also includes, among many others, Ulice Payne, who played on Marquette University’s 1977 national championship basketball team and later became president of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team. Lou “Bimbo” Cecconi was a standout two-way football player at Pitt and left in 1950 as the Panthers’ all-time passing leader. In a game against Penn State in 1949, Cecconi intercepted three passes. Angelo Dabiero was a four-sport athlete at Donora High and led Notre Dame in rushing for two years and in interceptions and tackles in his senior season of 1961. Rudy Andabaker played for the Pittsburgh Steelers before becoming a coach at Donora High.

“It’s mind-boggling what Donora has produced athletically,” Russell said.

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