SWAMPSCOTT — Eddie Toner is thankful that he’s able to answer the call when the New England Patriots organization needs a volunteer from among its alumni to do some community service.
The Patriots are grateful too.
Last week, Toner received honors for being the Patriots’ first Alumni Volunteer of the Year. He was actually sick when the award was announced, but Pete Brock, who runs the alumni association, lives in Topsfield, and last week Toner received award.
“If there’s an event where a Patriots alumni is needed,” explained Toner, “I usually go. It could be Wounded Warrior event, a turkey giveaway, autograph session, I usually go.”
Toner goes even though he’s still bothered by a leg he broke last year after falling off his bicycle while riding it along the beach.
“We were playing the Wounded Warrior amputees in a game of touch football,” said Toner. “I joked that I’d play for the warriors.”
Toner is part of a professional football family. The 1961 graduate of Lynn English played from 1967 to 1970 for the Patriots; his brother, the late Tom Toner, a Swampscott High graduate, was a member of the Green Bay Packers and his son, Eddie Jr., who also went to Swampscott High, played for the Indianapolis Colts.
Toner said he has established lasting relationships with several members of the Patriots.
“(The late) Jim Nance was a great friend,” said Toner of the bruising running back that almost singlehandedly led the Patriots to the 1967 Super Bowl (they lost a late-season game to the New York Jets in which Joe Namath led the Jets in a second-half comeback). “Back in those days, he was built like Superman. He led the league in rushing a couple of times.”
He used to go golfing with Gino Cappelletti, a wide receiver on the early Patriots teams who also doubled as the placekicker.
“He is a real gentleman,” says Toner. Cappelletti and former Miami Dolphins linebacker Nick Buoniconti are close from Buoniconti’s time with the Patriots. After the Patriots traded him to the Miami Dolphins, the two met up with him over a round of golf.
“I remember Nick says that the Miami area was starved for football. ‘Boy,’ he said, ‘if we could ever take off, this place would go wild.’
“Of course, it did,” said Toner. “He was on that undefeated team.”
After graduating from English, Toner went to prep school for year, ostensibly to play hockey.
“But I wasn’t very good at it,” he said.
Instead, he matriculated at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst where he eventually played football. Among his coaches at UMass was Fred Glatz, who eventually spent 17 years as the head coach at St. John’s Prep.
After lettering in three sports (lacrosse, wrestling and football) he was drafted in 1967, both by the NFL and the AFL Patriots. He chose the Patriots, he said, “because they played at Fenway Park, and Ted Williams was my idol.”
Through his association with the Patriots’ alumni association, he became friends with the late Bill Lenkaitis, who became a dentist after he retired.
“I don’t know how he did,” Toner said, “with the hands he had.
“Steve Nelson and I have a special bond, because we both have a special-needs child.”
He considers his community work with the Patriots a labor of love.
“If I’m available, and they ask, I almost always go,” he said.
