CLASS NOTES | SUMMER 2024 | 47 ’51 Wes Wardell, 302-998-7020; and associate, Lee Martucci '82, leemartucci12@gmail. com, 480-388-1849 This is our second column! We hope it inspires you to send us information about yourself and special events that you participated in while at Lehigh. Trina and Lee Martucci ’82 live in Arizona and attended Lehigh wrestling’s last dual meet of 2024 against Arizona State. While the results were not favorable to us, it is always fun to attend a Lehigh sporting event. Speaking of special events, I remember the 1948 NCAA wrestling tournament held at Lehigh’s Grace Hall. Lehigh hosted the event five times! The wrestlers participated under Olympic rules, where you were eliminated once you accumulated five bad marks. Only with a fall did you not receive any bad marks. Gerry Leeman, our third wrestling coach, was a participant who got eliminated. Bill Koll, from Northern Iowa and future Penn State coach, won in his weight class by falls and was the Most Valuable Wrestler. Lehigh’s Gus LaSasso ’50 pinned a wrestler from Oklahoma State. LaSasso later unfortunately died in the Korean War. I sat near legendary coach Billy Sheridan, who is in the Wrestling Hall of Fame and was later honored at the Lehigh Music Festival in Grace Hall. I believe the NCAA event was free! If you are a sports fan, can you top that? I remember the NCAA event at Lehigh more clearly than watching the Hindenburg on its last flight over New Jersey or when the Morro Castle ocean liner burned on the beach at Asbury Park. Tom Gabuzda and wife Stella are retired to Newtown Square, Pa. After Lehigh, Tom graduated from Harvard Medical School. He continued his studies in the U.S., as well as overseas. Tom and Stella lived several years in Germany and Denmark before returning to the U.S. They have three children, a son currently in Class Notes Welcome to Class Notes, where you can find out what your fellow alums are up to. Thanks to our dedicated correspondents for the work they do to keep our extended Lehigh community together. Please send class notes to your class correspondent, or, if unsure of the class to which the news applies, send to classnotes@lehigh.edu. Eight women, including athletes and coaches, were formally inducted into the Roger S. Penske/Lehigh Athletics Hall of Fame in May 2024. From left are Jessica DePalo ’05, Roseann Corsi, Susan Sachs ’77, Muffet McGraw, Barbara Everhart Lipkin, Judy Turner Baxter, Erica Prosser ’11 and Sue Coursen ’85. Read more about women’s athletics in the 1980 and 1985 columns.
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