'Goodfellows' brings back memories
of a scrappy underdog of a team

Rick Gosselin, who started as an altar boy at St. Ambrose, went on to cover 23 Super Bowls, write thousands of words about the National League Football and get inducted into a newspaper hall of fame.

But when he returned last week to St. Ambrose to tell the stories and anecdotes of St. Ambrose’ remarkable football teams of the 50’s and 60’s, he drew a crowd of football players and fans who weren’t there to hear stories from the Super Bowl press box. “I feel like I’ve come full circle,” the Dallas Morning News sportswriter said.

“Goodfellows: The Champions of St. Ambrose” is the story of the Cavaliers, a tiny Class C Catholic high school on the edge of the Grosse Pointes that didn’t have a football field or even a practice field; the coach’s office was a converted coal bin. Yet it won the Detroit Goodfellows championship in 1959 by beating public school giant Cooley High from across town. But “Goodfellows: The Champions of St. Ambrose” is more than that.

It strikes a chord in fans, cheerleaders, former St. Ambrose player and players from other schools. Joe D’Angelo, the quarterback of that ’59 team, accompanied Gosselin in his talk at the St. Ambrose Ark.

“We were not the biggest, fastest or strongest in the Catholic League,” D’Angelo said. “It was a lot of hard work that spelled success, all the hours we put in. We would run play after play all winter long to prepare for the next season.”

D’Angelo, who threw the pass that won the big game in the final seconds, said it would be sad if those days were the highlight of someone’s life. “But if that experience can make life better today, then it is all worthwhile.” D’Angelo, after a successful career in coaching, is a counselor at Detroit Country Day in Oakland County.

In the decade from 1957 to 1967, St. Ambrose High “produced 12 all-state football players, future National Football League players, future Big Ten and NFL coaches and Super Bowl champs.”

Gosselin grew up in Grosse Pointe Park, attended St. Ambrose, graduated from Michigan State and eventually became the NFL columnist for the Dallas Morning News.
He has spent 35 years writing about football.

Your kid is no Einstein, lady

It was one of those basement to balcony success stories. Julie Aigner-Clark, a mother of two and Grosse Pointe native, started the Baby Einstein Co. in 1997 with a borrowed video camera in the cellar her Colorado home.

The first video cost $15,000 to make and brought in $109,000. She sold the company to the Walt Disney Co. in 2001.

In 2007 she was introduced from the balcony at George W. Bush’s 2007 State of the Union address, making her local friends and acquaintances proud. She attended Ferry Elementary, Parcells Middle School and graduated from North before going to Michigan State and earning a degree in English literature and education. She taught before the couple moved to Littleton, Colo.

Aigner-Clark was named Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst and Young in 2000 and later got Michigan State’s Distinguished Alumni Award.

Saturday’s New York Times in a front page story by Tamar Lewin, detailed a sad conclusion to Aigner-Clark’s success story with “Baby Einstein.”

“. . .The Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for all those ‘Baby Einstein’ videos that did not make children into geniuses,” Lewin reported.

While Aigner-Clark’s original videos may have been educational and beneficial, lawyers threatened Disney with a class action lawsuit for all the videos marketed since 1994, according to Lewin.

The lawyers cited published studies that said television exposure to children under 4 could cause attention problems later. So Disney will now buy back up to four “Baby Einstein” DVDs per household for $15.99 each, Lewin reported.

Beware of sign snatchers

A vigilant homeowner spotted a Grosse Pointe City man removing political signs from the lawn of the condos at Cadieux and St. Paul, copied down the license number and alerted police.

City police, ever diplomatic, looked up the ownership of the vehicle–which turned out to be the sign snatcher’s wife’s car–and telephoned the resident.

The conversation went something like this: Sir, we have a report that you removed political signs from a yard, is that true? The man readily admitted he had done the deed and laughingly explained to the officer that the owner of one of the condos where the signs were located had asked him to remove them.

The owner having moved to Nevada was unaware that his neighbors were posting the signs. Without getting into a discussion of whether the condo association had approved the postings, our sign snatcher said, “I’ll simply replace them.” And he did. Look for additional reports of sign snatchings as we get closer to the November election.

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