Early Life
Gatski was born in 1921 and raised in Farmington, West Virginia. His father and grandfather were immigrants from Poland, and most of the men in his family worked at the nearby Number Nine Coal Mine Camp. Gatski started at center for three years on his Farmington High School football team, which played on a cow pasture with no scoreboard, bleachers or game clock. He worked in the coal mines during the summers, and went to work in the mines full-time during his senior year in 1939. Gatski was reserved and aloof, but he was also known as a graceful dancer. "I used to dance a lot in Farmington," he said in 1949. "But I like polkas better than jitterbugging."
Read more about this topic: Frank Gatski
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