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Mostly Cloudy The loss of a legend
Green Hornets co-founder Bob Hawkey is dead at 79
Valley Stream has lost a legend. Bob Hawkey, founder of the village’s youth football program, the Green Hornets, died on Dec. 19 of a heart attack. He was 79.
Hawkey founded the Green Hornets, along with Valley Streamers Bill Scher, Leon Lang, Herb Green, Bill Warsdale and Ed Ulinoff, in 1950. He came up with the name for the team while sitting on his couch, watching one of his favorite shows, “The Green Hornet.” Thousands of Valley Streamers played under Hawkey during his nearly six decades of coaching, including some who went on to play in the National Football League. He won more than 450 games and more than 30 championships during his 59 years as head coach of the Green Hornets.
His son, Bobby, who played for Hawkey and coached alongside him for 20 years, said his father’s death is not only a loss for his family, but for the entire community. “It’s a big void for the Green Hornets,” Bobby Hawkey said.
Though Hawkey was known as a tough coach, he was loved by virtually all of his players. Richard Vela, 46, who played under Hawkey from second grade through high school, said that the coach always got the best out of his players. Though Hawkey was tough, Vela said, he kept the team close and treated the players as if they were his own children.
To help raise funds for the team, players sold “chance” books — books of coupons good at local businesses — to members of the community. Vela recalled playing in the annual Turkey Bowl in Massachusetts, and how, on the bus ride north, Hawkey would reward the top chance book sellers by giving some of the money they raised back to them — if they did one thing for him. “The catch was, you had to go to the front of the bus and sing a song you made up on your own,” Vela said. “It was embarrassing, but hilarious. That’s the best memory I have of him.”
Sharon Daly, president of the Green Hornets, who has known Hawkey for more than 30 years, said that the organization will never be the same. “He loved it. He bled green,” Daly said. “He cherished his family, but the Green Hornets was his passion.”
