Two weeks ago, I wrote a column about the importance of taking time to go on family adventures, just after we spent nine days out west with our three adult children. Previous to that, I wrote about my great friend and hockey teammate Tim Holdcroft, who passed away unexpectedly at just 62, too young an age as he had so much to look forward to doing with his family and friends. Tim’s celebration of life will take place at 1 p.m. on Saturday Oct. 18 at the State College Alliance Church, 1221 W. Whitehall Rd.
Then, this past Sunday morning, my dear friend and Patton Township legend Don Boller passed away peacefully with his family by his side. He will always be remembered as the patriarch of the Boller family, the gregarious owner of the State College Dairy Queens and a passionate supporter and member of the “Icer Family.” As of this writing Don’s obituary was not finalized.
All of these events simply reinforced my recent commitment to reaching out more often to friends and family and to stop talking about “getting together someday” and making it happen. Well, in keeping with that mindset, we did something that didn’t make any sense at first glance. Right in the middle of moving to a brand-new home in the newest section of Sun City (just 2 miles away from our last home), we met with my three best friends from high school for a four-day vacation with our wives all the way down on Hilton Head Island (16 miles from Sun City!).
What were we thinking? Well, after years of talking about a reunion, our friend Lou Longo took the bull by the horns and organized our stay in a VRBO near Islander’s Beach Park. It would have been easy to just say we couldn’t, given the impending move into our new home. But Lou was pretty adamant that it was beyond time to make it happen. I thought my wife was going to shoot me, but I am so thankful that we went through with the gathering.
I met Lou “Weeg” Longo in the second grade, Clark “Loopy” Dexter in the fourth grade, and Don “Hidebone” Studebaker in the sixth grade when we played youth tackle football together. His dad was actually our head coach on the Penn Hills Braves. We all became great friends when we played hockey for Penn Hills High School, and we spent many a day together, usually getting fed well whenever we visited each others’ homes. We graduated in 1978 with “PHDs” – Penn Hills Degrees.
We loved playing hockey…street hockey, roller hockey, pond hockey, table top hockey and ice hockey. Our parents would take turns transporting us (until we were old enough to drive) to a rink 45 minutes away in Greensburg to play pick up hockey from 3:30 to 5:30 a.m (yes, you read that correctly). But we also played baseball, pick-up games of two-hand touch football and golf, and just hung out together throughout high school. We even played slow-pitch softball together in the summers while in college on JJ’s (named for my family dog), a team that was coached by my father.
We all went on to play hockey in college as well — Clark, Don and I at Penn State and Lou at the University of Dayton. Even though Lou didn’t play at PSU, he has ties to hockey at Penn State. Lou’s son Michael played on the Icers from 2009-2013. In his senior year Michael played for current head coach Guy Gadowsky on the newly restored NCAA varsity team in the last season in the old Greenberg Ice Pavilion. He was one of a handful of club players who made that varsity team. That team notched many firsts, including upsetting Ohio State and Michigan State, and an epic 3-2 OT win over a storied Wisconsin program in Madison knocking them out of NCAA tournament consideration. In fact, Michael Longo has the distinction of scoring the final goal in Greenberg Ice Pavilion.
Lou continues to be a supporter of the PSU hockey program as he often joined Clark, Don and me to play in the annual Icer Open fundraiser golf tournament during my time as head coach. By the way, we won the tournament several times and some of the players and boosters thought it was rigged! The guys would come up on Friday and stay with us in our Williamsburg Drive home and then we’d head out and meet up with other alums. It was always a great time.
We did almost have to cancel the reunion because Hurricane Imelda was heading straight for South Carolina. But the good Lord intervened and in a rare phenomenon Hurricane Humberto, following close behind, actually pulled Imelda out away from the Carolina coast. It did rain the first two days of our reunion but that gave us a chance to spend time indoors catching up. We ate well, and we did some sightseeing and shopping in Old Town Bluffton and in Harbour Town on the island. We did get one beautiful day on the beach and introduced our friends to Viking Bowling. Think bowling meets bocce meets horseshoes.
Unfortunately, Clark’s wife, Rene, missed our gathering because she was scheduled to fly into Hilton Head exactly when Imelda was supposed to arrive and had to make the decision to cancel her trip before Humberto intervened.
We certainly ate well during our reunion, visiting the infamous Harold’s Diner (where sarcasm is part of the experience), the world-famous Salty Dog Cafe, Nectar, Pool Bar Jim’s in Coligny Beach, Dockside at Skull Creek, Jamaica Joe’z, Benny’s Coastal Kitchen and the Pittsburgh-themed restaurant Giuseppe’s in Shelter Cove, which proudly displayed sports memorabilia from the City of Champions where our friendships evolved.
I wrote about my friendship with these guys and the importance of choosing the right group of friends to hang out with in my book “The Power of Pragmatic Passion” (page 17). We all constantly credit our mutual friendship for having a lasting impact on the successes in our lives. It’s our goal to continue to make this happen annually. Clark and Renee have a vacation home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, Louie and Beth in Chautauqua Lake, New York, and Don and Maria in St. Augustine, Florida, so the plan is to rotate every year.
By the way, I’m sure you’re dying to know what my nickname was from high school. A lot of people simply called me “Joe B.” But my closest friends knew me as “Otto.” Where did that come from? Well, one day when I was 13, a bunch of my friends and my brother’s friends were playing touch football outside on our Laurie Drive street. This was a regular occurrence in the early 1970s. I was totally into WWII history and built models of some of the most famous ships of that conflict. I decided to skip playing to stay in to watch the classic WWII pacific fleet war movie “In Harm’s Way” starring John Wayne and Kirk Douglas while finishing up a model of the USS Yorktown.
As the movie was about to start, my older brother Jan came running into the house and said, “Hey, one of the guys had to leave and we need you to make the teams even.” I defiantly said “No, I was watching a movie.” Well, he didn’t like that answer and he stormed into the living room to see what was keeping me from playing. Just then the credits preceding the start of the film were on screen and it said, “Directed by Otto Preminger.” He turned to me to make one last plea to join them. I stood my ground. On his way out the door I hear him yell to the guy’s, “He’s not coming. ‘OTTO’ is too busy watching a war movie!”
So, there you have it folks. Your lives are now complete knowing how I earned the moniker “Otto.”
On our last day together, we had breakfast at the Hilton Head Diner across from the Leamington entrance into Palmetto Dunes. Leamington has a special place in the lives of our family as we vacationed on Hilton Head Island for years in a home there and it was the major reason we ultimately chose to retire to the Lowcountry. The home that we stayed in belonged to a certain very famous and generous Penn State alumnus named Terry Pegula.
The reminders are all around us. The message is clear. Just make it happen. Call your loved ones and friends you’ve been meaning to reach out to and make those reunion plans. Stop procrastinating, quit making excuses, and commit. Make it happen.
