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King’s College students accepted to Notre Dame as first class in cooperative engineering dual degree program

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Police: Man found with 50 bags of suspected heroin near Sherman Hills

<p>BERWICK &#8212; Upon returning to his hometown immediately following his first season as Berwick&#8217;s first NFL player, Bo Orlando drove straight to the home of his old high school coach.</p><p>George Curry was waiting for him.</p><p>&#8220;I figured he was going to be proud,&#8221; said Orlando, who left West Virginia to play in the pros before graduating college. &#8220;So I pulled up on front of his house, got out of the car and he was already on his porch.</p><p>&#8220;First thing he says to me is, &#8216;You get that goddam degree yet?&#8217; &#8220;</p><p>That was Curry.</p><p>Always firm and direct yet filled with so much caring and concern that stories of his 46-year coaching career flooded St. Mary&#8217;s Church in Berwick, where thousands of former players, coaches and friends paid their respects to Curry during his funeral procession that lasted more than five hours.</p><p>And most of those memories had little to do with the football field.</p><p>&#8220;Grades, how you were doing in general,&#8221; Chase Strother, an offensive lineman who played during Curry&#8217;s final season in 2015, said of his coach&#8217;s main interests. &#8220;It was a lot more than football. He was like a father figure to me.</p><p>&#8220;That meant so much.&#8221;</p><p>Make no mistake, Curry didn&#8217;t take lightly the path to Berwick&#8217;s football success. And he didn&#8217;t get to 455 coaching victories &#8212; the all-time Pennsylvania high school coaching record and the fourth-most in the country &#8212; along with six state championships and three USA Today mythical national titles through his career by accident.</p><p>&#8220;He worked you hard,&#8221; said Gus Felder, a former Penn State offensive lineman who played on Berwick&#8217;s last state championship team in 1997 who recently accepted a job as director of strength and conditioning at the University of Miami. &#8220;Anything that made you better. He always said when you work hard, great things happen. He was a motivator. He made us play better.</p><p>&#8220;But he wanted you to succeed off the field.&#8221;</p><p>The seeds for such accomplishments were certainly planted through the game of football, which Curry often called a tool to prosperity.</p><p>And his unique style that commanded immediate respect from and captivated many of his former players was legendary.</p><p>&#8220;He always had that vision of getting through to us,&#8221; said Orlando, who quarterbacked Berwick&#8217;s first unbeaten national title team in 1983 and went on to play more than nine seasons as a defensive back in the NFL. &#8220;He always had that view and he tried to pass it on.&#8221;</p><p>People all over the country listened.</p><p>Famous people.</p><p>Charlie Fedorco can attest.</p><p>He followed Orlando as a Berwick star quarterback in the mid 1980s and then to West Virginia as a wide receiver, where he found out his old high school coach had quite the following.</p><p>&#8220;Before the West Virginia-Pitt game, I wanted to meet Mike Ditka,&#8221; Fedorco said. &#8220;So I went up to Mike Ditka and told him I was from Berwick. First thing he said to me was, &#8216;How is George Curry?&#8217; (Former Florida coach) Bobby Bowden, same thing. When I told him I was from Berwick, he said, &#8220;So how is my old friend George Curry?&#8217; You&#8217;re talking about people who are legendary (coaching) figures who have this kind of relationship with him.</p><p>&#8220;It was incredible.&#8221;</p><p>Equally amazing was the way Curry developed unquestioned leadership among the players he coached, and the way they&#8217;d follow his direction without hesitation.</p><p>Felder laughingly remembers the way Curry guided him into the Nittany Lions&#8217; starting lineup.</p><p>&#8220;People always ask me how I ended up at Penn State,&#8221; said Felder, who was an All-American at Berwick, All-Big Ten at Penn State and played briefly in the NFL with the Cleveland Browns. &#8220;George took me up to Penn State. We were driving in the car, and George said to me, &#8216;Now, you&#8217;re going to Penn State, you&#8217;re going to meet the top football coach and you&#8217;re going to commit to him.&#8217;</p><p>&#8220;So I met Joe Paterno,&#8221; Felder continued, &#8220;and I said, &#8216;Joe, I commit to you.&#8217;</p><p>&#8220;And when we were going home, I said to George, &#8220;Coach, what do you mean by commit?&#8217; &#8220;</p><p>It was Curry&#8217;s unbreakable commitment to his faith, family, friends and players that brought together a whole sea of people honoring the man who will forever be much more than their coach.</p><p>&#8220;He cared about the little things,&#8221; Orlando said. &#8220;He took so many young students and made them into young men. My God, George started as a coach, turned into a teacher, then into a father figure.</p><p>&#8220;Most of all, he was a friend.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/web1_TTL040516Curry3.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Former Berwick football player, Gus Felder walks out of the funeral for George Curry with Berwick assistant football coach Carl Majer on Monday. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/web1_TTL040516Curry3.jpg</photo0><caption0>Former Berwick football player, Gus Felder walks out of the funeral for George Curry with Berwick assistant football coach Carl Majer on Monday. </caption0><photoCredit0>Aimee Dilger|Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/web1_TTL040516Curry6-4.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">A line of mourners wait to pay their respects to the family of George Curry on Monday. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/web1_TTL040516Curry6-4.jpg</photo1><caption1>A line of mourners wait to pay their respects to the family of George Curry on Monday. </caption1><photoCredit1>Aimee Dilger|Times Leader </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/web1_TTL040516Curry7.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">A shrine to former Berwick football coach George Curry outside of Crispin field in Berwick. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/web1_TTL040516Curry7.jpg</photo2><caption2>A shrine to former Berwick football coach George Curry outside of Crispin field in Berwick. </caption2><photoCredit2>Aimee Dilger|Times Leader </photoCredit2></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><subheadMeta>Former players share favorite Curry memories during funeral procession</subheadMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Paul Sokoloski</p><p>psokoloski@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Paul Sokoloski at 570-991-6392 or on Twitter @TLPaulSokoloski</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Former Berwick football players remember coach George Curry during funeral procession