'Bucky' Amodei, 86, beloved coach

BACK IN 1953, there came a timid knock at Carmen "Bucky" Amodei's door in Hunting Park.

Three youngsters came in and asked if Bucky would coach them in football.

The spokeskid weighed "all of 60 pounds," Bucky later recalled. He didn't take the boys seriously and told them to come back that Saturday.

He never expected to see them again, but on Saturday, 18 kids showed up. Bucky, who had been a successful sandlot- football coach going back to 1944, but had been sidelined for a couple of years by illness, could hardly turn them down.

The team they created, Pompeii CC, was entered in the 115-pound division of the Pop Warner Conference and won the division. After the boys had put on some weight, they went on the next year to win the 130-pound division.

Bucky's sandlot teams over a 12-year period had a record of 106 wins, 13 losses and three ties. He and his boys had shelves full of trophies.

Bucky Amodei, who, when he wasn't coaching kids, was a popular bartender at several night spots in the city and who worked as a Common Pleas Court tipstaff for 20 years, died Saturday. He was 86 and lived in Hunting Park.

He also coached baseball, managing the Our Lady of Pompeii School team, starting in 1955, and forming the Pompeii Catholic Youth Organization team in 1957. Pompeii CYO received the intermediate-playoff-championship trophy in 1957 and the runner-up trophy the next year.

Bucky loved sports, but discovered early that he wasn't a very good player. He started coaching football in 1944 with the Franklinville Boys Club.

The club was later combined with St. Anthony's Boys Club and the team won the first "Most Courageous" trophy ever awarded by the Pop Warner Conference in 1948.

His teams received a total of 16 trophies from 1948 to 1958, and he was awarded a number of personal trophies for his work.

"If I can teach my boys to accept all challenges and to realize you get out of life only what you put into it, I'll feel my time has been well-accounted for," he told a Daily News reporter in 1956.

Bucky was born in Philadelphia to Alfonso Amodei and the former Maria DeLisi. He attended Our Lady of Pompeii School but, because it was the Depression, had to quit and go to work.

He sold newspapers at 6th Street and Erie Avenue and worked in a hosiery factory. Eventually, he got a job as a clerk in Traffic Court while bartending at various clubs in the Hunting Park area.

He learned to coach on the job, so to speak, by watching other coaches and listening to them.

James King, longtime high- school basketball and football referee and a 20-year friend of Bucky's, said Bucky "loved sports, loved kids, loved everybody."

After his coaching days, Bucky liked going with Jim to games he was refereeing.

"I would pick him up and he would ask what games we were going to that day," Jim said. "It didn't really matter where we were going. He loved to watch all games and would have comments about them."

Bucky and Dolores Williams were married in 1946. He also is survived by three daughters, Donna McAllister, Marilyn Sheinberg and Janice Cook; seven grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. He was predeceased by his son, Carmen Jr.

Services: Funeral Mass 10 a.m. today at St. Catherine of Siena Church, Frankford Avenue and Primrose Road. Friends may call at 8 a.m. at the Burns Funeral Home, 9708 Frankford Ave. Burial will be in Our Lady of Grace Cemetery, Langhorne.

Donations may be made to the Boys and Girls Club of Philadelphia, Development Office, 1518 Walnut St., Suite 712, Philadelphia PA 19102. *