Courtesy photo The photo shows its age, but the members of the 1929 Nashua High School basketball team are still recognizable, and even have their last names written right on the photo. Seated from left are Narkunas (first name unknown), Stanley Zedalis, Captain Bolik Tamelevich, Adam Bondonis and Lawrence "ray" Gauthier. Standing are George "Berdie" Tebbetts, Joe Sullivan, Coach Ray Pendleton and Thomas Stylianos. (Courtesy photo)

Finally.

I have finally found the answer to a sort of personal mystery that surfaces every now and then for no other reason than to bug me for a few days, then go away, sort of like gout without the pronounced limp.

I suppose I owe my old-Nashua friend and former Telegraph scribe Greg Andruskevich a card of thanks for pointing me, albeit unknowingly, in the right direction when he copied me the other day on one of his occasional group emails in which he likes to share one historic Nashua gem or another.

The gem Greg enclosed this time is a rather beat-up, but mostly decipherable, photo of the 1929 Nashua High basketball team. I believe it was originally sent to Greg by Carl Tamulevich, a former Nashua High athlete of the golden Harvey-Marandos-Tate era whose father, Bolic, was the captain of that ’29 team.

Bolic Tamulevich is in the center of the photo – although he went by Bolik Tamelevich at the time.

The column by the late Telegraph writer Fred Dobens that explains the history of Nashua High's change in school colors from purple and white to royal blue, then back to purple and white.

It was when I decided to look up in the archives some of the teams of that period, imagining that it must have been a difficult economic time for many of them and their families, that some references to that mystery of mine began popping up.

Although back in “the old days” team nicknames and their school colors were hardly mentioned in stories like they are today, I discovered a handful of references to the “Royal Blue,” which indeed was Nashua High’s nickname back just before the Harvey-Marandos-Tate revolution of the early 1940s.

So OK, Nashua’s nickname was once the Royal Blue, but it was so long ago that few if any of us proud Purple Panthers even knew it, and probably even fewer cared.

But, I found out, this nickname thing was more complicated than a mere case of a high school deciding to adopt a new nickname, perhaps one that would shout “athletic prowess” and be more apt to instill school pride.

Hmm, “Purple Pride” kind of has a nice ring to it, you think?

The Telegraph sports page for March 4, 1929, features stories about Nashua High's chances in the upcoming state basketball tournament. The NHS school colors were about to change to royal blue and white, but the original purple and white was brought back a decade later.

Those were exactly the sentiments the late longtime Telegraph reporter, editor and manager Fred Dobens shared with his readers back in September 1940.

It’s a fairly brief reference, tucked in a column that Dobens wrote about a group of local sports-minded folks getting together to kick around the idea, as Dobens put it, “of whipping up interest in a proposed high school Athletic Alumni Association.”

It was just several months earlier, in February 1940, that Dobens touched upon – but didn’t explain – the “Royal Blue” vs. “Purple” mystery in a column expressing disappointment with the NHS basketball team’s series of sub-par seasons back when he was covering sports at the outset of his Telegraph career.

“Never did we write a story of one of the Royal Blue teams – they used to be the Purple in those days – winning the championship,” he wrote.

So we have proof: Nashua High was “Purple” before it was “Royal Blue.”

Dean Shalhoup

Longtime reporter, columnist and photographer, is back doing what he does best ñ chronicling the people and history of Nashua. Reaching 40 years with The Telegraph in September, Deanís insights have a large, appreciative following.

So far so good. But it was Dobens’s September 1940 column, the one about a group starting an alumni association, that finally solved my mystery.

One topic that came up at the meeting, Dobens wrote, “ought to be laid before the authorities without delay.”

Everyone at the meeting “was unanimous in its condemnation of the move, some years ago, which resulted in the discard of the famous old school colors ‘purple and white’ for the ‘royal blue,'” Dobens wrote, adding that the royal blue color scheme “happens to be the official colors of a half a hundred school teams in this vicinity.”

Dobens went as far as to suggest teams in the mercifully brief royal blue era lost more games than they did wearing purple.

The “royal blue” teams “haven’t seemed like old Nashua clubs … old grads and followers of the team have always regretted the change (from purple to royal blue) and it can be assumed that some pressure will be brought to bear to ask the school to go back to its old color scheme.”

Clearly, Dobens was far from alone in suggesting the reinstatement of the purple and white. Just a year later, in fall 1941, all “royal blue” references were gone, and “purple and white” was back for good.

Interestingly, the return to purple and white happened to coincide with the arrival of a new football coach by the name of Charles “Buzz” Harvey – who some years earlier had graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester after a four-year, Hall of Fame football career.

Holy Cross’s school colors? Purple and white.

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears weekly in The Sunday Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

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