Tom Benjey's Weblog

On June 1, 2020 I posted a photograph taken at Union Station in St. Louis in 1908. Five Carlisle Indian School football players posed in a Thomas automobile used as a prop by a photographer who operated in the train station. Cecilia Balenti-Moddelmog, grandaughter of Carlisle star quarterback Mike Balenti, identified four of the five young men in the photo but could not identify the person on the far right.

The others are l-to-r Little Boy (Scott Porter), Wauseka (Emil Hauser), Mike Balenti and Fritz Hendricks.

Now Dennis Parrish has identified the player on the far right as John Balenti, Mike’s brother. In the team photo below, he is in the back row fourth person from the left. At least that is what the Pittsburgh Press said.

Why Mike’s granddaughter didn’t recognize her great uncle is a reasonable question. However, I had an uncle I never met even though he was alive decades into my adult life. I am so bad at picking people from old photos that I’m little help sorting out this one.

This entry was posted on July 24, 2023 at 7:42 am and is filed under Albert Exendine, Carlisle Indian School, Emil Hauser, Football, James Johnson, Jim Thorpe, Joe Libby, Joel Wheelock, Mike Balenti. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.