Division Avenue High football coach Jerry Jewell was immortalized as the tall, dark stranger in a Maverick theme song parody

The old coach is still going strong. This photo was snapped at the class of 1960 reunion in 2010

Jerry Jewell was a physical education teacher, department chairman and football coach at Division Avenue High School for decades. Some of us remember him as early as around 1956 when he was a young gym teacher out of Cortland State. He built a great Blue Dragons football program, one of the best in Nassau County.

The class of 1961's John Kinstrey played on some of coach Jewell's early teams and recalls that the players, not to his face, referred to him as Tonka, Chief and Wahoo because he resembled a Native American.

"I think my teammate Carl Kielbasa hit on Tonka," said Kinstrey. "These names were terms of endearment which never left the confines of the locker room. The little ditty we made up about him went to the tune of the original Maverick TV show theme song starring James Garner."

Who was the tall dark stranger there?

Jerry Jewell is his name.

Beating a path to who knows where,

A whistle’s his companion

Wind sprints are his game.

Chorus:
Run along all you clods

Tearing up all the sod

Run it on down the field

And back again.

We’ll be here 'til five

And unless you come alive

We’ll be on this football field 'til ten.
**
Your blogger's recollection was that maybe John Kinstrey's 1961 classmate and football teammate Tom Lux had written lyrics. Here is his poetic reply.....

Tommy was talented, have to admit

But had nothing to do with the writing of it.

Daydreaming in class consumed most of my time

So I dabbled and pondered the challenge of rhyme.

The infringement of copyright I did take on

By the time they caught up

I long would be gone

So I stole the Maverick tune like a thief

And put in pentameter our Indian chief.
*****
Mr. Jewell attended the 50th reunion of Division Avenue football last year as well as the 50th reunion of the pioneer class of 1960. According to some of his players from the old days, their coach's early nicknames still seem appropriate. John Kinstrey has been crowned by your blogger as the Poet Laureate of DAHS football.

John Kinstrey's memories of moving from The Bronx to Levittown and years later reuniting with an old friend while in the Army

By John Kinstrey '61

When I first came out to the island from The Bronx, Tom Baker - then Tommy Paturzo - was hangin' with Louis Lopez, Steve Mohr, Richie Ostrowski, Johnny O'Brien (Louis' cousin) and a kid named Pierre Woog who had a fox of a sister named Nikki. They were all in the 5th grade, Nikki was in the 7th.
Unfortunately, I was in the 4th and at that stage of life the "big country kids" didn't relish having to drag some "younger city kid" around with them. But, Steve Mohr's folks (Uncle Charlie and Aunt Ethel) and my folks had been friends since before WWII and, I guess, due to parental pressure, he was told to take care of his "cousin". At least until I could swim and find my way back from the West Village Green pool by myself.
These "country" kids knew some neat stuff. We would take sewing thread spools with a rubber band over the end and shoot the old wooden, light-on-anything, stick matches at each other as we ran down the street setting peoples yards on fire with any match you couldn't manage to get into somebody's pocket or at least launch into their hair. We created these medieval carpet guns out of a piece of wood from an old orange crate, a rubber band, a bottle cap and a clothes pin. We could shoot one-inch pieces of linoleum at a thousand feet per second at each other - long before OSHA required safety glasses. Pete Smith, whose dad managed a drive-in movie, had potatoes and tomatoes growing behind his house on the Old Motor Parkway right-of-way. Ate them raw with some salt. Wow, this "country stuff" was cool.
Anyway, within my first week in town, this Ostrowski guy thought he could pick on me and face no retribution whatsoever - he thought. Enter Tommy Paturzo. Whatever Tommy said to him worked. At that stage of our lives, Tommy was the only one who even had biceps, much the less the 18 inchers. In any event, the Big O never laid a hand on me again. That was the first time Tommy had saved me. Once I got into the 4th grade crowd, Tommy and I only said “hey” every so often. That was the way it went for the duration of our school years.
Fast forward to 1978. I was, at that time, the Operations Officer for the 5th Training Brigade, Fort Dix, New Jersey. A former special forces captain, on the list for major, I was completely out of my element. The Army had just moved all the mechanics and truck driver training programs to us from Fort Jackson and Fort Knox, and I knew nothing about either of those specialties. In addition, we had to integrate female trainees into a facility which, until then, had been an infantry training environment, hence, all male. My boss tells me, on top of all the other things I had to do, to develop a Sexual Harassment/Rape Crisis Program. Sure. Ouch!
Then, my civilian admin person tells me - the last words an active duty guy wants to hear on a crazy, busy Monday morning - "Sir, you've got a reserve captain coming in next week for two weeks active duty." Great. Just friggin' great. Some frumpleman reservist, probably wearing a wig to cover up his ponytail (which was OK back then). "Send him to the motor pool and let him count truck parts. That should take up at least 14 days."
So a week later into my office comes this Army reserve captain, looking sharp as a tack in his short sleeve summer tan uniform; creases perfect, medals and ribbons aligned and with, what appeared to be, 20-inch biceps. The name tag above his right pocket said BAKER. He stopped three feet in front of my desk - I thought he was going to salute but there was no time... eye contact was made and it was "TOMMY!" ... "JOHNNY!" That's what they called me in the 4th grade.
The folks in the outer office must have thought it was a fist fight. We talked. Closed the years' gap. As it turned out, Captain Tom Baker had been involved in developing the same programs while formerly a police officer in Virginia Beach. But now he's a professor of sociology at the University of Scranton, and says he'd be happy to help me out. No parts counting for Captain Tom. No Sir! Tommy had saved me the second time and I would be forever grateful. As it turned out, the final document became a model for other installations Army-wide as the male/female specialties merged at an increasing rate.
Before Tom left Fort Dix to return to his professorial chores, my wife (Sharon) and I had the opportunity to have dinner with he and his lovely wife Jane at the McGuire Air Force Base Officer's Club. For dessert we had about four inches of rain in 20 minutes. McGuire AFB has a two-mile runway, a gazillion feet wide, and a like number of taxiways. Concrete everywhere. With no place to go, the rain became rivers. The rivers lakes. As we tried to negotiate this unrelenting deluge, it was apparent we were doomed. A missed turn into a dark warehouse complex turned out to be our only salvation. We drove up onto one of the loading docks and waited out the storm. I know Tom and Jane get a kick out of this memory.
John Kinstrey is retired and lives in North Carolina. He and Sharon have been married 35 years and have a daughter, a son and a pair of grandkids.

Recollections of Division Avenue High's 1960 football season

It was a memorable year for coach Jerry Jewell and his Blue Dragons team

John Kinstrey 1961 wrote the following as a comment on one of our blog posts.

There were several of us who played football for the Levittown Bears - a so-so town team - during our freshman year when the ninth grade (class of 1961) boys team went undefeated. Our sophomore and junior years showed some improvement but it was the magical summer preceding our senior year when we realized we would be playing the same teams our freshman whacked three years earlier in the coming season.

We were psyched. Wrote a song about coach Jewell to the Maverick tune. Mohican haircuts. Borrowed dad's car and cruised the turnpike. Al Baldwin and Carl Kielbasa led illegal conditioning drills throughout July and August and we all showed. We'd "pig out" at a new place called McDonald's near Island Trees High School. We just knew it was going to happen. Everything seemed right. We felt like champions. And at season's end, we were.

Jim Urban 1961 wrote the following as a comment on one of our blog posts.

Jewell was a tyrant who knew very little about football at that time. DAHS history shows that he was a good learner. John Kinstrey's right. The 1960 football season was a great one. Most of the guys had played together for four years, running the same offense. There were no real individual standouts, but what a team!

Frank Barning asked Jim if he had additional memories of that season and this is his reply:

I absolutely love football. In my mind, no other sport even compares. I am not sure why I feel this strongly, but I assuredly do.

When I was a kid in elementary school and junior high, I would play football from the end of baseball season until the beginning of baseball season. I never played basketball. Baseball, then football, then baseball. I'm sure this accounts for why I was such a horrific basketball player.

I never played organized football - no Red Devils or Levittown Bears for me. Probably, because there was some financial aspect associated with playing for those teams. Hell, I never even had a Tonette in elementary school because it cost 25 cents.

In frosh year, I broke my ankle early in the practice season and never got to play on that great freshman team. In sophomore year, I was attending Clarke High School on a scholarship that I was talked into accepting. So, I didn't get the opportunity to have my butt kicked by the varsity teams Division played that year.

In my junior year, I won the starting quarterback position on the varsity team. Gary Parker was my backup. I had a slight problem holding onto the ball however, and following the first snap in the first game of the season, I became Gary's backup.

Then came senior year. We knew that we would be good. We had toughness, speed, power and desire. We held voluntary, but illegal, summer conditioning drills without our coaches. I don’t know if these drills had any impact on our performance, but the attendance indicated that we all were thirsting for the season to begin.

One thing I recall with a smile. I smoked even then. Jewell saw me several times and warned me that we would have to complete a 3-mile run before we would be able to join the team. On a beastly hot day in August, we began our mandatory run. It was so hot and humid that Jewell cancelled the run after a short while. But, Ernie Villatore and I had already gotten our second wind and were successfully pacing each other around the track. Jewell stood with his jaw agape as we completed that run with ease. I never heard any more about smoking.

Our record that year was (I believe) 7-1. We lost our first game. This was a huge shock and disappointment. Great Neck South no less. We were truly dumbfounded. But oh how we rebounded.

Several of us played both offense and defense. As I recall, John Dilberger, Al Baldwin, Bob Bonacci, Carl Kielbasa, Bill Goldhammer, and I. Perhaps Jim Judson and Ed Thomas also played both ways. Then there was Ernie Villatore, Jerry Labie, Corky Cybriwsky and Mike Gurr going one way or the other. That’s it for my memory folks. Help! Anyone?

We played Plainview, Oyster Bay, Wheatley, Floral Park (I think), Herricks, Levittown Memorial (first time ever), and one more team that I can’t recall. Except for one game, we kicked the crap out of them all. And, we trounced Memorial 37-6.

I met my beautiful wife at a party following the Memorial game. If ever there was a case of love at first sight, this was it. I wondered why we had never met before until I discovered, several months later, that she had just turned 15!

I can recall with total clarity several of the successful plays we ran during that season and can even feel some of the “hits.” It was a wonderful time in a life filled with wonderful times. Perhaps I have answered my own question about football.

The story behind the story of the boxing matches at Division Avenue High School

John Kinstrey pleads not guilty to skimming funds

By John Kinstrey
Class of 1961

These posts to your blog have continued to open up my, and I’m sure many others, “remember when” files, and I have enjoyed every word of them. However, having said that, I now can plead “not guilty” to skimming the funds from the Cassidy/Kohler fight-of-the-century (see November 16 and 17 blog posts).

When I first read Jon Buller’s recollection of said event, I honestly could not recall anything of the who, what, when, how or why regarding the money. That is until I read Jack Jacobsen’s total recall of it and the synapses began to fire again. So here’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it:

In the fall of 1959, a bunch of us juniors and seniors (Albaum twins, Caldarero, Bernhardt, Bonacci, Burner, Tanner, Zaretsky, Kinstrey, Gurr, Rutner, Stanley, Cassidy, Bruce (Billy type) and some others who need to ”fess up”, decided we wanted to be Explorers – BSA type Explorers – and go camping in a foot of snow in upstate New York at the Onteora Boy Scout Reservation for Operation Igloo. In order to do that we needed a charter, sponsors, and adult supervision before we could become a validated Explorer Post – which was nothing more than a “cover” for a bunch of testosterone laden, “I-dare-you”,… “hey-guys-watch-this“ adolescents.

Well, thanks to two “teachers-with-good-intentions”, Messrs. Vinny Nava and Earl Langdon we were saved. Unfortunately, the Boy Scouts of America weren’t so lucky.
Anyway, in order to fund this operation we were expected to get involved in community projects: rake leaves, sell candy bars, cut grass, etc., basically come up with the bucks ourselves. Surely, these people were kidding. Nope. Bucks, lots of bucks. What were we to do? Real work was not an option.

That’s about the time the girl, whose affection was sought by both Bobby Cassidy and Tommy Koehler, shows up and… Bingo! We had a plan. We had a meeting in accordance with Bob Bonacci’s Rules of Order. Voted on recommendations and agreed on a fundraiser… ok a boxing match. And we didn’t even have to break a sweat. Thanks to our adult leadership, they got DAHS to let us use a classroom every Wednesday night; the wrestling room was just a hallway or two away.

So, if it will help to allay any consternation on the part of former classmates, the money was used to offset the cost to each of us (as well as some parents, I’m sure) and was given to BSA to pay for operations and salaries of some of the paid personnel at the Onteora Scout Reservation.

And, by the way, Jack Jacobsen, whose sister Judy was one of the most beautiful girls on the planet to my 14 year old eyes, was one of the three guys who, in the summer of 1957, formed the singing group, The Three J’s. We never wrote a song, sang a song, and weren’t even sure we could harmonize, but we were gonna be great. We started with matching white bucks. But suddenly, Johnny Robinson, who’s dad was a professor at NYU, moved away, I discovered girls and Jack, well,… his feet went from size 9 to 11 before Labor Day, the bucks were history and the Weekly Top 40 was out of reach.

Defense Rests!

Love ya’ll. It’s the way we talk down here in North Carolina.

John Kinstrey's memories of moving from the city to Levittown

John Kinstrey and his son JJ in 1990

By John Kinstrey '61

When I first came out to the island from The Bronx, Tom Baker - then Tommy Paturzo - was hangin' with Louis Lopez, Steve Mohr, Richie Ostrowski, Johnny O'Brien (Louis' cousin) and a kid named Pierre Woog who had a fox of a sister named Nikki. They were all in the 5th grade, Nikki was in the 7th.

Unfortunately, I was in the 4th and at that stage of life the "big, country kids" didn't relish having to drag some "younger city kid" around with them. But, Steve Mohr's folks (Uncle Charlie and Aunt Ethel) and my folks had been friends since before WWII and, I guess, due to parental pressure, he was told to take care of his "cousin". At least until I could swim and find my way back from the West Village Green pool by myself.

These "country" kids knew some neat stuff. We would take sewing thread spools with a rubber band over the end and shoot the old wooden, light-on-anything, stick matches at each other as we ran down the street setting peoples yards on fire with any match you couldn't manage to get into somebody's pocket or at least launch into their hair. We created these medieval carpet guns out of a piece of wood from an old orange crate, a rubber band, a bottle cap and a clothes pin. We could shoot one-inch pieces of linoleum at a thousand feet per second at each other - long before OSHA required safety glasses. Pete Smith, whose dad managed a drive-in movie, had potatoes and tomatoes growing behind his house on the Old Motor Parkway right-of-way. Ate them raw with some salt. Wow, this "country stuff" was cool.

Anyway, within my first week in town, this Ostrowski guy thought he could pick on me and face no retribution whatsoever - he thought. Enter Tommy Paturzo. Whatever Tommy said to him worked. At that stage of our lives, Tommy was the only one who even had biceps, much the less the 18 inchers. In any event, the Big "O" never laid a hand on me again. That was the first time Tommy had saved me. Once I got into the 4th grade crowd, Tommy and I only said “hey” every so often. That was the way it went for the duration of our school years.

Fast forward to 1978. I was, at that time, the Operations Officer for the 5th Training Brigade, Fort Dix, New Jersey. A former special forces captain, on the list for major, I was completely out of my element. The Army had just moved all the mechanics and truck driver training programs to us from Fort Jackson and Fort Knox, and I knew nothing about either of those specialties. In addition, we had to integrate female trainees into a facility which, until then, had been an infantry training environment, hence, all male. My boss tells me, on top of all the other things I had to do, to develop a Sexual Harassment/Rape Crisis Program. Sure. Ouch!

Then, my civilian admin person tells me - the last words an active duty guy wants to hear on a crazy, busy Monday morning - "Sir, you've got a reserve captain coming in next week for two weeks active duty." Great. Just friggin' great. Some frumpleman reservist, probably wearing a wig to cover up his ponytail (which was OK back then). "Send him to the motor pool and let him count truck parts. That should take up at least 14 days."

So a week later into my office comes this Army reserve captain, looking sharp as a tack in his short sleeve summer tan uniform; creases perfect, medals and ribbons aligned and with, what appeared to be, 20-inch biceps. The name tag above his right pocket said BAKER. He stopped three feet in front of my desk - I thought he was going to salute but there was no time... eye contact was made and it was "TOMMY!" ... "JOHNNY!" That's what they called me in the 4th grade.

The folks in the outer office must have thought it was a fist fight. We talked. Closed the years' gap. As it turned out, Captain Tom Baker had been involved in developing the same programs while formerly a police officer in Virginia Beach. But now he's a professor of sociology at the University of Scranton, and says he'd be happy to help me out. No parts counting for Captain Tom. No Sir! Tommy had saved me the second time and I would be forever grateful. As it turned out, the final document became a model for other installations Army-wide as the male/female specialties merged at an increasing rate.

Before Tom left Fort Dix to return to his professorial chores, my wife (Sharon) and I had the opportunity to have dinner with he and his lovely wife Jane at the McGuire AFB Officer's Club. For dessert we had about four inches of rain in 20 minutes. McGuire AFB has a two-mile runway, a gazillion feet wide, and a like number of taxi ways. Concrete everywhere. With no place to go, the rain became rivers. The rivers lakes. As we tried to negotiate this unrelenting deluge, it was apparent we were doomed. A missed turn into a dark warehouse complex turned out to be our only salvation. We drove up onto one of the loading docks and waited out the storm. I know Tom and Jane get a kick out of this memory.

John Kinstrey is retired and lives in North Carolina. He and Sharon have been married 35 years and have a daughter, a son and a pair of grandkids.