Super Bowl Monday_ From the Persian Gulf to the Shores of West Florida - Adam Lazarus [8]
“This is great,” Paterno said. “I’m looking forward to seeing you and the family soon.”
Exactly a month after the Penn State scholarship was complete, Jeff Hostetler was busy working at another family legacy: basketball. Ron and Doug had each been fine hoopsters for Conemaugh—big, tough, and strong, they could both rebound and score around the basket. As expected, Jeff soon starred for the Indians squad.
As a junior, he netted twenty-seven points (brother Todd tossed in twenty) and earned MVP honors in the Jaycee Holiday Tournament. The next year, Jeff and the Indians won the early season Mountain Cat Tip-Off Tournament and cruised through the regular season undefeated.
Victories over Mercyhurst Prep and Bentworth advanced Conemaugh to the semifinals of the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Associate (PIAA) Class A Championship Tournament. In the next game, their opponent was a high school from East Brady, Pennsylvania, a town about one hundred miles northwest of the Hostetler farm, and home to another family with a knack for churning out stellar athletes.
Twin brothers Dan and Kevin Kelly helped East Brady keep pace with the powerful Conemaugh team. A pair of free throws by Dan with just over a minute remaining evened the score at fifty-five. At the start of overtime, Dan gave the Bulldogs a one-basket lead. Then Jeff Hostetler dominated the extra period (he finished with twenty-eight points and twelve rebounds) to give Conemaugh a 63-57 win.
After the game, the Kelly clan—father Joe, the twins, Dan and Kevin, the older boys, Pat, Ed, and Ray, as well as college freshman James Edward “Jim” Kelly—met with Conemaugh’s star forward.
“I was in the locker room after the game,” remembered Dave Michaels, the Conemaugh Township baseball coach, “Jim Kelly and his father and brothers came in to congratulate Jeff. Jeff’s father and brothers were there. I remember thinking how similar they were. Two very close families.”
Joe Kelly’s parents had died when he was two years old, and he was raised by nuns at a Pittsburgh orphanage. After spending time in the navy, he married Alice McGinn, then took up work as a machinist for Daman Industries, a steel mill repair company. The Irish Catholic family had six children, all boys.
“We all learned to be tough from the time we started talking,” Jim Kelly later wrote. “That was the only way you could survive in our house.”
The eldest boy, Pat, played linebacker for the University of Richmond and was selected by the Baltimore Colts in the fifteenth round of the 1974 NFL draft. The third Kelly boy, Ray, also played for Richmond, earning two varsity letters.
Jim Kelly was every bit as tough as his older brothers. Even when Jim was very young, his father knew that he was a special talent.
“He had something a little bit extra, more than the other boys,” his father later said. “I felt that all he needed was a little push to become great.”
Joe was often home during the daytime (prior to working the night shift), and Jim would come back from school to have lunch with his dad.
“I always told him, ‘before you eat, you gotta throw so many passes, so many punts and so many kicks,’” Joe told NFL Films in 1996. “He had to keep doing it until he got it right. I kept at him every day. There was times he was getting mad at me and I knew it. He turned around and I knew he was saying something.”
Although as a child and teenager, Jim hated this forced practice, he later said, “Looking back now, I’m really glad I had a father like mine.”
Joe’s training produced consecutive trips to the National Punt, Pass and Kick competition in 1970 and 1971. Jim was just as good at baseball and basketball. By age fifteen, he was ready to compete on the high school level, against kids older and bigger than he was.
The Bulldogs’ sophomore quarterback (during Jim’s freshman year, his brother Ray accounted for five touchdowns, six extra points, and a field