‘Everyone is intertwined in what’s going on.’ How a tiny coal town shaped UCLA’s Bob Chesney
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KULPMONT, Pa. — The softening late-afternoon sun was starting to cast shadows on Bob Chesney’s face as he settled into a recliner inside a cozy living room lined with overlapping Oriental rugs.
The family patriarch had been telling stories about his namesake son since mid-morning, following one anecdote with another about the boy from this fading coal town who grew up to become UCLA’s new football coach.
There were reminiscences about Bobby’s playing every snap for his father’s team, Bobby’s coaching start at a $5,000-a-year job and Bobby’s always doing the right thing, sticking with his convictions no matter what anyone else thought or had to say. At one point, Bob Sr. bolted from his seat to recreate a scene, voice rising, arms flailing.
Now, as the man known as Coach in these parts mentioned his son looking at old coaching notes he had passed along during Bobby’s rise from small-college jobs to the big time of the Big Ten, he could no longer continue. His voice went quiet, his eyes turning glassy. It was as if a realization had struck him, this fairy tale story smacking him like a football to the head.
After several moments of silence, his wife, Claudia, finally spoke.
“You’ve got him speechless,” she told a visitor. “That’s pretty good.”
The reverie underscored the Chesneys’ interchangeable tale, a synopsis printed on a wooden plaque in their utility room: “The most important thing in life is family. Followed by football.”
It’s why every one of Bobby’s games has doubled as a family reunion. His father was his high school coach. His grandfather was his offensive line coach. An uncle was his receivers coach. His brother, Vincent, was the mascot. A family friend filmed the games. Another friend who lived down the street was the equipment manager.
The connection wasn’t lost once Bobby left his hometown to become a college coach, buses packed with locals going to see his Holy Cross games at nearby schools in the Patriot League.
“Everyone is intertwined in what’s going on, and everything is important,” Bob Sr. said of the community. “And right now our area is on fire because of what happened to Bobby. I’ll bet you these Amazons and all, all they’re doing is throwing UCLA stuff out on porches.”
Bob Sr., 76, and Claudia, 75, will follow their son to Westwood for football season, just like they did during his previous stops at Salve Regina, Assumption, Holy Cross and James Madison. If the pattern continues, Claudia will joyously explore the surrounding community and Bob Sr. will become a fixture inside the Wasserman Football Center, working with the defensive line as a volunteer and tossing packs of gummy bears to anyone who wants them.
Everyone calls the elder Chesney “Senior” when he’s around one of Bobby’s teams. It never takes anyone long to learn that Bobby took more than just his father’s name. His toughness, off-the-cuff oratory skills and preference for coaching defense all come from the man whose traits were forged in a northeastern Pennsylvania town his family has called home for more than a century.
At about 2,000 residents, Kulpmont’s population has plummeted since the boom times spawned by coal mining and a silk mill. In the town’s heyday, its six streets were dotted with 34 bars and clubs, providing necessary relief for deadly work. In a daily ritual, workers would emerge from the mines to down a shot of whiskey and a beer chaser to cleanse their soot-covered throats.
No one wanted to meet the same fate as Bob Sr.’s grandfather, who fell 900 feet down a mineshaft to his death. Placed inside a body bag, he was brought to his pregnant wife’s doorstep. He was only 33.
“They said, ‘Clara, here’s Bill, he’s dead’ and that was it,” Bob Sr. said. “No insurance, no nothing.”
The click-clack, click-clack of a mill that operated around the clock would serve as either a constant nuisance or soothing white noise, depending on one’s disposition. After the mill shuttered in the 1960s and the coal operations moved to surrounding areas, leaving a jumble of tightly bunched clapboard and redbrick houses, the primary industries became working in construction or at one of the four prisons located within 20 miles.
“It’s a depressed area,” Claudia said matter-of-factly.
It’s also the sort of place where one knows almost everyone else, a honk and a wave while driving around leading to a return wave. Locals were thrilled when a Taco Bell, Wawa and Aldi sprouted in the nearby Coal Township, adding a touch of modern convenience.
Almost everywhere one looks, reminders of the coal culture persist. A manmade mountain of coal fragments and dust from tunnel digging stands on the horizon. Strip mining continues on a nearby ridge. A cooler and fridge stocked with beer can be found out back of the Chesney home.
In town, Bob Sr.’s nickname is so widely recognized that someone once only had to address a package to “Coach, Kulpmont, PA” and it got delivered. Coach scored perhaps his biggest victory at a local bar. Walking in with a friend in the summer of 1973, he caught the eye of Claudia, who was back home in the area while working as a flight attendant based out of San Leandro, Calif.
“My head exploded in fireworks,” Claudia said. “I was doomed to be with my husband.”
They couldn’t have been any more different. While Coach was so focused on football that he might as well have been made out of pigskin, Claudia leaned toward the performing arts, having played the clarinet in her high school band.
“She was band, opera, New York City plays,” Bob Sr. said. “I’m rolling through the bushes playing football.”
Something clicked. Vincent was born first, followed by Bobby three years later and Nick three years after that. When Bobby came along, the family lived in a 68-foot trailer on a lot owned by his grandfather on Spruce Street. Then they moved to a house on Pine Street when he was a year old.
A morning routine taught the boys discipline and compassion. They would have to make their beds, do homework — even in the summer — and complete chores before they could go play. In the winter, those chores included shoveling snow outside the homes of elderly neighbors.
“That’s how they were brought up,” Bob Sr. said, “to help the community whenever you can, help your neighbor whenever you can, be responsible for what you do and how you do it and that was ingrained and now it’s paid off in dividends.”
1. Claudia Chesney holds an old photo of her sons Nick (left) and Bob Chesney. (Rachel Wisniewski/For The Times) 2. Bob ChesneyOs old football jacket. (Rachel Wisniewski/For The Times)
Competitiveness in the household transcended football games, Bob Sr. and Bobby splitting a block on Bobby’s paper route and racing each other back to the middle to see who was the fastest at delivering the Shamokin News-Dispatch. Oldest brother Vincent didn’t let a vision problem prevent him from participating in sports, creating a four-team football league that he presided over and played in. Home games were played in one yard and away games in the yard next door, Vincent keeping statistics and handing out a trophy at season’s end.
Like the dozen or so kids on his team who possessed any football talent, Bobby never came off the field while playing for his father at Our Lady of Lourdes high school in Shamokin, a 15-minute commute from the family home. A star quarterback, he also played defensive back and participated on every special teams unit.
At one game, the P.A. announcer said “Bob Chesney” so many times that Bobby’s great aunts looked at one another and then Claudia from their seats in the stands and asked, “Isn’t there anybody else on this team?”
Along the way, watching everything his father did, Bobby adopted a coaching credo that also has a sort of John Wooden feel to it.
“We always say [to have] a positive attitude in what you’re doing and attention to detail and make sure that what you’re doing is the best you can do at that time,” Bob Sr. said. “And another saying that I always say is, ‘Your best is good enough. Just do your best — I can’t ask you to do anything else.’ ”
Claudia believes that other factors helped develop her son, ascribing his well-roundedness to an assembly line that God sends all children through before birth.
“As Bobby came through,” Claudia said, “there was positivity — I’ll take that; kindness — I’ll take that; discipline — I’ll take that; mental stability — I’ll take that; intellect — I’ll take that. Like, all the good qualities you could possibly engender into yourself as a person, he wanted and God gave it to him when he was born.”
Where he was born never strays from Bobby’s mind. His pride in his hometown is so unshakable that he threatened to walk off the reality television show, “Cowboy U” if he couldn’t wear a T-shirt bearing the name of his youth football team, the Kulpmont Cougars. He also wore that shirt underneath his jersey while playing football at Dickinson College.
As they embark on their latest football adventure, the Chesneys understand how fortunate they are. Scores of coaches have told Bob Sr. they wished their fathers could be there with them in similar fashion.
That’s why the Chesneys take such delight in the simplest of gestures. Just like the son used to bring his father a hat before games, now the father will toss his son a whistle.
In the grandest of Chesney traditions, it’s football and family converging once more.
Poll results
We asked, “Which James Madison transfer excites you the most?”
After 563 votes, the results:
Edge rusher Sahir West, 63.9%
Running back Wayne Knight, 20.2%
Offensive lineman Riley Robell, 5.7%
Defensive lineman Maxwell Roy, 4.9%
Wide receiver Aiden Mizell, 2.8%
Someone else, 2.5%
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