Larry Brick One Tremendous Athlete In His Prime
How good was Larry Brick, the just retired administrator at Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, as an athlete when he was much younger?
For starters he is a two-time WGD (World Games for the Deaf) athlete, a gold medalist in tennis. And he would have been in three Games except he had to stay home to be with his wife when their child was born.
And even more so, he was also a top notch swimmer and would have picked up a harvest of medals at the WGD in the freestyle, backstroke, breastroke, butterfly and the medley events. The problem was that he never heard of WGD until years after his swimming career ended, and after he broke school records. Looking back Larry continues to wonder if he would have won these WGD swimming medals during the prime years of his swimming career. “I was 24 by the time and past my prime for swimming,” said Larry.
Want more on his athletic exploits? At the Horace Mann School in Riverdale, NY he was the first freshman in school history to make the varsity in soccer. As midfielder he was never beaten out of his starting position for four seasons. Larry also played on the varsity in basketball and even was an outstanding baseball player on the freshman team before opting for tennis as a sophomore. As a senior, he won the school Athlete of the Year award, which was considered earthshaking. Not because of his deafness, but because he did not play either football, basketball or baseball, these “must sports” for winning such Athlete of the Year award.
Football? Why didn’t Larry play this sport? He wanted to. The school football coach wanted him, but the father put his foot down and said no. Said Larry “In retrospect, I’m glad Dad held firm.”
Many high school stars fizzle when playing collegiate sports. Did Larry fizzle? No, he put in three varsity seasons each in soccer, swimming and tennis for Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT. Tennis, however, was his best sport, winning trophies for placing top three in various tournaments. “That was too long ago for me to remember,” said Larry.
And while he was busy playing high school and college sports, he never heard of the WGD. It wasn’t only until he was well into his graduate studies at Catholic University, Washington, DC when he learned about the World Games of the Deaf.
Larry always wore hearing aids while playing tennis and there lies an amusing but a long forgotten incident that took place between him and the Italians at the 1969 World Games for the Deaf at Belgrade. Larry himself forgot all about it until it was brought up recently. He was paired with Bobbi Hutchinson Maucere in mixed doubles competition and they were leading the Italian pair in the final round. A win and the gold medal would be theirs. Nowadays hearing aids are not permitted in WGD competition but in the past the rules were lax. The Italian coach, not too happy at the prospect of losing to the Americans in the finals, yelled for attention and pointed to Larry’s hearing aids, saying these were “illegal.” Larry ignored the commotion and kept on playing. Larry wouldn’t take off the hearing aids and the Italian coach wouldn’t stop complaining. When reminded about the incident recently, Larry let go a chuckle, surprised that someone would remember this incident.
Speaking of religion, the first school he attended as a six year old child was a Yeshiva. He had to learn Hebrew while at the same time learning English. “My parents said I hated Hebrew,” Larry recalls. He stayed at the Yeshiva for only one year, though. His son Kelby, however, learned much of Hebrew from a rabbi that knew sign language while getting ready for the Bar Mitzvah.
Before retiring, Larry had a long career at schools for the deaf, from 1963 through 1997 both as psychologist and as school administrator. He worked at the Illinois School for the Deaf, Florida School for the Deaf, a school district in St. Louis County, Missouri before making Pennsylvania School for the Deaf his last stop.
