This letter is in response to The Suburbanite’s article, “The beginning of Green Youth Football.”

My name is Michael S. Gruich, Jr. My father was “Big” Mike Gruich. I was born 10 years after the beginning of GYF and all the while that I was growing up, I always remember there being a controversy on who started the program.

I have a picture of the 1960 Green Aviators Bantam (won four, lost four and one tie, the best record in Green Township) with my father as the head coach. There are three other coaches, Dutch Taylor, Dave Haggerty and a coach named Wilson. Notice the Grahams are not pictured (as my father was from the Aviator photo in the article).

I spoke with one of the players from the 1960 team and he agreed that the Grahams were always trying to take credit for starting the football program. He also mentioned Tom Sharret as another one who was extremely helpful with this program. I believe that if you dig, you would find out that there were quite a few others who helped start this program, besides the Graham brothers.

I am sure there are other sports out there and we’d really enjoy hearing them.

Michael J. Gruich, Jr.
Green, “Class of ‘87”