Leroy Frederick Gollatz

This son of German immigrants was passionate about the sport of bowling. He might not have known that many aspects of modern pin bowling were standardized in Germany, thanks to a priest named Martin Luther. He certainly knew about the automatic pinsetter, but probably didn’t know it was invented by a German in 1936.

Leroy was the fourth of six boys born to a couple that met and married in Carbon County, Pennsylvania but made several moves around the turn of the century. By the time Leroy was a teenager they were firmly planted at 6227 Sansom Street in Philadelphia and lived nowhere else.

His draft registration card in 1918 lists his occupation as an electrician. A younger brother also pursued that line of work, another followed his father as a machinist, one was a Marine, another a sailor. But It was sometime during the Roaring Twenties that Leroy found his life’s work as a salesman for Jerrehian Brothers, one of the oldest fine Persian rug dealers in the country. His obituary says he was “one of the area’s acknowledged experts on Oriental rugs.”

Exactly when he first picked up a bowling ball is unknown, but he began taking it seriously around 1925. At some point after that he took a serious interest in an interior decorator named Esther Reeps, which led to their marriage in 1929 and raising a daughter, Ruth.

In 1935 Leroy helped reorganize the Greater Philadelphia Bowling Association and was president from 1944 until he retired in 1980. It was actually just 35 years of leadership; in 1947 he stepped aside in a noble gesture to give his vice president, George Roberts, the top honor. The American Bowling Congress (now the United States Bowling Congress) was having a national convention in California that year where George had relatives, and Leroy thought George should go as leader of the Philadelphia contingent to make his family proud.

Those who served with him said Leroy was “a top-flight administrator, a soft-spoken gentleman, respected by all.” He was a former president of the Pennsylvania Bowling Association, served on several committees of the American Bowling Congress, and organized a number of leagues throughout the city. One was the Greater Philadelphia Protestant Church League, one of the nation’s largest.

Did he ever bowl a perfect score of 300? No, 290 was his high game, but he was a Class B singles and all-events champion in the 1943 city championship. Over the years he was in 37 state tournaments and 34 national tournaments. And he was a prime mover in the Individual Plan, where a person could play in as many leagues as he wished. 

Under Leroy’s leadership, the Greater Philadelphia Bowling Association grew from 20,000 to 40,000 members, earning him a prominent place in the group’s Hall of Fame in 1977. He joined the state Hall of Fame posthumously in 1985.

He saw his daughter Ruth marry in 1945, and she blessed him with two grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. After his mother died in 1946, he and Esther moved to Yeadon. After she died in 1953, Leroy married Pearl Whitlock, who joined him here one year after he died. They share this gravestone with her sister and mother.