Donora’s native son Bimbo Cecconi reflects on storied athletic career
Jim McNutt/O-R Bimbo Cecconi points out his photo in the first year, 1950 edition, of athletes whose photos were in Topps bubble gum packs.
Jim McNutt/O-R A football from the 1944 WPIAL championship game was going to be thrown away when Donora High School closed to become part of the Ringgold School District
Jim McNutt/O-R Bimbo Cecconi in his room of memorabilia in the basement of his Pleasant Hills home
Jim McNutt/O-R Bimbo Cecconi takes a kickoff and runs the ball against Minnesota in this 1949 photograph.
Jim McNutt/O-R The lower level of Bimbo Cecconi’s home is a museum and a testament to a man who has been a towering influence in Western Pennsylvania sports.
Jim McNutt/O-R Bimbo Cecconi holds a photo of himself from his football days.
Bimbo Cecconi during his tenure as an assistant coach at the University of Pittburgh
Bimbo Cecconi as a basketball player at the former Donora High School in the mid-1940s
Bimbo Cecconi, center, at the 2011 Pennsylvania State Hall of Fame induction ceremonies in Bucks County
Bimbo Cecconi’s family room barely has room for family.
Not with all of the sports memorabilia there. Footballs, inflated and deflated. Framed photos, retro and recent. Trophies. Six or seven helmets that would fit Godzilla. Dozens of autographs.
The centerpiece is a helmet signed by 22 players who have either won a Heisman Trophy, been enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, or both.
“I’m glad you came over. It gave me a reason to clean up. This was quite a mess before,” Cecconi said to a couple of guests, apologizing and chuckling.
The lower level of his house is a museum and a testament to a man who, despite his spare 5-foot-8 frame, has been a towering influence in Western Pennsylvania sports.
Louis “Bimbo” Cecconi was an athletic standout at Donora High School and the University of Pittsburgh, and a longtime coach. Overshadowed in his hometown by Stan Musial, Dan Towler, Arnold Galiffa and the Griffeys, he was a shining star as well, winner of 20 athletic letters in seven years.
“Bimbo Cecconi is a remarkable sports icon of the Mon Valley,” said Steve Russell, general chairman of the Mid Mon Valley All Sports Hall of Fame, to which Cecconi has been inducted.
Now 87, Cecconi is savoring retirement in Pleasant Hills with his wife of 66 years, Vilma, a Donora girl with whom he had five children. He remains a sharp dresser with a penchant for storytelling, a Pitt legend who attended the recent spring football game with a fellow Panthers luminary: Tony Dorsett.
Cecconi no longer slices up defenses or sprints up court, but looks as if he could. “I’m the same as I was in 1950 – to the pound,” said the bantam 158-pounder.
And to this day, he remains a fire-breathing Dragon.
He was a linchpin of Donora’s back-to-back WPIAL champion football teams in 1944 and ’45, coached by Jim Russell, and helped the basketball team win WPIAL gold in 1945. Also a baseball player and track guy, the teenage Cecconi earned 11 of a possible 12 letters over three years.
Donora was brimming with athletic talent at the time. Quarterback Arnold Galiffa led the 1944 team as a senior, before going on to secure a record 11 athletic letters at West Point. Deacon Dan Towler was the ace ball carrier on those 9-0 teams in ’44 and ’45, sparkled at Washington & Jefferson College, then was an All-Pro fullback with the Los Angeles Rams.
Cecconi, who switched from running back to quarterback after Galiffa left, was good enough in the offensive and defensive backfields to get a shot at Pitt – then succeed. Despite what he says.
“I came along with the best nucleus of athletes ever. And I mean anywhere,” Cecconi said. “I was born under a star and was nothing special. There were guys in Donora who were better.”
Actually, Cecconi was special at Pitt, lettering in football and basketball for four years and in baseball for one. His nine letters are a university record shared by two others.
He was a two-way football starter from ’46 through ’49, as a quarterback or running back on offense, in the secondary on defense. “I never missed a college game. That’s a pretty good achievement. There were no major injuries. I was just lucky,” said Cecconi, who also was enshrined in the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame in 2011 and named to Pitt’s all-time football team in 1970.
Few major college players have a game like he had in ’49, when Cecconi, a Panthers captain, scored two touchdowns, ran for a third and intercepted three passes – a school record that has been tied since. Pitt rolled, 19-0.
Cecconi was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers, but was released following the second preseason game and started teaching in the Donora district. Six months later, he was subjected to a second draft – by the U.S. Army – and served four years in Germany.
Back home, he embarked on a coaching career that would last more than two decades, beginning at Sharpsburg High School (now part of the Fox Chapel district) and including two stints as a Pitt assistant.
“Pitt fired me twice. They weren’t very smart hiring me twice,” he said in his self-effacing manner.
The athletic department, however, must have loved him on a mild Saturday afternoon in 1970. The Panthers were trailing nationally ranked West Virginia, 35-8, at halftime at Pitt Stadium when Cecconi, the offensive coordinator, devised a plan that worked perfectly: ball control.
Pitt patiently whittled down the deficit in the second half, running 97 plays to the Mountaineers’ 13, and rallied for a 36-35 victory.
Two years later, with Johnny Majors taking over the program with a new coaching staff, Cecconi again was gone from Pitt. He became head football coach at Steel Valley High School for a number of years and, ultimately, retired from that district in the early 1990s while serving as principal and athletic director.
Tending to that family room is one of his pastimes, but tending to his family is a higher priority. He and the former Vilma Semetkoski not only have four daughters and a son, but 16 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren, many of them nearby.
Donora likewise is reasonably near, and Cecconi said he returns occasionally to clean up gravesites and visit friends. He, like many former residents, laments what has happened in his beloved steel town. “There were so many beautiful houses and buildings,” he said. “Now there are no churches, no schools, no gas stations. People are living without the necessities of life.”
Yet the pleasant memories resonate, going back more than 80 years, to when he acquired that distinctive moniker.
“I had an uncle who called me ‘Little Bambino,'” Cecconi said. “Then he shortened it to ‘Bimbo.’ It was probably a blessing because who would recognize the name Lou Cecconi?”
A lot of people, actually.