Every year during the end-of-season banquet, varsity baseball coach J. D. Marchand tells the story of Mahlon ‘Buddy’ McCracken, whom the baseball field is named after.

The way Marchand tells it, McCracken encountered some kids “playing around with a fire hydrant,” tried to intervene, and was shot and killed. He goes on to describe how McCracken, who played both shortstop and third base, modeled the four ‘Ds’ of Wootton baseball: determination, desire, discipline and dedication. But who was Buddy McCracken? Who were the kids he confronted? And what really happened on that fateful evening?

Having heard this story twice now, during my sophomore and junior baseball seasons, these were the questions circulating in my head that drove me to uncover what really happened to Buddy McCracken.

Starting with a simple internet search for “Buddy McCracken,” I was surprised when instead of the plethora of articles about his murder that I expected to see, only two showed up. Both results — the first a blog by one of Buddy’s high school classmates, and the second, a neighborhood blog — confirmed Marchand’s story, albeit with more details about both McCracken’s background and the circumstances surrounding his death. Now, having some dates and names, I wanted to attach some faces and decided to look through the 1974 yearbook.

Gallery • 2 Photos

Photo courtesy The Fife and Drum 1974 yearbook

Buddy McCracken in his senior portrait.

Despite now having a rough picture of the night of Buddy’s murder, I still wanted one more thing: a primary source. Someone who was either at the scene of the crime or close enough to Buddy to be directly impacted by his death. With this in mind, I asked the school newspaper advisor Evva Starr if she could connect me with any teachers who might know more about Buddy McCracken, hoping that one of them could then connect me with a primary source. Luckily, Starr mentioned that a former teacher, coach and frequent substitute teacher at the school, Nia Cresham, had once recited the story of Buddy McCracken to her at a baseball game years before. Cresham, in turn, connected me with many of McCracken’s friends and family members, one of whom was Buddy’s youngest brother, Kevin McCracken.

According to the people who knew Buddy the best, and the old articles sent to me by Kevin (whose parents saved every article they could), the true story of Buddy McCracken and his death is as follows:

Buddy, who was originally from Alabama, moved to Fallsmead in 11th grade. He was outgoing, funny, and regarded as a good friend who always tried to do the right thing and stuck up for himself and others. He met one of his best friends, Mike Shaheen, by offering to drive him to school every morning after seeing him on crutches. They both ended up playing varsity baseball, which was also how Buddy made many of his other good friends, including Duane Westrick and Ted Duggan, and together they won the 1974 divisional championship. “He was just a great guy,” Duggan said.

On Friday, Oct. 11, 1974, Buddy and Westrick were sitting in Buddy’s car on Greenplace Terrace (right across from Wootton and near Buddy’s house), talking to three girls they were friends with, who had driven up next to them in their own car. At around 11:15 p.m., a station wagon driven by George Gus Duke and carrying his younger brother Christopher Gus Duke, Alexis von Bretzel, James Eugene Deiss, Michael Thomas Durkin and Mark William Schroeder (all students at the school,) and Richard Mark Tuohey (a Wootton alumnus) pulled up behind Buddy’s car.

The members of the station wagon, who later told the police they had been drinking, asked McCracken and Westrick if they knew of any parties that were going on, to which the boys replied “no.” They then made a U-turn and stopped opposite of McCracken’s car, in front of a fire hydrant. A couple of them got out of the car and proceeded to tamper with the fire hydrant, leading McCracken and Westrick to walk up to the boys and tell them to stop what they were doing and to leave. As McCracken stood by the car talking to the boys, Christopher Duke stuck a sawed-off shotgun out of the left rear window of the car and shot McCracken in the chest.

As McCracken fell into Westrick’s arms, the station wagon sped away. Westrick pulled McCracken to the side of the road before immediately sprinting to the McCracken home and frantically knocking on the door, trying to get help. David McCracken, one year younger than Buddy, ran out from the house and held his brother in his arms until the ambulance arrived. Buddy died on the way to the hospital. “Buddy’s death affected his family for the rest of their lives,” Margie Genau Gioia, Buddy’s ex-girlfriend and close friend at the time of his death, said.

After fleeing, the teens in the station wagon broke down the shotgun (which had been stolen six months earlier) into two parts, and threw them into a wooded area near Falls Road and Glen Mill Road before getting their stories straight.

The juveniles told the police that the gun went off after McCracken reached into the window and pulled the barrel. However, both Westrick and Deborah Gomulinski, one of the girls in the car next to McCracken’s, testified that McCracken was about two feet away from the station wagon with his hands by his side when he was shot. In addition, McCracken’s autopsy report revealed powder burns on his chest, but none on his hands. “Buddy never touched the gun,” Westrick said.

Although Duke was charged as an adult, the case never went to trial, despite the McCrackens’ wishes. Duke ended up pleading guilty to second-degree murder, which carried a maximum sentence of 30 years.

However, Duke was only sentenced to four years in the medium-security Maryland Correctional Training Center in Hagerstown, as the judge suspended 11 years from the original 15-year sentence. Duggan described the sentence as “a black cloud that hangs over the way things were handled by Montgomery County officials. The McCracken family was denied their rightful day in court and the people that were found guilty didn’t really pay a price,” Duggan said.

This sentiment was echoed by the rest of Buddy’s friends and family, who agreed that justice had not been served.

Up to this point, a tragedy of this magnitude had rarely, if ever, happened in Montgomery County. The mental toll on students was amplified by the lack of resources they were given to help deal with the tragedy. “Teachers were very supportive and caring, however in the school system at that time there were no formal interventions offered to those of us that were deeply affected by Buddy’s death. It was hard on the entire Wootton community, and thankfully now such resources are in place,” Gioia said.

Despite the hardships McCracken’s friends and family were enduring, they still found a way to honor his memory. Students started a committee to hold an interscholastic mixer in McCracken’s memory, raising $1,585.00 to build a memorial for him, as well as a scoreboard and bleachers for the baseball field. In addition to Wootton, students from Churchill, WJ, Wheaton, and Whitman were in attendance.

Former baseball coach Rhett Ross started the idea of the “Buddy McCracken Award” to recognize the player who best exemplifies the four ‘D’s Buddy stood for. He invited Buddy’s parents to attend the sports banquet and present the award, which they continued doing years after. The inaugural winner was David McCracken, who played baseball like his brother. The award continues on today; last year’s winner was 2023 graduate Josh Erd.

As we approach the 50th anniversary of that fateful night, it has become clear to me after talking to those who knew Buddy McCracken the best that while the hurt, anger, sadness and painful memories have persisted to this day, his friends and family remain motivated by their unwavering desire to honor his legacy and keep his spirit alive both on and off the field that bears his name.

Senior varsity baseball player Ryan Yang, who wears number three, (the same number McCracken wore) hopes to honor McCracken this season. “I hope to honor Buddy and all the good that he stood for both on the field and off the field, as I strive to represent the values he stood for,” Yang said.