Every Thanksgiving hundreds of Portlanders flock to the football field by the highway known as Fitzpatrick Stadium to see the annual renewal of the cross-town football rivalry that has endured since 1911 between the Portland Bulldogs and the Deering Rams. While many of the older people will know for whom the stadium is named, younger folks and more recent arrivals may not realize that James J. Fitzpatrick was one of the most respected figures in Maine athletic history.
Fitzpatrick was born in 1897. His father was the postmaster in Meriden, Connecticut. “Fitzy” was a standout athlete in high school, and was recruited for Boston College in 1916 by coach Charlie Brinkley.
At BC, Fitzpatrick played varsity football and baseball for four years along with three years of basketball and two years of hockey. After an interruption in his college career in 1918 when he served as a bayonet instructor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, Fitzpatrick returned to BC where he served as captain of the football team in 1919 and the baseball team in 1920. He also served as the president of his junior class and vice president of his senior class at BC.
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After his sophomore year, Fitzpatrick and a couple of teammates traveled to Canton, Ohio and to meet the Canton Bulldogs and their star Jim Thorpe. Coach Brinkley set up a punting competition between Fitzpatrick and Thorpe, and while accounts differ as to exactly who won, it's clear that Fitzpatrick was competitive with one of the most celebrated athletes of his era.
His BC football exploits are legendary. His punts averaged 65 yards through his college career. He was the team's top scorer in the 1916, 1917 and 1919 seasons. Perhaps his most notable play came during a game at Yale in 1920, just down the road from his hometown in Meriden and with his family and friends watching. Down by a point and with time running out, Fitzpatrick drop-kicked a 47-yard field goal to win one of the most important college football games for the year for BC. Years later, BC alumni would still be talking about “the kick.”
The coach in those years was Major Frank Cavanaugh. Years later, actor Pat O'Brien would play Cavanaugh in the 1943 film, The Iron Major, which chronicles Cavenaugh's exploits both on the football field and in combat in World War One, Including his stint at BC with Fitzpatrick. In 1921, Cavanaugh praised Fitzpatrick as "The greatest athlete Boston College has ever had...I doubt that any has ever done more for his college in athletics than Fitzy has done for Boston College."
Fitzpatrick's college football career ended in 1920 when, during a game with Georgetown, his shoulder was broken.
In 1921, Jimmy Fitzpatrick joined the faculty of Portland High. In an interview in the Portland High School paper from 1921, the newly arrived Fitzpatrick said, “I consider Portland High School second to none but my own and I could not be more satisfied with the conditions.” Fitzpatrick immediately became the coach of football, basketball and baseball.
As a young man new to the area Fitzpatrick was enormously popular with his students. In 1924 he married a girl from South Portland, Margaret Hackett, whose family had lived in the Cash Corner area for many years. Fitzpatrick and his new wife settled there and eventually had two children, a son and a daughter, both of whom pursued athletics at South Portland High School. His daughter, Peggy Furbush, who still lives near Cash Corner says, “I guess we grew up being athletes because that's what all the talk around the kitchen table was about.”
While dad was supportive of their athletic endeavors, his team loyalty was never in doubt, “He was a Portland High man and we were South Portland kids.”
As a young man, Fitzpatrick played in local baseball leagues and he was tapped to pitch when Babe Ruth brought his traveling exhibition team to Portland. The Portland team won and Fitzy denied Ruth a hit in four at bats. Twice Ruth popped up, “The highest fly ball I ever saw,” Fitzy said. Twice more Ruth went down swinging. “He was up there swinging with that great big swing of his and I was giving him all curve balls,” Fitzpatrick reminisced in a magazine article, “I changed the speed on them, but they dropped two feet, and he couldn't touch them.” When the game was over Fitzpatrick went to shake Ruth's hand, but the slugger wouldn't even speak to him.
Fitzpatrick would coach Portland football and baseball for fourteen seasons and basketball for 26. He also coached golf for a few years. In 1947 he became athletic director of the ever-growing school and remained in that position until 1966 when he retired.
Perhaps his most successful basketball team was the 1936 “Little Boy Blues,” who won the state championship and went all the way to the New England Championship where they lost in triple overtime to the team from Meriden, Connecticut, Fitzpatrick's hometown. His basketball teams went to four straight state championship games in the forties, winning in '42 and ‘43
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Peter Gribben says after so many teams and so many students in his 45-year career, Fitzpatrick was well known and extremely well respected in Portland. “If you played sports – you knew Fitzy. My father thought he walked on water. There was nothing higher than Fitzy.”
In South Portland, Fitzpatrick and his family were active in their church, first Calvary Chapel and later St. John's. He also was active with the Knights of Columbus on Preble Street in Portland, and he spent a lot of time on the golf course in later years. Daughter Peggy Furbush remembers, “Every Saturday morning there'd be three or four priests come in their white t-shirts and black pants and get him up out of bed to go play golf.” Former players often visited Fitzpatrick in his retirement and always the talk was about sports says Furbush.
In 1970, Fitzpatrick was inducted into the Boston College Hall of fame.
A few years after Fitzpatrick retired, a former player, Julius “Yudy” Elowich, Class of 1931 donated a trophy named for his former coach, the James J. Fitzpatrick Trophy. The Fitzpatrick Award has gone to the top high school football player in the state of Maine every year since 1971. Peggy Furbush attends the award dinner every year long with Fitzpatrick's former colleagues and players “I feel that it was such an honor that was bestowed on him that as long as I‘m able I'll go to that dinner and represent him.”
Shortly before Fitzpatrick passed away in 1989, the City renamed Portland Stadium and Fitzpatrick was able to attend the ceremony honoring Fitzpatrick for his lifetime of service to Portland and its children. “It meant an awful lot to Dad.”
by Chad Gilley |
The Iron Major |
Thanks to: Peter Gribbin, The Portland Public Library, Boston College, Peggy Furbush
Contact: gilleymedia@live.com
