Ticket Master: Since 1946, Joe Plant has been THE eye of the Hurricane

By Kayleen Cubbal

New Castle News

The year was 1946.

Harry S. Truman was president. Dean Martin’s musical career was just getting started. The average cost of a new house was $5,600, average wages were $2,500 and a gallon of gas was 15 cents.

And Joe Plant attended his first New Castle High football game.

The former Edinburg resident, who now lives in Union Township, has witnessed 695 total Red Hurricane football games since 1946. He has missed 17 games since then, but those all were early-on. Since 1952, this dyed-in-the-wool, red-and-black bleeding ’Canes fan has seen 642 straight games — home and away.

Yes, that’s right, he hasn’t missed a single one, not by illness or car trouble or a death in the family. Or even a wedding.

“Half of my family hates me,” the 80-year-old Plant said with a laugh. “I tell everyone in my family do not get married on a Friday night during high school football season. And if you do, I wish you well, but I will not be there, plain and simple.”

Plant has backed up his words with action.

“My brother’s grandson got married a few years back on a Friday night,” he said. “They picked a darling little chapel at Penn State University to get married, it was a wonderful wedding. I really enjoyed the pictures because I wasn’t there.

“My sister’s son got married in Las Vegas on a Saturday during high school football season,” Plant added. “All the rest of my family left Thursday. I said, ‘sorry, if I can get a flight out early Saturday morning, I will see you there.’ I boarded a plane at 5:30 in the morning and got there just in time.”

Plant was born in Cambria County, where his dad was a coal miner. When he was 9, Plant’s dad moved the family to New Castle so he could take a job with the B&O Railroad. His parents rented a house on Hazen Street sight unseen and moved in on a Friday night, the third week in October, 1943. They were only a couple of streets from Taggart Stadium and there was a game the night they moved in. Plant ran up to the third floor of the house and watched. He decided right then and there that he loved New Castle football so much, he never was going to miss a game.

Before the moving van left that evening, though, Plant’s mother decided she hated the house on Hazen Street and that they wouldn’t be staying. Instead, they moved in with his grandfather on Cascade Street — nearby, actually, but too far away to maintain a bird’s-eye view of Taggart Stadium and the Red and Black.

But in those few hours on the third floor of that house on Hazen Street, Joe Plant and New Castle football became forever entwined. Plant bought his first season ticket for $2 in 1946, at the age of 12, and he went to all the home games from that point on, although his mother would not permit him to travel to road games until his senior year in high school. Plant keeps statistical information as a hobby, so he knows for a fact that he missed a total of 15 road games from grades seven through 11. He saw all the games his senior season of 1951, then missed the third and seventh games of the year in 1952. And nothing since.

He has been a season-ticket holder for 69 years.

When he was 18, Plant was hired at Youngstown Sheet & Tube, but shortly thereafter, while he was still in his 90-day probationary period, the steelworkers went out on strike.

When it was settled, three weeks before football season began, he saw he had been put on a 3 to 11 p.m. work schedule.

Plant went into his boss’s office and asked if he could have Friday nights off so he could attend New Castle football games. His boss immediately reminded him that Youngstown is a great football town also.

“My boss said, ‘you and a thousand other guys want Friday night off,’ ” Plant said. “He said if I didn’t show up, I was fired.”

As soon as Plant passed his probationary period, he asked his wife to get him off the hook.

“She called and said she needed me at home for an emergency,” he said. “They couldn’t argue with that, so I was able to go to football.”

The next season, he pleaded his case with a new general foreman who came on board.

“I told him that I would work any horrible schedule anyone else didn’t want if I could just have 10 Fridays off,” he said. “They agreed to that and I got to go to my football games.”

Health woes also have not stopped him, although they have come close.

“In May of 2010, I had quadruple bypass surgery,” he said. “Dr. (Paul) Wawrzynski (himself a former New Castle High football standout) was my heart doctor and I told him I needed to be all right to go to football games in the fall. He said if he had to have me taken there on a gurney, he would see to it that I was there.”

Plant, who travels to road games with another New Castle fan, Kenny Carter, expects to hit the 700 mark in overall games he has seen in the regular-season finale at Hopewell on Oct. 24.

“During the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, the New Castle fans consistently outdrew the home fans,” he said. “New Castle fans are and always have been the best in Pennsylvania.”

He has made many friends along the way, like Norman Jones, who died last summer after himself amassing a lengthy streak of consecutive games attended. Plant’s love of New Castle football came full-circle, though, several years ago when he reunited — briefly — with his fourth-grade crush.

“When I started at New Castle, I fell for this cute little girl named Kathleen Essinger,” he said. “I knew she married a guy named Schooley and then I lost track of her. Well, here I am sitting at a game at Fox Chapel and there is Kathleen Essinger sitting right in front of me. I said, ‘what are you doing here?’ She said, ‘my son is the coach.’ Then it hit me ... Kathleen Essinger married Howard Schooley and they had a son named Gary who became New Castle’s coach. How’s that for a small world? My first crush ended up being the mother of a future New Castle High football coach.”

Plant’s goal is to hit 700 in a row before he calls it a career, although he is miffed that, like most WPIAL teams, the ’Canes no longer play a 10th game if they don’t make the playoffs.

“I’m getting short-changed so it’s taking me a little longer than I expected,” he said. “Not happy about that.”

Even the tough times, like the current 0-4 start, don’t deter him, though.

“I don’t just go to the games, I’m a fan of the Red and Black through and through,” he said. “My heart and soul is with the Hurricanes. Always has been, always will be.”