Always getting the call right was Hunnell’s goal
Charlie Hunnell once did something few football officials or sports arbiters would do.
He changed his call.
Hunnell, a Waynesburg native and West Greene High School graduate (1961) was named to the WPIAL’s 2026 Hall of Fame Class.
This guy is special in many ways.
Charles Evans Hunnell became a PIAA football official at age 19. He was a high school football official for more than five decades and officiated 220 college games.
In 2009, Hunnell showed how important making the right call is to him.
Late in the 2009 high school football season, then-Monessen coach Andy Pacak was ejected from a game against Carmichaels for two unsportsmanlike conduct penalties, which carried an automatic ejection and a one-game suspension, under PIAA and WPIAL rules.
It was upsetting for Pacak because he clearly was not involved in either penalty but apparently took the brunt because he was head coach.
Pacak admitted the ejection, coupled with a one-game suspension that would follow, would prevent him from coaching the Greyhounds in their WPIAL Class A playoff game the next week.
“I just thought, something went awry there,” Pacak said then.
The first penalty was against Monessen’s players for taunting their opponents before the game. At that time, a taunting penalty on a team was charged to the head coach. Then, in the second quarter, a Monessen assistant coach was assessed an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for making an inappropriate comment to an official.
Hunnell thought an assistant coach’s penalty also went against the head coach. That’s why Hunnell sacked Pacak for the rest of the game.
After some introspection, a sleepless night and protests by the Monessen athletic director, Hunnell – the referee on the officiating crew for the Monessen-Carmichaels game – wrote a letter to the PIAA admitting he was wrong for ejecting Pacak because one of the unsportsmanlike conduct penalties was against an assistant coach.
“He’s a man of principle,” said Dr. Terrence Kushner, a longtime high school administrator and former high school football coach. “That’s what made him a great teacher and a great referee. That’s an important quality of his.”
Hunnell worked as a teacher of 11th- and 12th-grade U.S. history and economics at Upper St Clair from 1968 to 1997.
“There was some questioning on the interpretation of the rule,” Hunnell explained. “And the interpretation was incorrect. It was an interpretation that I had gotten from someplace else.”
Hunnell wrote a letter to the PIAA admitting he was wrong for ejecting Pacak because one of the unsportsmanlike conduct penalties was against the Monessen assistant coach.
After receiving Hunnell’s letter admitting a mistake, the PIAA decided to examine the situation and check the rule book. Bob Lombardi, who was then the associate executive director of the PIAA, informed Monessen in an e-mail that Pacak should not have been charged with the second penalty. Thus, he should not have been ejected.
“I reached out to the PIAA and (the interpretation) was wrong,” Hunnell said. “I couldn’t believe that happened. But I spent the whole weekend working to correct it. I was on the phone. We got it taken care of. That was most important.”
Pacak said then he was “pleased with the outcome and the way the PIAA looked at it and said, ‘Wait. Maybe something did go awry here.'”
“Every sport nowadays you see using reviews. I must be very complimentary to (Hunnell) who stepped back and said wait a minute, ‘We need to look at this.'”
Kushner said Hunnell’s acknowledgement that the rule could have been applied incorrectly and his diligence and passion to make things right is a testament to his integrity and character.
“That also is indicative of the kind of person he is relative to the way he operates,” Kushner added. “You know that’s the way he did it on the field. That’s the way he was in the classroom. That’s the way he lives his life.”
Man of honor
Hunnell attended Penn State, where he was commissioned an Ensign in the U.S. Navy Reserve on graduation day. He was assigned to the USS Beale DD-471 out of Norfolk, Va., as main propulsion assistant to the chief engineer. Hunnell was responsible for the boilers and steam turbine engines of Beale and had 65 men in M Division directly under him. He stood bridge watches as a conning officer while aboard Beale from July 1965 to May 1968.
In 1966, Hunnell was in the second destroyer squadron from the east coast to deploy to Vietnam. While off the coast of Vietnam, he provided gunfire support for U.S. Marines in the I Corps area of northern South Vietnam and to accompany the USS Intrepid CV-11 in the Gulf of Tonkin while it launched air strikes on North Vietnam.
In 1967 and 1968, Hunnell was deployed to the 6th Fleet in the Mediterranean with Destroyer Squadron 32, serving in the Western Mediterranean with USS Franklin D. Roosevelt CV-42. He served in the active US Navy Reserve until 1977 and retired as a lieutenant commander, USNR.
“I had wanted to be an officer in the Navy from the time I was 12-years-old,” Hunnell said.
“I loved history. And when I talk to people, I tell them I have lived a blessed life. I went to Penn State because I couldn’t get in the Naval Academy and I found out Penn State had an NROTC unit.
“Now, I love Penn State. I’m really involved with them. I’m a graduate of the College of Education at Penn State.”
Said Kushner: “He likes to fly under the radar; He’s not a guy that is going out there and blowing his own horn. He’s done a lot. He’s a humble guy. He wants to do the right thing.”
Charles Patrick, former chancellor and chief academic officer for Penn State Fayette said in 2023 in announcing Hunnell as commencement speaker:
“Chuck Hunnell is a generous donor and member of our campus Advisory Board. His enthusiasm for supporting students, especially those with much need, is sincere and heartfelt. His life experiences in the U.S. Navy and as an educator plus his genuine love of Penn State make him an ideal person for our commencement speaker.”
Hunnell owns 136 acres but is quick to say he’s “not a farmer” but he knows how to work land and life.
“I’m a retired lieutenant,” he said. “I got to teach history at one of the best high schools in Pennsylvania, if not in the country, and I got to officiate almost my entire life. That’s pretty cool. Actually, it’s really cool. I consider myself to be very fortunate.
“I always want to do things the right way. If you can change something to the right thing, then you go ahead and do that.”
John Sacco writes a column about local sports history for the Observer-Reporter.