Remembering my biggest fan, my father
My father should have had a job advertising for The Morning Call.
Throughout this past year spent at the Phoebe Home in Allentown where he was recovering from a stroke and battling cancer, my dad, Rocky Groller, would continually ask people wherever he went: “Do you like sports? Do you read the paper? Do you know Keith Groller?”
He did this everywhere he went throughout the Phoebe Home and again on more than a dozen transport visits I accompanied him on to doctor visits and other events.
I’d try to shush him and say, “Hey Pop, they don’t care. I am just your son going with you to the doctor.” But five minutes later, he’d do it again.
Without a doubt, my father was my biggest fan.
I lost my biggest fan last week. He was 78. His funeral was on Monday and I was able to tell so many people how much he meant to me.
Whenever something good happened in my career, like getting assigned to a Super Bowl, a World Series or an Indy 500, or if I was inducted into a Hall of Fame, he was the first person I would call. That’s because I knew he would be happier about the news than I was.
“If there’s something big happening, Keith’s there,” he’d tell people.
Which wasn’t necessarily true, but I let him spin it his way.
The truth is my father was the one who taught me to love high school sports. When I was a kid, we didn’t miss a fall Friday night at a local high school football stadium or a winter Tuesday or Friday night at a local gym.
We now live in an age where you only seem to go to games if you have a son, daughter, grandson or granddaughter involved. But dad took me to games not because we had family involved, but because he wanted to support his alma mater and community.
It’s something we’ve lost in high school sports … going to games just because it’s your school.
The bottom line is without that influence from my father, who knows what I might have spent the last 37 years doing?
Because he was a member of Allentown High School’s last graduating class in 1959, Pop was partial to the Canaries, but after he began driving Engine 13 at Allentown’s East Side Fire Station in 1969, he softened up on Dieruff.
At a certain point he stopped going to games in person and watched them on TV and then he became a fan of all high school athletes.
He’d call me in the morning sometimes and say something like: “Keith, I watched that Central Catholic-Parkland game last night. What a game. That Muhammad Ali Abdur-Rahkman is pretty damn good. So is Devante Cross.”
And, I’d say: “Uh, dad, I know. I was there. Didn’t you see me sitting at the press table?”
But I appreciated his enthusiasm for high school sports and he told me often that he’d rather watch high school games on TV than college or the pros.
My father was a proud member of
Allentown High’s last undefeated football team in 1957 and he would often talk about those days when a Thanksgiving Day game against Bethlehem would attract 15,000 or 16,000 people.
He would talk about what it was like to be a visiting player at Easton or Phillipsburg or take on Power Memorial in New York and be in a hostile territory where the home fans bought Canary pennants just so they could burn them.
He talked about his legendary coaches such as Perry Scott and Ken Wildonger or how he would get free socks from iconic trainers such as Joe Blankowitsch.
He talked about his times working in the Lehigh Parkway with future Super
Bowl champion Larry Seiple before Seiple left for the University of Kentucky and the NFL.
He’d tell me stories about his high school buddy, Ron “Punkin” Miller, and how much both of them loved to eat.
Or he’d talk about meeting Sammy Balliet and Curt Simmons as a kid with his father, who was from Coplay, or how cool a place Breadon Field was and how he loved seeing games there.
I listened to every word and often wanted to get in a time capsule with him to go back to see what those days were like myself.
Dad tried his best to make me into a top-notch athlete, but my career as an East Side Ram baseball and basketball player wasn’t anything to write home about nor was my career as a Dieruff High tennis player.
Still, I tried to make him proud through sports and one of our final nights together I asked him if I was successful in making him proud. In a whisper he said: “Very much so.”
I also him told him how proud I was to have him as a father, especially of his 31 years as an Allentown firefighter.
More than that, I was proud of how he always interacted with people and wanted to make them laugh, smile or make their day just a little better than it was before he saw them.
He taught me a lot about how to treat people no matter their color, religion or station in life.
“I don’t pretend to be anyone I’m not,” he’d say. “I’m just me.”
He used to tell people that the only thing he ever taught me was how to write my name. Trust me, he taught me so much more than that.
Dad got a fitting firefighter’s farewell on Monday, complete with an honor guard and an Engine 13 escort to the ceremony, but I was also so gratified to see the local high school sports community represented as well with people there from Catasauqua, Northampton, Parkland, Executive Charter, Central Catholic, Northwestern Lehigh among other schools, and, of course, his beloved Allen High Canaries.
He will be missed by his entire family, especially his grandson Chris, who followed his footsteps into the Allentown Fire Department.
As for me, I can only hope he’s now reunited with my mother in heaven and they’re sitting front and center and watching a game together.