Despite playing four years in high school and one in college before becoming the broadcaster of my school’s games, I never learned as much about football in any of those stints as I did from John Durham.
John, the iconic coach from Bradford High, passed away from natural causes at his home outside of Pittsburgh, last Thursday, at age 83. His viewing will be Saturday afternoon and evening at McMurray, Pa.
We met 51 years ago when I took a job at WESB where one responsibility was broadcasting the football and basketball games of both Bradford High and since-closed Bradford Central Christian.
Durham was a fascinating person to me. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy who went on to serve as an Army officer in South Korea, he had the skills and background to be an engineer. But, as a football guy at heart, he chose a different career path … math teacher and coach.
After two years as an assistant at a high school in McKeesport, he was hired in Bradford. When I arrived in 1970, John was beginning his sixth season. Some of the local football “experts” persistently complained to me that not only did he not win enough, worse, he never threw the ball.
But my research told me that after going 2-7-1 that first year, Durham hadn’t had a losing season. And back then, the Owls were playing big-school football teams — Erie squads, Jamestown, Johnstown, DuBois, Warren, Meadville — not the remnants of the Allegheny Mountain League.
His knowledge and attention to detail quickly made me compulsive about preparation. One day I asked John if I could come to a weekly film session to scout the opponent and learn how Bradford would approach that team.
Durham’s key staffers were top-flight, Bill Shesman, the former head coach at Johnsonburg, and the late Ed Pomroy. And so it was every Monday night, watching film of the next week’s opponent that he had acquired from who-knows-where, for an hour-and-a-half.
By the time we left, I knew the other team’s key players by name and number and exactly how John and his staff would deploy their offense and defense that week.
Though John was oft-criticized for being so power-run-oriented, it worked for him and they showed me why. He, Shesman and Pomroy focused their film study on the opposing defensive ends, learning the best way to attack them and get 3-to-5 yards every carry.
Over the three seasons I broadcast Owls games, they went 22-7-1 but the highlight was the middle one, 1971.
Parkway Field, which Bradford shared with Central Christian, was being renovated and both schools were forced to play every game on the road.
Durham steered his team to a 10-0 record, including two point wins over both Warren and DuBois, two of the victories coming at its faux home field, Smethport’s McCoy Stadium.
Incredibly, BCC also didn’t lose, going 8-0. That season I didn’t broadcast a losing game. That 18-0 effort by both teams is one of the most remarkable accomplishments in Big 30 football history.
In a tribute to his dedication to the running game, at the banquet celebrating that ‘71 season, Durham cited two seniors in particular, Tom Mealy, the prolific yard-producing tailback, and 225-pound offensive tackle Gary Morris of whom he said, “We ran behind his blocks more than 700 times during his varsity career.”
Over the last six seasons of his 11-year career, John’s teams went 44-13-3, a glittering .742 percentage against quality competition.
To this day, I’m convinced he wanted to stay — as he was also athletic director — despite being offered a job at Pittsburgh’s Keystone Oaks. The narrative was, he’d have remained in Bradford for a few thousand dollars more, but that the school district administration demurred.
Durham coached at KO for 21 years and was ultimately inducted into the Pennsylvania High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame in 2000. But he didn’t retire from football until 11 years later after defensive assistant stints at Washington & Jefferson College and California (Pa.) University.
Once he left Bradford, I saw Durham only rarely but never forgot the football he taught me and how revered he was by his players who held him in such high esteem. Along the way, he wrote five books on the intricacies of the game, and John gave me one of them, “Game-Tested Football Drills,” which remains a prized possession because of the man who wrote it.
To me, the closing lines of his obituary were a perfect summation of his life and why I had so much respect and admiration for him:
‘He was a great inspiration and touched the lives of so many over many years. His commitment to excellence was only surpassed by his unwavering commitment to integrity.”
(Chuck Pollock, a Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
