A Spencerport legend passed through his old village recently to reminisce and refresh fond memories. Bill Flagg, a Spencerport son, is a war hero, a professional baseball and basketball player, a devoted family man and a great outdoorsmen. At the urging of his son, Jim, and daughter-in-law Susan, Bill returned to Spencerport for a few days to enjoy visits with family and participate in the 35th Annual Spencerport High School Sports Hall of Fame Banquet. Bill was a member of the original inductee class. While life in Florida with his beloved wife of more than 50 years, Eunice, is blessed, Bill will always consider Spencerport his home - and how home has changed. "I don't think anything is the same," said Bill, who spent many of his formative years on Coleman Avenue in the village. "I used to hunt pheasants where there are houses now." Hart's Grocery Store on Main Street, where he purchased his first baseball glove, is no longer. Nothing is where it used to be. Bill said the fire department building on Lyell Avenue used to be a Chevrolet dealer. And as for the schools ... Bill recalls his school having to move while he was growing up. And yes, he had to move it. "I can remember our teacher telling us to bring our wagons to school the next day," Bill said. "We loaded up all of our supplies and marched down the street." During this trip north a few weeks ago, he ate lunch at Abbott's. When Spencerport was his home, ice cream came from Matheos Brothers. As a kid growing up he used to dive off the bridge into the canal. That's something that wouldn't be allowed today, and something, after looking at the water, that Bill said he wouldn't want to do. While the memories are suspended in time, reality changes every day. "Even the trees have grown so much larger," Bill said. That's partly why Jim, one of three children that Bill and Eunice adore, urged his dad to visit recently. He wanted him to take a moment to soak in pleasant moments of the past, and it was another chance for him and now his three children to learn from Bill's amazing tales. "His whole life is told in anecdotes," Jim said. When Bill was still courting Eunice, he asked her parents for permission to marry their daughter. They agreed as long as he promised to bring her back to Perry, Florida every year. Without fail they made the annual trip until 1977 when he retired from Rochester Telephone and they moved there. He was drafted by the Cardinals organization to play baseball out of high school. He played professional basketball for a team called the House of David. All the players were required to wear beards. They traveled from city to city taking on all different teams. Early in his athletic career he was drafted into the war. While in the service he contracted malaria, which almost took his life. It took a toll on his physical abilities and he realized he could never pitch professionally again. He got a job at Ogden Telephone and then switched to Rochester Telephone. Eunice was a nurse at St. Mary's Hospital and the head of nursing for Gates Nursing Home. The stories could go on and on, each tale a little more impressive. For Jim, the most intriguing is how Bill never questions what might have been. "He was drafted in the prime of his life," Jim said. "Who knows what his future could have been." But Bill knows, as he gazes into the lovely eyes of his wife, that his life has been charmed. |
Above: Bill Flagg is congratulated by Spencerport School District's Athletic Director John Pelin at the Sports Hall of Fame banquet in June.