Decades later, two native sons drawn back to Camden
On a summer night in 1955, Carmine Calzonetti walked around the corner from his family's home on Washington Terrace in Audubon to the baseball field next to the basketball courts and across the street from the high school.
On a summer night in 1955, Carmine Calzonetti walked around the corner from his family's home on Washington Terrace in Audubon to the baseball field next to the basketball courts and across the street from the high school.
He wanted to see this pitcher from Delaware Township Little League.
"I knew his name," Calzonetti said. "He was in the paper all the time for throwing no-hitters."
The pitcher was Billy Hunter. Later that summer, he would lead Delaware Township, which soon would be renamed Cherry Hill, to the first of two consecutive appearances in the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa.
Flash forward 61 years. On Wednesday, Calzonetti and Hunter rode together from their homes whose backyards touch in the Harlem section of New York to an event in Camden that beckoned them back to their hometown.
The formation of the Camden Community Health and Athletic Association - with an initial donation of $1 million from the Cooper Foundation - brought former professional athletes, dignitaries, politicians, community activists, youth-sports officials, and assorted movers and shakers to the 10th floor of the Cooper University Health Care building in the downtown section of the city.
But it's unlikely that many others in attendance traveled as long and circuitous a route back to Camden as did Hunter and Calzonetti.
They are a couple of Camden natives who made their marks as South Jersey athletes, were college stars in the state of New York, fashioned successful, sports-related careers in the city of New York, and became friends as neighbors living in semi-retirement in one of the big city's most eclectic neighborhoods.
They were drawn back to their hometown, inspired by the work done by Bryan Morton and others with the North Camden Little League, determined to join in the initiative announced by Cooper Foundation chairman George Norcross.
"So many people have a spiritual connection to this city," Hunter said. "I'm one of them."
The 72-year-old Hunter was a football star at Delaware Township High School (later, Cherry Hill West) and Syracuse University. He played in the NFL. He went to law school, worked in the Jimmy Carter presidential administration, became a judge, and served as executive director of the NBA Players Association.
"Nobody," Calzonetti said, "has a better resumé than Billy Hunter."
Hunter was born in Camden but raised in Delaware Township. He often returned to the city to spend time with relatives.
"I drove past my grandmother's house [on Wednesday]," Hunter said. "Kindle Street, near the [Ben Franklin] bridge. I remember playing stick ball in the street, hopscotch, 'chase.'
'When I was a youngster, I remember what a great place Camden was to be before it lost its tax base."
As was Hunter, the 69-year-old Calzonetti was born in Camden. He lived his first eight years in the city, attending Sacred Heart school on Fourth and Jasper Streets before his family moved to Audubon.
"I saw Camden in its heyday," Calzonetti said. "I remember my dad losing his job when the New York Shipyard closed. I remember RCA Victor leaving."
Calzonetti was a basketball and baseball star at Gloucester Catholic. He played both sports at St. John's University and embarked on a long career in athletic administration, serving as an associate director of the Big East Conference during its zenith in the mid-1980s.
Calzonetti is director of business development for Controlling the Game, a Bronx sporting goods company.
The company has donated equipment to the North Camden Little League and sponsored the Brooklawn American Legion baseball team as well as that showcase game in Campbell's Field between Gloucester Cathlic and Barnegat on May 16 that drew 6,500 spectators.
Calzonetti said CTG planned to "bring the store to Camden" to offer equipment at deeply discounted prices.
"That's exactly what we did in the Bronx," Calzonetti said.
Both men were drawn back to their hometown by memory and imagination - a desire fueled in part by nostalgia to improve the lives of underprivileged Camden youngsters through support for athletic programs.
For all its woes, the city has an uncanny knack for that: It tugs at old-timers with whispers of the way it once was, with the promise of what it again could be.
"Everybody," Calzonetti said, "has a soft spot in their heart for Camden."
While Calzonetti plans to have CTG directly involved in the new initiative, Hunter sees himself as a resource for Morton and others involved in youth sports in the city.
"I can help raise money," Hunter said. "I have a lot of contacts. I can help in a lot of different ways.
"I want to help. I want Camden to be a great place for kids to grow up again, like it was when I was a youngster."
The two men didn't meet that summer night in 1955. They weren't friends during long careers in New York.
And it was more than 50 years after that Little League game in Audubon when Calzonetti saw Hunter walking on the street around the corner from his home in Harlem.
"I was in the car, my wife was driving," Calzonetti said. "I saw Billy on the street and I said, 'Pull over.'
"I wasn't going to yell 'Billy Hunter.' Everybody would do that. I remembered another great player on that Delaware Township team so I yelled, 'Wilbur Robinson.'
"I knew he would remember."
@PhilAnastasia
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