Jerry Dwyer

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Jerry Dwyer, Plymouth, retired after forty years of teaching, thirty in the Plymouth School District and ten in Wyoming Valley West. Twenty of those years he served as coach in both football and basketball. He began his basketball coaching career in 1940 under John Mergo and was with Mergo until 1957 when a heart condition interrupted his activities for two years. He returned to coaching in 1959-60 and then resigned. Dwyer’s football coaching started in 1941 under Ed Brominski of Rose Bowl football fame. He was named head football coach in 1951, serving in that capacity until 1957. He coached Plymouth High School’s last championship football team. This was in 1953, when Plymouth lost the first three games to Scranton Tech, West Scranton, and GAR. GAR beat the Plymouth team on a run by Corny Salvetera, the only run he made that night, but enough to beat the Plymouth team with a score of 6-0. However, due to the fine coaching of Joe Peel, head mentor of Coughlin that year, Coughlin beat GAR and this enabled Plymouth, with a record of 8-1 in the conference, to become champion. Despite his fine record in football, it was in basketball that Dwyer excelled as a builder of champions. He was instrumental in instilling the fundamentals of the game in many fine and excellent players. At one time, Plymouth had a record of 52 straight games at home without a defeat and 64 league games without a defeat. During this time, Plymouth captured four straight league championships. Dwyer stated that Dr. Joe Bogusky was one of the finest players he had ever coached, but did not want to overlook his own nephew, Dr. Ted Dwyer, who, he said, had the finest pair of basketball hands he ever saw. Ted Dwyer went on to play at Columbia where he was a teammate of Chet (The Jet) Forte, who is now a director of ABC sports. He also recalled how Neil Amdur, a sportscaster on CBS, got his start writing articles about Plymouth teams to run in the Wilkes-Barre Record, and how Mergo and he gave the Rudolphs, father and son, their start in Wyoming Valley League.