When I read Gerry Murray's obit there was an outtake from something Gay Talese had written about Gerry in 1958. When I read that, I thought, I'd like to read the whole thing of where that outtake came from. Then I forgot about it.
I have books and magazines on my nightstand. Perhaps unlike how other people have books on their nightstands. My nightstand is a bookcase on its own. The truth is, I have no room to build another bookcase. So I stack.
And in that stack was a collection of garden magazines that I now want to give to my daughter Susan who just bought a house with her husband. Almost still newlyweds. She plans to be an ardent gardener.
Spine out, "The Silent Season of a Hero" by Gay Talese, a collection of his sports writing. Inside are essays on sports and sport figures. Length varies greatly. Did Gay include anything in there about Gerry Murray, a Roller Derby Queen? He certainly did.
"It's a Wonderful Whirl to Gerry," page 55. A short piece written in 1958 when was 26. (He's now 87 and still with us.) As much of the NYT as I've read, I have to admit I wasn't reading it in grammar school, which is when his piece on Gerry appeared. But there in the second paragraph is the outtake Richard Sandomir took to describe Gerry and I put in my prior posting on Ms. Murray.
But in the elegant Talese piece, there are many more nuggets that describe Gerry and the world of Roller Derby as it existed in 1958.
The setting is the 9th Regiment Armory in NYC, located on West 14th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues. The armory was demolished in 1969, like other armories in the city. There used to be a 71st Regiment armory on Park Avenue at 34th Street, where I went to many stamp shows as a kid. and had high school track workouts on the drill floor. The school's rifle team also used the shooting range there. I tried out for that team as well, but didn't make it. That armory was torn down in the '60s as well, and the site is now occupied by an office building, 3 Park Avenue, where the company I worked for had office space.
Gay's first paragraph could have been used as well to describe Gerry: "a curvsome woman pushing 40 with the gentility of a waterfront bouncer, elbowed and bumped the New York Chiefs to a 21-17 triumph over the Chicago Westerns in the opening of the roller derby season..."
Gay describes how the scoring works: "to score, a player must circle the entire field and then pass a member of the opposing team." This lead skater is called the "jammer" and they wear a helmet that identifies them as such. Each team on the track has five skaters, drawn from the 16 players on a team—eight men and eight women. The match alternates the men and women on the track.
The popularity of the sport in 1958 is acknowledged, having been built up by nearly a decade of televised matches. That would put Roller Derby right up there with Milton Berle, when TVs came into homes in the early '50s. I never remember watching Roller Derby at that early an age, but I did see it still on television when I was a teenager.
Gay recognizes the warm spot the crowd of 2,380 has for Gerry, the star of the evening. "I skate because there's action," Gerry says. "As a girl back in Iowa I played with the boys and I never read cookbooks. I played softball with the boys and I guess I was a tomboy."
On that evening, Gerry's 17 year-old-son, Mike Gammon, competed. The step-father Gene Gammon also competes for the Chiefs. Mike has been on skates since he was two. If Roller Derby were to get a boost, it might be an Olympic Sport, given what now becomes an Olympic sport. "Ultimate," a Frisbee (flying disc) throwing game is trying for inclusion. It's "a mixed gender sport" Hmm. Sounds like Roller Derby.
Talese can't help but recognize the crowd's demographic, "because of the dramatic appeal, more than half of last night's audience were young girls. between 16 and 19, many of of them pony-tailed and noisy."
"We like the game for the speed," says Pat Cotter, 20, of Queens. "There's action," explained Terry Scarpati, 20.
"This is one sport where women feel needed," said Pat Dillon, a television actress and the wife of James A. Farley Jr,* the owner of the Chiefs.
Robert Lipsyte in 1971 recognized the appeal of Roller Derby to women. The young ladies in the crowd that Gay Talese writes about are now grandmothers to the audience at Taylor Swift concerts, and probably just as noisy.
As the world turns, so does Roller Derby.
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*Mr. Farley passed away in 1986 at 58 from complications of heart-bypass surgery, and unmentioned in Mr. Talese's piece is that he was the son of the former Postmaster General, James A. Farley. James Jr. was on the New York State Athletic Commission, as was once his father. The Farleys were huge in the Democratic Party, the father being FDR's Postmaster General and the national chairman of the Democratic Party (and the originator of a special series of stamps that became known as the "Farley Issues.")
The main post office in Manhattan is known as Farley Station, and when it finally become an Amtrak railroad station (perhaps before I pass away) it will be known as Moynihan Station, in deference to New York's Senator Patrick Moynihan who allocated funds for the conversion a lifetime ago, himself passing away in 2003.
†Somehow in the Twitter world I came across @janesports, a young woman whose profile reads:
Director Marist's Center for Sport Communication, New York Daily News sports columnist. Also Roller Derby, ESPN, The Journal News, Columbia J-School.
(Since she obviously went to college, Jimmy Breslin would have understood if she used semicolons.)
Roller Derby! That stood out. Until I read Ms. Murray's obituary, Roller Derby was waaay back there in my memory. And here's someone who is obviously into sports, and whose whose Twitter feeds are almost a play-by-play for the now concluded U.S. Open, listing Roller Derby in their profile!
Jane lists Roller Derby! Did Jane make a Tweet of Gerry Murray's passing? No. Perhaps she's not into reading obituaries, despite her news background.
Was Jane's mother/grandmother in the crowd at the 9th Regiment Armory when Gerry was kicking ass and taking no prisoners? I'd love to know.
http://onofframp.blogspot.com
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