A ‘Midget’ Remembers a Coach Who Was a Giant By Michael Iachetta '54 Originally published February 21, 2001 in the New York Journal News

It is sunset at Valhalla, not the mythical playground of the gods but the
real life cemetery in Westchester’s Valhalla, and I am standing by the
tombstone of my mentor and track coach, the confirmed bachelor Joe Fox, the
foxiest Fox of them all. I’m holding a six pack of beer in my hand for him,
while thinking of midgets and sub-midgets of which I am one- or at least once
was-and the long-running ties that bind us together nearly half a century
after our last race has been run.

Not that I ever was a midget in the traditional sense – Joe Fox would never
let me or any of us think of ourselves that way- and we have the mid-life
success stories to justify his faith in us. We were the Fordham Prep boys of
summer, winning race after race from 1950 to 1954, running faster, higher,
stronger than we knew how because Fox (a track star out of Fordham Prep,
class of ’29; Villanova, "34) taught us how to win a sport and life.

Joe Fox was the track coach at Fordham Prep and he sent several of us
ungainly young colts galloping off to the races as pint-sized runners no
other coach in the school would look at when we were freshman. We were all
under 108 pounds in those days and we didn’t stand a chance of winning
running against the big kids, yet Fox guaranteed us all college scholarships
if we stuck with him and was good as his word.

Fox built our confidence by entering us in "midget races"-sprint races run
according to weight class – sub-midgets under 100 pounds, midgets under 112
pounds, junior midgets under 127 pounds. In short, we run against kids our
own size and developed the attitude of winners first and champions later.
And, because Fox trained us well so that our relay stick passes to one
another became honed to perfection, we became New York City high school relay
champions in the various weight categories. 

The result was that Johnny Hand of Highbridge anchored the sub-midget relay
to the city championship at Madison Square Garden. Constantine (Tino) Louis
Clemente, out of the same little Italy off Fordham Road in the Bronx that I
came from, ran the race of his life on the anchor leg of the midget relay
that gave us the Bronx-Manhattan-Westchester (BMW) championship by one point
at Van Cortland Park, holding on to the slim lead I gave him on the lead off
leg. And Pete McCall of Yonkers was the top-rated junior-midget in the city
in our championship season.

For we had learned things on the track under Fox that would be crucial for
our success in school and later in life. We learned to develop confidence,
discipline, a sense of self worth and an appetite for competition necessary
for sports, for handling physical adversity-and that would stand us in good
stead in the future.

These skills made a difference in later life, including the Supreme Court,
which was where Tino Clemente ended up; the operating room for Johnny, the
newsroom for me and the confessional for Pete McCall.

Now I could also tell you about other successes that came out of the Fordham
Prep classes of the 1950s-guys like Mario Gabelli of Bronxville who runs his
own multi-million dollar investment firm, Joe DioGuardi of Ossining, an
accountant who became a U.S. congressman, and Lou Boccardi of Bronxville,
president and chief executive officer of the Associated Press (AP), which
makes him the most powerful newsman in the world.

Hand, co-captain of the Fordham Prep track team with me, went on to become a
doctor with a distinguished career in the Navy. His son, John Jr., was
killed in a car crash in Newport, in his senior year in high school.
Clemente, an excellent sprinter who ran faster than he ever had before to
help us win that long ago BMW championship, won an academic scholarship to
Holy Cross and became a Bronxville lawyer, when his daughter, Emily, my
god-daughter and a senior at New Rochelle’s Ursuline Academy was also killed
in a car accident. I wrote Emily’s obituary for the NY Daily News. McCall
became Fordham Prep class president and a 50-second quarter miler who won
scholarships to Manhattan, Notre Dame and Georgetown but turned them all down
to become a priest. He survived a heart attack and a stroke, and is one of
the leading speakers on faith healing in the U.S. even though he stutters.

I ran the anchor leg as a sub-two-minute half miler on the Prep’s two- mile
relay team to this day remember coming up inches short of catching Eddie
McKaye of St. John’s Prep for the city championship at Randall’s Island. We
embraced at the finish line like we were young gods who would never grow old.
Two weeks later, McKaye was killed in a car crash in Rockaway. I went on to
win Fordham University’s Joseph Medill Patterson Scholarship as an
outstanding journalism student (with the aforementioned Boccardi of AP), and
became a nationally syndicated travel writer, columnist, editor and arts
critic with The NY Daily News.

I was almost killed on June 21, 1982 when I was hit by a falling cottonwood
tree while white water rafting in Alaska. Doctors thought I lose my leg, my
mind, my life, not necessarily in that order. It didn’t happen.

Today, Clemente does all my legal work. Hand had made himself readily
available for medical consultations. And McCall, who lives in the Sacred
Heart Monastery in Yonkers, takes care of my soul. I never cease to be
amazed at the wonder of it all.

So, I go often to Valhalla to pray over the grave of Joe Fox, who died after
suffering a stroke. Fox, who taught us history, hygiene and so much more on
and off the track always had a thirst about him, a thirst for knowledge,
adventure and a good cold beer. I acknowledge that "thirst" every time I go
to Valhalla to thank Fox for giving me a life through track and for
introducing me to my friends for life. I always end my reverie by leaving
the symbolic six-pack of beer by his tombstone. It is never there when I
return, which is why I always bring a new six pack on each visit.

Joe Fox was head track coach at the Prep from 1945 through 1965, and intermittently from 1966 through 1977.  After his retirement from the Prep he was assistant to his good friend Jim Scott at Xavier from 1977 until his death in 1990.  He served as CHSAA Commissioner and New York Sectional Chairman from the 1960's through the 1980's, and founded such major meets as the New York Relays and Eastern States Championships.