When I first think of the Class of ’66 I get a tremendous headache. I can thank Don Hamilton for this. I’ll get back to Don’s vigorous and most spirited assault in a moment, and much more significant, Don’s great contribution to young people and the community, but first, here’s a tip of the hat to the CCS Class of ’66 as a whole, a group of people who were almost godlike to me when I first walked the halls of CCS.
I work this memory loom with assistance from a set of yearbooks. If you attended CCS between 1966 and 1983 you might remember my father, George Brown. Dad kept a yearbook for each year he served as CCS superintendent of schools. Recently paging through the 1966 annual I saw Don’s senior picture and instinctively ducked. For a guy who only weighed about 145 pounds he sure hit hard, information I obtained inside a Saratoga boxing ring way back in the 70s.
There’s something special about a central school that houses multiple levels and ages. Although we coexisted in different parts of the building, some crossover was inevitable and sixth graders like me could often look up to “the big kids” and then we’d try our best to emulate them. Most fortunately, there was much of value in the Class of 66 as role models, for one of many good examples, Bob Herrington, who everyone called “Red.”
I can’t say I ever really knew Red except as a sports star. Seeing Red in a hallway or after school was, to me anyway, much like meeting Mickey Mantel down at the corner store, and Red would commonly acknowledge adulation from the unwashed and unknown like me. The few times I was close enough to say “Hi Red” he responded with a smile and something like, “Hey kid, how’s it going?” I had no clue that Red was also a scholar and member of National Honor Society, and only recognized he took the time to be kind to kids and small animals when I was a combination of both.
Mostly, I remember Red on the basketball court. Unlike football, I could actually see the faces of every player on the team and never missed a home game. From memory, I viewed the 66 team on the level of the Celtics, my favorite pro team at the time, but was surprised to find CCS only won one varsity game all season. Still, the record fails to tell the whole story, and my most vivid memories are cheering my lungs out for my heroes.
My memory of the wrestling team, though, proved to be more accurate. It’s hard enough to win a championship in any sport in any year, but to do so in the first year of competition is amazing, conditions I’d attribute to a combination of great coaching by Milt Tesar and an assembly of what I would argue was one of the toughest groups of young men ever to attend CCS.
From 98 pounder Mike Gibbons, then a sophomore, to super heavyweight William “Beaver” Watkins, a junior that year, the championship 66 team had no weak links and put a formidable competitor on the mat at every weight level. Sadly, I remember specific bits only at the extremes, but the middle weights were also exceptional. I wish I retained some concrete information (and hope someone else does) about other 66 wrestlers like Dean Chapin and Captain George Ridler because I know they were also outstanding, but the mind draws a blank as I stare at the old yearbook pages. Even Don’s efforts as a wrestler I have no memory of, except that he’s pictured in action in the yearbook and in the team photo. I only really knew Don 10 years later when he made an indelible impression on a very thick skull and then showed his intellectual side in subsequent actions.
I wish the yearbook had more details on individual weight classes and records, but this information may be lost to time. I did get a kick out of the name “L. Peters” being repeated four times in the group shot of the championship team, and this was no misprint. I guess Mr. and Mrs. Peters just really liked the letter “L” because all of their children’s names started with it. As far as Cambridge wrestling in this era, all of the Peters boys played most significant parts. Big brother Lloyd “Bunk” Peters I remember most clearly for a very good reason. He was so good he was scary, even watching him at a safe distance. In spite of my my staunch support of the Cambridge guys, I usually pitied Bunk’s opponents, especially when they tried to stare Bunk down eye-to-eye just before he charged. Those poor guys fooled no one, especially Bunk.
I can’t remember the opposing team by name, only the face of one guy Bunk glowered at just before the match started. Terror was written across the poor kid’s face who I think really wanted to be any place but in front of Bunk. When we watched Bunk wrestle, we didn’t talk about whether he’d win, only how quickly he’d pin his next victim. Some of us thought Bunk might rip off an arm or leg, but this never happened.
The matches I remember progressed by weight class with Mike on the mat first and almost always winning to great cheers from the crowd and his teammates. The matches seemed to progress into a climatic crescendo to what I’ll call the “Terrific Trio” beginning with light heavyweight Paul Virtue, also an outstanding wrestler and fierce competitor who continued his championship wrestling efforts in the Marine Corps. Then came mighty Bunk at heavyweight. The show always ended with big Beaver Watkins as super heavyweight. I don’t know what was charged for admission, but it was worth every penny, and I do recall the team grew so popular due to its success that later matches were held in the big gym, the crowd in the old gym/auditorium growing too large for the older location.
Like I said, I remember nothing about Don’s contributions to the championship wrestling team, but have no doubts they were significant as I know from personal experience Don isn’t just a tough guy, he’s a super diligent worker and team player, the sort of person that makes any group better. This is what Don did in Hoosick Falls when he took over my creation that was more like a slightly organized gang of street fighters than a boxing club. Don converted this team into a championship caliber junior program after I left for the swamps of Louisiana.
I learned a lot in Hoosick Falls. On the positive side, I discovered I was a pretty good community organizer, program coordinator and promoter. On the negative, I simply didn’t have the ability or nature to be a good boxing coach. For one specific example, I find great sports coaches have to be cool and deliberate in the line of fire. Don, in my estimation, could out cool Steve McQueen, the King of Cool. I never saw Don get excited. Me? It takes very little to turn me into a screaming maniac, definitely not the guy you want in your corner during a boxing match.
Don’s conversion or emphasis on junior boxers was brilliant. One of the biggest difficulties our boxing club faced in the beginning was an almost total lack of experience, a mighty difficult obstacle to overcome and one of the big reasons why I remain in awe of the 66 wrestling team that faced the same barrier and still triumphed.
Unlike many other sports, learning to box has a mighty painful learning and endurance curve that requires the student to absorb a good many punches in order to learn how not to get hit so often while also gaining the ability to counter effectively. With the younger kids Don most wisely specialized in, these skills can be imparted at an age where the opponents are just as essential but don’t have the power to seriously hurt their opponents. In this way, the essential boxing skills are learned and experience gained at a far lesser price, and if the young boxer chooses to continue as some do, the boxers do so with a tool box often far superior to most older competition.
I’m not absolutely positive but I believe Don turned out at least one national junior champion, and if I’m wrong in the regard, I am certain the club prospered greatly under Don’s direction and won many, many times at numerous levels of the sport.
As for our most memorable exchange, we were at a gym we frequently went to in Saratoga. It was in the middle of town on the top floor of the municipal building which also housed the police department. Police departments are frequent boxing club sponsors because cops know it’s a lot better to pin a medal on a kid than a pair of handcuffs, and the nature of the sport draws a lot of young people cops get to know well one way or the other. In our case, the Hoosick Falls club was generously sponsored by my employer Mike Mahoney after I managed to talk him into it, but we also received enthusiastic support from the Hoosick Falls Police Department.
I’m not sure how Don and I wound up facing each other. I only know we were both in the welterweight class and actively competed at the time as well as coached. We were supposed to be sparring, which generally means not going full bore, except in a place like Philadelphia where its commonly said the real wars take place in the gym more than on any fight card. I guess Don and I thought we were in Philly.
Again, I have no memory of who delivered the first big shot and only recall firing everything I had at Don. As a converted southpaw who fought in a right-handed stance, I had a fairly decent left jab and a pretty quick left hook. I fed Don plenty of both and he just walked though it all to deliver clubbing right hands to my head that had me seeing double.
When the bell rang ending the first three-minute round, one of the Saratoga coaches decided it was best not to continue the action. Don and I complained. Don was serious. I was not, but wouldn’t admit it at the time. Today I can say without any equivocation I was most fortunate the session ended where it did as the longer results would not have been in my favor. Like the entire 1966 CCS wrestling team, Don was not about to be stopped by the likes of me. The way I saw it, then and now, I faced a smaller version of Bunk and most fortunate to get out of it in one piece.
But this is not what I admire most about Don. Having walked in his shoes a bit, I know how much work it takes to run a boxing program, or just about any youth activity, and also know this work was done strictly on a volunteer basis. To achieve the results Don did took hundreds of hours of hard, dedicated work with no compensation and a great deal of personal sacrifice. A lot of kids in Cambridge and Hoosick Falls owe him a great deal, but Don, a most humble and quiet guy, would likely deflect this praise and give credit to others, and might even be a bit upset to have a spotlight shown on him as it’s not his style. Still, I thought it time to shed some light from here while I’m 2,000 miles distant and Don can’t easily hit me again. I don’t duck so fast now, and something tells me Don still packs a healthy punch.