Anchors Away!

Annual Police Outing for Kids Holds Last Excursion to Coney Island

By Linda Busetti

Mike Murphy remembers when police motorcycles escorted buses carrying him and other orphans to the annual New York Police Department Anchor Club outings to Coney Island.

Since 1922, the Anchor Club, whose members are Knights of Columbus, has made a huge difference in the lives of the six Murphy children and thousands of other orphans, as well as widows and children of deceased police officers.

Linda Busetti Photos

CONEY ISLAND TRADITION: Auxiliary Bishop Octavio Cisneros, second from left, and Father Frank Shannon, chaplain of the N.Y.P.D. Anchor Club, join club members in a short parade down Surf Ave. in Coney Island to Astroland, where for the 71st year, police officers hosted youngsters for a day at the amusement park.

This year’s outing to Astroland on July 10 was the 71st and last, because the famed amusement park at Surf Ave. and West 8th St. has been sold to a developer.

The day began with a short parade down Surf Ave. Honored guest Art Kingsley, a resident of St. Agnes Orphanage, Sparkill, from 1923 to 1941, rode in an open car with police widows, Gerry Vance and Millie Alcano. Auxiliary Bishop Octavio Cisneros and Father Frank Shannon, chaplain, marched with uniformed members of the Anchor Club behind their banner. The N.Y.P.D. Emerald Society Band played patriotic tunes as the parade arrived at the base of the Cyclone roller coaster.

Before the children took off on the rides with their police officer buddies, Lt. Kevin Lyons, Anchor Club president, presented a memento to Kingsley and thanked Vance for her hard work and the Albert family, owners of Astroland, for their kindness over the years.

Lt. Lyons reports the tradition will continue next year with an outing to Rye Playland in Westchester.

NEW YORK’s FINEST including Police Officer Joe Greco of the 104th Precinct, waving after a wild ride on the Cyclone roller coaster, accompanied youngsters from Brooklyn and Queens on the Anchor Club’s last outing to Astroland, Coney Island. Officer Greco mentors children in his precinct in a program called N.Y.P.D. Explorers. The tradition of police officers of the Anchor Club, who are also Knights of Columbus, helping orphans and other youngsters in need goes back to the club’s founding in 1922. At right, members of the N.Y.P.D. Emerald Society Band got the day off to a great start as they arrived at the base of the Cyclone.

Police Officer Joe Greco of the 104th Precinct in Ridgewood was doing what many other Anchor Club members have done over the years when he took a group of kids for a wild ride on the wooden Cyclone. Officer Greco mentors the N.Y.P.D. Explorers, a youth group in his precinct.

Retired Officer John Tully, Officer Joi Grant and Officer Shane Kelly shepherded children through the park. Detective Phil Schurr and his buddy for the day waited as others rode a swinging pirate ship. Another 100 children from the Blessed Sacrament summer camp in Cypress Hills were also guests of the Anchor Club.

They were just the latest beneficiaries. Since 1936, the Anchor Club – the anchor is a Knights of Columbus symbol of steadfastness – has hosted thousands of children at their Coney Island outings. No distinction was made as to Catholic or non-Catholic.

Mike Murphy was three in 1941 when he and five siblings were sent to live at Mount Loretto, a Catholic orphanage on Staten Island, after their father died.

“We really looked forward to the outings to Coney Island,” Murphy said. “You could have all the rides, anything you wanted,” he recalls. The Anchor Club also sponsored an annual Christmas party for the orphans, said Murphy, a firefighter for 30 years before retiring.

Murphy’s oldest brother, Pat, played on the Anchor Club’s New York Orphans All Star baseball team versus Boys’ Town at the Polo Grounds on Sept. 9, 1949.

Ed Ryan coached the Orphans team to a 10-3 victory over Boys’ Town. Ryan grew up in St. Mary Star of the Sea, Red Hook. In 1941, he graduated from St. Augustine H.S., where he had been captain of the baseball team. He was a young patrolman in the 78th Precinct, Bergen St., when Lt. John Boyle, Anchor Club president, asked him to coach the Orphans team.

Every Wednesday for months police officers drove to Mount Loretto, S.I.; St. Agnes in Sparkill; the Graham School in Hastings-on-Hudson; and the Hebrew National Orphanage in Yonkers to take boys to baseball practice at the Parade Grounds in Brooklyn. Afterward they all went to lunch at Michelle’s on Flatbush Ave.

ALONG SURF AVE. N.Y.P.D. Police Officer Janine Barnes, left, watched the Anchor Club’s short parade to Astroland with youngsters she would accompany for a day of hot dogs, rides and great summer fun on July 10. The temperature hit 91 degrees, a perfect day for Coney Island as is apparent from these smiles.

The week before the big game, the orphans were put up in the then-Statler Hotel across from Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan. Lt. Boyle arranged for each boy to receive a new suit, shoes, socks, ties and shirts.

Pat Murphy had been praying for a new suit. “He was the nicest kid you could ever want to know,” Ryan recalls of the boy who grew up to be first deputy police commissioner during the Koch administration.

Coach Ryan also pitched in at the Anchor Club outings to Coney Island. Old black and white photos show him and the kids enjoying the rides and eating ice cream together. “It felt good to know you were contributing to their welfare,” he says.

Pat’s widow, Patricia, heard many stories over the years about how much the Anchor Club meant to Pat and his brothers. The police officers gave their time and showed the children that someone cared, she said.

Another Murphy brother, Billy, a retired lawyer, remembers the potato sack races at Mount Loretto’s Field Day hosted by the Anchor Club.

Eighteen-year-old John Lawrence pitched a two-hitter in the 1949 game. Lawrence lived at Mount Loretto from 1940 to 1948 and went on to Manhattan College, medical school and training at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Bridgeport, CT.

YOUNGSTERS who came to Astroland as guests of the Anchor Club met Assistant Chief Diana Pizzuti, left, Borough Commander of Patrol Borough Queens North, who took the time to chat with them before they headed off to ride the old wooden Cyclone roller coaster.

Dr. Lawrence says the Anchor Club “gave me an opportunity to know that there were good things and good people out in the world.” His memories of the Coney Island outings include enjoying treats like cotton candy.

Retired Lt. Col. Ed J. Kelly spent most of his first 18 years at St. Agnes orphanage. He was an outfielder during the memorable Polo Grounds game and has great memories of the trips to Coney Island.

“It was a great boost to all of us,” he says. “I think the Anchor Club was one of the best organizations that focused on youth. Youth need guidance. Without that we would have had nothing.”

Kelly credits the Dominican nuns at St. Agnes with giving him the discipline that carried him through his military career and later struggles. He and his wife lost everything in their New Orleans home during Hurricane Katrina. They have picked up the pieces and live in nearby Slidell. He is retired, but like the policemen of the Anchor Club, Kelly gives something back. For the past 30 years he has coached a competitive youth swim team.

Lt. Lyons shared a story. A few years ago the Anchor Club had a Christmas party at the Immaculate Conception Center, Douglaston. A snowstorm kept the club’s spiritual director from getting there. Msgr. Vincent Keane was asked to come down from the retired priests residence to give the invocation. To their surprise, Msgr. Keane told the members that as a child he had been a recipient of the Anchor Club’s kindness. His father, a New York City police officer, died in 1947, leaving a wife and four children. He remembers that the Anchor Club bought him two suits.

At the time, he was a sophomore at Cathedral Prep, Brooklyn. “The Anchor Club is a tremendous charitable organization,” he said, calling the police officers a “great blessing” to his family. They visited his mom, brought gifts at Christmastime and bought clothes for the children.

Msgr. Keane says he still wonders if the founders appreciated “what a great thing they were doing when they sowed the seeds of charity, which became the Anchor Club.”

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