Who better to recall the late, lamented football tradition than the man who covered it — and played in it?
White Plains NY had Thanksgiving Turkey Bowl Stepinac HS vs. WPHS
Former coaches and players from White Plains and Archbishop Stepinac remember the Turkey Bowl, an annual Thanksgiving game between the rivals.
- Not only did our Frank Becerra Jr. cover the traditional Thanksgiving Day game between Stepinac and White Plains, he played in one
It’s good to have connections, and Frank Becerra Jr. has plenty. He knows everyone.
A Westchester native and Brewster resident, he’s been a firefighter and a fire chief. Having prowled the sidelines of sporting events for decades, he knows coaches, players, refs, umps and officials.
For a year, Frank has been digging into his archive of images from decades at the paper ‒ he started in September 1977 — to present a “This Day in History” photo gallery: He’ll post 366 galleries from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31.
Who better, then, to approach for photos of the storied (and long-gone) Turkey Bowl Thanksgiving Day football game between White Plains High School and Archbishop Stepinac? No one.
Frank, being Frank, has connections to both schools. His dad, artist Frank Becerra, was inducted into the White Plains High School Hall of Fame. Frank and his brothers went to Stepinac. And Frank played wide receiver and cornerback for the Crusaders in the 1974 Turkey Bowl.
Frank, being Frank, downplays his Turkey Bowl role: “I saw more action in warmups than I did in the game,” he said.
That might be so, but for years it was Frank on the sidelines with his camera to capture the great tradition, training his lens on the action on the field and in the stands. His shot of Rev. Peter Gelsomino blowing a bugle to celebrate a Stepinac play puts us right in the stands.
Like the players and coaches interviewed for the story, Frank got a bit wistful — standing at midfield at Parker Stadium at Highlands Middle School — when he remembered starting all those Thanksgiving mornings on that spot. He recalled the parties before and after the Turkey Bowls, how they meant that you arrived at Thanksgiving dinner knowing you had been to a party.
He remembered the hometown feel, people walking to the game, in part to beat the traffic.
He said he’d love to see the tradition revived, but wondered where it could possibly be played, given that some put the crowd estimate at 10,000 back in its heyday. (Parker Stadium’s refurbished stands are considerably smaller now.)
“There’s not a venue around that could hold it,” he said.
And he remembered something else.
“As big as the rivalry was, there was never a fight,” he said. “All my years here, I never saw a fight in those stands. And this is stands where everybody sits together. A lot of places, visitors sit on one side, home team on the other. Here, everybody was together, there was never an issue.”
Perhaps the reason there were no fights was because everyone knew each other.
It’s good to have connections.
Reach Peter D. Kramer at pkramer@gannett.com.
