By Monsignor Noel C. Burtenshaw

(Last In A Series)

When you talk about George M. along the Great White Way of colorful Broadway in New York City, we know you are speaking about the one and only Yankee Doodle, George M. Cohan.

In Atlanta, Georgia, when you talk about George M. in Catholic circles, especially in sporting Catholics circles, there is only one man who can fill the bill. It is George Bernard Maloof, football coach and Athletic Director of St. Pius X High School.

Go by Pi-Hi any Friday night of the football season and among the screams and yells of young enthusiasm and sweaty muddy uniforms of usually victorious giants, you can see George in his natural surroundings. He is prancing up and down the sideline looking like he just lost his friend. You would not feel like crossing George. From a distance he looks like a grizzly and close up, the kids tell you, he is not much different.

But the heart - everyone knows - the heart of this man is pure gold. “I love it here in St. Pius,” says George, “and serving the Church by serving these kids over 22 years has been a good paycheck to me.” It has been a good paycheck for the infant growing Church of Atlanta too.

George Maloof is strictly a local boy. He has watched his native Atlanta grow. Only once did he ever stray from her and that was simply to serve his country.

John Maloof and Sadie Azar had three boys. George was born in 1930. Since he can remember sports and participating in its “excitement” has been his life. “We grew up in ‘The Immaculate’,” remembers George as he fondly thinks of his home parish The Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, “and that’s where I played football and baseball. Father Doherty was our leader. He would take us over to St. Anthony’s or Sacred Heart for the games. We had our own little league.” In those days it was called the Little Fish League.

Life, for George and for so many other Catholics of the thirties centered around “the Immaculate.” “I was an altar boy,” recalls George, “we would meet all our friends, and the Lebanese community at the Church on Sunday mornings. Always we discussed sports, a little business too, but always sports.”

After graduating from the Shrine, George ascended to another golden Catholic institution of the day - Marist. “Father Dagneaux was the principal,” grins George, “a tough but wonderful guy.” For four years George Maloof was Marist’s star player, became All-State and the first All-American Georgia high school football player.

With never an intention of leaving Atlanta, 1949 saw George go to Tech. For four years, under the leadership of one of his great heroes, Bobby Dodd, he was star end on the team. “My most memorable game was against Georgia in my senior year,” recalls the coach, “I scored four touchdowns and we beat them good. Of course, we beat Georgia each year I was at Tech.” That same year, Georgia Tech and star end George Maloof went to the Orange Bowl.

After serving in the army and finishing his degree, George knew he wanted to coach. “My father was a merchant,” recalls George, “but that wasn’t for me. I wanted to be around youth and around sports.” For one year in 1955 Maloof was coach at Smith High School in Atlanta and then his Alma Mater called. “It was a great honor to go back to Marist and participate in their program. I loved it.”

That same year the official Church in North Georgia was born. The Diocese of Atlanta received its own Bishop - Francis E. Hyland. In that year of 1956, Bishop Hyland asked one of his pastors, Monsignor Cornelius Maloney, to found the first diocesan high school. He did. It opened in 1958 and the first coach for the infant school was home town boy, George Maloof. “Monsignor Maloney was such a gentle person,” recalls George, “and he gave me a free hand. We sure missed him when he passed on.”

From the first instant of its birth St. Pius was one of the new diocese’s warmest institutions.

“Every school develops a spirit,” says the Coach, “but St. Pius was different. We were small, instantly full and we had a sense of mission. We were a powerful arm of God’s Church now rapidly growing in Georgia.”

The history book will one day say it. George Maloof was a unique part of the Pi-Hi spirit. Boys or girls he could readily put in their place. On or off the field, there was thunder if the coach was crossed, but he was the one most of all sought when the chips were down. “It really wasn’t hard,” says George, “they want discipline, they are begging us to teach them how to play and how to live.”

What is a coach? George Maloof has the instant answer. “Coaching is selling. You sell the kids on themselves. You tell the little guys that big guys fall if you hit them hard enough. You show the big guys how to use all that muscle. But mostly for me, coaching is selling a kid on giving one hundred percent - even if he comes out of the game with nothing.”

They go back to St. Pius and seek him out. “Hey coach,” they say, “look at my kid,” or “Here’s what I’m doing,” or “Miss those afternoon practices.” They all come back knowing he’s still there with his grizzly bark and his heart of gold, still pitching - still selling.

George M. Cohan lifted our spirits with gaiety and music after the depressive horrors of the First World War.

George Bernard Maloof was there, not just at the beginning of a school, but at the beginning of the Church in North Georgia and lifted the spirits of our most valuable commodity - the leadership of tomorrow.