John Stephen Petercuskie (January 31, 1925 – April 20, 2018) was a former

American football American football (referred to simply as football in the United States and Canada), also known as gridiron, is a team sport played by two teams of eleven players on a rectangular field with goalposts at each end. The offense, the team wi ...

coach.

Military service

After graduating high school in the summer of 1942, he enlisted in the

United States Marine Corps The United States Marine Corps (USMC), also referred to as the United States Marines, is the maritime land force service branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for conducting expeditionary and amphibious operations through combi ...

. He was trained as a radar operator on the

SCR-270 The SCR-270 (Set Complete Radio model 270) was one of the first operational early-warning radars. It was the U.S. Army's primary long-distance radar throughout World War II and was deployed around the world. It is also known as the Pearl Harbor ...

and attained the rank of Sergeant. As a member of Air Warning Squadron 8, he took part in the Battle of Okinawa in 1945.

Coaching career

He served as head coach at

Neshaminy High School , motto_translation = , address = 2001 Old Lincoln Highway , location = , region = , town = Langhorne, Pennsylvania postal address , county = (Bucks Count ...

from 1960 to 1965, garnering a 59–1–5 record. He also served on the coaching staffs of college football teams at

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

, Boston College,

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

Liberty University Liberty University (LU) is a private Baptist university in Lynchburg, Virginia. It is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Conservatives of Virginia ( Southern Baptist Convention). Founded in 1971 by Jerry Falwell Sr. and Elmer L. Towns, Lib ...

, and as an assistant coach (defensive line and special teams coach) on the

Cleveland Browns The Cleveland Browns are a professional American football team based in Cleveland. Named after original coach and co-founder Paul Brown, they compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (A ...

from 1978 to 1984. In 2010, a bronze statue of his likeness was unveiled at Harry P. Franks Stadium in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Bucks County Sports Hall of Fame, Neshaminy Hall of Fame, Scranton Hall of Fame, East Stroudsburg Hall of Fame, Lackawanna County Hall of Fame, Luzerne County Hall of Fame and Pennsylvania Coaches Hall of Fame. Petercuskie died at his home on April 20, 2018.

References

External links

* 1925 births 2018 deaths American football guards Boston College Eagles football coaches Cleveland Browns coaches Dartmouth Big Green football coaches East Stroudsburg Warriors football players Harvard Crimson football coaches Liberty Flames football coaches Princeton Tigers football coaches High school football coaches in Pennsylvania People from Old Forge, Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania Players of American football from Pennsylvania United States Marine Corps personnel of World War II United States Marine Corps non-commissioned officers {{1950s-collegefootball-coach-stub