The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Remembering Middletown’s star
Serra spent most of life making sports better in city
MIDDLETOWN — Tom Serra was an All-State receiver at Middletown in the early 1960s. During the Tigers’ conference championship season of ’63, one of his teammates, a running back, remembered how comforting it felt on the rare occasion Serra blocked for him.
“Tom’s senior year was my junior year, and Waino Fillback decided on a prostyle offense with usually only one running back behind the quarterback,” Mike Augeri recalled this week. “Serra was catching passes left and right from (quarterback Phil) Sienna.
“When I did carry a pitch-out or short pass, Serra would easily take out two of the opposing players. He would say, ‘Come right off my backside, I’ll block the corner and the safety, and you’ll score.’ ”
The image is enduring and in line with what people knew about Tom Serra — out front, charting a path for others to follow, making sure they were taken care of.
Serra, 72, died Saturday after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was a powerful advocate for athletes and teams in the city. In his working career, whether in the role of coach, athletic director, principal, city commission member, town councilman or mayor, in some way he made sure city athletes got their due.
Sports helped Serra hone his leadership style. After football season, he also excelled in basketball and baseball for the Tigers. Fillback and basketball coach Sebastian “Prof” Gallitto were major influPORT
ences on him. Former teammates, regardless of the sport, describe Serra as a fierce competitor with an attention to detail like no other player. At the same time, he was a calming presence in pressure situations, a trait he carried into town politics.
He also liked to involve others — even as a teen. Xavier athletic director Tony Jaskot grew up just yards from City School Field and was not yet of high-school age when he would go watch Serra and the Tigers hold practice.
“My backyard was City School Field, and me and the other kids would watch Waino Fillback and the players practice. There was not a moment when Tom wouldn’t pick up the ball on a practice break and pass it to me and my friends in the neighborhood,” said Jaskot, who would go on to teach and coach Serra’s sons, Jason and Chris, at Xavier.
“Tom’s role modeling, as far as treating people kindly, started when he was a teenager,” Jaskot said. “We laughed about it later on, but it was true. I had respect for Tom on that alone. I got interested in playing football by a kid who was a star on his high-school football team. I never forget that and he never forgot it, too.”
A ‘TENACIOUS, GUTTY ATHLETE’
Serra also played defensive end for the Tigers and was a “brutal tackler.” In basketball, his signature contributions — no surprise — came on the defensive end. The 1963-64 Tigers were undersized — Bill Brown was the only 6-footer among the core of Serra, Sienna, Tom LaBella and Sal Zimmitti — and not projected to go far in the Class M tournament. But they went on a midseason tear, winning 13 in a row, and beat East Catholic by 13 points in the final for the city’s first state championship in the sport.
“We were a very fast team and Tom was put on the hardest person to defend,” Sienna said by phone from his California home. “He was a fierce rebounder and defender and took pride in that. Prof schooled him on boxing out and he accepted that. That was his role. East Catholic had a 6-5 guy and Tommy was 5-10, and Tommy kept him off the boards. He was tenacious, a gutty athlete.”
In football, Sienna said Serra pushed himself to make great plays and put in time in the offseason to get better at receiver.
“Back in those days, teams didn’t throw the ball a lot. Well, we threw it a lot,” he said. “One game, I’m rolling out to the right and Tommy is on the sideline to the left, 25 yards downfield. I threw it hard, over his head, and he reaches up, touches the ball, catches it and runs the rest of the way for the touchdown. It was a spectacular play by him.
“He would practice in the summer. He’d drag me out there to work on timing routes. People just didn’t do that back in those days. He was progressive and ahead of his time as a receiver. As a quarterback, I would not have made All-State without Tommy. He didn’t drop the ball.”
Bill Denehy, who went on to pitch in the major leagues out of Woodrow Wilson High, called from his Florida home to reminisce about the days when Serra was his catcher in the Ahern-Whalen League. The two opposed each other in the Wilson-Middletown basketball rivalry, and Denehy enjoyed the harmless trash talk they would engage in underneath the basket at the Wesleyan Cage.
“I enjoyed him as a friend, as a competitor and as a teammate, all three,” Denehy said. “I loved playing against him. There was never any animosity or thoughts of having a fight or doing anything dirty. We just played schoolyard basketball and enjoyed the competition against each other.
“In the 60 years I knew him, we had only one disagreement. It was our junior year and Tommy had made All-State in football. He was going out for the track team because he wanted to increase his speed for football that fall. I heard about that and when we ran into each other, I said, ‘Tommy, I understand what you’re doing, but you’re one hell of a catcher. Improve your speed on your own time. You ought to stay with baseball.’ He just said, ‘Bill, I have to do this.’ ”
HIS ‘PASSION PROJECT’
Serra took great pleasure in his role as president of the Middletown Sports Hall of Fame, a title he held since 1994, and is among the hundreds of athletes inducted since the hall opened in 1994. He was part of the 1998 class that included his basketball teammate, Tom LaBella.
David Gallitto, the hall’s vice president, was 8 years old and tagging along with his father for Tigers practices and games at the old Armory when he got his first introduction to Serra. Gallitto was among those who worked with Serra to plan for the induction dinner in January, and Gallitto presided over the festivities in Serra’s absence.
“He took a lot of pride in the Hall of Fame. It was his passion project,” Gallitto said. “All too often when you’re involved in so many boards and commissions, it can take its toll after a long period of time. But it was a labor of love for him and he always commended the group involved that helped to put this on. Tom was a great leader for the Hall of Fame. He went the extra mile to make sure things were done correctly and people were satisfied.”
When Middletown and Xavier played for the City Championship on Thanksgiving at Wesleyan, Serra presented the trophy, paid for and donated by the Hall of Fame, to the winning team. It was another way for him to remain close to the city’s sports scene, and in the first few years of the rivalry, he drove Fillback, then in his 90s, to the games.
“Tom was involved in all the behind-the-scenes stuff that went on when the game originated (in 1998),” Jaskot said. “He was always a guest of the Tuesday dinner that week, when both teams and cheerleader squads and coaching staffs attended. It was in his mind a positive thing, not as much for the city but for the kids in the city of Middletown as well as the kids who attended Xavier that came from outside the community. The kids came first all the time for Tom.”
PROMOTING VINAL’S KIDS
At Vinal Tech, where the sports complex was named for Serra upon his retirement in 2003, his decadeslong career includes the roles of teacher, coach, athletic director and principal. Over the years, he and others worked to expand the school’s sports offerings — football and wrestling for boys, and softball, basketball, volleyball and tennis for girls.
Tom Lombardo and Serra, who first met in the 1950s through Middlefield’s Midget football program, had parallel careers at Vinal beginning in the 1970s. Serra coached basketball and baseball at the school. Lombardo coached soccer and succeeded Serra as athletic director at the end of the 1980s, when Serra rose to the administrative ranks.
“Tom cared very much about the school. He was a hands-on person and a hands-on leader,” Lombardo said. “I liked the idea that he supported athletics 100 percent. Whatever we needed or wanted, if it was possible, he made it happen. He went to games and did everything he could to promote our kids.
“We got along very well. I lost my wife to cancer in 2010 and his loss is still so surreal to me.”
Because Serra’s devotion to public service impacted education, athletics and politics, his legacy is particularly special, his longtime friend said.
“He was looking to not only better the schools but improve the town,” Lombard said. “Tom was strong willed and he wanted to be involved in good things that were happening and he helped create a lot of those good things. I guarantee he touched everything that was good in Middletown. He just wanted to be effective and wanted to help and wanted to be involved. That was Tom.”