Leading off today: The blogs that I post three to six times a week serve mostly as summaries of newspaper reports from around the state and sometimes the country. My rule of thumb governing the length of each blog and its individual items is to follow Father Murphy's advice on term papers from freshman English class in 1976; they should be like a women's skirt . . . long enough to cover everything and short enough to keep you interested.
I'm breaking Father Murphy's rule (not to mention the fair use provision of the copyright law) to quote liberally from the lead of Tom Borelli's story in The Buffalo News today, because it's a wonderful setup to the profile of a distinguished administrator.
So, here we go:
"Joe Wolf remembers being a heartbroken, 105-pound freshman in the fall of 1953, tempted to walk away from St. Joe’s for good.
Fifty five years later, he’s ready to follow through on what he couldn’t do back then.
"'I had already gotten my No. 10 jersey from the JV football team — a beat-up, hand-me-down thing that I was so proud of. But I got cut a few days later and was absolutely devastated,' said Wolf, who is leaving St. Joe’s after spending the last 42 years as athletic director. 'I asked the coach if I’d done something wrong and all he told me was that if I drank a cherry soda I’d look like a thermometer because I was so skinny.
"'I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t even get on the NFTA bus for the ride back home to Cheektowaga. I just kept walking and walking, right across the course at Grover Cleveland and all the golfers were yelling "fore" at me. But at that point I didn’t even care if I’d gotten hit with a golf ball.
"'When I got home I had tears in my eyes and told my dad that I wanted to transfer to Cleveland Hill. But he said I should go back and try out for the freshman basketball team, and that if I didn’t make it, then I could transfer at the end of the school year. Well I made it and the rest is history.'"
That's a wonderful tale to use to open the profile of Wolf, 68, whose tenure has spanned the time in office of eight American presidents. St. Joe’s teams won 273 championships — including 31 Supremacy Cups for overall performance in the Monsignor Martin Association — during Wolf's time there.
Though hardly a star, Wolf was a running back on the 1955 St Joe's team that defeated archrival Canisius for the first time in 24 years and a member of the team that started a 33-game winning streak in 1956.
"I wasn’t much of an athlete," Wolf said. "I got into a lot of the games only because we overran everybody. But I was on the bench so much that they called me the judge."
Wolf spent 24 years teaching history, business law and phys ed. As a coach, his varsity baseball teams won more than 130 games in 13 seasons and his JV football squads went 94-7-4. He turned full-time attention to his AD duties in 1985.
L.I. voters say no: Residents of the Northport-East Northport School district rejected a nearly $9 million bond proposition by narrow 1,197-1,158 margin, Newsday reported. The proposition would have allowed for the renovatation of athletic fields at several schools and the installation of artificial turf at the high school.
District officials had estimated the impact to the average taxpayer to be $60.04 per year for nine years.
There's a big Central New York vote coming up tomorrow as Liverpool sends a $6.3 million proposition to the polls. In February, voters said no to a $44.5 million proposition covering substantial school renovations and a new athletic facility for the high school by a 1,954-1,620 margin.
Now, the proposal has been split in two. The primary package for $34.3 million covers an assortment of work at
