An ‘undertaker’ and bartender coached St. Joe’s Prep long before it became a football power

Bob Vincent drove a hearse to practice, paired a derby hat with a shirt and tie, and spoke softly to his players.

St. Joseph’s Prep — now one of the country’s high school football powers — was an undersized afterthought in 1963. The Hawks struggled so mightily in the 1950s that they opted to spend seven seasons as nomadic independents before the undertaker revived them and returned them that season to the Catholic League.

Vincent, his teenage players assumed, spent his mornings dressing bodies before driving his 12-foot black hearse each afternoon to practice in Fairmount Park.

Nowadays, the Prep is The Prep, a juggernaut beginning in the 1990s and becoming a national power in the 2000s. No school has won more Catholic League titles than St. Joe’s, which plays La Salle at 1 p.m. Saturday at Villanova for the Catholic League Class 6A title. Only La Salle — its archrival that beat it last month — is able to now keep pace.

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But in the early 1960s, the Catholic League belonged to La Salle, Monsignor Bonner, and St. James. It certainly did not belong to the school with the coach who drove a hearse.

“I had never even heard of the Prep growing up,” said Dick Bailey, the team’s quarterback in 1963.

The coach who drove a hearse grew up in the Northeast and played at the Prep in the late 1940s before attending Fordham University, where a knee injury as a freshman derailed his football career. He was hired to coach the Hawks — they were often referred to as “The Hawklettes” — in 1961 after assisting at North Catholic, Camden Catholic, and La Salle.

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The Prep, as it does now, attracted students from all over the region to Girard Avenue where tuition was $250 a year. Bailey hitched a ride every morning from a Delaware County neighbor who worked in the city at the Botany 500 factory. He dropped Bailey at 16th and Vine and the high schooler “thumbed it” the rest of the way.

The Prep was still an incubator for the future movers and shakers of Philadelphia, but it had yet to figure out football. The Hawks won just 18 games over eight years before being muscled out of the Catholic League.

Vincent brought the vagabonds back to the league in 1963 and added Joe Tyrrell, a former star at Temple who spent a few training camps with the Eagles, and Billy Magee, a former Villanova quarterback, as assistant coaches.

Tyrrell grew up in Fairmount and was the co-captain of Roman Catholic’s 1947 city champions, a team regarded as one of Philadelphia’s all-time high school squads. His NFL dream was cut short when he was drafted into the Army, where he played on a football team at Fort Belvoir in Virginia coached by future Raiders owner Al Davis.

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He still looked like a player with bulging calves when he coached Vincent’s linemen in the afternoon at Belmont Plateau. Afterward, it was off to bartend at the Vesper Club in Center City, a members-only spot on Sydenham Street that his family owned. Tyrrell was so strong he could carry a keg on his back from the basement.

The Vesper was where the city’s elite hung out — Frank Rizzo held court on Friday nights — and Tyrrell poured the drinks.

“He could talk to anybody,” said Tyrrell’s son, Joseph. “He was a very kind guy. He’d fit in with every situation.”

Coaching the Prep is now a full-time job as the football program is a pillar of the school and an enrollment driver. In the early 1960s, the coaches were volunteers who drove hearses and tended bar.

“It was an interesting time,” Bailey said.

The Hawks’ biggest player was 185 pounds, but Vincent energized them in their first year back in the Catholic League by keeping things simple. They ran the football behind fullback Mo Keating and tailback Brendan Murray, who later captained Villanova.

“I think I threw maybe 10 passes the whole season,” Bailey said.

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And one of them was a tying TD late in the fourth quarter that November against St. James, the team pegged by everyone to win the Catholic League. The Hawks trailed by 14 in the fourth quarter before scoring a late touchdown and converting the two-point conversion — single extra points were rare — to cut St. James’ lead to 6.

It’s been more than 60 years, but Bailey, now 79, can still see Murray catching his pass with a minute left — “fourth-and-goal from the 13,” Bailey said — to tie the game. The undertaker opted to kick the extra point, something Prep had done just once all year. A missed kick would have ended the game with a tie, which was all St. James needed to win the Southern Division.

But the Cocozza brothers — Don held the ball as Tim kicked — met the moment and fans stormed the field when the game ended. The kicker — “Tim the toe,” the school’s yearbook called him — told students at a pep rally the next week that “five thousand people were kicking it with me.”

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The Hawks, in their first year back in the Catholic League, pulled off a stunner in front of 7,000 fans at what was then the Pennsylvania Military College (now known as Widener University).

They clinched the Southern Division title on Thanksgiving against rival Roman Catholic and advanced to the Catholic League championship against Bishop Egan. The Hawks got hammered, losing by 22 points at Franklin Field to a squad coached by the legendary Dick Bedesem. Unlike today, the Prep was OK with a loss.

“We were just thrilled to be there,” Bailey said. “Everyone thought we were a pushover because we hadn’t been around.”

Bailey could have joined some of his teammates at the Merchant Marine Academy on Long Island but decided to go to what was then known as St. Joseph’s College.

“My claim to fame there is we had a pretty good intramural football team,” he said. “And my wide receiver was Vince Papale.”

Tyrrell later coached at Malvern Prep and died in 1994. He was 65. Vincent, who left St. Joe’s Prep in 1969 and later coached at Father Judge, died in 2020 at 87.

Vincent drove a hearse to practice, but he wasn’t actually an undertaker. He was driving for Frankford Limousine, the company he later purchased for his father.

“At the time, the funeral homes in Philly didn’t have their own hearses,” his son Brendan said. “So that was part of the business. He provided hearses and limousines for the funerals.”

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The kids Vincent coached never thought to ask him. Everyone assumed he was an undertaker, Bailey said. He looked the part and drove a hearse. What else would he be?

Vincent helped the underdogs become winners. Years later, winning became the norm at the Prep. It has been a while since the Hawks were a Cinderella. And now the guys from that team know what “Mr. Vincent” actually did during the day.

“I was wrong to assume he was an undertaker,” Bailey said. “He never really spoke about himself. And 16-year-old kids did not ask. He was an adult and we were not.”