You know the phrase…behind every successful man stands a pretty special woman? Nothing more true than the one who taught me to type and set me on my path as a writer at Akron East High School.
(Ed. Note: A reader of the site recently wrote to ask what we would like to write in the place of daily coverage of sports, who won, and by how much. Our resident hall of famer, Hal McCoy, shares today his submission…the story of the person who introduced him to writing.)
There is no doubt my job is glamorous.
For 63 years I have been a sports writer, the last 53 years as a baseball writer covering, for the most part, the trials and tribulations of the Cincinnati Reds.
I love it. I love baseball. I love writing. I love to travel. I got to do it most of my life and got paid for it.
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I always tell people I never had a real job.
And that’s the truth.
Hall of fame writer Hal McCoy covers the UD Flyers and sports at largel for Press Pros Magazine.com
The real job was performed for 44 years by my wife, Nadine. She was a teacher at a Catholic school in Dayton, Our Lady of the Rosary.
I was paid in six figures while she was paid a barely liveable wage.
And, like me, she loved it.
I always tell her, “What you did is far, far more important that anything I ever did.”
And I meant it, and I mean it.
I was extremely fortunate to be elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., the writer’s wing.
As a result, I get recognized everywhere I go and it is flattering and I love it…pictures, autographs and kind words.
When Nadine and I are out I am often recognized and, yes, people sometimes fawn over me while she stands quietly in the background, ignored.
And that’s not the way it should be. Her only reward is that she was loved by her students, many of them whom keep in touch and thank her for her dedication to her profession.
I know, first hand, what a difference a teacher can make because there was one who changed my life and to whom I am forever grateful.
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I was a senior at Akron East High School and I took a typing class, only because it was all girls and me. What a concept.
The typing teacher, Mrs. Rose Picciotti, was also the advisor to the school newspaper.
One day, as I was flirting with Patsy Walling, a girl I had deep crush on and sat next to me, Mrs. Picciotti approached and I thought, “Oops, I’m in trouble for cutting up with Patsy.”
Bless you, Mrs. Picciotti, from Akron East High School…who put me on the road to writing.
Instead she said, “Harold (what I was called in high school), don’t you play on the basketball team?”
“Yes m’am, I sure do,” I said. “Why do you ask?”
“Because we need a story about the team in the school paper and I don’t have anybody to do it. Would you?”
“Well,” I said. “I’ve never done any writing.”
“If you do it, I’ll fix it up and make it presentable,” she said.
So I slaved over it for a couple of days and then turned it in.
The next day she approached again and said, “Harold, have you ever considered Journalism as a career?”
“No, why?”
“Because this was very good and I didn’t have to do much of anything to it.”
And I forgot about it.
I had no idea what I wanted to do. I probably would have followed my father, who built tires in the Goodrich factory. Akron was nothing but rubber companies in the 1950s — Goodyear, Goodrich, Seiberling, Mohawk, General.
That’s where most Akronites worked and I figured I was destined to be a rubberworker.
I also played baseball in high school and was decent enough to acquire a partial baseball scholarship to Kent State University.
When I enrolled, I had to declare a major and rubber worker was not part of the curriculum. I suddenly had a flashback to what Mrs. Rose Picciotti asked me.
So I scratched ‘Journalism’ in the box to declare a major.
I soon discovered that hitting a college curveball was not one of my assets. So I quit the team and joined the staff of The Daily Kent Stater daily school newspaper — better to write about baseball than try to play it.
And the rest of my personal history is attributable to one person. Mrs. Rose Picciotti went to her grave not knowing the impact she had on one student’s life…a life-changing, life-saving gesture.
Had she not asked if I had considered Journalism, my life would be much, much different. And not for the better.
That’s the reason I say what Nadine did is far more important than anything I ever did. I never changed anybody’s life. Nadine and every teacher whoever walked this planet accomplished more in one year than I’ve done over an entire career.
And that’s why, when Nadine stands in my shadow, when she should be standing in front of me, I tell her, “What you’ve done in your life belongs in the Cooperstown of teaching.”
Unfortunately, there isn’t one. But there should be.
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