'67 LACKAWANNA WAS REALLY MAY'S DAYS

Dave May laughs when the subject comes up now. He's spent the last 30 years as the answer to a sports trivia question. He is used to it by now.

"I see Ronnie on TV all the time," May said. "He's haunting me."

You see, casual sports fans assume that Ron Jaworski was the starting quarterback for the great Lackawanna High football team of 1967, the first team in school history to go through a season undefeated and untied.

It's not true. Jaworski was a backup quarterback as a junior on that '67 team. He started at defensive back. In fact, he was considered more of a baseball prospect -- as a catcher with a cannon of an arm.

May was the starting quarterback, a senior who led the Steelers to championships in football and basketball and was seen as the best all-around athlete in the school.

When you talk to May's former high school teammates, they go out of their way to praise him. They seem a bit resentful about the fact that Jaworski's football fame -- he went on to play in a Super Bowl and is now an NFL analyst on TV -- overwhelms the memory of that wonderful '67 team.

But the 1967-68 school year was an unforgettable one at Lackawanna, worthy of the No. 7 spot on our list of great high school athletic years. It was a year when the sons of steel workers proved they could compete with anyone on the playing fields of Western New York, when Lackawanna became a high school sports power.

"It was like the culmination of 50 years in this town," said Mark Moretti, who played baseball and golf at Lackawanna and now teaches math at the school. "We were the third generation. My grandparents came from Italy; my parents lived here their whole life. They worked in steel mills, the whole bit. We were all tough kids, all basically middle class, lower middle to poor."

The football team went 8-0 and won the ECIC Division I championship. The basketball team, led by May and 6-foot-6 Butch Luba, went 19-1 and won the Class AAAA sectional title by beating LaSalle at Memorial Auditorium. The baseball team tied for first place in the ECIC and lost to Frontier in the sectionals.

"Those were definitely the glory years for Lackawanna," said Ann Burke, who edited the yearbook in '68 and worked on programs for sports events. "Up to then, we'd never been a force in anything. I remember going down to the Aud for basketball. It was the highlight of our lives. It was an outlet for everybody."

It was also a time of growing dissent in America over the Vietnam War. The hippie generation was emerging. Protest was in the air. But Burke said it remained a pretty innocent time in Lackawanna.

"In our high school, it was still a pretty straight time," Burke said. "The big thing was still going to someone's basement to drink a couple of beers. Lackawanna being what it is -- a blue collar town -- most kids expected to get drafted when they got out. There were lots of girls whose boyfriends were already in Vietnam."

This was before the advent of state playoffs, or girls high school competition, at a time when the three major boys sports of football, basketball and baseball were paramount. And it was on the football field, under the stern coaching of the late Gordy Bukaty, where the Steelers were most dominant.

Bill Pukalo, who started both ways on the line as a junior in '67 and was Lackawanna's head coach for 18 years, said the team was so deep it was able to survive the loss of some talented players who quit after a falling out with Bukaty.

"Bukaty was a maniac," Pukalo said. "He loved that Alabama coach, Bear Bryant. We had tough practices, really hard, long practices and a lot of contact. He gave you a little fear. You were scared of the guy. Oh, he was tough, the 'old school' coach. Back in the '60s, you ran off an injury and if you needed water you were a sissy."

You proved it by running the ball. Bukaty, a former University of Buffalo quarterback, had the ideal weapon in Marty Januszkiewicz, a 6-foot-1, 200-pound fullback who could run over linebackers and past defensive backs.

"He always wanted the ball," said May, a social services employment counselor for Erie County. "I had to give him the ball. Marty's a good friend. We were fortunate. We had a lot of good athletes. The linemen never get credit, but they were good."

Januszkiewicz starred at Syracuse, where he left as the fifth-leading rusher in school history, just behind Jim Brown. "Jan The Man" was selected by the Colts with the 399th pick of the 1973 draft, but never played in the NFL. "I never stepped off the field that year," said Januszkiewicz, a special education teacher who lives in Orchard Park. His son, Jason, plays lacrosse at Syracuse. "I played linebacker and defensive end. We were a pretty close bunch of guys. Most of us still hang around and see each other. We played slow-pitch softball for a bunch of years together."

Several members of that team played college ball. Pukalo and halfback Paul Ebert went to Boston University. Tony Patillo, a guard, played in college. May played basketball at Potsdam and made the Hall of Fame there. Mark Rojek, who started alongside May as a football wingback and basketball guard, played hoops in college.

Jaworski turned down an offer from the Detroit Tigers -- veteran Buffalo scout Cy Williams says he had a big-league arm and could have made the majors -- to concentrate on football. After graduating in '69, he went to Youngstown State and began to blossom as a QB. A dozen years later, he started in a Super Bowl for the Eagles. He did not returns calls for this story.

"I don't want to take anything away from Ronnie," Pukalo said. "But Dave May was the guy. Wow, could he play. There was no mistake when Ronnie was on the bench. In '68, Ronnie got the job done, but we went 5-2-1. Everybody wanted to know, 'What the heck happened to you guys?' "

Tuesday: An unforgettable Seventies Show.