ADAMCZYK: Recalling a man of influence

By Ed Adamczy/Contributor

Souvenir. It’s French for “remembrance.”The things that make up the “high school experience” seem so fraught with significance as you live them. Their impact fades with time — the highs, the demoralizing lows — so that they become either warm memories or, as the guy in the White House says, teachable moments.

Kenmore West and Kenmore East high schools engaged in their annual football rivalry several weeks ago, two not particularly strong teams playing for school pride and some kind of small-turf bragging rights. What made this one significant was its status as the 50th meeting on the field between these schools. Once a year they play, since 1959.

It was probably less significant for the players than for the legions of alumni who played for Kenmore East or Kenmore West somewhere along the way. They descended on this event, filling the local restaurants, coming in from out of town, treating this golden anniversary as a celebration of themselves, and so it was. They filled a large tent, pre-game, for a meal and a reunion, and then filled the playing field for ceremonial handshakes and a walk across Crosby Field one more time.

The combined school bands and a vocalist had a contest to see who could finish the National Anthem first, and a color guard of young Marines brought the flags. Watching all of this from field level, I doubt if I was the only one in the place wondering which player would be the first to trade in his football uniform, after graduation, for dress blues.

The game was so big, two souvenir programs were published and distributed, one typically full of statistics and team photographs, and the other, smaller, full of sentence-long comments from football-playing alumni, little liner notes by players remembering their own East-West games of years ago.

The ex-Bulldogs of Kenmore East wrote remarks along the “yeah, it was fun” line. The ex-Blue Devils of West, many of them, wrote about their coach, Jules Yakapovich.

The coach from 1950 to 1976 was, from all accounts, a no-nonsense martinet and former Marine who tossed troublemakers against walls, spoke softly and carried what seemed to be pent-up fury to reinforce his authority, and generally was a teacher as The Man in Charge. I never met him, but have heard enough anecdotes to understand he had resilience to everything but his way of doing things. A teenager, especially a teenager in what was termed The Turbulent Sixties, could hate the guy or carry a lifelong grudge against him and his type.

Yet Yakapovich, who died in 1993, earned the devotion of a lot of his players. Comments in the little souvenir program imply the writers’ lives were turned around by the presence of the coach, or that after a certain amount of post-high school reexamination and reflection, the writers concluded they needed that sort of person to enter their lives at that moment.

Ever have someone like that in your life? Someone to gently push you onto a different and better track, or someone to remind you that what makes you different will make you terrific if you just keep at it?

Ever want someone like that?

Ever want to be someone like that, for someone else?

My own wandering through a long life includes meeting plenty of people whose actions or opinions wounded me, back in the day, and through the lens of some maturity I understand why they did what they did. It was because they were jerks, looking for someone appropriately vulnerable.

Then there were the ones who better understood that, whatever the professional title or authority, guidance was a part of their job descriptions. Everyone and everything around you turned you into what you are, for better or worse. Some days my mind flashes on a long-ago moment, with a person or in a situation, and the way I came out of it unconsciously influences my choices, my actions and my reactions.

There have been plans afoot to name something in Kenmore after Coach Yakapovich, the way a number of area coaches have their names on stadiums and other school properties. While I think it a great idea, I have observed his legacy is secure, for now. Several generations of now-grown high school football players carry him in their hearts. He still influences every step they take.

Ed Adamczyk is a Kenmore resident whose column appears Fridays in the Tonawanda News. Contact him at EdinKenmore@gmail.com.