Thornton Academy Postscripts Alumni Magazine Spring 2018 | Page 11

AT H L E T I C S
A Salute to service: the Veterans basketball team 1946-47
L
ike many other young men
of “The Greatest Generation”,
Arthur Bishop, Jr. of Saco,
Maine left the safety of home to
serve his country in World War
II. A star athlete at Thornton
Academy, Bishop played football
for the Trojans. Several credits
short of a diploma, he nevertheless
left high school early to join the war
effort.
By the time that Art Bishop
and his contemporaries
returned to Saco in the
months following the
Japanese surrender, they
had been hardened by the
experience of war and had
left a great deal of their
innocence behind on the
battlefields of Europe and
the Pacific. Nevertheless,
many of them returned to school
to complete their high school
education and to prepare for the
careers that lay ahead during
peacetime.
The World War II veterans who
continued their studies at Thornton
Academy were significantly
older than their classmates and
no longer eligible to participate
in interscholastic sports for the
Maroon and Gold. Harold “Bud”
White, Thornton's athletic director
at that time, conceived the idea of
organizing a program to offer these
local heroes an opportunity to
represent the Academy on athletic
teams while competing against
their age peers.
The result was Thornton
Academy’s first and only “Veterans”
basketball team, which competed
in the 1946-1947 winter season.
Ten Thornton Academy students
formed the nucleus for the “Vets”
during that winter and comprised
one of the most unique teams
assembled in the history of the
school.
Joining Bishop were: future
Thornton Academy Hall of Fame
inductee Fred Arno, Freddy Blow,
Bob Coleman, t