Chapter 681

Nov 15, 2024

Claim to Fame

podunk to world champions

We went to secondary eduction in a little podunk school made up of kids from farmers and factory workers graduating less than 20 pupils. Yet many had successful lives and some of us even performed on a world stage. 

One such case I have been frantically trying to document occurred in 1959. Pieced together the facts as best I could here. I was in eight grade  and a manager for the Virgil High School basketball team. We played a preliminary game at the Onondaga War Memorial in Syracuse just before the Syracuse Nationals NBA team took to the floor. They were the World Champions in 1955 in a league with the Celtics, Knicks and Lakers. They still had hall of famer Dolph Schayes on their team before they left to become the Philadelphia 76ers.

I recalled with amazement the opponent and hall of famer Bob Pettit  #9 playing with a cast on his left arm for a broken wrist bone and still scoring many points. I recall Hal Greer was impressive as the shortest guy on the team, but also recall Costello, Conlin, Kerr, Yardley, Bianchi, Derkins. According to the schedule the game had to have been Feb 26 or more likely March 11 as it seemed like it was the end of our year. Our opponent may have been Layfayette as one of the northern teams not in our official league.

We had to leave at halftime since it seemed like a school night or we simply had a curfew. 

Pettit played with a cast on his arm in '58 an '59. Hal Greer only began with Syracuse in fall of '58 and did play in the spring of '59.  News articles confirmed that teams from Cortland County did play preliminary games at the War Memorial. I contacted some members of our team but some did not recall and many were deceased. 

Wanted to make sure my memory was not confabulating  facts and I did confirm the event with one of my later year teammates, Wayne Congdon.

The one contact who confirmed the memory of playing at the War Memorial was #11 Wayne Congdon one of my older brother Dale's best friends. Again I was 8th grade manager of the '58-'59 basketball teams, this being the JV squad. Later I played on our '61 Championship team (chapter 3). Wayne recalled pro Schayes hitting many jumpers from the corner but our school team losing badly by 20 to a team that included several much taller players.

These are fragmentary fuzzy memories, but generally valid with so some details yet to be confirmed.

Wayne lives retired in Florida now but has had quite a career, perhaps the most successful Virgil graduate. We had great teachers and a great learning environment. This shot was from his grandson's high school graduation, Alex Rodriguez, at New Berlin High in Wisconsin when Wayne & wife Judith were living in the Grand Cayman Islands. Alex also pursued Chemistry in college and was hired at one of Wayne's companies but has move on to become a yacht captain now. Wayne has lived in Murrieta, CA  as well as in Lake Tahoe, and a dozen places around the U.S. and elsewhere.

We had chemistry together in Virgil and after getting his Ph.D in Physical Chemistry he became an independent researcher at the huge Bell Labs facilities, primarily in Indianapolis, where he received 24 patents and 100 trade secrets. He was President at many companies such as at Shell Coatings Inc.,  and partnership at  Sunray and others. Had operations around the world incuding Bangkok, Singapore, China and etc.

Health not good now, but still kicking.

One of his patents involves the telephone cord used to connect the hand set to the base set.  Perhaps you have used one of these- in the olden days of landlines. But he also was involved with the microphone used in cell phones as well.

I've torn several of these connectors apart along the way. I keep telling myself I should clean up the basement someday, when I have time.

"I owned part of a business in Teipei.  I was working on an idea to extend the service life of rubber domed TV controllers.  It involved extraction of monomer from the silicone rubber before assembly.  We worked up a batch of 10,000 units.  Once the monomer was extracted we placed the dry batch in a 1,000 cu ft oven at 70C.  Unfortunately, the oven exploded and blew the roof off  the plant. No one got hurt and I scrapped the project."      Wayne