Mr. William Hanley

“Before there was Title IX, there was Bill Hanley.”

William K. Hanley started teaching math at Bishop McDevitt High School in 1967 when he was 21 years old and a senior at Villanova University, which he attended on scholarship.  From Massachusetts, Bill found himself in an unfamiliar area, and supplemented his scholarship by working a number of odd jobs, bill-collector and repo-man among the more colorful ones.  As you might imagine, teaching at Bishop McDevitt on the “girls’ side,” at the then-gender-divided school, was a welcome improvement.

This former high school basketball star was asked to coach the McDevitt girls’ softball team.  (The job of basketball coach was taken.)  The girls’ softball team won the division championship that first year and would continue to excel under his guidance for the next ten years.  “Mr. Hanley,” as so many of us still call him, was a loyal supporter of girls’ sports and the school’s female athletes’ best advocate.  He drove the buses to away games for all the McDevitt girls’ teams.  He fought to open the padlocked gym so the girls’ basketball team could warm up before games.  As Assistant Athletic Director, also known as the “Girls Athletic Director,” Mr. Hanley personally went to Cheltenham Township to request permission to build the field hockey and softball fields behind the school.  (The girls had been playing at public parks, risking injury from broken glass and “chuck holes.”)  With help from our fondly remembered chemistry teacher, the late Jim Ferris, and another former McDevitt student, Mr. Hanley constructed the softball backstop and portable field hockey goals himself.   He also borrowed a turf-cutter from the groundskeeper at Temple University’s football stadium, took a personal day, and cut and laid the softball field’s infield…in the pouring rain, as stunned students and teachers watched from the school’s windows.

The McDevitt girls’ basketball team was still wearing dated, faded, mustard-colored jumpers they had to iron, when other teams did not.  With Father Foster’s approval, Mr. Hanley designed new uniforms for the team, washing them in “Cold Power” detergent in the school’s laundry room.  Fellow teachers and close friends Mike Burns, Jim Ferris, and the late Tom McNutt jokingly suggested he do commercials for “Cold Power,” which he said he used because he didn’t want the uniform colors to fade.  Mr. Hanley also designed stylish uniforms for the softball team. The girls had been wearing McDevitt t-shirts with their own clothing. And with the help of some handy McDevitt dads and some surplus carpeting, curtains and paneling, Mr. Hanley converted an empty ground floor storage closet into a private dressing room for the school’s female athletes.  (They had been changing in the school bathrooms, taping their ankles in a classroom. The boys had their own locker room.)

Mr. Hanley’s fellow McDevitt teachers became his closest friends. He was asked to deliver the eulogy for our dearly missed Legend of McDevitt Tom McNutt at his funeral in 2022. Tom was Bill’s best friend.  Mr. William K. Hanley taught math at Bishop McDevitt from 1967 until 1989. Many of his former students call him the “best teacher they ever had.”

And, to connect the dots with our opening statement, before there was Title IX, female athletes at Bishop McDevitt knew they had an ally who fought for them and cheered them on, and Mr. Hanley has followed the careers of many McDevitt student-athletes ever since. He continues to support women’s sports at all levels of competition. Honor, honesty, selflessness and generosity govern how he has lived his life, both personally and professionally.

With thanks to his nominator – Her name may be familiar to you.  Feel free to guess before I tell you that it’s my 1973 classmate and 2023 Hall of Fame member (wait for it…) Jane Metlzer, (allow a moment for laughter) – please welcome a true Legend of Bishop McDevitt High School, Mr. William K. Hanley.