(Courtesy photo) Adam Gureckis Jr., who died last week after a long battle with cancer, pictured at a recent social event with his youngest sister, Deb.

NASHUA – Arch rivals, they were, top-notch high school athletes from two cities barely 20 miles apart who took their games with each other quite seriously, because losing to a Manchester team wasn’t acceptable, and likewise, losing to a Nashua team was unacceptable.

That’s the way it’s been for Nashua and Manchester high school athletes since the introduction of football helmets and the days when each basket stopped the clock for a jump ball at center court.

The focus for the purposes of this story is on a few years from the late 1960s to early 1970s, a time when the rivalry between Nashua High and Manchester Memorial High on the basketball court was particularly intense, illustrated in part by the deluges of partisan fans jockeying shoulder to shoulder to claim a precious seat or two in the bleachers, knowing full well that he or she who hesitated would be relegated to his or her car to listen to the game on radio.

The lucky ones got to see what would certainly be another classic episode in the Nashua-Memorial basketball rivalry, which promised – and always delivered – another Gureckis-Flanagan shoot-out, an evening of under-the-basket muscle-tussles featuring the storied Puchacz-Terrell battles, and an exhibition of quickness, ball-hawking and fake-passes staged by the Kopka-Daigle backcourt matchup.

A week ago, when word began to spread that one of the proudest Panthers of that era – Adam C. Gureckis Jr. – had passed unexpectedly after a long, valiant battle against cancer, among the first to reach out to Gureckis’s family with condolences were some of those long-ago rivals that many fans believed really disliked each other – both on and off the court.

(Courtesy photo) Well-known Nashua native and longtime athlete Adam Gureckis Jr. in a recent Facebook photo with his sons, Aaron, left, and Craig. Gureckis died last week after a 15-year battle with cancer.

Tim Flanagan, for instance, text-messaged some of Gureckis’s family members as soon as he heard, calling Gureckis a man who “respected and cared for everyone.”

Flanagan’s brother was Mike Flanagan, the three-sport star at Memorial who faced his rival – and good friend – in basketball and baseball, the latter when the two were their respective teams’ aces on the mound.

So important was family to Gureckis that he befriended the Flanagans’ father, a relationship that grew closer following Mike Flanagan’s unexpected death.

“When Mike died, Adam visited by dad … they could talk sports for hours,” Tim Flanagan wrote.

Another one-time rival Crusader reached out: “I was so sorry to hear of Adam’s passing … we became friends while playing against each other,” Dave Puchacz wrote, noting that the two had something else in common: Sept. 16, 1951, the day they were both born.

(Courtesy photo) The late Adam Gureckis Jr., left, with three of his fellow 1971 Nashua High School graduates at last year's 50th class reunion. From left are Gureckis; fellow basketball stars Dave Clark and Drew Curtis, and classmate Eddie Boyle.

Gureckis was 70 when he passed last Saturday, just hours after he chatted over the phone with his longtime buddy, Bill “Hawk” Soubosky.

“He sounded very upbeat … said he had breakfast and was looking forward to going to Boston,” Soubosky said, referring to Gureckis’s next treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital.

“After that, I guess things went downhill.”

Soubosky said the two, although several years apart in school, were teammates on the famous Stan’s Place slo-pitch softball team, which began under the sponsorship of McLaughlin Mayflower then Kegler’s Den before Stan’s owner, the late Stan Slosek, became their sponsor.

Soubosky often traveled to Antrim to watch Gureckis play basketball. “He was the man … the player … every time I went he’d light it up for 25” points, he said.

A story and photos that appeared in the June 11, 1971 Nashua Telegraph reporting on Adam Gureckis's selection of the Nashua High Athlete of the Year. Gureckis died last week after a long battle with cancer.

Nashua High School South basketball coach Nate Mazerolle said he was “not fortunate enough to ever see” Gureckis play, but he’s quite familiar with his legacy.

“If there is an all-time, all-Nashua basketball team or a Mt. Rushmore of Nashua sports, Adam Gureckis would be atop both,” Mazerolle said.

“Adam Gureckis, in the simplest terms, is a Nashua sports legend and Hall of Famer … but he was also a big fan and proud, loyal supporter of all Nashua athletics,” Mazerolle added.

Gureckis was a born fundraiser with an uncanny knack for persuading friends, business people, neighbors and even strangers to sign on as sponsors to whatever cause he was championing at the time, said his sister, Connie McCullion.

“It’s just amazing, all he did for people,” McCullion said, calling her brother a “born fundraiser” who could “organize a fundraiser in his sleep.”

There is one special fundraising campaign, formed just five years ago, to which Gureckis was particularly attached: The Jenny Fund, founded in honor of his beloved niece, Jennifer Gureckis, who died in April 2017 after a years-long battle against brain cancer.

The fund, which raises money to support brain cancer research at Massachusetts General Hospital, has donated between $75,000 to $100,000 each year to the cause, McCullion said.

“Adam put everything into it … the golf tournament wouldn’t be what it is without everything he’s done,” she said, referring to The Jenny Fund’s top annual fundraiser.

Previously a landscaper who founded his own company, AG Landscaping, Gureckis grew his customer base by leaps and bounds, prompting him to recruit his sons, Craig and Aaron, to help with the workload.

The reason for its growth, his family said, is steeped in large part by his reputation as a fair, honest businessman who took the time to drive to Canada each year to find the best Christmas trees available.

“If he had any left over, he’d always donate them to an agency or give them to people who didn’t have one,” McCullion said.

Patty Clark, one of Gureckis’s younger sisters, said she knew that her brother had a lot of friends and knew a lot of people in and around Nashua, but the volume of responses to her brother’s passing left her stunned.

“I had no idea,” she said, shaking her head while scrolling among emails and text messages that seemed to just keep going.

“He had many friends, knew lots of people, we knew that … but I can’t believe how many there are,” Clark added.

“It’s amazing … he must have touched an awful lot of lives.”

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.