NEW ORLEANS —
The Friday night lights are glowing again at Tad Gormley Stadium in City Park.
And while it’s probably safe to assume most New Orleanians have heard of the stadium, it’s probably an equally safe assumption that they don’t know who Tad Gormley was.
The man whose name the stadium bears made a name for himself as a coach who trained not only athletes at local universities but even Olympic champions during a career that spanned more than 50 years.
Francis Thomas Gormley was born Dec. 23, 1883, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He arrived in New Orleans in 1907 as the director of physical training for the Young Men’s Gymnastic Club, now the New Orleans Athletic Club. Between 1914 and 1930, he would coach at Tulane, LSU and Loyola. While track was his passion, he also coached basketball, wrestling and boxing teams at the universities.
A crowning achievement was being named associate coach of the 1932 U.S. Olympic track team. While he coached athletes at the highest levels, he later took a job with City Park in 1938, operating its stadium.
The “Gormley Games” -- a name the publicity-shy Gormley never used himself -- were held every Sunday during the track season.
“Gormley had used those Sunday events to uncover and develop talent almost from the day he arrived in New Orleans,” The Times-Picayune wrote upon his death in 1965. “They were held at many locations before finding a permanent home at City Park Stadium.”
As passionate as Gormley was about developing athletic ability, he was more concerned with how his young athletes would develop as young men, once remarking that his greatest reward was “seeing those schoolboy athletes become successful in business and good providers as a result of their early training.”
The 26,500-seat stadium, built during the Works Progress Administration, opened in 1937 as City Park Stadium. (A record crowd of 34,345 onlookers packed the stands and sidelines in 1940 to see that year’s Jesuit-Holy Cross showdown.)
Even in his later years, long after he retired and as his health faded, Gormley would visit the stadium once a week.
Gormley died Dec. 5, 1965. Just 14 days later, City Park’s board voted unanimously to rename the stadium in his honor.
---
Mr. N.O. It All is an occasional series by WWL-TV reporter Danny Monteverde, a sixth-generation New Orleanian and local history buff. Have a local history tidbit you’d like him to explore? Drop a line to danny@wwltv.com
---
► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the FREE WWL-TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.
