Remembering Ron Perry Sr.: Holy Cross Two-Sport Champ, Iconic High School Coach, and an Excellent Free-Throw Shooter: Shaughnessy

In that brief moment, we’d been in the presence of Massachusetts amateur basketball/baseball royalty. No brag. Just fact.

Mr. Perry died last Friday at the age of 92. He was a Massachusetts amateur baseball and basketball legend for the second half of the 20th century and impacted thousands of young lives as a player, coach, teacher, husband, and father. His was a life well-lived.

“My dad was a great man and loved his family,” Ronnie Perry Jr. told me Monday. “I was very lucky to have him as my dad. He was the best as a man, mentor, and adviser to many.”

It all started in Somerville, where Perry was a high school guard. He drew big crowds to Boston Garden and won two Tech Tourneys and a New England championship while also taking his baseball team to the state tournament. From there, he went to Holy Cross, where he won national championships in both sports.

For Ron Perry, 1954 was a busy year. He graduated from Holy Cross, signed with the Boston Braves, but also was drafted by Red Auerbach … and the United States Marines.

“That’s not a draft where you have much of a choice,” Ron Perry Jr. said. “I think if it hadn’t been for the draft, Dad would have played professional baseball.”

Life had other plans for Ron Perry Sr. Instead of playing for the Celtics or pitching for the Braves, he served his country for three years, became a husband for 59 years, raised three children, and spent a lifetime teaching, coaching, and sculpting souls at Catholic Memorial High School and Holy Cross.

“He made such a huge mark on my life and the many lives throughout his years,” said Dick Osso, who played varsity baseball and basketball for Perry at CM in the early 1960s. “I am in awe of his history and it affected my life. He shaped and molded my life into the person I became.”

Ron and the late Patricia Perry married in 1955, raised a son and two daughters (Ron Jr., Maryellen, Patrice) in West Roxbury, and the male Perrys became a dynasty at Holy Cross.

As an 8-year old in 1966, Ronnie Jr. won a national Punt, Pass and Kick championship in a competition held at the Orange Bowl. When he graduated from Catholic Memorial in 1976, he was Massachusetts’s all-time leading basketball scorer with 2,481 points. He went on to become first-team All-America at Holy Cross, leading the Crusaders to the NCAA Tournament in his senior season while becoming that school’s all-time leading scorer (2,524 points).

Drafted by the Celtics, Perry Jr. was the last player Bill Fitch cut from the 1980-81 NBA championship roster. (Larry Bird said Perry deserved to make the team.) Ron Jr. went on to play professional baseball, homered off Jack Morris in a spring training game, and was later traded for Mets ace Jerry Koosman.

Matt Perry, Ronnie’s son, had a four-year career as an infielder for the Holy Cross baseball team, graduated in 2010, was drafted by the Tigers, and played professional ball in the Detroit system for four seasons. He was inducted into the Holy Cross Hall of Fame in 2016.

“Three generations,“ said Ron Perry Jr. “Dad was very proud of that. It was an emotional night when Matt was inducted.”

And it all started with Ron Sr., who will be waked at Gormley Funeral Home in West Roxbury Friday afternoon from 4-8. His funeral will be at 11 a.m. Saturday at St. Teresa’s. There are nine Ron Perry grandchildren and nine more great-grandchildren.

Ronald S. Perry was born in Somerville in 1932 and grew up to be a national champion in college basketball and baseball.

He arrived at Holy Cross in the fall of 1950 and immediately made his mark in both sports.

In his sophomore season, Perry, a righthanded pitcher, was part of a magical ride that ended with an NCAA championship in the College World Series in Omaha. The Holy Cross team had only three pitchers, and they combined to hurl seven complete games in the tournament. Perry beat Texas, 2-1, in an elimination game, then bested undefeated Missouri, 7-1, in the final round. It remains the only NCAA Division 1 baseball championship won by a school from the Northeast.

When Ted Williams returned from flying combat missions during the Korean War in the summer of ‘53, he asked for Perry to throw him private batting practice at Fenway Park. Holy Cross baseball went 78-14 in Perry’s three seasons.

On the hardwood, Perry played alongside future Celtics Tommy Heinsohn and Togo Palazzi, and was cocaptain when the Cross won the 1954 NIT. The NIT was a big deal in those days, and the entire team appeared the next night on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” In Perry’s three varsity basketball seasons, the Cross went 127-19.

As coach at Catholic Memorial, Perry made the Knights a scholastic powerhouse. In 1964-65, his squad featured 6-foot-9-inch center Ron Teixeira and played against New York’s Power Memorial and center Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). Power won, 61-38.

Perry won two state championships at CM. His 1969 squad went 29-0, won the state tourney at the old Garden, and featured six Division 1 college players, including Billy Raynor, Fran Costello, and King Gaskins. Perry was 292-34 as coach at CM, and the school’s home venue is the Ronald S. Perry Gymnasium, a.k.a. “The Ronnie.”

It was a very big deal when Perry returned to the Cross as athletic director in 1972. He was athletic director when the Hart Center was built and when Holy Cross last beat Boston College in football (1977 and ’78).

And long into the 21st century, the great Ron Perry Sr. was still making his free throws. Even while wearing dress shoes and a necktie.

Nothing but net.