Lenny Wasmanski – Rest Easy old Friend

Lenny Wasmanski
He never really left Conshohocken
By Jack Coll

Damn It! I really hate writing these articles, Lenny Wasmanski passed away earlier this month, it didn’t come as a surprise, we knew cancer was making its way through his body, but it still hits you hard when the news comes.

I met young Lenny back in 1980, Mike Borzelleca introduced him to me one day at Don Lens Trophies then located on lower Fayette Street. Mike and I had coached a Tee-Ball team in the Conshohocken Little League, it was our first year coaching for both of us. We were great coaches and had a great team, but we just didn’t win that many games. (GO ANGELS)

Mike and I thought it would be a really big deal if we could present the members of the team with a participation trophy. (This was back before “Participation Trophies” were part of the landscape) So Mike and I went down to the trophy shop to see what 15 trophies would cost and that’s when I met Lenny.

Well a typical trophy on the cheap back then would run about ten bucks each, which we quickly determined was out of our budget seeing how we were paying for them. But Mike knew Lenny because Mike’s father (Harvey) and Lenny’s father (Big Len) coached Conshohocken midget football back in the 1960’s together and Mike played with Lenny, (I don’t know if they were on the same weight team together) so Lenny says listen, stop back tonight after we close the shop, we’ll go downstairs and see what we have and you guys can help me screw the trophies together.

So we stopped in later that evening and downstairs we went and Lenny cut the brass plates, ( I think the plates said, “1980 Angles”) me and Mike screwed the trophies together and put the plates on and Lenny charged us a total of $30.00 for the fifteen trophies. From that night on I was a friend of Lenny’s.

As the years passed Lenny always helped me with one organization or another, always offering whatever discounts the project would allow. For many years I sat on the Board of Directors for a number of youth leagues and always got first class service for the leagues. But it was Lenny’s generosity with the Fellowship House. The Fellowship House like so many of us know ran a lot of after school programs including basketball, baseball and the main attraction “KICK BALL” where everyone was a star for a day. From Al Donofrio to Dennis McCann, to Floyd Shaffer to Darlene Hildebrand, all Fel Directors loved giving out trophies to the champions of these programs, and the Runner-Ups, as well as third place and fourth place trophies.

As much as we loved giving out trophies to the kids we didn’t always have the money to pay for them. Lenny would say hey if you get the money fine and if you don’t we’ll just worry about it later. In the early 1980’s Conshohocken Little League would often have an “Awards Day” handing out trophies to the champions of the numerous leagues and Jackets to the graduating players. The trophies and jackets were handed out in August, but the league couldn’t pay Lenny until the following April when registration money came in, Lenny never complained.

I’m sure Lenny was good to Conshohocken because of his father Big Len. Big Len gave a lot of time to midget football but also donated much more to Conshohocken then he was required to. Big Len to this day still has a heart of gold.

Some years ago Lenny moved to Perkiomenville, he so loved the outdoors, but his heart and soul never left Conshohocken, he loved the people and organizations of this town.

We mourn our loss because Lenny was a good man, we seem to have fewer and fewer good men and women remaining in this town that care enough to go out and volunteer and give back to our community. Lenny was one of them, and I’ll miss him.
Lenny was a friend of mine.