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The Life and Influence of Joseph C. McCloskey
By Louis M. Iatarola
Every third Saturday of September, the community of Tacony
comes toghether to celebrate in festive fashion its rich history
at Disston Recreation Center. Tacony History Day is a day
to reflect on what we have to cherish as a community, and
to look forward at the possibilites that lie ahead. The facility
known as Disston Recreation Center has had a profound effect
on generations to come, not only in his neighborhood but throughout
the City of Philadelphia.
Joseph C. "Goople" McCloskey
was born on Barton Street in Tacony in 1920. He attendede
St. Leo School and became a fixture on the grounds of Disston
Recereation Center, whose junior boys' volleyball team he
captained to the city-wide championship in 1936 at the age
of sixteen. This had been the fourth consecutive championship
for the Disston Center team, which emerged with swift impact
from a facility constructed in 1931.
It seemed a rite of passage, growing
up in Depression-era (or post-Depression era) Tacony, that
boys had nichnames, either earned or bestowed unwittingly
upon them. Joe McCloskey picked up the nickname "Goople"
while attending St. leo School, and this stuck with him his
entire life. Aside from his volleyball exploits, "Goople"
or sometimes just "Goop" participated in many sports,
including football and basketball for the old Disston Scholastics
and baseball for the William Oxley American Legion Post Juniors,
for which he played first base.
Although accomplished at various sports,
it became apparent that Joe McCloskey's true passion was for
the sport of boxing. He participated as a middleweight and
light heavyweight at local venues such as St. Leo's School
Hall and Disston Union Hall, located in the old Tacony Trust
Fund building at Tulip Street and Longshore Avenue. He often
fought at Kensington's storied Cambria Arena, usually boxing
under the colors of the Southwark Athletic Club, which was
located in Wissinoming at Devereaux Street and Torresdale
Avenue.
Joseph graduated from Northeast Catholic
High School in 1937, and earned his livelihood measuring garment
material at the Tacony Factory Store, a successor to Rubin
Brothers' Department Store at Longshore Avenue and Hegerman
Street. He continued to to rise in the amateur ranks of local
boxing, battling his way to the finals of the Philadelphia
InquirerDiamond Belt Tournament in 1939. He then turned professional,
fighting as a light-heavyweightand heavyweight under the management
of former world light-heavyweight champion and local legend
Tommy Loughran.
McCloskey traveled several times to New
York for bouts, and one of his most memoral was in Jersey
City when he appeared on the undercard of the highly touted
Max Baer - Pat Comiskey contest. He became regarded as a highly
athletic, strong, fighter whose lethal, sometimes wild swinging
would often summarily dismiss his opponents. Note the following
two newspaper excerpts from some of Joe's memorable matches:
"Joe McCloskey, of Southwark, made
quick work of Nick Halasa... McCloskey twice floored Halasa
in the first round, the latter, however weathering the round
although in tottering condition. The referee would not allow
the second round to continue..."
"Joseph McCloskey, Southwark, delivered
the lethal punch to send down Horace Johnson, Eastside Club,
to the canvas to stay after 1 minute, 55 seconds of the second
chukker... McCloskey let loose with two looping rights along
the ropes in the second round and Johnson went down with a
thud. The Eastside lad had to be carried from the ring..."
Goople's boxing career came to an end
after two fights at the Cambria Arena with a Grays Ferry fighter
named Army Rullo. McCloskey lost both matches with the referee
halting each before McCloskey suffered any serious injury.
Although a third match was scheduled, it was called of when
Rullo broke his arm during training. mcCloskey then had enough
time to decide that he no longer wanted boxing to be his livelihood.
He retired from the ring, after fifteen professional bouts
with a combined amateur and professional record of 27-6-1.
In 1946, Joe joined the Philadelphia
Police Department. He continued to work with the community
in which he was born and bred as he raised his family on Keystone
Street. He was part of a group that helped get a boxing ring
installed at the old Merz Brothers Hotel on State Road, which
in the 1940's served as the home to the Tacony Athletic Association.
At this locatoin, He served as an expert instruction in boxing
classes to serve the local youth. By 1947, McCloskey was among
the first officers chosen for the Police Boys' Club because
of his background in sports.
The purpose of the Police Boys' Club
was two-fold: (1) it promoted a better relationship between
youth and police, whose presence was sometimes viewed as more
adversarial than protective, and (2) to provide an outlet
for children in an effort to curb juvenile deliquency, which
was an increasing urban ill at this time. Joe McCloskey found
himself perfectly suited to help organize the 27th Police
District Boys' Club in his own "backyard" of Tacony.
With tremendous enthusiasm, over 150
boys between the ages of 7 and 17 signed up for the fledgling
league, whose headquarters was at the old Police and Fire
Station at Longshore Avenue and State Road. Contributions
were solicited from local businesses, with Henry Disston and
Sons donating $100.00 to the cause (twice as much as the next
largest contributers), and the first meeting of the 27th District
Police Boys' Club was held on April 5, 1947. Within a month,
plans were underway to fully outfit a portion of the Station
into a first-class gymnasium for the benefit of the League.
Patrolman McCloskey, according to a local newspaper, "revealed
with pride the bright aspects for the future development of
the club. The gymnasium...will include pool tables, ping-pong
tables, shuffleboard and a basketball court, as well as a
boxing ring, showers, and lockers."
By that summer, over 200 youths has registered,
and twelve teams were formed in the league, with such names
as the Tacony A. A. Juniors, Disston Eagles, Tacony Indians,
Tyson Panthers, Tulip A. A., and Tacony Stars. Joe McCloskey
personally coached a variety of teams, including football,
basketball, and baseball, and he also coached boxing, swimming,
street hockey, and girl's softball teams. In 1950, the 27th
District brought home the Senior Basketball Championship and
the Eastern States District Championship in baseball.
The name of the Police Boy's Club had
been changes to the Police Athletic League (P.A.L.) by the
early 1950's. By then, its positive impact on the lives of
urban youth was undeniable, and a wide array of activities
became available including football, table tennis, ceramics,
marbles, and glee clubs. Over the years, Joe McCloskey's teams
would take home championship trophies too numerous to mention
in this profile.
Joe McCloskey gave selflessly for the
benefit of Tacony's youth. He would accompany orphans from
St. Vincent's on hayrides to circuses that were held at Cottman
Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard. In 1954, his football team
traveled to Lakeland, Florida to play in a tournament known
as the Santa Claus Bowl. That same year, Joe formed the Penn
Jersey Football Conference. The league remained in existance
for nearly thirty years, which included dozens of boys clubs
and thousands of youngsters in multiple weight divisions.
Over his many years of service, Joe would travel as far as
Canada and Boys' Town, Nebraska with his various teams. He
helped to get the Philadelphia Athletics to hold baseball
clinics at Disston Recreation Center and accompanied boxing
great Rocky Marciano as he addressed a crowd at Princeton
Avenue and Edmund Street to promote P.A.L.'s fund drive. For
ten years Joe served as Athletic Chairman of the National
P.A.L. and supervised tournaments all over the country. He
was known to have spent as many as eighteen hours in a given
day overseeing P.A.L. activities. During "down"
time, Joe would write press releases to send to local newspapers
so that his boys would receive proper recognition for their
accomplishments.
After nearly fifteen years of dedicated
service to his community and his children, Joe McCloskey experienced
something that, for a typical citizen, would have forever
changed their outlook towards children and dimmed their faith
in the justice system. On June 28, 1960, after unpiring a
game at Keystone and Unruh Streets, McCloskey approached several
youths who were parked in a car, having harassed players and
umpires throughout the game. As he was speaking to the youths,
he was approached from behind and struck repeatedly in the
head with a hammer. The police eventually rounded up over
75 youths, and three were charged in the beating.
Although Joe was severely beaten, he
was found by a fellow officer wandering aimlessly at State
Road and Magee Avenue. It took over five hours for him to
regain his memory, and he began to suffer severe headaches
after the violent incident, ailments which were foreign to
McCloskey before the attack. Quite a controversy ensued after
the incident when two of the three teens charged were released
on one year probation and the third, who uncoincidentally
was the nephew of a Northeast Philadelhia Police Inspector,
was released after denying taking part in the attack. Even
more controversy ensued when, in an emotional outburst in
Municipal Court, Joe mcCloskey delclared that "the fix
is in." For this he received a six month jail term for
contempt of court, which was soon revoked by Judge Benjamin
W. Schwartz after outcries from residents and city leaders.
The attack on McCloskey and subsequent
controversy ignited a flurry of letters to local newspapers
from Tacony and throughout the region. The injustice surrrounding
the teenagers' light sentence and the near-victimization of
the victim only reinforced in the public eye the notion that
Philadelphia, after decades of sczndalous government affairs,
was still "corrupt and contented." One letter from
a person who simply called themselves "a Taconian,"
wrote to the Bulletin, "May Mr. McCloskey still have
faith in the generation he works so hard with, and may God
bless him for it."
Just one week after his amnesia-inducing
attack, Joe was back on the job, umpiring games and escorting
35 players to New York to compete and see a major league baseball
game. His home, which was usually cramped with athletic equipment,
was besieged with over 150 cards, letters and telegrams, as
well as flowers from as far away as the Miami Police Athletic
Department. When asked about the attack, McCloskey stressed
foremost that, "the kids in Disston Park I grew up with
were no different from the kids that hang around there now...
only two of the boys out of these 75 or so questioned were
kids I had contact with in my P.A.L. work... most of them
were strangers." Despite his brutal incident, Joe McCloskey
wanted to reinforce through his experience the fact that P.A.L.,
for the most part, keeps children out of trouble. Two weeks
after the attack, he took 115 children to the Phillies-Senators
benefit game at Connie Mack Stadium.
In the years following Joe McCloskey's
unfortunate experience, he began to be recognized for the
true civic hero that he was. A testimpnial dinner was held
by the Tacony P.A.L. Parents' Committee and Tacony merchants,
and City Council Resolution No. 350 was adopted on May 2,
1963 commending Officer McCloskey's "sixteen years of
devotion and dedicated service in teaching law and order to
the youth of our City through a planned program of sports
activities."
Joe continued to work tirelessly at advancing
youth sporting activities. He was instrumental in forming
P.A.L. leagues in Hazeltown, Pennsylvania and Palmyra, New
Jersey. Philadelphia became recognized as a model for P.A.L.
programs, and it was Officer McCloskey who squired visitors
from Boton around the city as they sought funds to expand
their P.A.L. programs. The late Joe Scott, a founder of the
Philadelphia Flyers and P.A.L. Board Member, bestowed upon
McCloskey another nickname, "Mr. P.A.L.". When Joe
visited Canada in 1967 as a supervisor and ambassador for
a series of exhibition games, he was so well received that
Mayor James H. J. Tate sent a personal letter of commendation
for his fine conduct.
Despite his non-stop work ethic, Joe
was a devoted husband and father who always found time for
his family. He never forgot that he was a police officer first
and constantly strived to perpetuate P.A.L.'s mission, that
is, to form a bond between the police and youth through sports.
Throughout his career, he made several arrests of gun-toting
suspects and, while in Canada for a baseball tournament, once
arrested a man he witnessed burgarlizing a church.
Although McCloskey sunned the limelight,
his dedication to Tacony's youth made it unavoidable. In March,
1968, Joe was the recipient of the prestigious annual John
B. Kelly Foundation Award for "unselfishly contributing
his time to extend to the future of youth through the medium
of sports." Notable past recipients of this award have
been Connie Mack and Jersey Joe Walcott. In May, 1970, "Mr.
P.A.L." was presented the Pop Warner All America Award
for faithful service to youth through the Pop Warner and P.A.L.
programs. Joe would also receive citations from the Pennsylvania
Legislative and United States Congress.
Throughout Joe's storied career, he guided
as many as two thousand children in any given year. Some went
on to greatness, including J.K. Daly, who attained his goal
of becoming a professional jockey. Joe's alumni went on to
star in college basketball and football, minor league baseball
and national collegiate swimming. Harry Silcox was one of
Goople's boys, beoming a star basketball player for Temple
University in the 1950's and going on to become a noted historian
and author, serving for a time as Principal of Abraham Lincoln
High School. Over two dozen of Joe's alumni became police
officers themselves. Most importantly, to Joe, were the countless
children who simply went on to become good citizens.
Joe retired in 1984 after thirty-seven
years of dedicated service. He never lost his drive to help
local youth, and at the age of 67 was one of the first in
line when P.A.L. started an alumni group to assist officers
in charge of existing programs. When asked by a local reporter
about his involvement in the lives of children for over four
decades, McCloskey said, "If they made me President of
the United States, I couldn't have enjoyed it more than the
job I had all those years."
Upon his retirement, Joe pursued his
dream of attending a baseball game in every major league ballpark
in America. By the time he passed away at the age of 70 in
1990, he had missed only three ballparks. He was posthumously
inducted into the P.A.L. Hall of Fame and Northeast Catholic
High School Hall of Fame. His career fills four scrapbooks.
Joe's legacy has not been lost on those
who continue to reinforce Tacony's rich history to this day.
Dr. Harry Silcox remembered McCloskey in his 1994 book, A
Place To Live and Work: The Henry Disston Saw Works and the
Tacony Community of Philadelphia...
"There were numerous independent
teams, the most influential of which in Tacony was the 27th
P.A.L. under the leadership of Joseph McCloskey. Connected
with the 27th Police District, the team won the National P.A.L.
Championship in 1949-1950. McCloskey became known to every
Tacony boy over a thirty year period for his work with the
youth of the community."
In Images of America - Tacony, the caption
below a 1946 photo of the Tacony Boys Club reads:
"Throughout its history, Tacony
has benefitted from the commitment of local businesses and
civic leaders who have served as sponsors and coaches. This
tradition continues today. People such as Joseph McCloskey,
who lent countless hours coaching with Tacony's Police Athletic
League, had a profound impact on those who coach Tacony's
youth of today."
In September, 2001, a "History of
Tacony" mural was unveiled at the corner of Longshore
Avenue and Tulip Street, whose main scene is an image of a
parade proceeding along Torresdale Avenue. Two policemen appear
in the mural on horseback, and as a lasting tribute to "Mr.
P.A.L.", the badge on one of the officers reads "McCloskey".
Today, like perennial blossoms, the seeds
sown by Officer Joe McCloskey continue to reap bountiful rewards.
On the fields of Vogt Playground, Dorsey Playground and Mayfair
Athletic Club, and sprinkled throughout the region, are undoubtedly
coaches who were once touched by Mr. P.A.L., deterring them
from choosing the wrong path and inspiring them to reach out
and help our children. What makes Joe's story even more special
is that Tacony's most notable father figure was himself fatherless
from the age of five.
In 2002, the Police Athletic League
boasts twenty-three centers providing a safe haven for over
27,000 boys and girls from ages 6 to 18. The hard work of
people like Joe McCloskey some 55 years ago provided the rock-solid
foundation for the Police Athletic League of today. Since
Joe's retirement, the Tacony P.A.L. has been operating out
of Holmesburg and is a mere shadow of what it used to be.
Nonetheless, the influence of Officer Joseph C. "Goople"
McCloskey or just "Mr. P.A.L." continues to live
on and thrive in the memories of many who grew up in Tacony.
May they perpetuate his mission for the benefit of generations
to come.
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