City of Champions: How a Gritty New Jersey High School Shocked the Sport of Football by Capturing the 1939 National Championship

by Hank Gola

It was 1939. The Depression loosened its grip on America, yet World War II loomed. Meanwhile, high school football was cresting as one of the country's most popular pastimes. In an era before big money and television engulfed sports, schoolboys shared newspaper headlines and glory with the pros and college players, and drew crowds in the tens of thousands. That Christmas night, 1939, two vastly different teams from Garfield, New Jersey, and Miami, Florida collided in the historic Orange Bowl to decide the National Sports Foundation's national championship. Garfield's Boilermakers were first-generation immigrants from Eastern Europe and Italy, whose parents were drawn to the industrial city's churning factories. Miami's Stingarees were from families from all over country settling in one of America's most thriving and glamorous cities. A pair of towheaded superstars, Garfield's brawny Benny Babula and Miami's diminutive Davey Eldredge created a nationwide pregame hype. The night lived up to it, with one of the most thrilling, magical--yet highly contested--football games ever played in that stadium. In City of Champions, Hank Gola, a veteran and award-winning football writer (and a Garfield kid himself), unveils this long-forgotten game through voluminous research and numerous interviews. In the telling, Gola mines stories of the towns and the lives of the players and coaches--and details the grit (and wild strokes of luck and fortune) that led up to a Garfield victory, stunning the football world. Gola also describes how this game, and the sport in general, was a mirror to America, revealing some of the most pressing cultural, economic and social issues of the day, including how segregation stifled high school football in the south and how infantile paralysis, the game's charity benefactor, gripped the nation in fear. And, with war in the air, football imparted lessons to the boys on the gridiron that would eventually transfer to battlefields in Europe and the Pacific. Above all, City of Champions is a story of everyday heroes and lives well-lived.

Genres: Sports, Football

465 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 26, 2018

About the author

Hank Gola has spent over four decades as a journalist, primarily covering professional football and golf for the New York Daily News and New York Post after starting his career at The Herald-News of Passaic, NJ, and the Daily Record of Morris County, NJ, where he covered the Cosmos of the North American Soccer League and the New York Giants of the National Football League.

A native of Garfield, NJ, Gola graduated with a BA in history from Montclair State College in 1976. He has previously authored two books, Hard Nose, (HBJ, 1987) with Jim Burt, the inside story of the Giants’ 1986 Super Bowl season and Tiger Woods, (Courage Books, 1998) an illustrated biography of the then-young superstar golfer.

Gola has collected several writing awards from the Golf Writers Association of America and was most recently named the 2018 recipient of the Metropolitan Golf Writers Association's Lincoln Werden Award for golf journalism. He lives in Parsippany, N.J., with his wife, Lillian. He has two children, Henry and Julianne, and four grandchildren, Rose, Ruby, Elliot and Iris and a loyal pug, Freddie.

Reviews

[Ed Gurak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much more than a sports book. As a grad of Garfield High I loved reading the history of this historic team that I’ve heard about but knew little. What makes this book better is the integration of the history and stories of the people of that day both in Garfield and Miami. You see the people as real experiencing immigration, adjusting to a new environment and then WWII. Lots of personal drama enhanced the excitement around the story of a championship football team.

[Michael Frasca · Rating 5 out of 5]

First, a disclaimer. I graduated from Garfield High School in 1972 along with the author. Hank Gola and I have been friends since high school.

As Garfield High students, Coach John Hollis regaled us with his first-hand stories about the 1939 game. That game and its players attained mythic proportions to us. Benny Babula was Garfield's Odysseus, leading the Boilermakers in their own Trojan War against Miami High School.

Gola seeks to strip the fantasy away with facts. He does that admirably by digging into the morgues of local newspapers and unearthing old game films. He also interviewed surviving participants, fellow students, hangers-on and families. As a Garfield High alumnus, the story he weaves is fascinating.

But what if you're not a Garfield High School alumnus? Well, you're in luck. This isn't just a story about Garfield football. It is about World War I, immigration, religion, blue-collar life, early 1900's families, the depression, infantile paralysis, Jim Crow, isolationism, and, of course, World War II.

For example, here are some interesting questions answered in the book:
- How did Teddy Roosevelt save football in 1905?
- Why were 20- and 21-year-old men still playing high school football in the 1930's?
- What kind of football injury could be caused by lazy groundskeepers? (It's not what you think!)
- How differently did Garfield NJ and Miami FL cope with the Great Depression?
- Why did Miami High have a palm tree on the 20-yard line of their football field?
- Why did Toledo OH All-City tackle Floyd Wright have to watch the game hidden under a tarp on the team bus while his Waite High teammates took on Miami High in 1932?
- Why did Miami build the Orange Bowl?
- What were the machinations and politics behind the building of the Orange Bowl?
- Why did Rutherford NJ cancel a football game and lock down their city in 1935?
- Why does Garfield have the NY State Board of Education and politics to thank for their Florida trip?
- How did bad medical advice almost cost Garfield High the 1939 National Championship?

Highly recommended. I hope film maker Ken Burns takes a look at this meticulously researched book.

Pairs well with Baseball: An Illustrated History

[Sandra Valentina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sports lovers and history buffs, prepare to be transported back in time. Exhaustively researched and painstakingly written, Hank Gola has mined the depths of the early days of the World War II generation and the nation’s fascination with high school football. The similarities and differences of the Miami Stingarees and Garfield Boilermakers teams are combed like fine filaments by a silkworm, only to be woven together into a fabric of lasting beauty. The epic Christmas Day gridiron battle which gives the book its title is not even the final chapter. There is so much more life lived by these heroes. The closing chapters of the book brought tears to my eyes.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very detailed of Garfield High Schools 1939 National Championship. At times a little dry because of the details but the history leading up the game, the reason for it and how Garfield was picked to play was as important to the story as the chapter on the game itself. I love the fact the Hank Gola gave a rundown on each team's players who served in World War II and then a follow-up of most of the primary players, coaches and a few others of their lives following the game and the war.
These young men were members of the greatest generation and they were honored well in this book.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exhaustively researched, “City of Champions” takes you on a journey back in time to a bygone era when high school sports ruled the roost. The story unspools like a TV series, populated by rich characters in a tight-knit, diverse community of immigrants, the bedrock of our country. You can tell that Hank Gola poured his heart and soul into this book and knew the subject matter intimately. It was a joy to read. As another reviewer noted, I would love to see Ken Burns get a hold of this story and turn it into one of his patented documentaries.

[Karen & Gerard · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was not surprised that I enjoyed City of Champions by Hank Gola because it is a true story that I knew little or nothing about. It is about a high school world championship football game in 1939. Who knew? Not me! I liked reading about both teams and the coaches. It shares good insights into both teams. (Gerard's review)

[Len Knighton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story of the 1939 National High School Championship Game between Miami (Fla) High School and Garfield (NJ) High School on Christmas Day at the Orange Bowl in Miami. The author is from Garfield and the book seems to have been written with the natives in mind, with many details and local color that only Garfielders would be interested in.
About twenty years ago my "baby" sister, then in her mid 40's, asked me to write some Thanksgiving memories for her. I wrote about two football games. One of them was played on Thanksgiving Day, a touch football game we called the Turkey Bowl. It was the first game in a tradition that continues to this day. The other game was played on Friday night, November 15 of the same year as Turkey Bowl I, 1968, between the Palmyra (PA) Cougars (my high school alma mater) and their arch rival Hershey Trojans, the game that would decide the Capital Area Conference Championship. Both teams came into the game undefeated but Hershey had a tie on their record. The game was played at twenty thousand seat Hershey Stadium. (Yes, this is where the Hershey Bar was made.) My sister sent my article to a local newspaper which published it on Thanksgiving Day 2003. If I had known that she was going to submit it to a newspaper I would have written it very differently.
As I read CITY OF CHAMPIONS I thought of changes I might have made to make it more appealing, especially to readers who lived in other states beside New Jersey and Florida. The focus of the book was the Game in Miami on Christmas Day but certainly one would want to know how the teams were chosen to compete for the mythical national championship. Hank Gola does a good job setting up the Game, reviewing the 1939 season for both teams.
However, Gola also chose to give us the details of the 1937 and 1938 seasons which made the book much too long. For those who are still living and remember the 1939 season and the Game, that might be interesting, but for most of us it was a bit too much. Gola could have summarized both seasons leading up to the championship season but opted to give us the details of all the games. Because of these chapters, it took me longer to read the book than the time needed to play the entire 1939 football seasons for either team. (Having broadcast high school football games for more than twenty years, I know how long the average high school football takes to play. I speculate that games were likely shorter in time in 1939. Most of the plays were running plays so there were few incomplete passes. Also, there was no overtime. Ties were not broken.)
There were a number of intriguing players and coaches on both sides and I appreciated the background material on all of them.
The length of the book dropped my rating considerably.

Three stars waxing