Officiated at local high school basketball games for decades
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
The “Greatest Generation” got its nickname because of people like Walter “Lud” Yaworski.
A well-known high school basketball official for decades, Mr. Yaworski was a beloved father, grandfather and World War II veteran who left nothing undone and had no regrets, said his daughter, Debbie Rozsa of Silver Lake, Ohio.
Mr. Yaworski, 91, died Saturday at the skilled nursing home where he lived in Mt. Lebanon, due to complications from diabetes.
“My dad was a great guy,” Ms. Rozsa said. “It was a testament to my dad that he was supposed to live three to six months, but he lived 10 months.”
The youngest of five children, Mr. Yaworski grew up in Carnegie and graduated from Scott High School in June 1944. Just a month later, he enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he served as a private first class and a machine gunner in the Pacific theater during World War II, including the battles in Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands.
After he left the service in 1946, Mr. Yaworski found a job as a brake man for Pennsylvania Railroad, which eventually became the Penn Central Railroad, then Conrail.
“That was his first job that he got out of the war and that’s the job he stayed with for 40 years,” Ms. Rozsa said.
Mr. Yaworski served for many years as treasurer of the local United Transportation Union, which represented railroad workers, before his retirement in 1986.
When he was in his mid20s, he met Elizabeth “Betty” Lawrence at a shop in Carnegie.
“He went into the shop because he thought she was cute and he was going to buy a coonskin cap, just to have a reason to go in and talk to her,” Ms. Rozsa said.
The couple married in 1953 and built a home in 1960 on Greentree Road in Scott, where they raised four children. They celebrated their 65th anniversary in April.
Mr. Yaworksi had a lifelong love of basketball that started when he played for his Scott High School team, his daughter said.
“His great love was sports — especially basketball,” Ms. Rozsa said. “He had to have his sports page in the newspaper every day.”
That translated into a part-time job as an official for local high school boys basketball around 1950 and continued through the early 1990s. He officiated many state championships, his daughter said, and wasn’t afraid to make tough calls.
“They weren’t paid a lot of money, and many times they had a police escort out of the building,” she said. “My dad was known to be tough and call everything. He had no problem calling a technical [foul].”
In 1971, Mr. Yaworksi was elected president of the South and North Hills Basketball Officials Association. He also served in 1969 as vice president of the Suburban Pittsburgh Basketball Officials Association.
Mr. Yaworksi was recognized with a commendation from the Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic League for his service as an official and was honored by Russian Orthodox officials for his work with local youth groups.
Mr. Yaworksi retired as an official primarily to help care for his son, Dan Yaworski, who suffered a traumatic brain injury as a result of a 1993 car accident in which he was a passenger. He was in a coma for a time and spent two years recovering.
“It was a full-time job” to care for Dan, Ms. Rozsa recalled. Her brother, now 49, is part of a brain injury program near his home in Erie.
The elder Mr. Yaworski was a lifelong member of Holy Virgin Russian Orthodox Church in Carnegie, and he pitched in to help coach youth basketball teams that were part of the Federated Russian Orthodox Clubs.
“They practiced for two hours every Thursday and had a tournament every year,” Ms. Rozsa said of the program for students in grades 7-12.
Her father always had more to teach her, Ms. Rozsa said, and that’s what she’ll miss most about him.
“I felt that I constantly learned something every time we spoke,” she said. “I was amazed at all the things that I didn’t know and continued to learn, even in the last conversations.”
Her father will get his last wish — to be buried in Marine dress blues — which he couldn’t afford in his younger years.
“He never had the money to buy them and he always wanted them,” she said of the uniform.
In addition to his wife, daughter and son, Mr. Yaworksi is survived by another son, Arian Yaworski of Bridgeville; another daughter, Christine Censullo of Aurora, Ill.; and seven grandchildren.
Friends will be received from 2 to 4 and 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at William Slater II Funeral Service, 1650 Greentree Road, Scott, followed by a Parastas Service, an Orthodox funeral ritual, at 7:30 p.m. The funeral will be held at noon Thursday in Holy Virgin Russian Orthodox Church, 214 Mansfield Ave., Carnegie. Interment will be in the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies in Cecil.
The family suggests donations in Mr. Yaworski’s name be made to the church.