From Depression to Victory: The Garfield High School Football Team’s Remarkable Journey

We have a great episode for you tonight as we join an author who wrote a book about a high school team right before World War II that had a remarkable finish and a remarkable story.

Hank Gola joins us in just a moment to tell us all about it.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren.

He's a pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal deposit of football history.

And welcome to another edition where we get to talk to an author that has a very interesting gridiron story.

I think you're going to enjoy this one as it goes way back in the time machine in football and to an era that I personally love.

And I think you do too, because you listen to this show.

The author's name is.

And he's a journalist too.

His.

His Hank Gola.

Hank, welcome to the Pig Pen.

Ah, thanks very much, Darren.

Happy to be here, Hank.

Roll around in the mud a little bit.

That's right.

We'll roll around the mud in the pig pen a little bit.

Right.

So, you know, Hank, why don't you tell us a little bit about your background and what got you into writing books on sports history and especially this football history book.

But I started part time, ended up covering the cosmos of the North American Soccer League.

Oh, Pele.

Yeah, Pele Beckham Baroness.

It was, it was great.

It was most fun I ever had covering anything.

And then, well, the NASL kind of met its demise and I shifted over to football.

Covering the Giants did that as a beat for a number of years.

Got them through two Super Bowls for the New York, ended up at the New York Post and then the New York Daily News where I covered the Giants and then more of more league stuff rather than just the team.

And also golf.

I covered the PGA Tour with the rise of Tiger, so.

Wow.

Pretty much in a nutshell.

Yeah, you have really seen some amazing things both for the teams that you were the writer for and, you know, seeing some great golf and, you know, rise of Tiger.

That's an exciting time in history as well.

So, yeah, we definitely have the right guy here to talk about some great sports History.

I'm sure you got stories galore, but we're going to sort of center in on a book that you wrote not too long ago.

Maybe you could start off by telling folks the title of it and where they can get it.

City of Champions.

It's actually still being sold on Amazon or any bookseller's website.

Might be in a few bookstores left too.

And you might say, wow, there was actually a national championship high school football game.

And that's why I knew about the story, because it's passed down from generation to generation still in Garfield took on Miami High in the Orange bowl on Christmas night and ended up winning by a field goal with two minutes left by a.

One of the most highly recruited high school players in the country at the time, Benny Babula, which was a fantastic football name.

And Benny ended up going to Fordham and kind of blew out both knees.

So that was the end of his.

There was no, there were no James Nicholases or famous knee surgeons at the time.

So you blew out a knee.

It was pretty much over for your football career.

But it was, it was, it was a tremendous story because Miami was a. I mean, they were, I mean, this was in the middle of the Depression, and Miami High School's football team had, was probably the best, best program in the country.

I mean, they're, they're, they're.

They.

The competition in Florida.

And you think of now, I mean, Florida is maybe arguably the best state in the, in the country for high school football.

At the time.

Miami couldn't find competition in Florida, so it had to go out of state.

They played teams from Atlanta and Knoxville, Tennessee and Mobile, Alabama, and they, they, they flew their coaches in to do scouting reports.

I mean, you know, this is the Depression here.

But what they were able to do was they were able to bring teams into the Orange bowl, played a very big crowds, as big crowds as the University of Miami was attracting at the time and filling the coffers of the athletic department.

So it was kind of a man, it was just kind of a franchise almost.

He he had polio himself.

So this was the first one.

First and only one, actually.

They didn't have another one after this, although they did have a couple of national championships.

Games were so called in other places and Garfield went down there and, you know, kind of a upset underdog little team from Garfield, New Jersey that nobody ever heard of beats Miami in the Orange Bowl.

But it's more than that.

The book is more than football.

There's plenty of football in it.

It's packed with football, but it's, it's kind of.

I, I wrote it against the backdrop of what was going on in the country and specifically in those two cities between the Depression and World War II.

And then afterwards, I do follow these players into World War II where, you know, they.

What they learned on the football field, they applied on the battlefield.

And it's kind of all encompassing.

I didn't leave any stone unturned with the research.

I kind of.

Whatever avenues were there, I followed them out to, to however they went.

So I was pretty pleased with it.

I think it's a great look at the period and at football and high school football at the time and know the single win and everything else.

I even go into the formations.

Miami played this short punt formation, by the way, if you're wondering.

Oh, okay, now, what an exciting time you.

For the folks, the kids in Miami, it probably wasn't all that big a deal if they've been playing in the Orange bowl.

But you know, Christmas Day, you know, Pre World War II for the United States anyway, and you're traveling from cold New York City and going south into Florida.

It's not like we today.

You know, people take vacations all the time.

That had to be a pretty rare thing at the time.

Well, it was a train ride, of course.

They took the train all the way down.

And most of the Garfield kids hadn't been like more than 50 miles away from home.

And ever.

A couple of them got into New York City, I guess, but they.

The train stopped in Philadelphia and one of them wanted to know if they were in Florida yet.

But they got off the train in Miami and it was another world.

They were palm trees.

There were things they never saw before.

I mean, imagine seeing a palm tree for the first time.

It wasn't, you know, you got to think back then, there wasn't any.

Maybe they saw one in a movie somewhere, but.

But I mean, this was like a foreign place to them.

And they were immediately met with.

They supplied high school coeds, one for every guy on the team.

And there was a parade from the train station to their hotel, the Alcazar on Biscayne Boulevard, which was this beautiful at the time, beautiful palm tree, four Lane Boulevard fronting Bayfront park, which was, it was a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful park filled with everything, all sorts of flowers and everything else.

And they stayed at the Alcatraz and it was kind of a fantasy world.

And many of them said, you know, this was the best experience of their lives.

I was lucky to talk to a couple who were still surviving from, from then and, and got some stories and they all, I mean this.

Although they obviously they went into the war and everything changed and came out of the war and everything changed again.

But it's funny that most of the guys on both sides of Miami and Garfield mentioned that they played on those football teams, especially on the Garfield side, that they were part of a national championship team long ago.

Oh man, I can't even imagine.

I can just sit there and think about, you know, I'm from the North, I'm in the Great Lakes region.

I can remember I was like 9 or 10 first time I went to Florida and I can remember seeing the palm trees and you know, you, you see them on TV and everything, you know, but nothing's like really looking at one in person.

So I can, I can appreciate what they must have gone through.

Yeah.

Well, the funny thing was too that Garfield played in Willen uniforms.

Miami of course had, they had, they had different type special jerseys for the Heat.

I mean they played in it all the time.

So Babula during the game lost 18 pounds during that game of sweat playing in those, in those hot woolen uniforms.

There was a, there was a.

You mentioned you're from the Great Lakes region, but there was a nationwide search for a, for an opponent for Miami.

Miami's was probably going to represent the South.

They needed somebody to represent the North.

So maybe they were going to settle on a team from the New York area anyway.

I mean they really, they actually had set on a team from, from New York City at Seward Park.

But the, the eligible, the, the rules in New York prohibited teams from playing a certain amount of miles from home and then a certain amount of time after the season ended.

And although they tried to get Stuart, I mean they went to, they went up to the Governor Lehman and they went to the Mayor LaGuardia trying to get this team, Seward park into the game.

And, and eventually they were unable to do so.

And there was Garfield, you know, across the river, an undefeated team and the best team in the state of New Jersey and probably a better team than Seward park.

Anyway.

They were.

They tried to get.

They wanted to get a New York City team in there because they thought it would draw more fans.

And there were a lot of New Yorkers down there, still are, obviously, and.

But they weren't unable to do that.

And there was Garfield, the.

The next best option.

Now, did they have, like, state championships back then for the states, or was it just okay, we didn't have until recently in Pennsylvania here.

Well, New Jersey was full of good teams.

There were maybe six teams that could have gone down there and competed with them.

In fact, there was another team from Nutley that went down and played another team from Florida, although it wasn't billed as the national championship team from Live Oak in Northern Florida.

And the Nutley team came out to win as well.

And Nutley thought they were a better team than Garfield was and that he should have been in the Miami game.

But, you know, that's, that's.

That's in one of the chapters, so I cover that pretty extensively.

And actually, the next year, Nutley and Garfield, they ended up playing in the first game of the season.

They arranged that in.

Nutley kind of got its revenge with.

With a win.

But Garfield didn't have Babula either.

So.

Just from what you're describing, this almost had to be, you know, the last age of innocence for, for many of these kids, you know, they're in high school and then, you know what, two years later, they're.

They're.

Many of them are overseas and, you know, fighting the.

The Nazis or the Japanese or whoever they're fighting at the time, you know.

Yeah, absolutely.

Guys on both teams were.

Were, were in the fight and a couple lost their lives.

A couple of heroic stories that I get back on.

There was a guy named John Grambowitz, who was probably the second best player on the Garfield team and had an amazing night that night in the Orange.

Bo is probably the player of the game, especially on defense.

He was a normal lineman.

Because of injuries, they moved him back.

And then Arthur Argauer, the coach of the Garfield team, kind of set up his defense so that Grimberwitz would be kind of the rover.

Back then.

It was kind of like a, you know, a linebacker who falls back and into coverage.

And that kind of kind of fouled up Miami a little bit.

And he was.

Miami had a guy named Davey Eldridge.

In fact, it was billed as the Battle of the Blondes because Babula was the big blonde.

Guy.

And Eldridge was the speedster who was, all season long, he was breaking off big runs for touchdowns.

And Grembowitz was kind of the guy back there and always, always taking him down and ended up going to William and Mary, playing a little football coming out of there.

And then he wanted to be a, wanted to be a pilot in the Air Force and was killed in a, in a training accident over Kansas before he got over there.

And I kind of go into detail on that too, so.

But there were, there were a bunch of good, they all went in.

I think there was only two guys on both rosters that didn't go into service.

So, you know, that, that's how it was.

And yeah, there's some good stories in, during the war years too, what these guys went through.

Babola himself was on a PT boat and ended up with two Purple Hearts.

Wasn't uncommon.

Yeah, these guys are heroes too.

That's absolutely, I mean, I, I, I look at the book as, as kind of the story of the greatest generation in the making.

We call those guys the greatest generation, and they probably are what they did, what they sacrificed, but this was the greatest generation in the making.

What, what before they, before they became the greatest generation.

Yeah, they're sort of on the rise at the time right now.

Was it, you know, you mentioned, you know, both teams are playing different offenses.

This is right at the transitional period right before the transition of, you know, the, the, the wing T coming in, so wings in double wing or, or Right.

It, the single wing was obviously the, the, the formation that most teams were playing.

Miami played a short punt formation, which was kind of like a shotgun, like almost like a pistol.

Okay.

And you know, you know what the single wing was.

It was a direct snap anyway.

But Miami had it a little further back.

It was more of a conducive to passing than, than the single wing was.

That give problems to each, each team because maybe they weren't familiar with the.

The interesting thing was they did, they'd exchange game films and.

Okay, so, but, but what happened was that Garfield had some injuries and Art Artgauer, the Garfield coach, kind of out Fox, the Miami coach, and, and what he showed him and then came out with kind of a different little look.

And, and the wrinkle was Grembowitz back there.

And on the first play of the game, actually.

So, I mean, the quarterback wasn't actually the quarter.

It was a tailback.

That was the guy who ran the offense, a triple threat.

He could, he could run, he could pass, he could punt.

Babula would punt 60 yards, which was crazy back in the day, but.

So the tailback kind of ran the offense.

But Miami had a guy in its roster named Jason Cozy, and he was their best passer.

And sometimes the direct snap would go to him as well.

And he got hurt on the first play of the game by Grimowitz.

Grimowitz actually tackled him in the first play of the game.

Miami, what they would do was they kept Eldridge, their best player, on the sidelines for the first series.

This was.

They did this all year so he could get a look at what the defense was doing.

And with him out of the game, Cozy was running the offense as the tailback, and he ended up getting hurt on the first play of the game.

And then Eldridge ended up throwing, and I.

It was either three or four interceptions.

They outgained Garfield during the game, but Garfield had the turnover advantage.

And that's how they.

That's how they went.

Miami hadn't given up a rushing touchdown all year.

Geez, incredible.

And.

But.

And Garfield went over on its first drive.

Abullah went off tackle and on a power sweep and scored.

That'd be kind of deflating for the Miami.

Yeah, it was kind of a message, right?

Kind of a message.

But it was, it was.

I mean, the more I dug into this game, the cooler it was.

And I was.

I was able to kind of almost uncover buried treasure.

I would get these nuggets, you know, because I. I mean, I knew about the game, I knew about Benny Bobola, but I didn't really.

Details of the game.

And this enabled me to get in there and dig through all the newspaper stories and accounts and just learn a little bit about my hometown and how I was living there during Depression.

The one guy, the funny thing was the one guy I talked that was still alive, Walter Young, who became one of my dearest friends.

Although he passed away before the book was finished.

Garfield scored the go ahead touchdown on a naked reverse with Grembowitz actually running the ball.

Babula went off the right side and then he handed off the.

Gremowitz came all the way around the other side and the.

The last guy to have, basically have it.

Have the chance to get him was.

Was Eldridge, the fastest guy in the Miami team.

And Walter Young, who was the end, was one of the ends, had the responsibility of blocking him and taking him out.

And when I met Walter, this was 75 years later, we're talking about the play.

And Walter said, you know, I'm.

I, It.

I've lived with this my entire life that I thought I might have clipped him, that it should have been.

I should have been called for a flag.

And as soon as the play was over, I was actually looking around for the yellow flag, and none was thrown.

He says, it's bothered me.

And he was a very religious man, and he said, this has bothered me that maybe we won the game unfairly.

Right.

So I said, well, you know, Walter, there, there are.

The game films are on YouTube.

They are.

And because our Gower, the Garfield coach, was ahead of his time and used game films, which is kind of crazy, but I said, we could watch this.

We could, we could.

We could see if it was a good block or not.

So it was the day after Thanksgiving and went over to his place and we were watching the entire game.

And then he's.

I, he, he knew.

He says, we're coming.

This is it, right?

This, we're coming.

I said, yeah, this is the play.

And you could see it right on the, Right on the screen on my computer.

That he actually hit him straight on was a good block.

And Walter could let go of his conscience that he had made the good block.

And they won the game fairly, fair and square.

It was a really cool moment, but he was a real.

He was a great guy.

And that's one thing about writing this book.

I came across so many great people that I would never met from that generation, and it was probably the best, best part about writing the book.

We got great reviews.

We hope to sell more copies than we did, but it's, it's hard.

It's just hard to get the book discovered.

And so hopefully it's a little late.

Everyone who read it or reviewed it, we got some.

Five starred reviews everywhere.

Just.

We just couldn't get the word out across the country enough.

But I'm very proud of it.

And it's, It's, It's.

It's really cool.

I, I put my entire kind of spirit and heart into the thing and, And I'm happy the way it turned out.

It sounds like.

I mean, first of all, I mean, I assumed that he had never seen that game film before, too.

75 years later, he.

And then he gets to see himself playing as a youngster.

I had to be exciting all itself.

Yeah.

Relive that play.

And that was in black and white.

But there was also game film that I, I posted on YouTube of the Garfield Pasake.

Game that year, Passaic was.

That was the only game they lost.

They were, like I said, they were about six, maybe five or six teams from New Jersey that could have gone down and given Miami a good game.

Pasake was one of them.

And this game film was in color.

Wow.

And I put it on.

It's on YouTube.

Research that up and put links on for.

For folks to check it out.

As long as you look, everybody should go back and look at this.

But it looks like that the game film was shot like three weeks ago.

It was just such great color and action.

And Babula runs for 193 yards that day.

And I sent the film to Ernie, of course, he.

Who, who was the GM of the.

Of the Giants and before that the Browns.

And I said, do me a favor, give me a scouting report on Babula.

And he sent it back and he was just raving about the balance he had and the power and everything else.

But it really.

If.

If you're interested in.

In watching the single.

It's a thing of you.

The single wing is a thing of beauty.

It's just.

Corey, it's maybe the packers sweep with linemen instead of backs kind of thing.

And it's just the way the two pulling guards come out and, and.

And the way they take care of their blocks and everything is done so precisely.

And then Babula gets through the hole and he starts taking people on and he's got.

He gives people stiff arms and everything else.

And it's.

It's just beautiful.

It's.

It's.

It was a beautiful thing to watch the way that thing came to life.

That single wing.

Yeah.

How about.

You know, that's.

It's just an amazing time that you're.

You're writing about because, you know, I always use World War II as sort of that line of debarcation of, you know, the old formations sort of going out in single platoon football on its way out because of the, the war.

And then, you know, substitution comes in the.

The wing tea and everything else that comes off of that.

And you know, so it's a great time and just what a monumental period of time in world history where everything changes for everybody across the globe too, because of conflict and folks traveling around the world to fight for freedom too.

Was that Garfield was.

Was an immigrant town.

It was mostly Eastern Europeans and Italians for the most part, who came to work in the woolen mills.

That where there was.

There was Forceman Will Forcemen, Woolen in Garfield and across the river in Passaic, there were botany and a couple of other Willen Mills, Gira mills.

So the immigrants provided the muscle for the textile mills.

And these were their sons.

And these immigrants who had, who had worked in the mills, I mean, they had left their families behind, their mothers and fathers behind in the old country and probably never saw them again.

But now you've got Germany invading Poland and it was kind of like, look, we're here.

And they raised their kids to be Americans and while they still embrace their culture and look, I'm Polish.

I, I go back there too.

I, you know, I, I, my dad grew up, he, he would have been in this class.

And so I, I, I, I know all the traditions and the customs, but these kids were raised to be Americans and, and that's why they kind of took to it when, when, when World War II hit and, and Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

I mean, there was, there was a, a race to the, to the, to sign up listing.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah, the guys are very brave generation.

I think you're right.

And they deserved a great generation to have it.

They have under.

So, Hank, Hotel was such a perfect.

Sport for these guys.

You know, they love to get in there and mix it up and, and, and the way it was played back then, you know, it was in the trenches and everything else.

This, this was kind of the, the perfect way.

Yeah.

Very good, Hank, Why don't you take the opportunity?

Let's give the title of the book again and where folks can get copy.

Sure.

City of Champions is the name of the book, and it's still, it's on Amazon, is the easiest way to get it, although it's probably still available on Barnes and Noble and some of the other booksellers like Thrift Books and everything.

But I do know it's in stock on Amazon and it might still be in a couple of bookstores.

And it got such a great review and Library Journal that a lot of the libraries across the country picked it up.

So it could still be in a lot of libraries if you want to check it out that way.

Yeah, definitely.

Many avenues to get it.

Hank, you have a great website.

I was checking out folks.

I invite you to do it too.

It's Hank Gola.com H-A-N-K G O L A and it has a lot about you some of your other work and your your books and Writer cup book.

It's recently out.

That's got to be an exciting one.

Yeah, it is on the website actually if if you do get the book and start reading it, I have supplementary material for each chapter or for most of the chapters so that if you're reading a chapter you go to the website and then I'll put up some things that, that I didn't get into the book that are pertinent.

I've got some film for instance, the chapter I do on polio on infantile paralysis.

I have some information on polio and, and a guy named Fred Snipe who lived out his life in an iron lung and again football related because he had gone.

He was a Notre Dame alum and then he was stricken with polio after that and he would go to all the Notre Dame games and they would set up the iron lung in in the end zone of of Notre Dame Stadium.

And when they brought it in he got, he got a bigger hand of ovation than the Notre Dame team get got running onto the field.

So Fred Snipe there.

But it's kind of kind of stuff like that where I couldn't really get it into the book but I but I thought it was interesting enough to to put out there for anyone's interested for a little more.

But Ryder Cup Rivals is out obviously.

This is Ryder cup week.

I'll be out there.

And it's gotten some really good reviews too.

Sports Illustrated actually did a review and said it was the one book to to read before the Ryder Cup.

It's a. I picked out 13.

The 13 not necessarily the best, but the most impactful Ryder Cups.

The the ones that can either change the course of the competition or stood out as most memorable.

And I do, I do 13 chapters with 13 different Ryder Cups and I, I kind of treat them as, as, as a short stories.

So if you're into golf and into the Ryder Cup, I recommend that one too.

Wow.

Definitely sounds like some some good reads to get here real quick and get your football and Ryder cup seasons on here with some some good writing by a veteran journalist and author.

I was the guy who asked the question who opened up that whole can of worms.

Oh, you're the rabble rouser, huh?

Yeah, I have a little.

I, I have a very small but not necessarily inconsequential part in writer cop history.

Well, Hank, we really appreciate you coming on here and sharing information about your books and City of Champions.

I'll have links, folks, if you're driving.

Couldn't write it down when Hank was describing it, of links to get you to his book and to his website.

You can check out his stuff and get a copy.

And if you're in the New York, New Jersey area, I will be appearing at the Morristown Festival of Books talking about a Ryder cup rivals.

But I might have some City of Champions copies of City of Champions.

And I'll, I'll be signing books afterwards.

So if you're around, come on over.

It's.

It's a great, it's a great book fair.

A lot of, A lot of.

A lot of prominent writers, authors are there, so make a day out of it.

But come on over, say hi and tell me you saw me on the podcast.

All right, Good stuff, Hank.

We appreciate you coming on and good luck with the book sales.

Thank you, Darren.

I really enjoyed the session.

Take care.

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