LOOKING BACK is a Leader online feature that highlights historic photos. Readers are invited to submit their historic Jefferson County photos for online publication.
The two LOOKING BACK features over the summer on the Twin City Reds baseball team drew a belated, but still welcome, email from Bill Oddo of Bellevue, Ohio.
“While searching for information for long-lost relatives, I found your article that mentioned Benny LaPresta,” Oddo wrote. “The family moved to St. Louis when he was an infant and that was the last we heard from them. I was wondering if you could help us solve this missing link in our family by shedding light on Benny. He passed away in August 1975.”
Here’s what we know about Benny LaPresta, who starred on the very first Crystal City High School football team:
LaPresta toted the pigskin for the school in 1926. That team was coached by Aubrey Powers, a gentleman who guided the Crystal City High girls to state basketball titles in 1926 and 1928.
LaPresta was one of the stars of the Hornets’ first football conference championship squad. He went on to play for St. Louis University, which fielded a team from 1899 to 1949.
During his four years at SLU, the Billikens won four state championships, three city titles and one Missouri Valley Conference title. He is a member of the St. Louis University Billikens Football Hall of Fame.
LaPresta even played in the National Football League, which at the time was a struggling outfit. He played for the Boston Redskins in 1933 and the St. Louis Gunners in 1934.
According to the NFL’s website, LaPresta was a 5-9, 185-pound running back who was born Jan. 22, 1909, in Bellevue, Ohio.
Other websites note that he played on the other side of the ball, as a linebacker and defensive back. He also completed two of four passes for 50 yards for Boston while his only pass attempt for the Gunners was incomplete.
LaPresta also must have had a good foot, too, as he was credited with kicking an extra point in 1933.
He played in eight games for Boston, gaining 62 yards on 11 carries. He also caught one pass for 23 yards. He got in only one game for the Gunners in 1934 and is credited with a four-yard pass reception.
Some sources also have LaPresta as playing for the Cincinnati Reds football team in 1934 – that team lost its first eight games of the NFL season that year before the league suspended the team for failure to pay league dues. The league then enlisted the Gunners, previously an independent team, to play the last three games of the season. (The Gunners won one of them.)
LaPresta doesn’t show up in any of the Reds’ statistics from 1934.
Even though it doesn’t count in the NFL stats, LaPresta had his moment of glory for the St. Louis team, which continued to play scheduled games against independent teams during and after its part of the NFL season.
In the last of those exhibitions, LaPresta caught the only touchdown of the game from Charley McLaughlin to give the Gunners a 7-0 triumph over the Kansas City Blues.
After he left professional football, LaPresta worked for the Internal Revenue Service and was a college and high school football referee.
LaPresta also was inducted in 2010 into the Crystal City Hall of Fame.
If you know any more about Benny LaPresta, please send it to us we’ll pass it along to Bill Oddo.
Send submissions (or if you have any information on this photo) to LOOKING BACK to nvrweakly@aol.com or bring or mail them to the Leader office, 503 N. Second St., Festus (P.O. Box 159, 63028). Please include your name, phone number, a brief description of what’s in the photo and tell us how you came by it. Please also include when it was taken, where and by whom (if known). A new LOOKING BACK photo will be posted each week.
