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After 50 years, a group of men comes back to their "home away from home"
By Crystal Yormick
When Edward Rocco got off the school bus at the end of each day in the 1970s, he had a routine. He would rush home to change and then load his bike with a football tucked under the seat, a baseball glove balanced on the handlebars, and a basketball wedged in the sissy bar. Then, he would bike two miles to Carr Park.
For hours, he would play sports there with his friends before heading home.
“Carr Park was really our hub,” Rocco said. “We spent most of our waking hours up there.”
About 50 years later, Rocco and 13 of the guys he grew up playing sports with returned to Carr Park for a pickup basketball game.
The park itself has changed over the years. It’s been renovated and updated and now has multiple basketball courts, pickleball courts and an area for young kids to play.
However, some of the men said the energy among them remains the same.
“It’s almost like everybody takes on their personality they had 50 years ago with certain sayings and mannerisms we had,” said John Moore, who came from Methuen, Mass., for the reunion.
When it came time for the game, some of the men played while others acted as cheerleaders. They brought lawn chairs, snacks, drinks, and sandwiches from Bob's Italian Foods and spent nearly five hours catching up in the park. The men, who are now mostly in their late sixties or turning 70, described the reunion as nostalgic and a trip down memory lane.
“Our backs are hurting. Our knees are hurting,” Rocco said. “The basketball game didn’t last too long, but we had a lot of laughs.”
Some men said the bond they created through going to the park is so strong because they grew up in a time without phones or technology. However, they credited social media as part of the reason they are able to stay in contact today. Many of these friendships have spanned decades, with some of them lasting 65 years.
“It was so different back then,” said Peter Scavongelli, who attended the reunion. “We didn’t have screens. We didn’t have phones. We sort of just got together and socialized.”
Many of the men from the group now have children and grandchildren and have them participate in sports because of their experiences at Carr Park. Rocco said there were kids playing at the park while they were there, which reminded him of his own group.
“The biggest thing was just watching all those young children play at the park and us [being] given the opportunity to reminisce about how that was us about 62 years ago,” Rocco said.
The group stopped coming after most of them graduated college, Rocco said. They now stay in contact by getting together about once a month for lunch or dinner. Many of them live outside of Medford in other parts of Massachusetts or the New England area. Over the years, the group has lost some of its members, whom they now honor with a toast at all of their get-togethers, Moore said.
Some men said their experiences at the park shaped them for other parts of their lives. Moore said he learned how to be a team player at Carr Park, which allowed him to be successful in his career in high tech. Scavongelli said it helped him prepare for other sports.
The group hopes to get together again at the park one more time before the winter.
“In some respects, I miss the old park,” Rocco said. “It was much simpler back then because it wasn’t the park that made it special. It was the people that went to the park that made it special. The park was just the meeting spot.”
