Roger Kahn: 

A Boy Of Summer

Roger Kahn’s 1972 bestselling book about the Brooklyn Dodgers was so famous that when New York Governor George Pataki created a commission in 1997 to explore bringing the Dodgers back to Brooklyn, he named Kahn a member. 

The Boys of Summer, which had led the New York Times bestseller list for weeks, told the story of the 1950s Dodgers. Called by James Michener “the finest American book on sports,” it sold hundreds of thousands of copies and is still in print. In 2002, it was ranked #2 on Sports Illustrated’s list of the best 100 sports books of all time  (A.J. Liebling’s The Sweet Science, about boxing, was #1.)

Roger Kahn was born in Brooklyn in 1927 to a trivia-loving father who provided questions for the radio quiz show, “Information Please,” and a baseball-hating mother who taught her son poetry and Shakespeare. Both were teachers.

In the early 1950s he quit New York University after three years to join The New York Herald Tribune as a copy boy (he admitted to Ridgefield Press reporter Linette Burton that he got the job “by using a clever device, which was: my father knew the managing editor.”). 

At the age of 24, he was assigned to cover the Dodgers. “It was a rich time in the game’s history, especially in New York, the undisputed center of the baseball universe, home to three teams and three perfervid fan bases,” said The New York Times.

He spent two years reporting on the Dodgers and was then assigned to cover New York Giants’ baseball.

In the mid-1950s, he left the Herald Tribune to work as a sports editor for Newsweek, and to freelance for Sports Illustrated, The Saturday Evening Post and Esquire.  By the 1960s he was writing books on religion and sociology, including The Passionate People: What It Means to Be A Jew in America. 

Then came The Boys of Summer, the first of what was to be many books about sports and sporting personalities, but clearly, the best of them all.  The Times called it “as influential a baseball book as has been written in the last 50 years,” but Sports Illustrated qualified that, terming it “A baseball book the same way ‘Moby-Dick’ is a fishing book.”

The Boys of Summer was coming out  just as Kahn was moving to 830 North Salem Road in 1971, and the promotional tours and interviews that the book prompted made writing tough. 

“Each day I keep kicking the wastebasket and beating my brains to get out one page a day,” he told Nelson Merrell of The Press in June 1972. 

During a long promotional-tour period, Kahn was twice interviewed on the TV show of future Ridgefielder Dick Cavett, but he most remembered being terrified by having to appear on Johnny Carson’s show, knowing that Carson liked clever “one-liners” from his guests. “Nervous as hell on the night of the show, I got called to go on,” he told Merrell. “After the introduction, I sat down and Carson asked, ‘How’s it feel to be an instant smash?’ Then I delivered my rehearsed reply, ‘Better than a shot in the mouth.’” 

While in Ridgefield he also did a stint as a visiting professor of creative writing at Colorado College. He moved back to the city around 1976.

Kahn went on to write more than 20 books — many still in print — including, 

• Rickey & Robinson: The True, Untold Story of the Integration of Baseball, an account of how his close friend, Jackie Robinson, got to be a Dodger.
• Memories of Summer: When Baseball Was an Art, and Writing About It a Game, with stories of his Depression-era childhood, his reporting career, and his personal acquaintances with many great ballplayers.
• October Men, about the 1978 Yankees championship season.
• The Head Game: Baseball Seen From the Pitcher’s Mound, examining the psychological battle between hitter and pitcher.
  
• Joe and Marilyn: A Memory of Love, about the marriage of Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe.
• Good Enough to Dream, covering the lives and hopes of players in the lower minor leagues 

Kahn died in February 2020 at the age of 92.

Over his years of covering the game, Roger Kahn made many friends among the old-time ballplayers but few were as close as Early Wynn, a hard-drinking, Hall of Fame pitcher who was a longtime Yankee nemesis.

In 1973 he told The Press’s Merrell that Wynn was a good writer who did a regular column for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Editors at the Saturday Evening Post wanted Kahn to get his friend to write an article about the 1959 World Series between Chicago White Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers (in which Wynn was 1-1). They offered Wynn $1,250.

Wynn did the piece but when the Post editors insisted on his rewriting it, the pitcher balked and told Kahn he wanted $1,500.

“I called the editors, told them Wynn wanted more money, and got him $2,000,” Kahn said. “He’s bought my drinks ever since.”

Margaret O’Sullivan:

Boosting Sports for Women

In 1965,  the senior class at Ridgefield High School dedicated its yearbook to Margaret O’Sullivan who, by then, was a guidance counselor at the school. Few students at the time knew of the role “Miss O” played in helping young women be a part of interscholastic athletics.

     “Before girls sports at Ridgefield High School received an equality boost from Title IX legislation in the early 1970s, they got a formative hand from Margaret O’Sullivan some 30 years earlier,” said longtime Ridgefield Press sports editor Tim Murphy.

     Margaret Claire O’Sullivan was born in 1911 in South Boston, Mass., and graduated from Boston University with a degree in physical education. She later earned a master’s degree at the University of Bridgeport.

     When she joined the high school faculty as a physical education teacher in 1943, there were no interscholastic girls sports teams at RHS. Not one. 

     O’Sullivan quickly changed that, organizing varsity and junior varsity girls teams for one sport each season: field hockey in the fall, basketball in the winter, and softball in the spring. She later started a club team for girls tennis. 

     While turnout for the programs was good, conditions were not. The girls had limited equipment and shared fields with boys’ sports teams — mostly, they practiced and played when the boys were at away games.  But O’Sullivan always fought for more time and attention to girls’ athletics and well-being.

     She served as head of the girls physical education department at the high school until 1962, when she became a guidance counselor. 

“All of us have seen the kind of person she is,” said the staff of the 1965 yearbook. “Loyal, sincere, self-sacrificing, dedicated — these are part of Miss O’s personality. Friendly, helpful, generous, devoted — these, too, describe Miss O. This list is endless. She is the manifestation of many of our ideals.”

O’Sullivan retired in 1973 and moved to Shrewsbury, Mass., to live with a sister. When she died in 1993 at the age of 81, she had been all but forgotten locally. The Ridgefield Press had only a brief, three-paragraph obituary, provided by the sister (but did run a picture of her, smiling).

Seven years later, the Ridgefield Old Timers Association remembered O’Sullivan, giving her a Posthumous Award for her work with girls at Ridgefield High School. ROTA said she had died “with much deserved praise left unsaid.”

Dr. Peter Yanity: 

Making Things Happen

Few people have been more involved in Ridgefield’s public life than Dr. Peter Yanity, who was a community leader for a half century. Today, the gym at the old high school — used both for  athletics and as a voting place — recalls his name and symbolizes his immense involvement in youth sports and local government. 

“We named Yanity Gym after him because of all the efforts and work that heʼs done with kids over the years,” said Parks and Recreation Director Paul Roche. “Pop Warner, Boys & Girls Club, Parks and Recreation, baseball, basketball. He really had the kids in mind throughout his whole life, and really was committed to making things happen for them.”

Peter Vincent Yanity was born in 1927 in Homer City, Pa., and grew up there and in Athens, Ohio. He entered Ohio University, but — still a teenager — dropped out in 1945 to join the Army Air Corps. He hoped to become a pilot, but the training program was full and the war was winding down. So instead, he volunteered to go overseas with the Manhattan Project, to work with the atomic bomb testing on Bikini Atoll. However, his athletic skills won him a different assignment: traveling throughout the Pacific Islands and Japan, playing baseball and football on Army teams.

“He was an outfielder and a pretty good hitter,” said daughter Kathleen Yanity Duffy. “In football he was a lineman.” 

Yanity was good enough that he was invited by the Cleveland Indians to try out for their farm team, but he opted instead for an education, returning to Ohio University, where he played varsity baseball and graduated in 1949.

While at Georgetown School of Dentistry, he met Elizabeth Scileppi from Long Island, a recent graduate of Trinity College in Washington. They were married 10 days after he finished dental school. After a year of his working for the U.S. Public Health Service, they came to Ridgefield in 1955, living at first on New Street. 

Richard E. Venus was one of five milk dealers in town back then.

“We followed the moving vans so that we could be first to their door to get their business,” said Venus recalled. “Little did I know he would turn out to be such a great milk customer.” Beth and Peter Yanity were to have seven children.

In 1960, Yanity moved to a Main Street house just north of Gilbert Street and set up his practice there. “He was a hard worker,” Ms. Duffy said. “Heʼd get in there at 8 in the morning and usually finish at 6. He worked half days on Saturdays for many years.”

There he and Beth raised their six girls and one boy. “He was strong and opinionated and preached that we all do the right thing, but he was also very kind and gentle,” Duffy said. “He was a sweet, gentle guy.

“He was probably the perfect father to be raising women in the 60s and 70s, when there was all the societal tumult and the roles of women were changing. Where some people from his generation might have resisted some of the opportunities that were opening up for women, he just always encouraged us to pursue careers.”

From his first years in town until his last, Yanity participated in countless community programs, an involvement his obituary called “legendary.”

He served 18 years on the Board of Selectmen, followed by 16 years on the Parks and Recreation Commission — 10 as its chairman. 

He was a past president of the Lions Club, a director and past president of the Boys and Girls Club, a director of the Chamber of Commerce, an incorporator and past president of the Community Center, and a pillar of the Republican Party. He belonged to the Friends of the Library, Keeler Tavern, and the Italian-American Mutual Aid Society — his grandfather came from a little town near Salerno, Italy. 

He was also an active member of St. Maryʼs Church for 53 years, serving on its parish council and many committees. He and Beth received the 1993 Fairfield Foundation Award for volunteerism to church and community, presented by Bishop Edward M. Egan on behalf of the Diocese of Bridgeport.

He received many other honors, including the Old Timers Club Civic Award in 1998 — Beth was so honored previously. He and Beth were also the only husband and wife ever independently named Rotary Citizen of the Year — he in 1988, she in 2000. He was the Chamber of Commerce’s Volunteer of the Year in 2006.

“He always instilled in us a great sense of civic responsibility and community service,” daughter Kathleen said. “You gave back to your community because it offered us a great place to live, and the only way a community was successful was when its citizens were engaged and involved — not just in the political arena but in serving the town.”

Of all his many interests, sports may have been closest to his heart.

In the late 1950s, Yanity was a founder of the Pop Warner Football program — the first one in Connecticut — which he then coached many years. He was also Connecticut’s representative to the national Pop Warner organization.

“I grew up with Doc Yanity as my coach,” said First Selectman Rudy Marconi. The Ridgefield team on which Marconi played under Yanity was so good, it went to Florida in 1958 to play in the Orange Bowl.

Decades later, Yanity and Marconi would serve together on the Board of Selectmen.

For many years he was an alumni recruiter for Ohio University, attending high school games throughout the state to look for talent. Legendary North Carolina Coach Dean Smith was interested in a couple of players that Yanity landed for Ohio University over the years, and Yanity long suspected that this had led Coach Smithʼs lobbying for an NCAA rule change excluding alumni recruiters.

While his allegiance was to Ohio University, Yanity was also focused on helping young players in general. “If he found a kid who maybe wasnʼt, talent-wise, able to play Division I basketball, he had friends from his high school days or Ohio contacts who were coaches at other schools,”  Kathleen Duffy said. “There are several Connecticut schoolboy players who went out on full

scholarships to Ohio colleges. I think he was quite proud of the fact that there were kids who maybe never thought about going to college and were able to go to college on full scholarship.”

Yanity was also an accomplished golfer and a founding member of the Salem Golf Club in North Salem, N.Y.

He retired from his dental practice in 2005 and from service in town government a year later, but continued to be active in the Chamber of Commerce, the Boys and Girls Club (he was a member of its board for more than 40 years), and the Lions Club.

He died in 2008 at the age of 81. 

If there was one activity Yanity may have loved as much as sports, it was dancing. 

Longtime friend Maureen Kiernan, former town treasurer, said some of her fondest memories of Peter Yanity were of watching him dance with Beth.

“They were such a great couple,” she said. “I loved to see them dance. Oh, Lord, did they love to dance together — never got off the dance floor,” she said.

“He was just such a dear man,” she added. “He was such a gentleman in everything he did.” 

William W. Allen: 

Sports grows up

When Bill Allen arrived at Ridgefield High School in 1947, there were 36 students in the senior class, three varsity sports,  and one coach:  Allen himself. When he retired as athletic director 32 years later, there were more than 420 students in each class and 24 different sports being played. 

“Much of the growth was in girls sports programs, which Allen was instrumental in incorporating at the high school,” said Tim Murphy, longtime Ridgefield Press sports editor.

William Walker Allen was born in 1919 in Rockland County, N.Y., graduated from Arnold College, and earned master’s from New York University. He served in the Navy during World War II and, for several summers, pitched in semi-pro baseball on Cape Cod. 

When he joined Ridgefield High School’s physical education department in 1947 (he also taught science), the only interscholastic athletics were football, basketball and baseball — and the football was six-man. “I had to teach Bill how to play six-man football,” former student Fabio “Fibber” Biagiotti said at Allen’s retirement dinner in 1979. “He only knew 11-man.”

As a coach, Allen was  very successful, especially at baseball. During the 1950s his baseball teams won five straight Fairfield County Class B League titles, with Allen using a platoon system to make sure everyone played. The 1966 baseball team went undefeated, winning 15 straight games.

While he was better known for his high school coaching, Allen was also working with younger players. He was one of the founders of Ridgefield Little League, and served as its first president.

“Baseball was his forte, absolutely,” said Bob Mark, who succeeded him as director of physical education at the high school. “He won about seven championships when we were in the WCC He was a great sportsman, great guy. An outstanding person.”

As a proponent of female sports,  such programs as girls volleyball, girls track and girls tennis were established at the high school. 

Allen gave up coaching football and basketball in the early 1960s to focus on the increasing administrative duties of the athletic director’s job. He did continue coaching baseball until 1972. “Coach Allen’s greatest contribution was in overseeing and cultivating the growth of the Ridgefield High athletic program,” Murphy said.  “During his years, RHS sports went from the minors to the majors, as the number of players and teams skyrocketed.”

Ridgefield, which had become a power in the Western Connecticut Conference, joined the Fairfield County Interscholastic Athletic Conference in the early 1970s. 

“In Coach Allen’s 30-plus years, Ridgefield High sports grew up,” Murphy said.

After he retired in 1979, Allen moved to Rhode Island, living there until shortly before his death in 1993 at the age of 74. 

An avid fly fisherman, Allen also owned property in Canada where he regularly fished with some of the best anglers in the region. His skill with a fly rod was enough to get him featured on the cover of Field and Stream magazine more than once. One of his fishing buddies was another old baseball player, named Ted Williams. 

Donald Moss:
The Athletes’ Artist

Donald Moss was one of the leading artists of the world of sports in the last half of the 20th Century.

Moss painted hundreds of covers and inside illustrations for Sports Illustrated, produced scores of posters of athletes, golf courses, ski slopes, and other sporting themes, and designed more than a dozen U.S. postage stamps, including the 1976 Olympics set. 

His paintings are in all the major sports halls of fame, the Society of Illustrators Museum, the National Art Museum of Sport, the U.S. Sports Academy, the U.S. Air Force Art Collection, and the U.S. Marine Corps Museum. 

Born in 1920 in Somerville, Mass. Donald Francis Moss was attending art school when World War II broke out. He joined the U.S. Marine Corps and with the 1st Marine Division,  landed at Guadalcanal in August 1942, fighting through that campaign. He eventually serving four years.

After the war, he attended Pratt Institute in New York, where he met his wife,  Virginia “Sally” Hardesty Moss. He started out painting for various ad agencies, along with Good Housekeeping, Collier's, and Esquire magazines, but soon began focusing on sports.

“I have always been impressed by athletes who give everything to their sport,”  Moss said in his biography for the Sport Artist of the Year award given to him in 1985 by the United States Sports Academy. “I admire their intensity, their ability to please others and to make a good living at the same time. I like to think that I do the same.”

He got his first assignment with Sports Illustrated in 1954, and over 30 years, painted  more covers and editorial illustrations for that magazine than any other artist, said Anne Kent Rush of the American Sport Art Museum and Archives. “Donald Moss was working on the cusp of the change from painting to the camera,” Rush told The New York Times. “His art helped change the way we visualize sports scenes and players.”

He produced Super Bowl posters, the Best 18 Golf Holes in America, and countless logos — including the art for the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics raccoon mascot.

One of his more unusual series of posters involved aerial views of golf courses and downhill ski runs. “I usually fly over each course, take hundreds of aerial photographs, and translate these in the studio to very tight 24-by-36-inch aerial paintings,” he told The Press in 1996 about his golf course series.

Why did he paint courses and ski runs when aerial photos could accomplish the same and more easily? The Times asked in 1979. “Photographic aerials cannot define fairways and traps or ski trails hidden by terrain and foliage,” he said. “Photos do not bring out the values, color, depth, length, or height that an illustration can. And they do not glamorize the majestic mountain or the dramatic pitch of a downhill trail.”

Moss designed a dozen U.S. postage stamps for the U.S. Postal Service and 48 First Day Cover envelope cachets. He painted the signature illustrations for many major sports events, such as the New York City Marathon and the U.S. Tennis Open at Forest Hills.

His paintings of Ted Williams and Jack Nicklaus are included in Champions of American Sport, published by the Smithsonian Institution, and others hang in the collections of museums and the American Sports Halls of Fame. His painting of football star and coach Don Shula is in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

Over the years, his style of painting varied. “I go from pointillism to pop-art to impressionism to realism,” he told The Press in 1975. “I like surrealism because it’s a more cerebral type of painting.”

Moss was an author:  He wrote “How to Paint Watercolor,” published by Grumbacher in 1968. 

A hockey player as a boy, Moss was a lifelong skier and tennis player, and an avid golf, football, hockey, and baseball fan.

He lived on Peaceable Street for 23 years before moving to Farmington in 1999. During his years here, he often contributed his works to various local non-profits’ fundraising efforts. He died in 2010 at the age of 90. 

“He had a ready smile, innate charisma, and a gift for connecting with anyone, human or canine," said his daughter Margaret Moss Painter. “He loved his sports car, outdoor concerts with champagne and fireworks, dogs, his backyard garden, and a crisply pressed shirt.”