Your Palestra memories

The Daily News asked readers for memories of the Palestra after we published stories last Thursday by Rich Hofmann, Ed Barkowitz, Dick Jerardi and Mike Kern about the fabled building. Here are some of the responses:

Your article caused me to fondly recall that when I was a grad student at Villanova in 1967-68, I and several other grad students had a part time, work-study job 10 or 15 hours per week in the dining commons (Dougherty Hall) where we would manually inspect/check off the undergrad students prepaid meal cards at the dining hall entrance ramps.

Whenever there was a big basketball game at the old Villanova Field House that year, Yo-Yo would somehow manage to sponge a ride out to Villanova, and would show up at the entrance ramps of the Dougherty Hall campus dining room for a free dinner before the game, to the cheers of all of the undergrads to let him in. Yo-Yo ate dinner for free whenever I and my fellow grad students were on duty. When he went down the ramp into the dining hall on game nights, all of the undergrad students having dinner before the game would go nuts, chanting: "Yo-Yo, Yo-Yo."Whenever anyone in authority inquired, we all pled ignorance as to how Yo -Yo had managed to bypass both checkpoints to score a free dinner on game nights. The Dining Services Mgr. would always just smile and walk away shaking his head.

- Jack Thorn

Hi, Rich. Thanks for the great story on Yo-Yo. My mom's parents had a drapery store, A. Alper & Son on the southeast corner of 5th and Ritner that fronted Mifflin Park (one block north of Porter Street). During the very late 1950s and even early 1960s, Yo-Yo would frequently pass the store on foot, see me peering through the window, and give me two packs of Charms candies. That is very much in character with the man he was . . . perhaps it was his way of paying forward people's kindness to him.

- Mike Stern

Olney '73; Temple '77

Thanks for a great feature on a true character. I remember seeing him at the Camac when I was a kid. Sometimes at the old athletic club at the Broadwood courtesy of Max Patkin. My cousin Red Klotz, who grew up on Darien Street in South Philly, looked out for him over the years, as did another cousin and similar ne'er do well, Bernie Blum. He and Yo-Yo were like twins. Eddie Gottlieb always left passes for them at Sphas and Warriors games and made sure they got hot meals after the games. It was a different world back then, I was told, in Jewish neighborhoods like South Philly people looked out for each other and it wasn't unusual to have a "hundred parents" taking care of you. I got a taste of that myself growing up in SW Philly during the '50s and '60s. In many respects, people were better back then, or time has clouded over my reality, lol.

- Fred Lavner

You did a wonderful job in your piece on Yo-Yo. Such a singular and identifying personality in our city's sports history. I remember him riding on the Temple Loyalists' bus from Temple to MSG for the semifinals or the title game in the 1969 NIT. The driver let him off somewhere downtown at the end of that ride back, and he walked off alone into the night. Thank you for doing such a fine article.

- Ned Bachus

So many memories. Mine was December 1962 when Providence beat Villanova behind Ray Flynn's 16-for-22 from the floor. One year later, Ray and I became good friends in the Army at Aberdeen Proving Grounds. I played on the post team with him there. At home or on the road, capacity crowds were there to see him as he was the reigning MVP of the NIT in the spring of '63. Great memories!

- Alfred Rauch Jr.

I was 9 when La Salle had its magical 23-1 season. I wanted to be Kenny Durrett when I grew up. I wasn't old enough to watch the second half of the Saturday night doubleheaders, so if La Salle was playing, my dad would leave a note on my pillow with the final score and Kenny's stats.

Thanks for keeping the memories alive.

- Pat Donohoe

Loved your article today! I'm 55 years old and my best Palestra memory is being at the 1969 La Salle/Villanova game when both teams were ranked in the top 10 and La Salle had Durrett and Villanova had Porter. La Salle won (I think 74-67) and my dad and I sat up in a corner somewhere and just soaked it all in! I grew up in Ardmore so I remember all of my friends were Villanova fans, but, for some reason, I just loved Durrett and La Salle. My dad used to take me to two or three doubleheaders a winter and for some reason we were lucky enough to have tickets to that La Salle/Villanova game from '69 . . . what a great night and memory!

P.S. Still can't believe both Durrett and Porter are gone.

- Drew Curry

I enjoyed reading your article on the Palestra, brings back many memories for me.

Everyone in our crowd had their favorite Big 5 team to root for. If you were Catholic it was mostly St. Joe's or Villanova. If you weren't Catholic, it was Penn or Temple; La Salle was kind of evenly divided.

I read a real nice article from ESPN the Magazine in which it states the Palestra is the cathedral of college basketball!

- Joe Perri

Escaping from the frigid chill outside by ducking inside the warm environment of the Palestra has always been a psychological tonic that helps one get through the doldrums of a Philadelphia winter. It also provides a guaranteed way of stimulating all five senses. The smell and taste of the popcorn. The sound of the bands during warmups. The sight, as you enter your section through the tunnel, of the magnificent array of colors that burst at you from the uniforms on the court all the way up to the banners hanging from the rafters. Lastly, the dull ache that comes from the touch of those hard bleachers on your backside, especially after a doubleheader or, from the days of the old A-10 tournaments, a quadrupleheader. What a wonderful, well-earned sensation. The Palestra's personal stamp of acceptance!

- Joe Tolstoy

Philadelphia

So many memories . . .

As a 10-year-old boy in 1961, my dad took me to the opening round of the Quaker City Holiday Tournament at the Palestra. Seeing Iowa's Don Nelson, and in the second game, Hubie White and his Villanova team; who would eventually beat Iowa in the final. Early in the Iowa game a hushed whisper through the Palestra - "Wilt!" as Chamberlain entered to enjoy the game courtside.

The best was when Dad showed me his team picture on the wall - he played football, basketball, and track in 1936 with teamates such as Penn and Eagles legend Franny Murray. Dad lived to age 96; later in life, I would kid him: "Dad, you're so old that when you played, there were laces on the ball!"

- Charles Sutter

I remember being at the bomb-scare game between St. Joe's and 'Nova (in its day the best college rivalry ever). We were herded into a confined space behind the Palestra where no one could have survived an explosion. Les Keiter was safer staying in his TV booth than we were. I remember Ken Durrett, the best Big 5 player I ever saw, destroy Western Kentucky's All-America Jim McDaniel and Penn's Jim Wolf stopping Durrett cold as Penn led La Salle, 41-19, at half. I remember Calvin Murphy twirling a baton during layup drills and scoring about 52 (or was it only 42?) against La Salle and hundreds of other great memories from my 50 years of watching Big 5 basketball. I remember the NCAA tripleheaders in the '60s with great All-Americas from Pitt, NYU and UConn and West Virginia and the great overtime game between Bill Bradley's Princeton's team and St. Joe's, which the Hawks won after Bradley fouled out. I remember the look of confusion on the Columbia players faces when Sam the Drummer and his hundreds of Hawk followers burst into the building midway through the first game with Penn, which signaled the beginning of the "Let's go St. Joe's" and "Let's go 'Nova" chants, which did not let up until the end of the second game. I remember an ash from Yo-Yo's cigar falling on my jacket at a concession stand while he waited for Dick Weiss to buy him a hot dog.

- Dan Goroff

Philadelphia

My dad is a Big 5 Hall of Famer who played in the original Big 5 games at the Palestra for St. Joe's (Kurt Engelbert No. 19) so I've been to the Palestra countless of times. Each and every trip to the Palestra seems to produce a memorable story but my best memory was from the 1991 Atlantic 10 Tournament. It was a quarterfinal doubleheader and the second game was No. 8 seed St. Joe's vs. No. 1 Rutgers. In between the two games, one of the refs pulls me and my cousin out of the stands and incredibly asks if we want to be the ball/towel/mopup boys that stand under each basket during the game. Next thing we know, we are handed A-10 tourney T-shirts and are on the court handing towels to players and mopping up the wet spots on the court (which, in a sweat-soaked, packed-house Palestra, was very often.) The game goes into overtime and St. Joe's takes the lead, there was a stoppage of play and one of the refs comes up to me under the basket and warns me not to get trampled by the hundreds of rabid St. Joe's fans breathing down my neck ready to storm the court. Last thing I remember was the famous "dank-dank" sounds of the scoreboard clock ticking down to zero, the horn sounds and me leading the pack of court stormers celebrating a St. Joe victory.

- Kyle Engelbert

My father took me and my brothers to a lot of high school and college games in the area when we were younger. The Palestra was my all-time favorite. When I became a father, I was definitely going to pass on the tradition. I took my three sons to see a Penn game on a Friday night. A friend got me seats right on the floor. During the game, I turned around and saw Mayor Rendell. I pointed him out to my sons, and when they spotted him, I told them that we would call Pop (my dad) in the morning and tell him we were at the game and we had better seats than the mayor. We still laugh about it today. Thanks for letting me share.

- Ed Murphy

To read the entire package of stories, visit dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38683242/BV-2014-PALESTRA.pdf