Floor Burns
by M.C. Antil

Chapter Seven: Patron Saint of the Hearts, Part One

It would be understandable to give Adam Markowski and Billy E the bulk of the credit for finally getting an all-new gym built for Sacred Heart after a handful of seasons operating out of  VO's gently aging one.  After all, one week in the summer of 1960, the two teamed up and applied a full-court press on many parishioners and a good number of West End merchants.  And, as a result, over four days they helped the parish raise over $200,000.

Or credit could go to Marie Tuchewicz and Chet Iwanski, co-chairs of a fund-raiser held that Spring to honor Clarence Kadys (a local hardware store owner, one of the founders of the Polish American Club, and chairman of Polish Scholarship Day), the proceeds from which primed the pump on what church officials began calling their New Gym Construction Fund.

Or, likewise, credit could go to John Wysocki, the enormously successful restaurateur and funeral director who, once the gym fund had reached a certain dollar figure, told the parish to go ahead and break ground. He’d cover the balance.

Give any one of these people credit, and you wouldn’t get much of an argument from anyone who lived and died Sacred Heart basketball back in the day. But, truth be told, you’d be off base – at least in spirit

Because if there was one person – one youngster – who deserves the lion's share of the credit for getting a new court built for the Hearts, it was a wide-eyed and wild-haired immigrant who a decade prior had come to this country, literally, sucking his thumb and holding the hem of his mother’s housecoat, not knowing a soul and unable to even speak the language.

You see, if there was patron saint of Sacred Heart basketball, if there was one person who lit the sort of fire that would eventually envelop every last kid to ever wear the maroon and white of the Hearts, it was a small, wiry, whirling dervish who came into this world at the height of the war against Hitler as Eugieniusz Fisch. And to appreciate the rarified air that Sacred Heart basketball had come to occupy by the Fall of 1966, it would be helpful to turn back the clock two decades earlier and learn about the skinny, undersized Polish immigrant who came to this country and helped set into motion the school’s brief but oh-so remarkable run of excellence.

In many ways, Gene Fisch’s days at Sacred Heart were the very embodiment of the American dream, an unlikely tale of a first-generation kid fresh off the boat who worked, hustled and in no small way willed himself to success in America – both on and off a basketball court.

Fisch was a dribbling, shooting, passing, basketball-loving machine whose passion for the game was evident from the moment he first set foot on the court at the West End Boys Club. Though lightning-quick, stronger than he appeared, and physically skilled, the thing that truly set Gene Fisch apart – besides his electric blue eyes and the unruly shock of blonde curls that rose from his head like a pencil eraser – was a life force that seemed to radiate from within.

Although some would contend Gene Fisch was not even the best player on his own team, what he lacked in size, brawn and athleticism, he more than made up for in willpower, self discipline, and a deep and almost pathological desire to succeed.

Fisch would become one of only two players in history to earn first-team All Parochial League honors three years running and go on to win an athletic scholarship to New York University, where along with All American Barry Kramer and future NBA star, Happy Hairston, he'd become a member of, perhaps, the finest team in that school's history. But how Gene Fisch’s athletic career ended was truly nothing compared to the improbable circumstances under which it began.

Gene’s mother, Branislawa, a sturdy, big-boned woman, had given birth to him in a clearing behind her tiny thatched-roof farmhouse, while hiding from the Nazi soldiers who had occupied her village.  Given the lack of any surgical or even workshop tools at her disposal, she was forced to chew through own umbilical cord and tie it off by the light of the moon.

Gene’s father, meanwhile, Andrzej, both shorter and thinner than his wife, was a quiet and unassuming man who constantly struggled to eke out even a meager living as a farmer in the Polish countryside.

The Fisches – Gene, his mother and father, and his two sisters and brother, all of whom were older – not only spent years in Nazi death camps, they also spent months as human shields in a German munitions train, barricaded like animals in a boxcar without food, light or running water. The Nazis believed Allied planes might be less inclined to bomb a train (even one with deadly cargo, like armaments and munitions) for fear they might kill the innocent civilians who were also on board.

One day, in one of the handful of death camps he called home as a youngster, Gene was ripped from the arms of his mother by two Nazi soldiers and taken to a makeshift army hospital where he was, in ghastly fashion, used in a medical experiment to test how to treat field burns. For the experiment, acid was poured directly onto the boy's face by a Nazi doctor. The process burned Gene terribly around his right cheek and ear and left him with open wounds and sores that would ultimately result in deep and horrific facial scarring.  He was still in diapers at the time.

Somehow, throughout their time under the Nazis, the Fisches not only found away to survive, but they managed to keep their family intact.

They defied the odds and cheated death many times over, yet by the time they'd stashed away enough money for steamship transport to the U.S., by the time they landed on Ellis Island, got processed and deloused, by the time they Americanized their names, rode the New York Central out of Penn Station and found housing near Bronislawa’s sister in Syracuse, where they started new lives as U.S. citizens, they were no longer Poles anymore, much less Polish people.  To many Syracusans, even in their newly adopted neighborhood on the West End, they were DP's – for Displaced Persons – a class of immigrants a notch or two below the country’s more well-heeled and Americanized Slavs.

To others, including many in Syracuse's dozens of ethnic parishes, the Fisches and their ilk – foreigners who spoke little English, dressed oddly, and carried the unmistakable odor of first generation – they were simply DP's. However, in those parts of town, when the term "DP" got used, it was uttered derisively and with a second, far more sinister meaning. To those outside Syracuse's Polish community living in the shadows of the twin spires of Sacred Heart, DP stood not for “Displaced Person.” It stood for “Dumb Polack.”

 

 

 

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For the Fisch kids, particularly the boys, life in America proved to be a mixed bag. The older of the two, Dominik, 16 years old when he arrived and a stranger in a strange land, with no friends and a limited ability to speak even conversational English, quickly withdrew and turned somber. As a result, every once in a while he'd show bitterness that would quickly cross over into flashes of outright anger. Dominik, like so many immigrant Poles, eventually dug in his heels and starting holding steadfast to his native language and culture.

He also began to strongly resist the ways of his new country. And Dominik’s internal conflict was only exacerbated by the fact that, since Sacred Heart didn't have a high school, he was forced to attend Central, a rough, inner-city public school that, more than any other high school in town, was a mix of poor and working-class black and white students. Dominik felt alone as he rode the bus to school each morning, alone as he walked the majestic halls each day, and alone as he ate lunch by himself, trying not to stand out. He also felt desperately alone as he painfully and begrudgingly tried to teach himself enough English to get by, picking up words and phrases here and there from teachers, classmates, textbooks, billboards and, most frequently, songs he’d hear on the radio or shows he’d watch on TV.

Gene, on the other hand, loved everything about his new country. As a wide-eyed eight-year old whose mind was like a sponge, he couldn’t get enough of Syracuse. His passion for western culture, his thirst for knowledge, and his grasp of the English language increased almost daily, and to witness his transformation from waif-like holocaust survivor to All-American boy was like watching like time-lapse photography of a flower going from bud to bloom.

Gene particularly fell in love with sports. Over the next two or three years, at the Boys Club, a small brick structure down the street from Sacred Heart, a rugged but kind-hearted man named John Lukowski took Gene under his wing and taught him the basics of the two games he loved most, basketball and baseball. Lukowski, like many in the parish, knew Gene’s backstory. And who couldn’t help but be drawn to the energetic boy with the wild mop of hair, scarred face, and mismatched but always clean hand-me-down clothes?

In time, big John became something of a second father to Gene, whose own father (now calling himself Andrew) had gotten a job sweeping floors at the Autolite factory and was working as much as possible to save for a down payment on a house. As the dominant male in Gene’s home-away-from-home – the Boys Club – Lukowski offered him a combination of guidance, inspiration and support, both on and off the playing field or basketball court.

Given Gene’s fascination with sports and his burning desire to fit in, he immediately developed a passion for Lukowski's two favorite games. He was too young and small, of course, to play either baseball or basketball very well – at least at first – but that did not stop him from practicing for hours. He wanted to be the best at both, and desperately so. Even though he was still a child, Gene saw how, in America, sports could serve as currency for a young man. Sports allowed him to bond, gave him standing in hid community, and served as a way for him to make a name for himself – and not just in his own neighborhood, but in neighborhoods all across town, many of which he'd heard about, but never seen.

By the time he turned nine, Gene was ready to play organized baseball. That spring he tried out for the West End PBA Little League. Unfortunately, the Fisches had little money for anything other than the basics. As a result, Gene found himself with no glove or cleats or even sneakers. All he had to offer any would-be coach was an attentive mind, a willing body, and a burning desire to learn.

When he showed up for tryouts in his beat up leather school shoes and school pants, not to mention without a glove, he soon found himself one of a handful of kids not picked by any of the six league coaches. As Gene listened to the names being called, one by one, by the six fathers who doubled as coaches, and realized his was not going to be among them, he was crushed. It was all he could do, in fact, to not break down and cry on the spot.

Gene Fisch had been born in a clearing in a forest. He'd been used as a lab rat in a gruesome human experiment. He'd lost his home and village and been forced to live in one DP camp after another.  He once slept just a few feet from two rotting bodies locked in a Nazi death train. His family had been shot at by Nazi soldiers and he, personally, had stared down the barrel of one of their cocked and loaded rifles.  But nothing – nothing – made him feel what we felt that day getting cut from the West End Little League.

Instead of hanging his head and moping, however, or blaming his status as a DP, he walked home and made a promise to himself. He promised he'd just become a better baseball player; he'd make himself a better player. All he had to do to ensure that he would never get cut again was work harder. And that’s exactly what he did.

Every morning he began waking up well before school and heading to Frazer Park, where he'd spend an hour or so throwing a beat up old baseball against the wall, building up his arm strength and teaching himself how to pick up any variation of ball coming at him; line drives, grounders, pop flies, even short hops. After school he'd return do the very same thing. He did all those mind-numbing and repetitive drills without a glove; something that began to increase both his hand-eye coordination and his ability to catch the ball. Before long, young Gene had turned himself into an excellent fielder.

That was only the start, though. He also continued to go to many West End PBA practices and games, sitting in the bleachers, watching the drills, and listening to what the coaches said about different situations. He did this day in and day out for the better part of three weeks, following as many teams as his commitments at home and school would allow.

Finally, one day, a young coach named Joe Hanyak noticed Gene alone in the bleachers, and wondered why he continued to come to watch his practices, even though he wasn’t on his team – or, as far as he could tell, any team. Hanyak was a parishioner who ran the local 7-Up distributorship a half mile or so down Genesee Street. His team, which he both coached and sponsored, was the league’s weak sister to begin with, and had also just suffered a blow because its starting catcher was forced to quit when his dad got transferred to the GE plant near Albany.

When Hanyak motioned Gene over, the boy sprinted out of the bleachers toward him. Hanyak smiled and asked Gene if he wanted to play on his team. The young man with the curly shock of hair and brown school shoes nodded excitedly and said, "Yes, please."

“What position do you play?” asked Hanyak. Fisch’s eyes sparkled and he shot back, “What you need?” Hanyak said, "I need a catcher." Gene looked at him like his prayers had just been answered and announced proudly in broken English, “I catch!”

After practice that night, Gene sprinted home to tell his mother the good news. As he approached his house, he saw on the steps of his two-family duplex, his family's upstairs neighbor, Joe Haryan, a middle-aged man whose marriage had recently crumbled. Even as a child, Gene sensed a deep sadness in the man.

Haryan’s upstairs apartment was small and modestly furnished, but spotlessly clean. He was known to take a drink now and then, and to occasionally drink alone. But unlike so many other men from the neighborhood who spent time in taverns like Leo Bielski’s, the St. Louis Club, the Polish Home, or the Old Port, he never seemed to get loud or ugly while drinking. And, at least during those years he lived above Gene, he seemed to entertained few, if any visitors. When he wanted, Joe Haryan could be an engaging conversationalist. But Gene noticed he seemed to go long stretches in almost complete silence, which, the boy reasoned, must be how it was when a man lived alone.

Regardless of Haryan’s mood, however, Gene always had a way of buoying his spirits and taking his mind off things. The kindly Pole would light up whenever he saw his little downstairs buddy bounding home after school, books in hand. And like Lukowski, his mentor at the Boys Club, Haryan become something of a surrogate father, regularly taking Gene to Syracuse Chiefs baseball games and Syracuse University football games, where he'd teach him the strategies and finer points of each sport, while at the same time singling out great plays or performers he should keep an eye on.

When Gene told Haryan he was going to be playing for 7-Up in the West End PBA, the old man broke into a big smile and eagerly listened as the boy recounted the story of that afternoon’s good fortune. Then one morning, just two or three days later, before Gene set out for school, his mother approached him with her hands behind her back. She told him that someone had left something on the porch, which she found in a brown paper bag that was leaning up against the door. As she pulled her hands out from behind her back, Gene looked down and as he did his eyes grew wide. There in his mother’s right hand was a shiny new baseball glove, just his size. Later, when she asked her neighbor about the bag on her doorstep, she'd learn the glove had been a gift from Mr. Haryan. Long before most Americans had ever heard the old African proverb about a village raising a child, that principle was alive and well in the tightly knit West Side of Syracuse.

That year Gene did, indeed, play catcher for Joe Hanyak’s ragged 7-Up squad, but not for long. Within a few games, his coach moved him to shortstop. Also, rather than continuing to hit him near the bottom of the order, Hanyak eventually determined he deserved a more prominent spot in the lineup. With each game, Gene got better and better, due in part to his natural ability and in part to the fact he continued to wake up every day and go to Frazier Park and do his drills. By the end of the season, despite the fact he was almost a year younger than just about every kid in the league, and the fact he still didn’t own baseball shoes, Gene Fisch was voted the West End PBA’s All Star shortstop; a position which, outside of pitcher, is the most important in Little League.

 

 

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Gene Fisch’s basketball career started much the same way as his baseball career did. Cut from the Sacred Heart grammar school team in 1951 – he was, after all, just a third grader – Gene nevertheless made a daily pilgrimage to the Boy’s Club to work on his game, particularly his dribbling and shooting. Lukowski would make up basketball drills that he'd then have Gene do tirelessly, and which the young boy did over and over again until he started getting the hang of them. In one drill, Gene would take shots from at or near the top of the key, and would not go home until he’d made ten in a row. Regardless of the hour or when he promised his mother he’d be home for dinner, Gene would fire away until he had made ten straight baskets. He also worked tirelessly on his dribbling and passing, particularly with his weaker left hand, and he would often force his body to become more and more left-handed by going days on end dribbling and shooting the ball only with his off-hand.

That's not to say that Gene was unique in his attitude toward drills. Many Syracuse boys in the summers of Gene's youth did drills in their driveways and on public courts across the city, and many loved the game and worked diligently to get better at it. Yet, regardless of the passion that kids in Syracuse had for basketball, there was something about Gene that drove him harder than just about any other young man who'd ever suit up for his school team. After all, only a handful of the basketball-loving youngster in the post-War Syracuse of the 1950’s would ever make practice a religion like Fisch did. Fewer still would inflict upon themselves a steadier and more grueling regimen of drills. But above all, none would ever be driven by a darker vision of how cruel men can be to each other, or live more with the sobering knowledge that, despite the grace of God and the love of family, even a little boy's time on earth is, ultimately, no more certain than the light of a flickering candle.

The same year he was cut from Sacred Heart's grammar school team, Gene earned a spot an independent traveling All Star team in a circuit called Biddy Basketball, a sort of Little League for young hoopsters. And much like what happened in baseball, when he rose from obscurity to stardom in less than a season, Fisch went from being a fringe Biddy League player to a star in all of about two months.

But unlike his undermanned 7-Up baseball squad, the Syracuse Biddy Basketball All Stars were loaded with talented youngsters and by the end of the season they'd emerged as a powerhouse on the Upstate New York Biddy circuit.

Based in the West End and coached by Bob Hayes, a basketball-loving Irishman and former Parochial League star from the working-class Irish neighborhood of Tipperary Hill, and led by two undersized Frazer Park kids who'd both go on to become Parochial League All Stars – Gene and a St. Brigid's boy named Billy Jones – in March, the Syracuse team participated in an annual tournament the promoters labeled the Biddy Basketball National Championship. Hayes’ club, with Fisch and Jones serving as his twin scoring machines, won three games to capture the New York State Championship before heading to West Virginia to play in the quarterfinals, semis and championship game.

It was during this tournament that, for the first time in his life, Gene Fisch began to realize just how good a player he’d made himself. Not only was he scoring twenty and sometimes thirty points a game, but he was being singled out by others, including some adults, for his on-court skills. Yet he continued to drive himself and continued to beat himself up over the smallest mistake. Before one game in Saugerties, near Albany, Hayes pulled him aside and told him not to worry so much, that he was the best young player he’d ever coached and that he knew Gene would lead Syracuse to a win.

Another time, during a halftime exhibition at a Syracuse Nationals game at the State Fair Coliseum, which was part of a Biddy league fundraiser, Gene was approached by one of the Nats stars, a lanky veteran named George King, who two years later would make a key steal and hit two free throws to help his Nats clinch their one and only NBA championship, and who'd later coach Indiana schoolboy legend Rick Mount at Purdue.  King had watched the Biddy kids in earnest, knowing they'd soon be playing a team of boys from his home state of West Virginia. Following the exhibition, he went up to Gene and put his hand on his shoulder, saying, “I’ve seen you play, son. You’re very, very good.” He then smiled and added, “When you get down there, you go easy on those Mountaineer boys, hear?”

Though the Syracuse All Stars would finally lose in the championship game, it was not through any fault of Gene’s. He averaged over twenty points throughout the tournament and earned a spot on its All-Tourney team.

Gene made the grammar school team the next season, in 1953, when he was just 11 years old. He quickly became a starter, and led his team to a championship. However, because he had so little formal schooling before sailing to America, and had entered Sacred Heart two grades behind others his age, at the time of his exploits he was still in the fourth grade. This didn’t concern Gene at the time. In fact, Gene never really gave much thought to what grade he was in, or the clothes he wore, or even the scar on his face. All he knew is he loved basketball, and his sole focus was on becoming the best player in the city.

But then one day he heard about something called the New York State High School Athletic Commission and a set of rules it had governing player eligibility. Apparently, as Gene would learn, one such rule decreed that any boy nineteen or older would be prohibited from playing any varsity sport. Gene did some quick math, realized he'd turn nineteen during basketball season of his senior year, and immediately started considering the implications. As he did, he realized he'd be ineligible to play midway through his senior year. He knew he just had to play basketball as a senior. It would destroy his plans if he didn’t. But what to do? He pondered his options for a while, and then, just as his mother taught him, and just as he'd done time and time again in his young life, he decided to take matters into his own hands.

Gene immediately went to Sister Mary Judith, a young Pole from nearby Buffalo, and a nun who, from the first day Gene entered school, had taken a profound interest in the boy's welfare. Even though she was the fifth grade teacher, and Gene was only in first grade at the time, she had worked with him on improving his English and eliminating his accent. And on more than one occasion, as she noticed Gene’s clothes becoming worn, she’d take a few dollars from her meager savings and buy for him a nice shirt or pair of chinos at the EZ Bargain Center. And now that Gene had entered the fifth grade, she had become not just his mentor and benefactor, but his teacher.

Gene closed the classroom door one day after school, the year after she’d been his teacher, and slowly walked over to Sister Judith’s desk. He said he needed to talk to her. Gene then detailed his dilemma. He said his goal was to go to college and play basketball. He said his mother and father were still very poor so they’d never be able to afford to send him. He explained, too, that the only way he'd ever get to go to college was to win a scholarship, and that the only way he would ever get to do that was to have a great senior year. Gene then told his teacher with as much resolve as he had ever told anyone anything, “Sister, I want to skip seventh grade.”

Most nuns would have balked, or tried to dissuade the young man to stay right where he was. Most would have tried to convince Gene that a scholarship was a long-shot at best, and that good grades were far more important than basketball to one’s future; but not Sister Judith. She knew how much Gene had been through and how much he loved the game. She knew too how ill-equipped the Fisches were to send their son to college. She also knew Gene was an excellent student and had an aptitude, determination and mental discipline unlike any child she'd ever taught.

But more than anything else, Sister Mary Judith knew the young man standing on the other side of her desk wasn’t just another starry-eyed kid with a pipe dream. She’d seen a lot of basketball in her time, some of it pretty good too. And she knew people. As this boy with the bright eyes, curly hair and facial scar stood before her and spoke with conviction about his future, she suddenly realized something for the very first time: that with his fanatic work habits, his passion for success, and his savant-like ability to pass, dribble and shoot a basketball, little Gene's future just might, indeed, include time as a big-time college player.

 

 

 

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Gene’s Fisch’s run as a Sacred Heart grammar school star was both historic and record-setting. Playing just 6-minute quarters, most grammar school games ended with the winning team generally scoring somewhere between thirty and forty points, and often less. Twice in a game the little Polish flash with the curly hair and scar topped fifty points all by himself, and he frequently topped thirty.

His specialty was his outside shot, which he launched often and with confidence. Gene’s long-range form was both unique and deadly. Because of the hanging ductwork at the Boys Club, where he'd honed his skills, Gene had developed an exaggerated line-drive shot. Such a trajectory, with its limited arc, would prove to be critical as he often found himself playing games in dozens of Syracuse’s turn-of-the-century gyms, many of them bandboxes marked by limited out-of-bounds territory, spongy backboards, soft rims, and comically low ceilings.

In addition to working on becoming a great shooter, during his countless hours at the Boys Club and Frazer Park, Gene had also drilled himself into becoming a top-notch dribbler and passer. His favorite player, pro or college, was Celtic star Bob Cousy, a wiry guard who in the 1950’s single-handedly revolutionized basketball with his talent and showmanship. Much like the Harlem Globetrotters did in their exhibitions against slower, inferior opponents, Cousy would dribble through and around defenders, often with either hand, and occasionally behind his back. And his ability to throw precise, no-look passes to open teammates made it seem as though he had either a sixth sense or eyes in the back of his head.

Gene had watched Cousy play for the first time on a TV set in the front window of the local appliance dealer on Genesee Street, Giminski’s, and had marveled at his speed and agility. He also saw how Cousy could ignite a crowd with his flashy passes and one-man dribbling exhibitions. It wasn’t long before Gene had incorporated many of those same moves into his drills at the Boys Club and had started to use a few of them in game situations.

Gene didn’t have to go far to find the second of his two basketball muses. And though he never saw his second muse play even one minute of basketball, of the two he was the one that had a far greater impact on young Gene’s relationship with the game. When Gene was just eight or nine, and long before he even made the Sacred Heart grammar school team, his Friday nights were all about basketball.

Every Friday all winter long, after a fried haddock sandwich with extra tartar sauce, a side of coleslaw and an ice-cold 7-ounce Canada Dry Ginger Ale at the Red Star Fish Fry, Gene would pile into Paul Januszka’s family car with Mr. and Mrs. Januszka and head across town to watch his brother play. Reggie Januszka, who tutored Gene on the finer points of basketball, and who himself became a terrific high school player, played at St. John the Evangelist under a fiery young coach named Bobby Felasco.

Gene loved watching Felasco’s fast breaking offense and high-pressure man-to-man defense, deployed as a full-court press, which made St. John the Evangelist contents often look less like basketball games than track meets.

This was especially true when Evangelist was playing at home. As one of only two teams in the league without a home gym, St. John the Evangelist played many of its “home” games at North High on the city’s North Side. North’s gym was huge, and not just by Parochial League standards, but NBA standards. And when big lumbering teams like Assumption would head a few blocks east up Court Street to play Evangelist, it wasn’t unusual to see a nip-and-tuck first half, followed by a second half in which the bigger, slower visiting players would simply run out of gas and spend the better part of the next sixteen minutes wheezing, gasping, grabbing the bottom of their shorts and hoping against hope, as they stood doubled over in pain, that they wouldn’t throw up in front of the cheerleaders.

As Gene sat there as a small boy, night after Friday night, he soon found himself convinced that when he grew up he was going to play Felasco-style basketball. And because of that, he not only worked religiously on shooting and passing on the run, he started running. And running. And running some more. Beginning as a fourth grader Gene began to run everywhere. He'd run to school. He'd run to the Boys Club. He'd run to Frazer Park. When he got older and developing an eye for the opposite sex, he'd run to the girl’s house. Though not a gifted runner, Gene eventually trained himself to run great distances at a rapid pace without stopping. It got to a point that by the time he reached high school he could keep up with, and even beat, the fastest members on the Sacred Heart cross-country team. In fact, one time on a dare from a member of the cross-country team, he not only ran in his only Parochial League cross-country meet, he won it.

Eventually Gene started bringing a basketball with him, and would practice his dribbling everywhere he went, especially on his long runs. No matter what time of day or night, if you were on the West End and in shouting distance of Sacred Heart, there was a chance that you'd be able to hear the faint sound of a basketball dribbling. This was especially true early in the morning, before the rhythm of the city would swallow the solitary sound of young man bouncing a ball on some concrete or blacktop surface in the neighborhood. Years later, veteran Syracuse police sergeant Chet Pienkowski, who as a young officer served as a crossing guard at Sacred Heart, remembered Fisch’s non-stop dribbling. Without having to turn around, he would simply shout over his shoulder, “Morning, Gene,” and the young man would answer equally as loud, “Morning, Mr. Pienkowski.”

The years of running, shooting and dribbling, day after day, both indoor and outdoor, paid off handsomely. By the time Gene was twelve, he had molded himself into a superb ball handler and shooter. Even though he stood only 5’3” and was easily the lightest player on his team, and even though he went directly from the 6th grade to the 8th, for two consecutive seasons – his 6th and 8th grade years – Gene emerged as one of the greatest scorers and playmakers in the history of Syracuse grammar school.

Not coincidentally, both his 6th and 8th grade teams went undefeated. In addition, with Gene as headliner, attendance at Hearts grammar school games, which had always been strong, reached overflowing – and not just at home, but on the road. Basketball fans, even those not living within the Polish enclave on the city’s West Side, regularly came out to get a first-hand look the Hearts’ curly-haired little dynamo, the skinny kid with the scar on his face, the jaw-dropping, no-look passes and the wild, trolley-line outside shot.

Roughly at the same time Gene’s career was ascending, something far more fundamental to the parish was unfolding. A dedicated and ambitious Polish immigrant priest named Monsignor Piejda had hatched a plan that he and a handful of parishioners had been formulating for some time. Piejda’s vision was to add a wing to the existing Sacred Heart grammar school building and take it from a K-8 facility to a full, K-12 one.

In essence, much like nine other major parishes in the city had done over the course of the past few decades, he wanted to open a parish-based and state-accredited high school. In addition to the new wing, he also wanted to build a state-of-the-art gymnasium, complete with roll-away bleachers, glass backboards and a spacious coach’s office. So in 1955, after an extensive capital campaign, Sacred Heart parish did just that, opening the high school for 9th graders and establishing long-term plans to eventually fund and build a brand new gymnasium.

The opening of Sacred Heart High delighted the neighborhood’s Poles for any number of reasons. Many parishioners, particularly those with strong ties to the motherland, felt that a Polish high school in the neighborhood would help preserve their culture and offer a layer of protection between the traditions of the Old World and the rapid encroachment of American culture. Others believed that a high school would add status to the parish and validate their growing sense that Sacred Heart was, perhaps, the most vital and important parish in the Diocese. But a significant majority – most of them, admittedly, basketball fanatics – remained excited for one reason and one reason only: after years of watching so many Polish boys leave the neighborhood for schools like Evangelist and Cathedral, where they then went on to become stars and bring glory to parishes other than their own, these boys would now be able to stay close to home and bring glory and honor, not just to Poland, but to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The first year of varsity play in the Parochial League for Sacred Heart was the 1956-57 season. Gene at the time was in 8th grade, and enjoying one of the greatest seasons ever by a grammar school player in Syracuse. And although the Hearts varsity, a team comprised entirely of underclassmen, won only 8 games that first season, it was assumed by most of the increasingly rabid fan base that the basketball situation would correct itself once Gene entered his freshman year and started leading the Hearts high school team to victory after victory, just as he had done for its grammar school team.

That natural progression turned out to be anything but a foregone conclusion, however. Not only was Gene becoming a highly coveted basketball and baseball prodigy, but after so many Saturday afternoons sitting with Joe Haryan in Archbold Stadium, watching the likes of All American halfback Jimmy Brown carve up yardage for the S.U. football team, he'd fallen in love with the idea of playing football. So, when Christian Brothers Academy on the near North Side offered Gene a scholarship to play all three sports, he was ready to jump.

CBA, a private all-boys school with the highest academic standards in the area, had a football tradition as storied as any team in the state, and year after year turned out some of the most powerful teams in Central New York. For a young immigrant boy who desperately wanted to test himself against America's best, the chance to go to CBA and compete at such a high level was a dream come true. Plus, even though the Parochial League did offer football, it was a watered down version called six-man football that, as the name implies, was favored by smaller Catholic and private schools since it required only six boys per team.

It is important to note that, as excited as Gene was about his scholarship, his parents did not fully comprehend its significance. Even though Andrew and Bernice Fisch, as his mother was now known, had always been intimately involved in the raising of their children and had, literally, saved their lives many times, and even though each continued to take a active role in guiding their kids’ major life decisions, they'd not yet seen Gene play, even once. Both Andrew and Bernice were tireless workers who considered things like baseball and basketball mere recreation; things best left to children to watch and play. Therefore, neither had any idea how fundamental sports were to American culture or how revered athletic ability was in the pantheon of talents a young man might hopefully possess.

Nor did Mr. and Mrs. Fisch have any clue that their youngest, little Eugieniusz, was not merely becoming a hero in the parish, he was becoming known to fans across the city. When Gene told his parents about winning a scholarship, they were delighted, but little more. They thought nothing of what his going to CBA might mean to the fledgling Hearts basketball program or its growing legion of fans. Nor did they care. All they knew is that Gene had been rewarded for his hard work, and they couldn’t be happier.

The same could not be said, however, for Sister Mary Judith. When Gene told her the next day he'd won a scholarship to CBA, she momentarily gasped and grew pale. As a young woman born of means, she'd turned her back on family and home for a life of celibacy and devotion to God, giving herself to Jesus, both body and soul. But she was not merely a devout Catholic, she was a proud Pole who, above all, would have done whatever it took to protect the priests and parishioners of her beloved Sacred Heart.  So when Gene told her he was thinking about playing basketball for CBA, it was as if he had come up to her, taken his fist and punched her in the stomach.

Of course, like so many nuns, Sister Judith was nothing if not strong-willed and as tough as barbed wire. Rather than taking the news of Gene’s scholarship lying down, she got resourceful. First she appealed to his sense of loyalty. Then she leveraged whatever chits she might have held for all the shirts, chinos and English lessons she'd given him over the years. Finally, when that failed, she did what any red-blooded Polish girl from inner city Buffalo would have done; she stooped to extortion.

One day, soon after hearing his news, she interrupted class and asked Gene if she might have a brief word with him in the hall. There, she looked the young man straight in the eye, pointed at him and told him that even though he was a good student, he still needed her to get good grades. She reminded him of the time when she tweaked his first quarter report card, so as not to alarm Monsignor Piejda, who always took it upon himself to deliver each child’s grades personally, often letting his eyes linger over the report cards of the basketball players and cheerleaders. She then suggested that if Gene wanted to maintain his stellar academic record and to keep getting excellent report cards – report cards that Monsignor Piejda would continue to take a deep interest in – he might want to reconsider his decision to attend CBA. She said she and the other nuns at the convent had been talking about his situation over dinner last night and were concerned about what sort of a message his not going to Sacred Heart High might send to all the other students.

Sister Judith couched her terms, of course, much like a mobster might do when “offering” protection to some poor shop owner. Years later, Gene would say he saw a twinkle in her eye as she explained how things were going to work if he actually followed through on his plans – meaning she was, most likely, just kidding. Then again, who knew? It was, after all, basketball. And this was, after all, Sister Mary Judith, the strongest-willed teacher in the whole world, who loved Sacred Heart as much as anyone in the parish and who remained steadfast in her belief that the all-new parish high school was going to become a Parochial League power.

Besides, what would it say to all the Polish kids in the area if the greatest athlete in parish history, a good, hard-working boy who survived the death camps to write his own Horatio Alger story, chose to leave the West End and go downtown to some private school – especially with a brand new Polish school just a stone’s throw from his house? What, in the name of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, would that say about Monsignor Piejda’s vision, which had been after all, built by and for Polish families just like his?

Fortunately for all concerned, there was someone who, as it turned out, loved Sacred Heart as much as Sister Judith, if not more. Gene Fisch, himself. He thought about what Sister Judith had told him that day and the fact she was willing to say it.  He'd always thought his decision would impact him alone. But now, Gene started to think about Sister Judith and what she had given up to become a nun, about the devotion she'd consistently shown for the people of the parish – people like his mother, father and Joe Haryan. Sister Judith, he realized, was right. Football be damned. And CBA be damned too.

There was only one high school for him, and it was located in the new wing of the very building in which he was now sitting.

 

 

 

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