FORGOTTEN TIMES
by Dick Graves
It was Bill Hanscom’s second year coaching Presque Isle’s varsity team, now called (for the first time) the Wildcats. I mentioned before that the Wildcats were originally called the Blue and Whites. The new name was attributed to Claude Taylor. Taylor had covered the sports arenas for The Star-Herald for over 60 years staring in 1928. As a young man, he would hang around the high school gym (later, Cunningham School) and watch Hanscom’s basketball teams practice. It was in 1932 that Taylor renamed the Blue and Whites to Wildcats. Taylor died in 2000 at the age of 94.
Photo courtesy of Dick Graves
NEIL MICHAUD, 1931, Presque Isle High School team.
Presque Isle won its first-ever Eastern Maine Championship in 1931 under the leadership and organizing of Coach Hanscom. Capt. Ralph Sweetser, Clarence Burnett, Verdelle Clark, Walter “Bus” Shaw, and Harold Glidden started every game that season. As mentioned before, there were 10 other players for back-up: Neil Michaud, Roy Beaulier, Elwood Harmon, Bob McEachern, Richard Sweetser, Harold Cheney, Dana Thompson, Percy Willette, Jack O’Donnell, John Cooper, Astle Ryder, and manager Phil Christie. The “Boys of ’31” went undefeated in high school play for the regular season. They lost only to Portland High in the game played for the State Championship.
The 1932 season retained the same starters as the year before, the only time that had happened up to that year. Shaw, Glidden, Sweetser, Burnett and Clark would finish their high school careers as part of one of the greatest basketball machines ever to play for Presque Isle. Through the season, they breezed by the Aroostook League, Aroostook County League and finally the taking the Eastern Maine Championship from South Portland High School. By the time they had captured the State Championship, the team had won its last 19 games. Two defeats came at the beginning of the season losing to the Houlton Athletic Club and Alumni teams. Ralph Shaw recalled once that he had estimated around 2,500 fans attended that final game at Orono. Perhaps 300 of those were from Presque Isle. The famous moment of that game came in the last few seconds when, the score now 30-29 in favor of Portland, Verdelle Clark dropped a long shot to give Presque Isle its State Championship. The final score was 31-30.
It’s of great historical significance that I quote from White’s “Fifty-One Years of Basketball Playing in Aroostook County” concerning the broadcasting of the Eastern Maine and State Championship games. One thing you must know first … Red Hughes, along with Sid Cook, was directly responsible for establishing Presque Isle’s first radio station, WAGM, in the Perry Theatre building in 1932. The first-ever live broadcasts of sporting events were telephone-relayed, play-by-play descriptions of the 1932 Eastern Maine Tournament and the State Championship game. White wrote, “… it was his (White) privilege to give a play-by-play description of the State Championship over a special telephone hookup from the indoor gym at Orono to Sid Cook in the Perry Theatre [corner of Main and State streets and burned in 1945] where the play description was relayed to eager fans who had to stay home. In the Eastern Maine Championship game a week earlier, Cook was in Orono and White on the Presque Isle end of the wire.” Let me note here that the final tournament games alternated from year to year between Bates College in Lewiston and the University of Maine at Orono.
The teams always traveled by train in the winter when playing out of town. Lunches were put up by mothers. The tournament games were played late into the evening so players had to put up wherever they could … dorms, gyms, etc. But, somehow this time – after winning the State Championship from Portland High School – the team returned to Presque Isle. It was late when the special B&A train stopped momentarily in Mars Hill. Townspeople, along with the members of the ACI team, saluted them with sirens and whistles. Later, around midnight, the train arrived in Presque Isle only to be greeted by 2,000 frenzied fans at the station. The five starters (two years a row) then ended their high school careers in flames of glory.
Next week’s installment will reach out and touch, if you will, some of the players from that famous team. All have passed away but one. Neil Michaud survives, is alive and well, and recalls clearly his 93 years. It’s been an extreme pleasure to know Neil over the years. I was invited to interview him at his home on Cedar Street. That meeting was at the pleasure of his daughter, Barb, who had extended the invitation. I was interested in Neil’s life, not only because he was a member of the “Boys of ’32,” but because he’s a wonderful person and the consummate gentleman. Something Neil has saved over the years will mightily surprise you, so stay tuned for part IV next week.
Photo courtesy of Dick Graves
THIS PARADE was held in downtown Presque Isle for the 1931 Eastern Maine Champs. Note the unfinished Northeastland Hotel in the background.
