This year’s Graf/Gaffney Awards dinner and fundraiser corrected a nearly six decades old injustice for Edward J. Rivers, a former worldwide materials manager at UNIVAC headquarters in Blue Bell, writes Chris Brock for the NNY 360.

Rivers was a star athlete at Watertown High School in New York in the mid-1960s. In 1965, he was expected to receive the William I. Graf Award, which honored the top graduating male athletes at WHS and another local school.

However, that year no student received the award because a disagreement occurred over the selection process.

Now, 58 years later, Italian American Civic Association president James P. Scordo said that the club has decided to exercise its right to select the 1965 Graf Award winners.

“I did think about it over the years,” said Rivers. “It’d come back to mind when we’d get back to Watertown and drive by the high school. It’d come to my mind that it was a disappointment during my senior year and I felt bad about it. But you know? Life goes on. There’s always ups and downs.”

Read more about Edward J. Rivers in the NNY 360.

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