COMMUNITY PARK: Dick Cavallero spent some time passing a few
footballs at Community Park, taking the St. Bernard Ramblers to
some memorable victories in the 1950s.
And we’ve got proof. His wife Ann shared with us a family
scrapbook that includes copies of newspaper articles touting him as
“one of the finest schoolboy passers in the state.”
One article is dated September 1953, proving the park was still
very much in use beyond 1950.
The story remarks on the dryness of the field that was
momentarily wetted down by a slight rainfall, a factor contributing
indirectly to Bernie touchdowns.
Other readers have e-mailed us with more Community Park
memories.
Jim Flynn, now of Erie, writes, “Two things I remember about
Community Park were helping my Dad sell score cards for the Kiwanis
Club and losing my girl friend/wife’s Class of 1962 Saint Bernard
ring.
“We were at the park watching a game, and it was cool. The ring
was sliding around her finger, so she gave it to me to hold. I put
it in my pants pocket and that was the last we saw it.
“So if a Saint Bernie’s ring turns up if they knock down the
canning factory, it’s Kaele’s.”
Julian Price from Hewlett, N.Y., writes that the Community Park
baseball closed in the summer of 1956.
“My late brother, Harry Price, was the general manager of the
baseball club, which was a farm team for the Phillies. I remember
going to his office the day I had my Bar Mitzvah, which was in
1956, and his office was located over a grocery store named
Loblaw.”
Although Julian believed Loblaw’s had once been located across
from Public Square, we checked with someone who remembers it being
first on Congress Street then Williams Street.
Another reader called in with evidence the Community Park had
remained open after 1950. “I gave birth to my daughter in September
1955 and remember watching the games that year in the park. Dr.
Fannin used to sit behind me,” she said.
Lanny McCaslin, now of Mesa, Ariz., said he moved back to
Bradford in 1952, graduated from Bradford High School in 1955 and
went into the Air Force in 1957.
“During the period from 1952 to 1957,” he writes, “I went to
many PONY league games at the stadium with my grandfather. So I’m
sure it didn’t close in 1950.”
