April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
ST. JOSEPH'S
Depression-era athletic club still at Schenectady parish
More than 100 men keep coming back year after year to watch sports on flat-screen televisions and create fantasy sports teams. They also bowl and golf in real-life leagues.
Many of the members are sons and grandsons of the 83-year-old club's first members, who started it to promote social and athletic activities
for young, Polish-American residents of the Eastern Avenue Hill area of Schenectady.
Originally called St. Mary's Athletic Club, it attracted parishioners of St. Mary's Church, which closed in 2009. It is unclear when and why the club's name changed.
Karl Gurzenski, 91, whose five brothers were also members, believes it's because St. Joseph's Church was the first Catholic church in the city, but the reasons may be more complicated.
"Maybe it was the fact that St. Joseph was a working man, and the guys back then were blue-collar workers," mused Bob Malecki, the club's current coordinator and a member since 1976.
The athletic club has evolved to include engineers, city workers, police officers and seasonal residents, in addition to non-Catholics and residents of other towns.
Once upon a time, Italians weren't allowed as members; women still can't attend club meetings, but they can come as guests to the clubhouse, a two-story house on Eastern Avenue. Locations before 1957 included an electrical supply store and a bakery.
In its heyday, members of St. Joseph's Athletic Club sponsored or participated in golf, bowling, softball, football, hockey and basketball teams. They took trips to the Saratoga Race Course and formed a traveling dart league, a fishing club and other groups.
With help from a women's auxiliary, they hosted picnics, dances and holiday parties, often in the former St. Mary's School hall.
Membership was a quarter a month and proved to be the cheapest form of entertainment after the stock market collapsed in 1929 and the Depression set in.
"It was hard for everybody because there was no money around," Mr. Gurzenski remembered. "You can do things together a lot easier than alone."
Mr. Gurzenski joined out of a passion for golf, which he continued playing with the club until last year. In addition to traveling for tournaments around the northeast, he spent many nights simply shooting the breeze with other members.
"I knew everybody there," he said. "You always had somewhere to go and someone to talk to," and membership kept men out of trouble, he added.
Today, "baby boomers are now mostly in charge, and a lot of young ones don't care for that stuff."
Richard Piatkowski, a member for about 60 years, recalled the club as "a family group," although these days, "you can walk in there and not know anybody's name." He thinks it would be good to start including women.
Annual communion breakfasts and Masses at St. Joseph's Church keep the club's spirit alive. Plus, Mr. Piatkowski said, "it's good for the neighborhood because it keeps the property up."
Ron Jablonski, a member for 55 years who had his bachelor party at the clubhouse in 1959, says the group was always more intimate than organizations like Elks or Eagles.
"It's difficult in this day and age to maintain a small, little neighborhood club," he noted.
But Mr. Malecki said the club still serves its original purpose: "It's just a gathering place for the guys to come down and enjoy their sports [and] let off steam."[[In-content Ad]]
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