PARK RIDGE—In this week’s featured photograph, Mayor Donald F. Gelnaw, right, having lost a bet, is forced to wear a Glen Rock High School Panthers sweatshirt at a borough council meeting. This came after the Park Ridge Owls fell to Glen Rock in the 1980 state sectional football championship.
Days before the game, Gelnaw had struck a wager with Glen Rock Mayor Charles Lagos. The losing mayor would have to do two things: first, attend the rival borough’s council meeting wearing a shirt supporting their team; and second, don the opponent’s fan gear again to preside over his own council meeting.
It had been a great season for Park Ridge football, and Gelnaw was confident the local boys would prevail.
Glen Rock and Park Ridge met on the Owls’ home turf for the North I, Group I state sectional championship on Saturday, Dec. 6, 1980, at 1 p.m. The matchup was a nail-biter. Park Ridge came out strong and finished the first half leading 21–7.
But Glen Rock mounted a big second-half comeback. When it was over, the Panthers had won, 22–21. They capped a season of nine wins and two losses, becoming their school’s first team to win the championship since 1963.
Their 326 points scored that season broke all school, league, and county records.
Mayor Gelnaw was a good sport. He honored the terms of the wager, appearing at Glen Rock’s council meeting on Dec. 9—the same evening the Panthers were being celebrated. He sat stoically through a tribute to the team and even posed for a photograph with Lagos and several Glen Rock players.
The News out of Wyckoff, in its post-meeting report, compared Gelnaw’s appearance to being “the centerpiece of a Roman triumph in the days of Julius Caesar.”
The following night, the second part of the wager was fulfilled at Park Ridge’s own council meeting, where Gelnaw conducted business wearing a Glen Rock football sweatshirt.
The moment was captured by local news photographer Thomas Moorhead of Emerson.
Gelnaw served as mayor of Park Ridge from 1980 to 1983. Councilman Richard Mancinelli, pictured here holding the gavel, would later serve four consecutive terms as mayor beginning in 1988.