Difficult and painful as it is, we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows.
Louis E. De Vicaris
Let us realize the arc of the moral universe th rd is long April 29 1930 -- February 23 2010 but it bends toward justice . -Martin Luther King
In Loving Memory A Celebration of Life March 6th 2010
Catherine
Rachael
1937
Gaetano
Eulogy for Louis E. DeVicaris written and delivered by Alexander E. DeVicaris on 3/6/10
Louis
My name is Alex DeVicaris and on behalf of my family I want to thank everyone for coming today to honor my father, Mr. Louis Edward DeVicaris. My father went by many names: Louis, Lou, Mr. DeVicaris, Mr. D, Big Lou, Coach, Papa Lou, and even Dutch when he was younger. We of course knew him as Dad. These monikers highlight the many facets of my father’s personality and presence, I would like to be able to say that as an Educator he did this, and a Coach he did that, but with a man like my father it’s nearly impossible to separate his story into different segments. He was larger than life and considered a living legend by many who knew him. There are however some overarching themes throughout his life that will become clear as we trace his journey.
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y father was born on April 29th 1930 to first generation Italians in South Philly: Gaetano, Catherine and older sister Rachael. Even as a child, the first thing many people would notice about my father was his sheer physical presence. He was larger than most, and as a young adult he dominated the line of scrimmage as both an offensive and defensive lineman. He excelled at football at Frankford high school, earning All-Scholastic and All-City honors, and received sixteen college scholarship offers. He also had an offer to play baseball for the Philadelphia Athletics, but turned it down for an opportunity to attend college. He played college football at Penn State, Alabama, and Temple. While at Alabama, he beat out 17 other tackles for the starting job. It was also where he experienced firsthand the horrors of the Jim Crow South.
This was not his first exposure to racism. As the first Italians to move into Mayfair, he had the rare experience of being on the other end of the bigotry stick. In fact, his neighbors were ready to move out when the DeVicaris family moved in, but within a day or so my father became like an adopted son to them. After leaving Alabama, Big Lou, as he was frequently known, became the starting tackle for Temple, and played both ways until a knee injury ended his football career. Most former athletes, myself included, gain or lose weight when their playing days are over, but not my dad. At 6 feet 2 inches and 230 pounds, Big Lou cut an imposing figure well into his 70’s. He was comfortable with his size and often used it as part of his total package. He would often tell stories about how much he loved to wear his big black overcoat and matching fedora on cold days in the city,
looking like someone straight out of the Godfather. He would chuckle to himself as people would cross the street rather than pass this frighteninglooking man on the sidewalk. To those who knew him however, he was a gentle giant with a heart of gold, who was willing to do whatever it took to help you with whatever you needed. People loved to be in his presence and would often sit for hours telling their stories to him, and he to them, because he was such a kind and gentle human being.
but he sang them all. And he didn’t just sing at camp. Our family cars never seemed to have working radios so Dad sang where ever we went. He is also probably the only principal in the history of the Philadelphia school district who got his entire staff to sing “The Isty Bitsy Spider” at a faculty meeting. Just before his open heart surgery he had the entire O.R. Staff singing “Good Morning to You.”
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He not only used that voice for control, he also used it to
ut my father wasn’t always a principal. Before that he was a teacher and a football, baseball, and track coach at Simon Gratz High School. At Gratz, he experienced the worst of institutional racism and de facto segregation that the Philadelphia School District had to offer. Gratz was a school that was designed to hold 2,400 students but enrollment topped
sing. As any one who spent time at our day camp knows, Mr. D was always singing songs. Patsy Patsy Ore-A was his favorite,
4,000 during my father’s time there. The school boundaries were routinely re-drawn to keep Simon Gratz an all black
That’s not to say he wasn’t a force to be reckoned with. As principal, he was the only person alive who could quiet 4,000 high school students and run an entire assembly without the use of a microphone or bullhorn.
school, often requiring students to come from extremely far away, while white students who lived just a few blocks away went elsewhere. What my father found at Simon Gratz was a dilapidated gymnasium, no home field for football games, and hand-me-down equipment. His players actually used the same equipment he played in at Frankford almost 10 years before.
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ut he also found a wonderful group of students who had experienced tremendous hardships at too young an age. He often recounted to us how he was advised by other teachers before he transferred to Gratz that he should always stand with his back against the wall in the hallways and gym to keep from getting stabbed. If you know Mr. D, or Coach as he was known to his athletes, you knew that wasn’t going to happen. One, because he wasn’t afraid of anything in his entire life, and two because
he knew these students. He taught many of them at Gillespie Junior High School and knew what wonderful kids they were. My father went through life judging people not by their appearance or skin color, but by the content of their character. During his time at Gratz he worked to get kids involved in sports and out of gangs. He went to the homes of kids who had dropped out to help their parents persuade their kids go back to school. He used to take groups of students to Sears and help them get jobs because in those days they didn’t hire many African-Americans, but that didn’t stop Coach. He also got kids into college. In most cases, like him, these were the first children in their entire families to attend college. He would nominate kids for the All City team and write to college coaches to improve their chances of getting in because he knew the importance of education as a way up and out
of poverty. Most don’t know the lengths my father would go through to get students in to college.
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n one of our many car trips without a radio, he told me about a particular player he helped get into school. The player was accepted to college to play football and met the coach on the first day. The coach said “Mr. D said you were a 6’1” 200 pound righthanded quarterback” Which I guess wasn’t too far off the mark considering he was a 5’10”, 180 pound, left-handed quarterback…But he got into college. Coach D also addressed institutional racism head-on during these tumultuous times. Gratz was widely considered to have the worst gym in the entire city. New schools were being built, and other schools were being refurbished, but not Gratz. Building a new gym would require the demolition of 14 homes occupied by white
families. In the 60’s that just wasn’t going to happen. The mayor came down and said these homes would be saved. But the mayor never met Lou DeVicaris. You see, he knew that 100,000 blacks were dispossessed to make way for Temple University to be built, so he wrote a letter to the Philadelphia Inquirer and other city papers threatening to resign if a new gym wasn’t built. He, with the school and local community, put enough pressure on the district to get a new gym and football field for Gratz. This was also around the time that Coach D was given the opportunity to leave Gratz and coach at his alma mater Frankford, often mentioned as the best football program in the city, but he turned it down. My father loved the kids at Gratz and their community. It was an exciting time and things were beginning to change, and he wanted to be a part of it. With Dick Bauder, Mr.
D worked and coached at Simon Gratz High School for fifteen years. He had many former players attend college, and some even making it to the professional level, most notably Leroy Kelly, the Hall of Fame running back, and Alvin Mitchell, both of the Cleveland Browns. He also coached Leroy’s brother Harold Patrick Kelly, who played professional baseball.
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Luther King and Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. The Vietnam War was raging and the battle for Civil Rights was rocking the nation. It was during this era that my father and mother along with the Herrs, Malloys, Hepburns, Graves, and Padrones formed the Catholic Lay Council, a group dedicated to the civil rights movement.
ith the help, guidance and support of colleagues like Marcus A. Foster, Santee Ruffin, and Walter Scriven, Mr. D moved up the educational ladder and became an assistant principal also in charge of discipline at Germanton High School. This was a time of gangs and riots in the neighborhoods but the work of these great men gave kids the opportunity to succeed and move forward in life.
They didn’t just talk about civil rights, they actively worked to move the agenda forward. They were present for Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream speech” . And when an African-American family moved into a traditionally white neighborhood and had their house vandalized, the Catholic Lay Council showed up with shovels, rakes, and plants, walked through the protesting crowds and cleaned the damage up.
This was the 60’s, a time of social upheaval and turmoil in the entire country. President Kennedy, and later Martin
I’m sure at this point many are wondering how could anyone accomplish so much in such a
short period of time? Well, that’s not all he did. In 1955 my father married my mother Judy Boyer. Between 1957 and 1969 they had 5 children: Suzanne, Lisa, Jacqueline, Christopher & me (Alexander). And in 1960 they opened Adventureland Day Camp Adventureland was an outgrowth of my father’s work as a city playground instructor in the evenings and summers. You see, my father loved kids and never wanted to stop working with them, mainly because he was a child on the inside as well.
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e never lost the wonder of experiencing nature, the joy of playing in a game, or the pride in creating a work of art. Mr. D wanted to share those experiences with children and he spent his summers doing just that. The Day Camp wasn’t always located on this site. From 1960 and 1961 Mr. D operated the
camp out of Pennypack Park. My father drove the bus to pick kids up and he and Mr. Bauder were the counselors. A milk man dropped off milk and a local deli delivered sandwiches for lunch. In 1962 they arrived at Pennypack Park for the first day of camp and discovered that because the Day Camp was a for-profit business they were not allowed to use the park any more. My father always thought it was funny for the camp to be considered a for- profit business because like most small businesses we’ve never made a lot money. Without the use of a regular site, most people would have thrown in the towel, but not my dad. They spent that summer taking the kids to a different playground around the city each day for the entire summer. This was also when Lou recognized the need for a permanent site and we opened
our doors here in Bensalem along the Neshaminy Creek in 1963.
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n 1972 my father was appointed Principal of Martin Luther King, a new high school located in Mt Airy. My father never thought in a million years he would get this job, a white Italian running an all black school named after an icon of the Civil Rights Movement. And when he was appointed, the Home and School Association was not happy, they did not want him as the leader of that school. But Santee Ruffin said to them : You want this man running this school. This man loaded up his station wagon with kids and drove them to Morgan State in Baltimore to get them into college. That’s the kind of man Lou DeVicaris is.
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ing was the first high school in the nation to be
built on the “House Plan” which basically divides a large school both physically and staff-wise
into smaller schools. It is similar to a concept called teaming that is practiced in many elementary and middle schools today. It really was fitting to have an innovatively designed school led by an innovative man. My father ran the school based on one philosophy: What will help the students? What will make them grow and stretch to become better than they are? What will give students the real tools they need to succeed in our competitive society? That same philosophy applied to the staff as well. His office had an open door policy so any one could come in at any time and speak with him. If a teacher had an idea that they wanted to try he would back them. If a teacher wanted to become a department leader or administrator, he would help them study for the exams and interviews because he believed in developing leaders who served their students, not the other way around. And these are just a few examples. He also empowered his
students. King was one of the only inner-city schools to have a lunch program and evening dances because he challenged the students by asking them: “The white schools have these things, why not you?” He showed the larger community that given the opportunity all students can rise to the occasion and make us proud. My father did things at King that often put his job in jeopardy, but were the right thing to do. For example, at the Home and School meetings every year he went out of his way to explain to parents that no one verifies the financial information that parents put down on forms to qualify for free and reduced lunches, and lo and behold the number of students who qualified for assistance and therefore eased the financial burden on household budgets increased. But he went a step further. What Mr. D found out from the cafeteria staff was that few
students were actually using the program, because they didn’t want to be seen as poor by their peers. So, he worked out a system with the cafeteria where any student could get a free lunch if they didn’t have any money with them. Was it illegal? Absolutely, but kids who may not have gotten another meal that day got to eat. I don’t even want to tell you what he did with the bus tokens. Just suffice it to say that kids were able to get to school and the money went back to King.
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r. D also recognized the need for students to feel safe in and around the building. The layout of King made it impossible to monitor every door, and it wasn’t given the fancy locking doors like the predominantly white schools, so my dad did the next best thing: He chained some doors to keep out drug dealers and gang members who weren’t even students at his school . This was completely illegal, but my father
knew the safety of the students and staff took precedent above all else. They devised a special coded announcement to remove the chains in the event of the Fire Marshall showing up, and most times they were successful. One time they were not and Mr. D was fined $300. The staff took up a collection and paid the fine for him. At King the Health and Law academies were born where students who were interested in medical or legal fields could take coursework specifically designed to prepare them for further education in these professions. Many former King students from the health academy worked at Jefferson and would visit him while he was there. They also started an adult school program where people from the community could come in and earn their high school diplomas. My father worked so hard at Martin Luther King that he set up a cot in his office so he could rest between school
and the evening activities that he took part in. And through it all he never forgot his love for the students or working with kids. There was many a fall day where you could find him on the practice field helping out Coach Ferber and the football team, whether Mr. Ferber wanted him there or not. King became a model school both nationally and internationally, and began to draw kids from all over Philadelphia, something unheard of for an inner-city predominately black school. Over 15,000 visitors from all over the world toured King during my father’s tenure to learn about what an amazing place a comprehensive high school could be.
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urveying all the awards my father received during this period is impressively overwhelming. He was proud of being named a Danforth Fellow but was most proud of the students, the staff and the
support he received from the Home and School Association.
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he entire community had worked together to create a school culture that was a model of success. The large number of students who were graduating high school, going on to college, or getting well paying jobs was his legacy. My Wife, Wendy, is an administrator in her school district and recently met with a textbook salesman. He recognized her name and asked if she was related to a Mr. DeVicaris. She explained that she was his daughter-in-law, and the salesman talked about my father’s deeds, and though he never met him personally, told Wendy how he was a legend in the Philadelphia School System. This was fifteen years after he had retired. I’ve shared with you some highlights of his professional life but I haven’t talked much about his other passion, the Day Camp
we are at today. My father loved summer and he loved this camp. He loved the land, the fish, birds and animals that call it home, but most of all he loved the people who were part of the Adventureland family. It’s very difficult to describe the camp experience to someone who hasn’t lived it, but suffice it to say, camp gets in your blood. There are many in this world who count their summers at camp as among the best times in their lives. I can’t tell you how many former campers who worked at Adventureland and even put off getting full time jobs so they could keep coming back summer after summer. My father received many phone calls from parents over the years begging him not to re-hire their children so they would be forced to get full time jobs. That was all because of the culture that he created. He got all of us kids involved with
the day camp as well, and fired us all except Chris at least once. But he never held a grudge with anyone, and I’m happy to say that he hired us all back.
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amp was the place where he could share this joyous and child-like nature with the world. In the early days he drove the bus and taught swimming and diving to the campers at Highway Pools. Located along the boulevard, the Highway pools were open to the public and the camp wasn’t big enough to rent the entire facility so there were other people there as well. He used to fondly remember how he would be teaching swimming to the campers and the next thing he knew there were additional kids in the group. Kids who were not part of the camp would see what he was doing and join in the fun. These kids didn’t pay for lessons, but such was the heart of this man that he never turned them away. He taught swimming at the camp well into his 70’s, and
literally thousands of people credit their first dive to Mr. D. I often describe camp as organized chaos, and that’s an environment where my dad thrived. A sudden rain, or heat wave or rising waters from the creek could destroy the best laid plans in an instant, but if you know anything about my father, you know that nothing could stop him. He had a solution for every problem that would occur and oftentimes no one would even know something was amiss. He was always proud to say that we have never missed a day of camp in our entire 50 years in operation. Mr. D could sing by heart every camp song known to man and get 400 campers including teenagers to join in His favorite time at camp was the evenings after most people had left for the day, when the camp is quiet and takes on a wonderful glow. The animals would come out and he would
feed the fish left-over sandwiches from camp lunch. My father loved to ride on the tractor, cut the grass and ponder the beauty of this special place. My dad’s grace and charity showed through here at camp as well. Many families who couldn’t afford to attend camp found their way into camp because of my father. He bent over backwards to get kids into camp because he knew the value of children attending a place like this. Camp was, and is, a magical place that gave everyone who came in contact with it a special experience that will travel with them for the rest of their lives.
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espite the time and effort my father spent in his professional life, he always made time for his family and a rich personal life. We would spend our days between the end of camp and the beginning of school at the Jersey shore where my father was legendary for
avoiding the beach tag checkers. He used to say “I’m not paying for something that discriminates against poor people!” To avoid paying he would proudly lead our family and cousins under the boardwalk to the beach. We had a standing rule that when you see the tag checkers coming yell “hit the water” and run into the waves and dad would lay on his towel and pretend he was asleep. Usually, his size would prevent people from bothering to wake him up. He coached my brother and I in CYO football and carried his philosophy of honest and spirited competition to a whole other population of kids. His competiveness showed through in every contest he participated in. Once he broke his thumb by slamming it into the pool deck in a vain attempt to beat my then 13 year-old sister Suzanne in a swimming race. He coached football in a full arm cast after that episode. These stories
highlight his irrepressible nature and joy of living.
Dad was also an amazing and fearless card player, who almost always won money. But he was e used to love food shopping and would often never rude or pompous about it, when you lost to him, you never pick his feet up and ride the shopping cart down the little hill felt bad or angry, you just knew you were beaten by the best. at the local supermarket. Most That’s not to say he was a quiet times shopping for a family of player, his good-natured ribbing, seven produced groceries heavy infectious laughter and great enough to counter his weight. But one time he had a lot of bags stories always made playing cards with him a fantastic experience. with light groceries like bread When he played in cash games and eggs. He started his ride down the hill, and the next thing and did really well, Dad would often stay late to let people win you know his cart flips up, he smashes his knees on the ground, some of their money back. cuts his pants and breaks his These are just a few of the eggs. many wonderful memories we have of our father. He was a If that wasn’t humiliating great man who loved life and enough, the whole scene unfolded in front of the kid who lived it large. He lived greatly, was gathering the carts. The kid and argued passionately. Our family will forever be known as rushed over and wanted to help “The Loud Family” because of him get new eggs, etc. but he our time spent debating with was so embarrassed that he just Dad. No matter how old we wanted to get in the car. And if
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that wasn’t bad enough, he had to come home and explain to us why his pants were all cut up.
became, he was always our dad and we were always his children. To the end, he still called my brother and I Aley and Chrissy,
and we didn’t mind. He loved his grandchildren greatly and welcomed my wife, Wendy, my brothers-in-law Dave and Mac and everyone else who crossed our doorstep with open arms. While at times people may have disagreed vehemently with him, he never held a grudge and rarely burned a bridge with someone. Most eventually became his friends and supported his endeavors.
Although our whole family is devastated by his passing, I have no doubt he is in heaven with Uncle Richie and Uncle Chester, they’re swapping stories, telling the people in charge how the place should be run, and figuring out how they’re going to cheat at the next Trivial Pursuit Tournament.
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any people are aware of different parts and aspects of my father’s life and personality but we were fortunate enough to have known all of him and are better people for it. His whole life was spent helping the people around him. But he wasn’t pretentious about it. He knew that whoever he was involved with was helping him as much as he was helping them. The best way to describe it was that he was authentic. That’s the kind of man we grew up with.
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hile he is no longer with us, his life, his legacy and his influence made the world a better place and will be remembered for a long, long, time.
We would like to thank everyone who knew and loved Lou. He will be sorely missed by all.
People have shown our family an amazing amount of support. For this we will be eternally grateful.