EAST PROVIDENCE — Riverside Little League plans a special event in memory of recently deceased coaching luminary Edmund Korkuc on Saturday, Oct. 15, at the Ron Silva Baseball Complex off Wampanoag Trail.

The public is invited to the service, which begins at 9:30 a.m., when a memorial plaque will be unveiled to honor Korkuc, who led the Rhode Island Little League All-Stars to the “Big League” Division World Series in 1978. Korkuc passed away at 94 in March of this year.

The team — including players from the respective Riverside, Rumford and East Providence Central leagues as well as a few from nearby Seekonk, Pawtucket and Providence — won the New England and Eastern Regional championships along the way before reaching the Big League World Series held in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

The '78 Stars became the first from Rhode Island at the time to reach the series by winning the Eastern Regionals.

The Big League Division was created in 1968 for high school age players originally between the ages of 15 and 18. The division later changed its age eligibility to 16-18-years-old. Little League Baseball International eliminated the Big League Division in 2016. The World Series was held from 1970–1998 in Fort Lauderdale.

Taiwan won the 1978 edition of the series, proving to be the last of five world championships in a row. The country later matched its record run with another five in a row from 1987-91. Taiwan finished with the most Big League World Series, 18. U.S.-based teams won 20 championships led by the Southern California representative with six. No New England team won the title. The most northern league to win was the New York entry in 1979.

The 1978 R.I. All-Stars squad included George Brown and Ed Avila of East Providence Central; Terry Boyd, Kevin Cloutier and Fred Reinhardt of Riverside; John Tierney, John Healy, Jay D'Angelo, and Rob Perreault of Rumford; Mike Ballou of South Providence/Washington Park; and Mike Andreozzi of Barrington. The rules at the time allowed the locals to fill out their ranks with others players from surrounding areas from those organizations that didn’t offer Big League programs, so the Rhode Island entry also included players from Seekonk: Glen Larrabee, Joe Sousa, Chris Lema and Gary Najas. Korkuc was the manager, assisted by Riverside’s Steve Studley.

Studley, unfortunately, passed away in the early 2000s, but his younger brother, Ray, served as the team’s bat boy that summer. Among his recollections of the squad were the standout play of D’Angelo, who starred both on the mound and at the plate, and Tierney, who was the centerfielder and also a key contributor at bat.

The thing that stands out most to the younger Studley, who was 12 at the time, was his brother’s prodding of Korkuc to play the left-handed Perrault, a superb pitcher, in the infield.

“I thought what the coaching staff did that was phenomenal was playing Robby at shortstop. You never saw that at the time. My brother urged Ed to play him there, and it worked out well,” Ray Studley said recently.

The locals rallied from the losers’ bracket to win the New England title, defeating Windsor Locks of host Connecticut in Enfield by the scores of 2-0 and 4-2 in the championship round.

In the Eastern Regionals held at the Little League headquarters in Williamsport, Penn., Rhode Island went undefeated en route to the title, including a 6-3 win over Edison, N.J. in the final.

In Florida at the World Series, the locals were eliminated in two games. Rhode Island lost to Port Hueneme, Calif., 8-2, and to the host Fort Lauderdale club 6-3. Those same two teams actually reached the losers’ bracket final with Fort Lauderdale winning 3-1. The hosts then lost to Taiwan, 4-1, for the championship.

The idea of a potentially memorializing Korkuc, who also served as president of Riverside Little League during the 1970s, emerged out of talks between his family and members of the current board, including Jody Richards, the league treasurer.

One of Korkuc’s children, Donna Niederberger, who remains a Riverside resident, called her father a devoted  husband and father of three (herself, sister Deborah Giordano, also of East Providence, and her brother Robert Korkuc, of New Hampshire).

The elder Korkuc was a captain and standout goalie in hockey for the East Providence High School squad before serving his country in World War II. He was an EPHS grad Class of 1945 and later graduated the University of Rhode Island in 1953. Besides giving of his time as a coach, he was also a volunteer member of the Seekonk Fire Department in his youth.

Niederberger said of her dad, “volunteering and teaching” were among his passions, especially the fundamentals of baseball. She added, Korkuc was “a soft spoken yet incredibly confident man. He loved to mentor and teach. He left a lasting impression on those he met.

"As his children, our hope in sharing the 1978 Rhode Island All Star’s journey is to inspire the youth of the Riverside Little League to dream ‘big’.”