GEORGE POSCHNER We should learn: Freedom isn't free

In sports and war, the Chaney graduate made his mark.
By JOHN BASSETTI
VINDICATOR SPORTS STAFF
Football players-turned-military heroes have been in the news recently -- Pat Tillman and Bob Kalsu the most notable.
Tillman, of course, was the ex-Arizona Cardinals player killed in a firefight while with his Army Ranger unit in Afghanistan in late April. Kalsu's name was resurrected as the former Buffalo Bills player who died in a mortar attack in Vietnam in 1970.
George Poschner's death recently had the same ring.
Unlike Tillman and Kalsu, Poschner's injury in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II didn't lead to this death. But the former Chaney High and University of Georgia player who eventually lost both legs below his knees and his right-hand fingers from frostbite, suffered until passing away at age 85 on May 2.
Like Tillman and Kalsu and many others who went to battle for their country, Poschner paid a price. For the rest of us, their lives were inspirational.
His story
Lt. Poschner was machine-gunned in 1945 while attempting to stop German troops from overrunning his platoon's position.
Before going to war, Poschner played alongside another Chaney standout, Frank Sinkwich. They both went to Georgia where Sinkwich won the Heisman Trophy in 1942.
Later, Sinkwich said: "In my opinion, George Poschner is perhaps the greatest competitor of all time, both on and off the field. I have never known anyone with more courage on the football field or battlefield."
Joe Benish of Boardman, a 1935 graduate of Chaney, remembers Poschner.
"He lived a long life, but a miserable one," Benish said of the man who had 32 operations, survived a stoke in 1979 and overcame bitterness in the early stages of his ordeal.
At one point, Poschner was quoted as saying, "I learned to accept it a long time ago. God has kept me alive for a certain purpose and I've got to see if I can do what He wants."
For several years, Benish said he and his late wife, Kathryn, used to get Poschner out of his house.
"We'd take him out for fish dinners," said Benish, "and we'd take him to nursing homes to see people."
Poschner's post-war locomotion was possible because of a transtibial prosthesis, but he eschewed the best equipment in favor of the bucket-type, strap-on fittings.
First was best
"He used the original ones," said Emil Basista of Austintown, Poschner's brother-in-law. "He never wanted anything else. The first ones were the best for him."
Accepting his condition, at first, was difficult, Basista said.
"When he was down and out at Walter Reed Hospital [in Washington D.C.], guys tried to get him to accept it. Eventually, he softened and realized it was the life he'd have to lead."
The war hero was buried with his adopted equipment, his cane and his red letter jacket from the University of Georgia.
Basista, whose wife, Marie, died in 2002, has inherited his brother-in-law's war medals and memorabilia. Poschner walked his sister down the aisle when she married Basista at St. John's Slovak Catholic Church in Campbell in 1947. He eventually lived in Florida and was able to drive a car.
Poschner was All-City twice as an end.
"He didn't care how big or how small you were, he'd your knock block off," Basista said.
bassetti@vindy.com