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By JOE PETRUCCI
jpetrucci@leader.net
Saturday, March 08, 2003 Page: 3B
HERSHEY – He hitchhiked. He made his sister drive him in a snowstorm. He
rode with several friends in a Winnebago.
Whatever the means of transportation, Wilkes-Barre’s Tom Williams has
attended every PIAA Wrestling Championships each of the past 40 years.
“It’s something I always loved,” said Williams, 52. “I was a wrestler
but never good at it. But I stuck with it. I have countless memories.”
The tournament makes its debut at Giant Center – just a few thousand feet
away from Hersheypark Arena, the event’s home for the previous 24 years. It is
the fourth venue in which Williams has seen the state’s finest wrestlers
compete.
Williams made his first trip to the state tournament in 1963, when it was
held at Rec Hall at Penn State. The tourney was held at the Farm Show Arena in
Harrisburg for a few years and returned to Penn State before moving to the
arena in Hershey in 1979.
“My dad used to go with all his buddies and they used to drag me along,”
said Williams, a Meyers graduate who isn’t sure if he was at Rec Hall for
Hanover Township star John Carr’s championship in 1960. The streak started in
1963.
Williams said the best Wyoming Valley wrestler he ever saw was Meyers’
three-time PIAA champ Jay Patterson from the mid-1970s. Despite a badly
injured knee, Patterson won in his senior year, and Williams remembers shaking
the hand of Patterson’s opponent in the final, Glenn Koser of Downington, who
avoided going after the knee.
Williams has traveled to states with several groups of friends. For the
past 13 years, he has gone mainly with Dale and Steve Whipple and Lenny
Olerta. They stay nearby at the Tall Timber Motor Lodge, a place Williams
discovered after getting off the wrong exit on Interstate 81 years ago. To
this day, he still doesn’t get off either Hershey exit. Instead, he gets off
at Manada Hill and takes the back roads.
“I have friends all throughout the sate,” Williams said. “We only see
each other once a year, but we have three great days together.”
Williams said he used to enjoy partying when he was younger and the tourney
was at Penn State. Since then, he values more a good diner, one right next to
the hotel, where he gets his usual “dog-dish” concoction of scrambled eggs,
home fries, sweet peppers and ham.
“Believe me, I could write you a book,” Williams said. “It’s amazing,
all the things I’ve gone through and all the fun I’ve had and all the nice
people I’ve met and all the good wrestling I’ve seen.
“Hopefully I’ll be here for another 10 years. Or 20. Maybe even 30, if I
live to be as old as my dad.”
His father is 87, so Williams has a chance – and incentive. He discovered
Thursday that he doesn’t hold the record for consecutive years attending the
state tournament. He met someone from the Wyoming Valley who knows a diehard
fan that has been coming for 52 consecutive years.
“I don’t know who he is or what his name is, but hopefully I’ll catch up
with him one of these days.”