The Simpson Recreation Center in Northwood used to have a really active athletic association.
“We had soccer, indoor soccer, basketball and baseball,” said Joe Bergmaier, who was the AA’s president until 1983.
Over the years as kids grew up and some families moved out of the neighborhood, interest waned. By the 1990s, said Deputy Recreation Commissioner Leo Dignam, the association just had soccer, and after that, it was gone.
A vestige of the AA’s glory days remained. There was an 8-foot by 16-foot case filled with trophies and team photos, Bergmaier said in a Sept. 25 phone interview.
Not anymore.
Bergmaier, who now lives in Chester County, said he heard that the case, which represents a part of the neighborhood’s history, was gone. There was a suspicion the case and its contents had just been summarily tossed, Bergmaier said.
That’s not what happened, Dignam said last week.
Sometime in the last five or six years, the rec center was vandalized, he said, and the case was destroyed. Dignam had to do some research to find out what became of the decades’ worth of team photos and trophies.
A Simpson rec leader was able to contact people who had been involved in the athletic association, Dignam said, and asked them if there was anything they wanted from the damaged trophy case. They took some items, and the remainder was put in storage.
Trouble is, rec centers don’t have much storage space, and eventually, the items were tossed out.
If anybody knows where the salvaged trophies and photos are located, contact John Loftus at jloftus@bsmphilly.com. Write Simpson in the email’s subject field. ••
