NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1941

 

 

Planning Golden Jubilee Memorial to Basketball Founder

 

At a luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria yesterday arrangements got under way for the court game’s fiftieth anniversary. Here a portrait
of the game’s jounder, Dr. James Naismith, is examined by members of the original basketball team and the Mayor of Springfield,
Mass., chairman of the Naismith Memorial Committee. Left to right: Lyman W. Archibald, Mayor Roger Putnam of Springfield, Thomas

 

Duncan Patton, William R.

Chase and Ray P. Kaighn

Herald Tribune—Acme

 

 

Golden Jubilee

of Basketball

Launched as N aismith Tribute

 

3 Pioneer Players Attend
LunchPlanningMemorial
and Sport’s Hall of Fame

By Everett B. Morris

With three of the five living mem-
bers of the game’s first organized
team participating in the cere-
monies, the golden jubilee of bas-
ketball was given a send-off yester-
day at a Waldorf-Astoria luncheon
sponsored by the Naismith Memo-
rial Committee.

Springfield College dignitaries
and alumni, A. A. U. officials, met-
ropolitan coaches and basketball
writers paid tribute to the sport’s
first heroes and heard formal an-
nouncements of plans to erect on
the Springfield campus a temple of
basketball as a monument to Dr.
James Naismith, who originated the
game there in 1891.

The speakers were Roger L. Put-
nam, Mayor of Springfield and
chairman of the memorial commit-
tee; Dr. Ernest M. Best, president
of Springfield College, and Irving T.
Marsh,. head of the Metropolitan
Basketball Writers Association.

Pioneers on Dais

With them on the dais were T.
Duncan Patton, of Toronto; Wil-
liam R. Chase, of New Bedford,
Mass., and Lyman W. Archibald, of
Warren, Pa., members of Dr. Nai-
smith’s original team; Ray Kaighn,
a New ~orker who had the distinc-

tion of being the game’s first cas-'

ualty—he. cracked up a knee in the
first scrimmage—and Dr. Lawrence
Locke Doggett, president at Spring-
field from 1896 to 1936 and a leader
in the early propagation of basket-
ball.

Nation-wide observance of the
game’s fiftieth birthday by the play-
ing of “Golden Ball” contests by
college, high school, club and insti-
tutional teams will be tied in with
the efforts to raise funds for the
construction of a basketball Hall of
Fame.

The first of these special events
will take the form, of a tournament
in Madison Square Garden Nov. 19
and 24, involving four outstanding
A. A. U. teams—the national cham-

pion Twentieth Century Fox quin-
tet, of Hollywood; the 1940 title-
holders, Phillips Oilers, of Bartles-
ville, Okla.; Ohrbach A. A., rulers of
the metropolitan district, and the
Roanoke (Va.) Legionnaires, cham-
pions of the Southern area.

All-Star Game Set for Chicago

Out in the Mid-West the drive for
funds for the memorial will receive
its impetus from the second annual
“Chicago American” all-star game
in the Chicago Stadium, Nov. 29
Even at this early date, it was an-
nounced, 150 colleges and 115 high
schools have scheduled “Golden
Ball” games. Hundreds of others
have signified their intention of so
doing.

An architect’s drawing of the pro-
posed structure and a portrait of
Dr. Naismith occupied adjoining

the committee’s hope to erect a
building which not only will contain
a model playing court and spectator
facilities, but a Hall of Fame and
museum in which may be enshrined
records, souvenirs, documents and
curios of the sport.

“Dr. Naismith gave us a complete-
ly democratic game,” Mayor Putnam
said in his talk, “one which knows
neither sectarian nor national
boundaries. It is played everywhere
by men and women of all races and
creeds. We want this building to be
a universal memorial to a man who
was loved universally for his contri-
bution to competitive athletics and
their democratic traditions and
ideals.”

Dr. Best sketched the origin of the
game, Springfield’s role in its devel-
opment and turned over to Mayor
Putnam a deed for the ground on
which the memorial is to be erected.
Then he introduced the game’s first
players and Dr. Doggett.

Basketball in this area was rep-
resented by Clair F. Bee, coach of
Long Island University; Nat Hol-
man, ©. C. N. Y. coach; Jacques
'Coffey, graduate manager at Ford-
ham; Captain Edward Méessinger,
basketball officer at. West Point;
Harry Henschel, head of the met-
ropolitan A. A. U. basketball com-
mittee, and Jerry Ohrbach, presi-
dent of the Ohrbach A. A.

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easels in the luncheon salon. It is}

 

 

This is a reproduction of
the article in the New York
Herald-Tribune of October
15, 1941 concerning the in-
augural luncheon at the

Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The

luncheon was the opening
gun for the Golden Jubilee
of Basketball campaign.