As a pure runner, there weren’t many better than this guy. Maybe none. But not even John Silveira knew how good he could have been. Not even after what may have been the only race he cared about. The high school track scene in the late 1950s belonged to the long-striding kid from New Bedford High School. Whatever the running sport — cross country, winter or spring track — Silveira was dominant. But, as good as he was, he probably could have been better ... if he had enjoyed what he was doing. By the time he got to high school, Silveira has his mind set on becoming a team player. Basketball was his first athletic love and he was ready to give soccer a try until a man named Al Boucher whispered in his ear. Boucher was a soon-to-be legendary track coach at New Bedford and after watching Silveira run around in his gym class, Boucher talked the kid into becoming a runner. Al looked like a genius when Silveira followed up a second-place finish at the Class A State Cross Country Championships with a victory in the 880-yard competition at the Class A State Track Championship in his freshman year. And when he continued to write headlines in The Standard-Times sports section all through his sophomore year, the running world appeared to be his. But, mentally, Silveira was on another planet. He wasn’t happy running and his coach knew it. “He was just fantastic, but running was a chore for him and he’d much rather be playing basketball or soccer,” Boucher was quoted as saying in a 1984 interview with The Standard-Times. Happy or not, Silveira stayed with it and even though his heart wasn’t in running, he poured his “sole” into the sport. The distance events were John’s specialties and first or second-place finishes were the norm for the kid with the flying feet. One of his more memorable events came during his junior year at the Bowdoin College Interscholastic Championships. Silveira dropped down to compete in the comparatively-new 600-yard event and won it in the blazing time of 1:13.5 which was fourth-tenths of a second off the meet record set in 1952 by Olympic 400-meter champion Charlie Jenkins of Rindge Tech. It was another in a string of winning performances by the Crimson Comet from New Bedford. But in John’s mind, it was just another race. The one race Silveira seemed to care about came earlier in the winter season when, despite a handful of nagging injuries that forced him to be taped from ankle to thigh, John made the trip to Madison Square Garden to compete in the National Interscholastic Track and Field Championships. He was entered in the 1,000-yard event and ran the fastest time of his career only to be nosed out at the wire by John Dante of New Jersey who crossed the finish line in 2:17.0. Silveira’s time was 2:17.2. During his time at New Bedford High School, John Silveira won back-to-back New England Cross Country Championships, set a record for the half-mile at the State Class A Meet in Boston, captured the New England 1,000-yard Championship in record time and was named the outstanding individual performer at New Bedford High in 1958. And those were just a few highlights from his brilliant running career. Of all the races he had won, it took a close loss get him motivated for his senior year. Silveira wanted desperately to win a national championship. Unfortunately, he would never get that chance. In January of 1959, Silveira was stricken with an attack of appendicitis that ended his final winter track season prematurely and robbed him of his final shot of a national title. “That was the only thing I wanted,” Silveira was quoted as saying in that 1984 newspaper interview. “They could’ve taken everything else away, but I wanted that race because I felt it was my race to have. I didn’t think anybody could beat me after coming so close in my junior year and I just didn’t get a chance to do it.” Silveira married a year after graduating from high school and later enrolled at the University of Nebraska. But, because of a growing family, he dropped out of school and took a job as finance officer at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
Class: 1959 Inducted: 2011