Former athletic stars still shine bright

HOPKINTON -- Francis Cady and Helen Fair began dating more than six decades ago, when they were both sports stars at Hopkinton High School.

She admired the way he stood out on the football field, and he was her most ardent rooter at girls' basketball games.

When the boys' and girls' basketball teams traveled to road games, ''we just piled into a few cars," recalled ''Buzz" Cady with a twinkle in his eye. ''It always seemed that Helen and I wound up in the same car. We made sure of that."

On June 8, 1942, they were married at the home of their parish priest from St. John's Church, as America was reeling from the events of World War II.

Two days later, Buzz Cady left for basic training and Army service that eventually took him to combat on several Pacific islands.

After the war ended, he returned to Hopkinton, the town where he built the house they still live in on West Main Street, where the couple raised their two children, and where, on Oct. 8, the couple will be inducted into the Hopkinton High School Athletic Hall of Fame.

''Buzz and Helen are part of the fabric of our community," said Hall of Fame committee member Mark Stickney, who is assistant baseball and football coach at the high school. ''They always have a big smile and a wave for you, but lately their smiles have been bigger. The link to the past of Hopkinton is one of the main reasons the Hall of Fame was started, and to see what it means to longtime Hopkintonians like the Cadys really makes it special."

Buzz was captain of the boys' basketball team, quarterback for the football team, and a baseball infielder. Helen was captain of the girls' basketball team.

''Back then, our graduating classes were very small," recalled Buzz, ''and we had, at the most, eight players on the basketball teams."

The high school on Main Street where Buzz graduated with the class of 1937, and Helen with the class of 1938, is now an office building. So is their old high school gym, a WPA project from the Depression years, located at the corner of Main and Ash.

The field next to the water tower where Buzz called signals for Hopkinton's first football coach, Chick Welch, is now the site of the town's middle school. The thread mill where Buzz and Helen once toiled (''for 13 1/2 cents an hour," she said) went out of business a long time ago, as did many of the working farms in a community whose population has grown fivefold since the 1930s.

But the memories remain.

''The coach of the girls' basketball team, Marion Harris, lived on a farm in Leominster," said Helen, ''and she invited the team there, and we had quite a feed. I can still picture her prying open that big barn door. She graduated from Amherst College and took us there, too, and we were so good that we beat the Amherst women's team."

Helen Fair was better than fair -- she once scored 54 points as a ''rover" in a game against Westborough and was a member of an undefeated team and another that lost just once. ''But I would have hated it if Marion Harris had guarded me," she said. ''She was a great coach and a wonderful chemistry teacher."

Welch, who died in 1973, coached football from 1923 to 1951 and was well known as a local sportswriter. The current high school field is named after him. Harris, who died this year, began her teaching and coaching career in 1935 and was later a principal and superintendent. Both Harris and Welch were among the first Hopkinton High Athletic Hall of Fame inductees, in 1993.

''Chick coached football and baseball," said Buzz. ''You could tell when he got mad because his face got redder and redder. That's because he was a great competitor and a perfectionist. If you made a bad tackle, he would ask you, 'What are you trying to do, break your own leg?' He was an outstanding coach."

Those were happy times for Buzz and Helen, despite the hardships of the Depression. The couple loved to swim, play tennis, and walk around town and weren't in a hurry to get married after high school graduation.

After returning from the war, Buzz eventually made his living as a carpenter and was active in the community as a founder of the Little League, as well as a coach and umpire.

''My dad was a hero, and my parents are honest people who made it through some tough times during the Depression and the war," said their son, Bill. ''They cared about each other and about other people. I was very proud when my dad helped build the first Little League field in Hopkinton, and I had on my Braves uniform that year. And I'm very proud of their going into the Hall of Fame."

Buzz celebrated his 87th birthday last month. Helen turned 85 in April.

Buzz's father, Daniel Cady, was a machinist at the Boston Navy Yard. The family lived in South Boston. But after being trapped in a sunken submarine for four days, Daniel suffered severe lung damage, and the family moved to rural Hopkinton in hopes that the fresh country air would help him recover.

''My father had to sleep outside in a tent. He died when I was 4 years old," said Cady, whose mother, Mary Agnes, had to survive on a small pension and whatever money the children could earn.

Helen, one of six children, also lost a parent. Her mother died after a stillborn childbirth on New Year's Eve of 1932.

At Christmas time, in 1943, with her husband stationed on the island of Guam, Helen mailed her photograph to him. On it she wrote, ''I love you darling, always & always." The photograph now sits on a bookshelf in their home, in a dark wood frame made from an ammunition case by her husband 62 years ago.

''When anyone walked by that picture in the barracks and said a swear word, they used to look at it and say, 'Sorry, Helen,' " he recalled.

She still calls him Dad and he holds the ladder when she cleans the gutters of their home near Lake Maspenock.

They both remember when Route 9 was being built, when there were 25 runners instead of 20,000 at the nearby Boston Marathon starting line, and when their house was moved intact up West Main to make room for Route 495.

And in two weeks at the St. John's Parish Center, townspeople will remember and honor Buzz and Helen (Fair) Cady, high school sweethearts, then and now.