GLORY AT GREENWAY | 'Greenway Avenue Stadium': Cumberland's stadium

Oct. 26—CUMBERLAND — Greenway Avenue Stadium is Cumberland's football stadium, but it's far more than that.

It's a historic landmark, a community center, a family reunion, a theatre, a time capsule, a cathedral, a concert venue, a proving ground, an annual tradition, a source of pride, a link to the past and a glimpse at our future.

It's not a football stadium, it's "the" football stadium. The best high school football stadium in the state of Maryland.

Thousands of Cumberland boys have played on that gridiron since the Works Progress Administration, part of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, erected the venue in 1936 alongside Fort Hill High School.

With a bevy of upgrades over the past two decades, it's all but ensured that thousands more will grace that field.

It's seen its share of changes over the years, including a swap in name from Fort Hill Stadium to Greenway Avenue Stadium in 1987, but its essence has remained intact.

Some will say it's Fort Hill's stadium, but the stadium answers to no master. It's Cumberland's stadium, and it means something different to everybody.

'A poor excuse for a stadium'

As fans walk into Greenway Avenue Stadium this Saturday afternoon for the 102nd meeting between Fort Hill and Allegany, they'll be treated to ample legroom, handicap accessibility, concession stands, a press box, a beautiful turf field, and a near-zero chance of developing Tetanus.

Early fans in the series — and those of Allegany for the 10 years that preceded Fort Hill's opening — were not so fortunate.

Allegany first opened atop Sedgwick Street in 1926, and, for the first 10 years of their existence, the Campers played at Community Park.

So too did Fort Hill in 1936, as Fort Hill Stadium, as it was known then, wouldn't be completed for another year.

Suter Kegg, who served as the sports editor of the Cumberland Evening Times and Cumberland Sunday Times from 1946 until 1981 and covered area sports for the better part of a half-century, described Community Park thusly in a 1979 column:

"It was a poor excuse for a stadium but it was the only place to play."

The field was enclosed in wood, as were the bleachers and the fence that surrounded the field along Wineow Street. There were no concessions, and the bathrooms were little more than outhouses.

On the plus side, the county didn't need to employ anyone to cut the grass because there was none to be found.

The stadium was indicative of the times.

The Great Depression struck the world in 1929 and created a national unemployment rate of 25% in 1933. There wasn't money to go around to fund a new high school or renovate a decaying Community Park.

That changed when FDR instituted the Public Works Administration in 1933 as part of his New Deal.

The county secured $230,000 from the PWA in 1934 for a new high school, and other funding sources brought the total for the school to $600,000.

On April 5, 1935, George F. Hazelwood was announced as the low bidder for a new high school building at Johnson Heights at a price of $537,809.

The initial funding did not include the cost of a football stadium or tennis courts, and the county received $60,000 — approximately $1.3 million today — in WPA funding, part of FDR's Second New Deal, to erect a football stadium.

With the new stadium yet to be completed, Allegany and Fort Hill both played games at Community Park during the 1936 season and waged their first Turkey Day game on Nov. 26, 1936.

Herman Ball's Campers completed an unbeaten 9-0-1 season with a 19-12 win over Fort Hill. The Sentinels ended 6-2 in their first and only season under Bobby Cavanaugh, who coached the Penn Avenue grid team the previous four campaigns.

The turnout from the game was so impressive that Allegany County Superintendent of Schools Charles L. Kopp vowed to provide suitable seating accommodations at the yet-to-open stadium for 10,000 spectators.

The concrete side of the stadium parallel to Greenway Avenue provided stands for 3,500 fans, and "temporary" wooden bleachers seating approximately 1,000 more Cumberlanders were built on the opposite side of the field.

"I predict it will be necessary to have seats for 10,000 in order to take care of all the fans desiring to attend the annual Allegany-Fort Hill game on Thanksgiving day," Kopp said during a speech at Allegany's alumni banquet in 1936.

Even in his wildest imagination, Kopp couldn't have predicted what was to come.

The Industrial Bowl

Allegany opened the brand-new stadium on Sept. 18, 1937, with a 32-14 rout of Davis, West Virginia.

LaSalle and Petersburg nearly opened Fort Hill Stadium a day prior but were relegated to Community Park when the field wasn't ready.

Fort Hill played its first game at the stadium two weeks later, a 34-0 rout of Petersburg on Oct. 1.

The football fever spread throughout Cumberland like a virus, and, even with the onset of World War II in 1939, the crowds increased exponentially at Turkey Day games.

In 1938, there were 4,500 spectators. Two years later, there were 6,000. The crowd swelled to 7,500 by 1946 — that paled in comparison to the spectacle that was the 1948 contest.

An estimated crowd of more than 10,000 fans packed Fort Hill Stadium to see two 9-0 city schools duke it out, and both left the field unbeaten, too.

The game featured two of Cumberland's greatest football heroes. Earle "Lefty" Bruce hauled in Allegany's lone touchdown, and John Alderton made Fort Hill's only tally through the air.

Bruce and Wes Abrams were known as the "touchdown twins" in Bob Pence's backfield.

The game would end in a 6-6 tie.

Bruce would go on to coach Ohio State to an 81-26-1 record and was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. Alderton captained the undefeated Maryland Terrapins to a 10-0 mark in 1951 and was drafted by the Pittsburgh Steelers two years later.

With Cumberland's football tradition rapidly expanding, J. Goodloe Jackson and the Cumberland Chamber of Commerce got the idea to bring college football to the stadium.

At the conclusion of the three-day Greater Cumberland Industrial Exposition in 1952, a football game coined the Industrial Bowl was scheduled between West Virginia and Washington and Lee Universities.

The normal capacity of the stadium was just shy of 5,000 at the time, but workers installed additional wooden bleacher seats on the east side which more than doubled the capacity.

These additions, plus the use of collapsable bleachers of the City Recreation Department from Penn Avenue Field, furnished approximately 12,000 seats.

Abrams was now the star back in Washington and Lee's backfield, and he'd get one more opportunity to leave Fort Hill Stadium with a win. Despite a team-high 77 yards — including a 51-yard jaunt for the Generals' first score — West Virginia left with a 31-13 triumph.

Eddie Landis, a Fort Hill graduate, played half the game at linebacker for Washington and Lee, and Rollin McCleary, of Romney High, played right guard for WVU.

However, it would be the last time college football was brought to the city, as the event sold just 4,500 tickets, far less than the promised 10,000 to financial backers. The deficit resulted in a loss of $10,000-$12,000.

LBJ, Al and Little Sinatra

While college football never returned to Fort Hill Stadium, the roaring crowds of the 1950s continued, as Turkey Day attendance hovered between 5,900 and 9,500 annually.

The playing surface was meticulously cared for by Bill Hahn, who coached Fort Hill to a record of 110-13-7, including an 11-1-2 mark in Turkey Day games.

Hahn resigned from coaching at Fort Hill in 1958 and moved to Montgomery County, where he coached at Wheaton High for eight seasons.

On May 7, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson — who assumed the presidency six months prior after the assassination of John F. Kennedy — visited Cumberland during his tour of the Appalachia and war on poverty.

Johnson and his party arrived via helicopters, which they landed on the grass surface at Fort Hill Stadium.

It was probably a good thing for the 36th president of the United States that Hahn was no longer in town.

Johnson attracted a crowd of 8,000 as he spoke in the stadium, 2,000 fewer than the Turkey Day game a few months prior.

While LBJ is the lone sitting president to grace Cumberland's grand arena, the next best thing once sat on the visitor's side bleachers.

On Sept. 22, 2000, Vice President Al Gore and wife Tipper attended a football game to see their son and his Sidwell Friends Quakers take on Allegany, a 47-38 Campers win.

Gore, himself a linebacker at Sidewell in his playing days, drew similarities between the atmosphere at Greenway Avenue Stadium and that of his hometown in Carthage, Tennessee, where "Friday night football is the biggest thing."

He also said that the stadium was one of the best high school stadiums that he's ever seen and that the welcome he and his wife received was appreciated.

The '60s also featured a celebrity musical act in the stadium, as Frank Sinatra Jr. played at Fort Hill Stadium in the summer of 1968 — five years after his high-profile kidnapping.

Sinatra was the feature musical guest of the "Shrine-O-Rama," an event put on by the Ali Ghan Temple.

Former Cumberland Times-News sports editor Mike Burke, whose family moved into their house on Kent Avenue in 1967, remembered the day well.

"My mother and brother were interested in going, and I can remember everyone sitting out back behind our house. We heard the entire concert from two blocks down," he said.

'She ain't what she used to be'

In the decade that followed Hahn's departure, the condition of the football field at Fort Hill Stadium had deteriorated.

A modern lighting system had been installed, additional seats constructed, a new scoreboard assembled and larger restrooms went up during that time. The stadium even got a new press box.

What didn't continue, however, was the unofficial position of stadium caretaker.

"What's happened to this place?" Martinsburg head coach Clyde "Fats" Wilson, a Ridgeley High graduate, asked after playing Allegany in 1968.

"I can't believe the field would be allowed to get in this shape."

Part of the problem was the use of the field by three football teams for stretches of the '60s and '70s, with Allegany, Bishop Walsh and Fort Hill all hosting games some weekends.

Throw in soccer matches, marching band competitions and youth activities, and nearly every fall season ended with a mud bowl between the hashes come Turkey Day.

The Stadium Improvement Committee was organized in 1973 and chaired by Harris LeFew. New aluminum bleachers replaced the "temporary" wooden bleachers that occupied the visitor's side since the stadium was built 36 years prior, the fields were resodded and blacktop surfaces were placed on the track to make it more suitable for use in all weather conditions.

The projects were completed by 1977 and the committee was dissolved.

However, the condition of the field continued to be an issue, and in 1979, discussions were had as to whether to switch the surface to Astro-Turf or another synthetic surface.

Resurfacing the field every season wasn't an option, but neither was artificial turf due to concerns over injuries.

The mud bowls continued, climaxing with "the" mud bowl in 1997 when Roy DeVore's Beall downed favored Allegany, 14-8, to advance to the Class 1A title game.

The last five weeks of the season were played under a sea of mud, testing the acumen of ace groundskeeper Jim LaGratta, and that final contest in the state semifinals would prove to be the final played on a natural surface at that stadium.

'What's in a name?'

FieldTurf was installed in 1998 at a cost of $600,000, was replaced in 2008 for $540,000 and again in 2019 for $488,000. Maryland's Program Open Space contributed $150,000 to the most recent upgrade.

The renovation also included the painting of a blue "Allegany" on the scoreboard end of the end zone and a scarlet "Fort Hill" on the school side.

That action was the latest in a line of changes to make the stadium more inclusive to the Sentinels' crosstown rival, the first of which came in 1987 when the county formally changed the venue's name to Greenway Avenue Stadium.

A blue 'A' was erected below the scoreboard in 2004 — which was promptly vandalized — and an Allegany team house was constructed in 2010.

Current Allegany head coach Bryan Hansel, who led the Campers to the 2005 state championship and won Player of the Year, had the following to say about the changes:

"Fort Hill people will still tell you it's their stadium, which is fine," he said. "The first step was that 'A' they put in during my senior year. I was like, 'Oh great, we have an A.' Then the field house came out. They painted the end zone (Allegany). It feels more like a shared stadium. A new press box is probably what needs to come next."

The concrete side

When people talk about the heyday of Fort Hill and Allegany, the discussion usually begins with Homecoming 1994.

It's one of those historical events that everyone says they attended, and for once, they probably did. More than 14,000 people packed into Greenway Avenue Stadium to see a pair of 9-0 teams put their unbeaten records on the line.

The images are stunning, the hills surrounding the gridiron were completely adorned with spectators and the game was a classic to boot, with Mike Calhoun's Fort Hill Sentinels outlasting Jack Gilmore's Allegany Campers, 28-21.

"The whole student body, they're on the hill as you're coming down through," remembered the Hall of Famer Calhoun, who later became the principal at Allegany. "All those kids and the fans there, it was kind of surreal. It was like out of a story or something.

"I loved the whole week of Homecoming. The buildup. The pageantry that was going on. The preparation. You knew you'd get both teams' best efforts. I hate to see that we don't get the crowds anymore, but I understand we've lost population."

The roaring crowds of Homecoming's past had one last swan song in 2007 when NFL Films brought a film crew to film the game as part of its "Greatest High School Football Rivalry Series."

Roughly 11,000 fans packed the stadium to witness Allegany roll to a 33-14 victory — a Campers season that ended in the state championship game, a 58-34 loss to Dunbar in Baltimore.

In 2009, the Board of Education decided to allocate $2 million to jump-start the destruction of the failing "concrete side" and the rebuilding of a new structure.

The final football game played with the old home side bleachers still intact was on Nov. 20, 2009, when Allegany upset Fort Hill in a surprise 35-14 rout before 8,000 fans.

The concrete stands, which had towered over the neighborhood along Greenway Avenue for more than 70 years, were demolished in March 2010 and rebuilt early in the 2011 season.

That victory was the last time Allegany has beaten Fort Hill. The Sentinels have won 18 straight against their crosstown rival and 14 straight in Homecoming.

A three-phase plan

Greenway Avenue Stadium has meant so much to the people of Cumberland, and, thanks to the Greenway Avenue Stadium Capital Improvement Fund, its future is all but secured.

Renovations were outlined in a three-phase plan, of which two are completed.

The first phase was implemented in 2018, which included a new turf field and stadium lighting upgrade. The running track was re-surfaced, and the scoreboard was repaired.

Phase 2 was finished in 2022 at a cost of $5 million; $3.5 million was funded by the BOE while the remaining $1.5 million was supplied by the American Rescue Plan Act.

The visitor side bleachers were replaced with safer, handicap-accessible bleachers, and the addition of an eight-lane track that will allow the stadium to host regional track meets.

A new sound system debuted this fall, and the stadium committee is still working on upgrading the stadium lighting, press box and visitor's side bathrooms.

"It's the best high school stadium that I've ever been to, and I've done a lot of scouting," Fort Hill head coach Zack Alkire said. "Nothing touches it. I'd be hard-pressed to find a stadium in Maryland that's better outside of the University of Maryland."

Greenway Avenue Stadium has been a part of our lives in Cumberland for 86 years. It'll be Cumberland's football stadium long after we're gone.

Alex Rychwalski is a sports reporter at the Cumberland Times-News. Follow him on Twitter

@arychwal.