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June 12, 2002

Holy Spirit Hall of Fame adds some impressive names

By TOM WILLIAMS
Sports Columnist

A couple hundred of the Holy Spirit faithful gathered this month night at the Clarion West ballroom in Egg Harbor Township to add a half-dozen more members to the school’s Hall of Fame.

It was the third such induction ceremony for Spirit but this one had additional significance. One of the six chosen had become an International celebrity.

John O’Neill graduated from Holy Spirit in 1970 after a good sports career, highlighted by his success on the track team. But this Hall of Fame is not exclusively for the school’s top athletes and coaches. And O’Neill would not have been selected if those were the sole criteria. A variety of accomplishments, both in school and after graduation, are used to select this Hall of Fame.

After O’Neill graduated from Holy Spirit, then from American University and from George Washington with a Master’s Degree, he worked his way up through the ranks of the FBI until he was one of its top experts on terrorism. When you type his name into a Google search, you get more than 17,000 responses. Not all may be about this particular John O’Neill, but most of them are.

Former Attorney General Janet Reno was quoted as saying that, at meetings, “the answer would often be ‘check with John O'Neill’. When I walked into the room and saw John O'Neill there, I was always pleased, because I always knew I would get a reasoned analysis. He had a powerful command."

O’Neill left the FBI last year because, if you believe most reports, he was frustrated with the agency’s lack of response to his analysis. He took a job as director of security at the World Trade Center.

His first day at work was September 11, 2002.

O’Neill escaped the structures after the first plane hit but went back in to get somebody just before the second plane crashed. He died in the collapse.

The emotional response to Bill Deibert’s acceptance speech on O’Neill’s behalf Saturday night indicated the pride with which Holy Spirit people remember him.

Though O’Neill’s inclusion brought the emotion to the induction, the other five new Spirit Hall of Famers are a pretty remarkable group by themselves. Ironically, two were not Holy Spirit graduates. Stan Bergman, recognized as the group’s Legendary Spartan, accepted his diploma from Atlantic City High School. And Father Ed Lyons graduated from Roman Catholic in Philadelphia. The other inductees were Frank Finnerty and Jim Mogan, from the Class of 1961, and Steve Brady, who graduated in 1971.

Bergman created what is now the prestigious Spartan crew program, leading his teams to a pair of trips to the Royal Henley Regatta. Bergman is now the men’s crew coach at the University of Pennsylvania.

Mogan may be better known for his association with Sacred Heart to many area sports fans. He was the Sacred Heart boys basketball coach for 27 seasons, winning more than 350 games. He was also the school’s athletic director. At Holy Spirit, Mogan was a very good basketball player. And, years after his college career ended at St. Francis (PA) College, he was able to score 71 points in one game as the ringer on a radio station team. He is now the recreation czar in Brigantine.

Finnerty, who was an assistant football coach under both Lou Paludi and Ed Byrnes, is a longtime teacher in Absecon and currently an Atlantic County Freeholder.

Brady, a star quarterback at HSHS, was unable to attend and his mother accepted his award. After high school, he went on to play quarterback at Widener, where his top receiver was Billy “White Shoes” Johnson. Since graduating from Holy Spirit, Brady became a legendary softball player and one of the area’s top golfers. He is president of Ocean City Home Bank.

Father Lyons, currently the pastor at Our Lady of the Angels in Cape May Court House, was inducted because of the more than 30 years he spent teaching at Holy Spirit. Many of those years were also spent as the spiritual advisor to the Spartan athletic teams. And he played a little basketball on a team of priests, proving that his elbows were as sharp as they were in his high school days.

But Father Lyons, who also celebrated 40 years as a priest over the weekend, could have been recognized for what his foresight brought to area basketball. That night at St. Michael’s in Atlantic City when he explained his idea of a basketball tournament that would bring top teams to Atlantic City is still so clear it seems like yesterday.

Father Lyons, together with Boo Pergament, created the Seagull Classic, still the greatest basketball event ever held in the area. This was before the Battle by the Bay or the Olympic-Cape Challenge. Before the Shootouts, Tipoff Weekend or the Boardwalk Basketball Classic.

His vision opened the door to all of those events, proving that you could successfully bring great teams together in this area.

Whether it is Holy Spirit, Ocean City or any of the Cape-Atlantic League schools, remembering the great athletes, coaches and teams of the past can only enhance the future.


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