Bo Windy looks to preserve L-P, local sports history

Growing up, Robert “Bo” Windy admired the athletes at La Salle-Peru High School, dreaming of one day being as good as the Cavaliers before him.

He left quite the legacy of his own at L-P.

Windy was All-Big 8 Conference in football and honorable mention All-State in basketball.

He was inducted into the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 2007 and is a member of the L-P Hall of Honor Class of 2020.

“I’ve been involved in sports all my life,” Windy said. “It was an honor to play for L-P. I used to watch them in grade school and always said to myself, ‘I’m coming into school and I want to be as good as those players out there or even better.’

“I was pretty successful at L-P. I know a lot about history at L-P and former athletes.”

Windy doesn’t want all that Cavalier history to be forgotten.

So Windy wrote an L-P sports anthology with help from friends Bernie McGraw, Walter Ziel, Ron Volpe and Jim Stancl.

“I felt I had to do it because if we don’t do it and have it on record, it will be history that’s gone,” Windy said. “That’s the reason we did this. I was in an era of a lot of great athletes at L-P. They should be remembered somehow.”

The book focuses heavily on football and boys basketball but also features sections on baseball, wrestling, track and field, cross country, golf and volleyball.

“It’s only a 28-pager, but it’s 28 pages that wasn’t out there before,” Windy said. “We’re happy with the results. I think it sends a message out there that this area has been a hotbed for athletics since the early 1900s all the way to today.”

Windy said putting the book together was a long process.

“It was very difficult,” Windy said. “There’s not a lot out there to go by, so you have to do a lot of research and have to find good historians. You have to have a good team to do it.”

The first printing was 50 copies, and Windy and his team started out by giving copies to family, friends and neighbors.

Since there was interest in the book, a second printing is planned.

Anyone interested in a copy should mail a check for $10 to Bo Windy at 1112 31st St., Peru, IL, 61354 by Aug. 30.

“By the end of the month, we’ll have a pretty good idea,” Windy said. “If there’s pretty good demand, we’ll go ahead and set up a printing.”

Windy’s interest in documenting local history doesn’t end with L-P athletics.

He’s currently working on another book about local baseball in the late 1940s through the 1960s.

“The area was a hotbed for baseball,” Windy said. “We had over 35 players in this area sign major league or minor league contracts. This book will bring back a golden era of players who were unbelievably good.”

Among the players who will be featured in the book are Edwin Schweda, who won the Louisville Slugger Trophy in 1940 for highest minor league batting average at .422, and Matt Peoplis, who set a Provincial League record with 220 strikeouts in 1954 for Quebec.

“I’m really excited about this upcoming book,” Windy said. “It will be out in six months or so. It’s very difficult. Even with the internet, it’s still hard to find ball players because they’re not on the internet. We have to go back to historians, which there are not a lot around. We try to find information anywhere possible. We’re well acquainted with all the librarians in the area. Word of mouth is helpful if you can find the right people and the right stories. We’re staying after it.”