by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

April 30, 2009

They first met as members of Newark’s Weequahic High School football team in the late 1940s. But after graduation, their get-togethers on the gridiron turned into kinder, gentler moments on the baseball diamond.

“We call ourselves the Sunday Morning Group, because we used to get together to play softball on Sunday mornings,” said one of its charter members, Len Alpert, class of 1947. “It started out as a sports thing, but now we’ve broadened out to anybody who graduated between 1940 and the early ’60s.”

Since the ’60s, the Sunday Morning Group has been holding reunions every other year, and for the most part, the sports they play are games of memory.

“The older you get, the better you were,” said 81-year-old Mort “Lefty” Leiwant of Short Hills, a former fullback for the Weequahic Indians. “Right now I can say anything. I can be All-American, because unfortunately, all of my friends are dead,” he joked grimly.

At its peak, the Sunday Morning Group managed to assemble 500 alumni. But as they prepare for their next dinner on May 21 at the Maplewood Country Club, their numbers are decreasing.

“Two years ago we had 300 guys,” said Leiwant. “Unfortunately, because of the attrition here, we are closing in on 200 now.” So, the Sunday Morning Group is looking for new members.

It has two requirements. “We cover a 25-year span from 1940 to 1965,” said Alpert, who lives in West New York. “And it is just guys. It’s not that we are chauvinists, but none of the wives wanted to come.”

“Why no women? Basically they get bored stiff,” Leiwant said. “We tell stories about when we played a particular game and the women are not interested, even though we could tell the same story 50 times and still be excited about it.”

“There is a great unity we’ve had for many years,” said Alpert. “We get together just to be together. We tried emcees and we tried comedians, but nobody wanted them. We just wanted to hug each other and have a good time.”

“The camaraderie we had in the locker room was so different from the camaraderie we had with other students,” said Leiwant. “There is something special you share, and that goes on. But this is not only about sports. We have relationships we never lost.”

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