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The Observer | www.theobserver.com that we had enough shooters on the team, that I had to bring the ball up and pass it. He treated me like everyone else on the team. I never felt like I was signaled out.” John Ferguson decided to pursue a life in education and is now an elementary school principal in North Plainfield. “I was motivated by his complete devotion to helping people,” John Ferguson said. No better story then the time that Fergie got a call at home late at night. It was
from a student. “She said that she got into trouble with a bunch of guys and she was so upset that she was going to jump off the George Washington Bridge,” Bill Ferguson, Jr. said. “My Dad went there to go help her in the middle of the night. She then told me years later that my Dad saved her life.” McKeown will always remember the last time he spent with his friend two weeks ago. “He knew what the situation was,” McKeown said.
“He was in good spirits. He wanted to cheer us up. We still laughed. I don’t know of anyone who disliked him.” Just minutes before Fergie passed, Bill asked him a question. “I asked him that it was time to tell us who the better athlete was, me or my brother John,” Bill Ferguson, Jr. said. “He thought for a second, then gave his answer. He said, ‘Your sister, Kristen.’” Telling jokes right to the end.
Bill Ferguson leaves his wife of 63 years, Ruth An, his three daughter, Kristen, Lea An and Patty and his two sons. He also leaves hundreds of students he taught and coached, kids he treated like his own and treated him like he was their father. There was only one Bill Ferguson, one Fergie, one coach who personified North Arlington athletics. To say he will be missed would be a gross understatement. He truly was one of a kind.
spective colleges to see if she could apply to the school and get a chance to try out for the Continued from Page 9 team. She attached videos of her playing in the e-mail along college baseball, even though with her impressive academic there were no other females resume with a stellar 3.7 grade playing baseball in the United point average. States. Alexia Jorge hoped to One might think that Jorge’s buck the odds once again. fine athletic and academic “I knew it was going to be package would produce a ton tough,” Jorge said. “I knew I of interested schools, right? was going to play my senior “Most never returned my year (at Lyndhurst High). The e-mail,” Jorge said. “I kind of only thing I worried about was expected that.” getting a chance to play in colWait, not even a thanks, but lege. I kept pushing to comno thanks letter. The respecpete in college baseball.” tive schools could have done Jorge sent out literally that, especially after she took hundreds of e-mails to prothe time to write.
“If they would have gotten back to me, I would have given them a call,” Jorge said. “Once they didn’t respond, it was a dead issue. I wasn’t mad. I’ve learned to accept that.” Jorge’s recruiting video was done complete with music. She chose the background mu-
sic from the movie, “Rocky.” Not the popular “Gonna Fly Now” version that is more readily known, but the music that both Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) and Apollo Creed, Jr. (Michael B. Jordan) had as they ran through the streets of Philadephia in the
popular Rocky-Creed movie series. “My mom critiqued the video to make sure that things lined up with the music,” Jorge said. “I spent many hours putting it together.”
but when I left, I was a better man.” Bill Ferguson, Jr. said that his father’s roommate in college was the famed concert promoter Don Kirschner, from the popular weekend concert shows on NBC television, long before MTV was even thought about. John Ferguson was a player on the good North Arlington teams in the early 1980s. “He told me that my job was not to shoot the ball,” John Ferguson said. “He said
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