Date: Fri 23-Aug-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: TOMW

Quick Words:

Wilton-Lackaye-Hall

Full Text:

Hall of Fame - Wilton Lackaye

In the early 1940's a man named Wilton Lackaye and his wife Florence retired

from the vaudeville stage and opened up a little antiques shop in the Sandy

Hook section of Newtown.

Disturbed by the carryings on of some wayward young boys in town, Lackaye

decided to do something about it and in 1945 formed the Social Athletic Club

(SAC) of Sandy Hook. The club began in the old Sandy Hook Firehouse, but

Lackaye soon acquired some land on Riverside Road where he put up a small

wooden clubhouse and built a baseball field.

The seeds were planted.

Over the course of the next 25 years Lackaye's SAC would affect the lives of

hundreds of Sandy Hook youths as they gathered every Thursday night for their

club meetings, learned to play baseball, basketball, six-man football, boxing,

wrestling, swimming, fishing, and countless other sports and recreational

activities.

"Wilton started the SAC to keep the young kids off the streets and give them

something to do," said Newtown Police Detective, Jack Qubick, a longtime SAC

member. "He kept them involved in sports and things of that nature. There were

various activities, but hardball and basketball were the two main sports.

There was a Midget team, a Junior team, and a Senior team, and he coached them

all."

Lackaye had no children of his own, but through the SAC became a father to an

entire town.

"If he wasn't around I don't know what my childhood would have been like,"

said Fred Terrill. "I remember when it started, I was eight and was too young

to join. You had to be ten. I couldn't wait. When I finally did join, I played

baseball with him until I was about 21. Wilton Lackaye was a great man.

Everything he did was for the kids."

Another of the club's earliest members, Ken Smith, couldn't picture his life

without the SAC. " I started in the SAC when I was around ten and was a member

right up until I was 28 years old. I didn't get to know Wilton all that well

on the social level because he pretty much kept to himself. He wasn't an

outspoken man, but he felt very comfortable around kids. Wilton was always

around. The SAC was his life. He just lived for that club and for the kids."

During the summer month's Lackaye would coach his three SAC baseball teams,

loading the boys into the back of his station wagon and driving them to games

in area towns like Weston and Redding. The SAC's home field, which he built,

still stands in the lot behind the old wooden clubhouse, on Riverside Road,

which is now used as a storage shed. The red metal building, which also still

remains, became the new clubhouse during the '50s.

"We'd meet there every Thursday night," Qubick remembers. "We had a president,

vice president, secretary, and treasurer, and Wilton taught us

responsibilities and the knowledge of how meetings are held. It was just like

a Boys' Club. In the winter Wilton would stoke up the wood stove and the kids

would hang out and play basketball until all hours of the night. We did so

many things and Wilton ran and supervised them all."

When it came to funding for his countless activities, Lackaye financed the

majority on his own.

"He never took a dime from the town," Terrill said. "He did it all himself. He

wanted nothing to do with the town. People would give him a break on equipment

and things and he'd take care of it all. He had ponds dug up so that kids

could go swimming, and then he'd stock them with trout for fishing. Every week

he'd be out there mowing the grass and lining the baseball fields. The club

was a year-round thing for him. He was Mister SAC."

"I got to know him when I was ten years old," said Newtown Fire Marshall,

George Lockwood, who still has a scrap book with old photos and newspaper

clippings from the Lackaye days. "He was a great man. He donated his whole

life to the boys and the SAC facility. Him and his wife donated their money

and their time. Even when he was sick, towards the end, he ran it from his

sick bed. He was so important to our lives. Without him, who knows where we

would have been?"

In 1965 a special awards ceremony was held at Dickinson Park in Lackaye's

honor. At it, Lackaye was presented with a framed certificate from the

National Recreation Association recognizing him as one of the great recreation

leaders in the country for his efforts with the SAC.

Lackaye passed away, of natural causes, in the early '70s, and with him went

his life's work.

"When he died, the whole thing just sort of stopped," explained Terrill.

"Nobody could really do what he did as far as putting in all the time."

By that time, though, the Newtown Parks and Recreation Department had been

developing different sports leagues and organizations, Little League Baseball

was in full bloom, and any Newtown or Sandy Hook youth who wanted to, could

participate.

Lackaye's work was through, but his legacy lives on in the hearts and memories

of the many who benefited by his actions.

"I have so many terrific memories," Ken Smith said. "I'll never forget the

baseball trips, packing into his station wagon and burning that clutch going

up the hills. He was such an important part of my childhood. Playing sports

was my thing and without him I don't know what I would have done."

Lackaye's work will forever be remembered as he becomes one of the initial

cornerstone inductees into the Newtown Sports Hall of Fame.