The Man Who Built the National Football League: Joe F. Carr Read online

  After just a decade St. Patrick Church was a staple in the Irish neighborhood. Purchased for $1,000, the first cornerstone was laid out in September 1852 at the northeast corner of Seventh Street (now Grant Street) and Naghten Street in the Irish neighborhood. The church's original layout-152 feet long and 52 feet wide-was done in Norman style architecture and patterned after the ancient castles of Ireland. One year later on Sunday, September 25, 1853, the church opened its doors to the Irish community"

  The following year a two-story brick school building was erected beside the church on Mt. Vernon Avenue. In August 1855 Father James Meagher of St. Patrick engaged the service of the Sisters of Notre Dame, from Cincinnati, who took immediate charge of the girls' school. Lay teachers were employed to teach the boys. Eventually the school would double its capacity, providing four rooms for the boys and four rooms for the girls. The Karr family would build a relationship with St. Patrick that lasted for over seventy years.12

  Starting in 1867, Michael the shoemaker and his stay-at-home wife would have four children over the next seven years-two boys and two girls. These four children would travel very different paths and one would disappear altogether. Bridget Karr (1867), John Aloysius Karr (June 1869), James Karr (December 18, 1872), and Mary Therese Karr (September 22, 1874) were all born healthy and baptized at St. Patrick Church. After the arrival of child number five, Michael would change the direction of his family.

  In 1877 the Karrs had their fifth child, another son, Michael Lawrence Karr (April 11, 1877).13 At this time papa Michael decided to take charge of his own life and make his family more stable and comfortable. He was now on the verge of becoming a successful Irish story. After the birth of young Michael, the father decided to go into business for himself. Fourteen years after arriving from Ireland, he now owned and operated his own shoe-making business. He found a home where the family could work and live that was in the old Irish neighborhood located at 419 Mt. Vernon Avenue.

  Over the next few years the business would also turn into a grocery store and a saloon for his customers. The tight-knit group of seven had now become a well-known established family in the city of Columbus as the Irish neighborhood and its citizens were becoming a positive influence in the city. Irish immigrants were running businesses, working on the railroad, running for political office, and making an impact in the capital city. The Karrs' new home on Mt. Vernon Avenue was right in the middle of what was now being called "the Irish Broadway."

  But this home on Mt. Vernon Avenue was about to become the birthplace of a boy who would make his own success story and do it the Irish way.

  y 1879 the Karr family had been living in Columbus for nearly fifteen years and had seen the city start to grow up. The city now had a strong population of 51,647 that included forty-four churches, thirty schools, fourteen banks, over 140 grocery stores, and eighty-eight shoemaking shops-including the one owned by Michael Karr on Mt. Vernon Avenue. The Karr shop, which now included a grocery store and a saloon, became a place to meet and socialize for the local Irish citizens. The upbeat group of immigrants, mostly male, loved to hang out for a few drinks after a hard day's work, and Michael was no different. His store became a very popular spot.'

  "As you look down Mt. Vernon Avenue at this time, there were quite a few saloons, but they were meeting places, places where people who couldn't entertain in their homes would go for the night and have a bite to eat and a bottle of beer," says Margaret Mooney, great-niece of Joe Carr, and great-granddaughter of Michael Karr. "My great-grandfather had a liking for the drink and that might've changed the opinion of the Karr boys about drinking as they got older."2

  As summer turned to fall in Columbus everything seemed to be going very well for the Karrs, and Margaret was expecting again with child number six. But this child would be different; he would be special. On Thursday, October 23, 1879, Joseph Francis Karr was born at home on Mt. Vernon Avenue. A week and a half later on November 2, the family took baby Joe to be baptized by the Reverend Michael M. Meara at St. Joseph's Cathedral on East Broad Street. The bigger church was needed so the Karrs' new baby could be presented to God in front of his whole family and his two sponsors, James and Mary Edleman. James was a local bricklayer who, with his wife and seven children, lived in the neighborhood on Oak Street and knew the Karr family very well.'

  Joe Karr spent the first six years of his life growing up with his family on Mt. Vernon Avenue. Four years after Joe was born, Michael and Margaret had their seventh and last child. On December 9, 1883, the clan welcomed Edward Karr to the family, giving them five boys and two girls. A year and a half later little Joe would attend his first year of Catholic school at St. Patrick following in the footsteps of his older siblings.

  At this time Michael started to reevaluate his life and what his family needed. First, he saw that the home at Mt. Vernon Avenue was too small for his family, and they needed more room. Second, he also wanted to find something else to challenge him other than running the store. So in 1886 the well-established Karr family moved to a bigger home at 274 Hamilton Avenue. The new house was still located in the Irish neighborhood, and this would be home to Joe Karr for the next twenty years.

  Michael, age forty-five, was now ready to change careers. After working for most of the past twenty years as a shoemaker, Michael became a sewer contractor. With his connections in the city and in particular the Irish neighborhood, it was an easy transition for him. The only drawback was that he was still drinking.

  As his father changed occupations, the eldest son, John Karr, finished his schooling and at the age of seventeen went to work as a cigar maker in Columbus. But the big mystery in the Karr family at this time is what happened to the Karrs' first child, Bridget. According to the family, Bridget was accounted for in 1880 (at the age of thirteen) and appeared in the 1880 Ohio Census with the rest of the family. But suddenly she seemed to have disappeared, and the family couldn't find any records of her from 1880 on. Some think she might have married and moved away, but the consensus is that she became sick and died. But it has been a family mystery as to what happened to her.'

  In the meantime Joe became a solid student, learning math, English, social studies, and Bible study. After three years at St. Patrick School he finished his education at St. Dominic's School. Michael made sure Joe and his siblings received a basic Catholic education, something he didn't have. To get to the new school Joe would leave the house early in the morning and gallop down Thorn Ally, which ran along the side of the house off Hamilton Avenue, and go the ten blocks to school. He always enjoyed the feel of running those ten blocks, and it made him ready for anything the teachers threw at him.

  In 1890 the blue-eyed, light-brownish-haired (with a little red in it), eleven-year-old son of an Irish immigrant was not filling out physically as he would have liked. Fairly short and skinny, Joe was now interested in the sports being played in the neighborhood, but his lack of size and strength was obvious. Despite his small dimensions, he would usually be right in the middle of all the action; sometimes he would be the one organizing the games. He would take charge and pick the teams and set up the rules for the games-not typical of your average eleven-year-old. Joe looked like a born leader. He might not have known it then, but his love for sports was growing on the sandlots of Columbus. Like most sons of European immigrants who came to America, Joe and his friends gravitated to sports to assimilate with the population and prove they belonged. For the Columbus boys, the sport of choice was baseball.

  While in the neighborhood Joe became familiar with an older boy who would have a big influence on his life and career. Robert "Bobby" Quinn was a Columbus native who was nine years older than Joe and had started to make a name for himself. Quinn, who grew up selling newspapers in the neighborhood to make money for the family, eventually left the city and played minor league baseball as a catcher in the 1890s for several teams. Then he became the general manager of the Columbus Senators of the American Association from 1902-1917. After leaving the S
enators, Quinn spent the next twenty-nine years as a general manager, president, and owner for four Major League teams, including the St. Louis Browns (1917-1922), Boston Red Sox (1923-1933), Brooklyn Dodgers (1934-1935), and Boston Braves (1936-1945). It was Quinn who showed Joe that you could be successful in sports, and not as an athlete, but as an executive.5

  Playing sandlot baseball in the neighborhood Joe would pretend to be Cap Anson, the best player in Major League Baseball, or John "Long John" Reilly, the first baseman for the Cincinnati Reds. While playing these games, Joe made another friend who gave him another future connection to Quinn and the sports world. Robert Drury was in the same grade as Joe, and the two became instant friends, with their love of baseball being the common connection. In the only photo from Joe's Catholic school years, a serious-looking Joe is standing (with his hands folded) right in front of his best friend, both dressed in their church robes. Drury's father was a prominent physician in Columbus and was the staff doctor of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company for many years. Drury was a talented ballplayer, himself good enough to play and manage for a few minor league teams in Ohio and the Eastern League. At the same time he was playing ball, he attended and graduated from medical school. After his playing career ended, Drury became a very successful surgeon in Columbus and became Joe's physician for many years.'

  Drury also knew Quinn through the old neighborhood and would eventually strike up a close friendship with him. When Quinn needed investors to help him buy the Boston Red Sox, he asked Drury to be part of the ownership team and Drury agreed. For ten years (1923-1933) the two Columbus natives helped run the ballclub, with Quinn as team president and Drury as a silent owner. The trio of Carr, Quinn, and Drury would make their mark as sports executives, and their connection through the Irish neighborhood would last a lifetime. The capital city of Ohio became a hotbed for sports leaders.

  As Joe was going to Catholic school and playing sandlot ball, his father was now established as a successful sewer contractor. He made an easy transition from being a shoemaker, and it was done with the hard work he showed when starting his own business over twenty years ago. The Irish saying "a handful of skill is better than a bagful of gold" fit Michael perfectly. Over time this work ethic rubbed off on his children, and maybe a little too much for his two eldest sons, who wanted to make their own mark away from home.

  In 1892 the eldest son, John, at the age of twenty-three, left Columbus and moved to Chicago, Illinois. After spending five years as a cigar maker in his hometown, he traveled to the Windy City and opened his own cigar shop located at 837 North Clark Street. John would keep the spelling of the family's last name of Karr and would go on to marry a German immigrant, Ada Abraham. The couple would have three children-Edward, Walter, and Virginia. "My grandfather was a very particular person. Very particular in the way he dressed and looked. Since he was twenty-one years old he never shaved himself; he always went to the barber shop to get a shave. He liked being very neat and he liked nice things, " says Jim Heavey, grandson of John Karr.7

  John was a sophisticated, well-read, very dapper man who always seemed to have perfect hair and a perfect mustache. The Karr cigar shop became a very popular place in the city, and John made many famous contacts there. But some of the clientele were very shady, and John contributed to this environment. In October of 1911 John Karr was arrested for running a gambling ring in back of his cigar shop. In a citywide crack down on gambling, Karr's store was raided; the Chicago Daily Tribune reported that "five detectives raided the handbook of Karr & Kennedy, just as bettors were getting into the action of the races. John Karr, who gave the name of Hammond at the police station, was arrested and betting sheets were confiscated."8

  "Yes he was a bookie but he did quite well. He made a lot of money," says Heavey. Two years after John left his hometown, younger brother James, when he turned twenty-two years old, followed his brother to Chicago. Joe, who was a teenager, was happy for his brothers, that they were making it on their own, although in the future the gambling operation would always put a slight strain on their relationship. The rest of the family, however, didn't handle the departure of John and James too well, and it seemed that the Karr family was breaking up and drifting apart. John Karr, who would reside in Chicago for the rest of his life, stayed in contact with his younger brother Joe by writing and visiting with him occasionally'

  In the fall of 1894 Joe was entering what would be the last two years of school, and he thought for an instant about furthering his educationmaybe college. Besides school and church Joe would also hang out at the local amusement center, once saying, "I got more fun out of a penny arcade where we dropped a penny in the slot and saw the mother of present movie."10 It was one of the few times Joe Karr would reveal something about his childhood to a reporter. But it was still sports that would top his list of things he loved. His experience of playing sandlot baseball in the neighborhood-and the connections he would make-became the start of a love affair that would eventually help Joe pave a road toward a career in sports. As the young teenager was getting this special feeling inside his gut for the sporting world, his family was drifting apart and it would get worse before it got better.

  ith John and James in Chicago (and a missing Bridget), the Karr family had started to separate and Michael Karr was participating in that old Irish tradition-drinking. He was still working and providing for his remaining family, including helping Joe Karr get through his grammar school studies. But he was drinking more and more. As for Joe, he always enjoyed going to school, and later on he would preach getting an education as the number one priority for any young person-male or female. This is something he stressed with his children as well.

  While at St. Dominic's he continued to be a good student. Once he won a school medal for excellence in Bible history, his favorite subject. The little gold medal (that was about two and half inches big) was presented to him by Father Mulhearn and was engraved with "Joseph F. Karr" on the back.' Around the age of sixteen, Joe finished his education. Although he thought about college (for about a minute), it wasn't in the cards. Most immigrant kids his age were already working and helping their families by making an income. Michael was a success but he wasn't a rich man, and Joe could be more helpful to the family by getting a job. There was no extra money to send a child to college.

  After finishing school, Joe, like his older siblings John, James, Mary, and Michael, went to work at an early age. In between his sixteenth and seventeenth birthday, Joe gained employment as an apprentice machinist. He worked in the city as a machinist for Case Manufacturing Co. and Rarig Manufacturing Co. For a teenager, a machinist's job wasn't difficult to learn, and it was rewarding work and well respected within the community. "Well, I suspect given his age that he probably did not have the most important machinist, quote-unquote, job and I suspect that he generally worked twelve-hour workdays. So it might've been a 6 to 6 type of routine," says Gregory Carr, grandson of Joe Carr. As Joe started to work he never lost his passion for learning. After working all those hours, he would find time to read. "When he left school he would continue to read. He always said you can get an education by reading the newspaper, " says Michael Carr, grandson of Joe Carr.'

  Joe worked hard at these shops, and this led him to be hired by a company that would change his life. By using his connections in the Irish neighborhood and gaining a reputation as a very dependable and hardworking machinist, Joe was hired to work for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He would work in the Permsy's Panhandle shops off of 20th and 22nd streets near the Irish neighborhood. He fit in well with the other shop workers, who were blacksmiths, boilermakers, carpenters, inspectors, laborers, clerks, welders, painters, drill operators, engine cleaners, and foremen. His daily job wasn't glamorous.

  "The Panhandle yard here in Columbus was, for a long time, a repair yard. So they brought in a lot of machines or engines and so forth for maintenance and repair. Instead of maybe sending out for a part and that sort of thing, they would either repair or rem
anufacture a part along those lines, in order to repair and keep the engines running. His participation as a machinist would have been related to repair and maintenance of engines at the railroad Panhandle yard," says James Carr, grandson of Joe Carr.'

  While Joe was making a living as a machinist, his sister Mary, age twenty-two, who the family nicknamed "Mayme," was working as a stenographer in the city, at one time being employed by New York Life and the Ohio Penitentiary. His brother Michael, age nineteen, found work as a clerk in a grocery-candy store, and Eddie, age thirteen, was still attending school. In the midst of their busy lives, the Karr siblings faced their biggest challenge. On July 20, 1898, Margaret Karr died at her home on Hamilton Avenue at the age of fifty-eight. The Ohio State journal wrote this obituary (which never revealed cause of death) under the headline of "Another Pioneer Gone":

  In the death of Mrs. Michael Carr at her home at 274 Hamilton Avenue Thursday afternoon Columbus lost another pioneer. Mrs. Carr had lived in Columbus for 32 years and witnessed many remarkable changes in the city's growth. When she first came here the East End was not what it is at present. The land occupied now by beautiful residences and handsome streets was then a country field and under cultivation by those who owned it. She lived to see the city prosper and spread out until it is now one of the best and prettiest cities in Ohio.4