Outpouring of memories for Porter

IT WASN'T THE people who were coming into the Ramsey County (Minn.) Corrections offices that surprised Chris Crutchfield.

It was why they came.

Ever since the news broke that former Villanova basketball player Howard Porter had been severely beaten a week ago, the offenders whom the probation officers deal with on a daily basis streamed back to the office.

"They came in to comfort our officers," said Crutchfield, the county's deputy director of community corrections. "That, to me, was just amazing. That's the sort of effect, I think, Howard had on everybody."

From Minnesota to Florida to Philadelphia, people are grieving, trying to come to grips with the cruel twist that snuffed out the life of a man who had worked so hard to get his life back on track. Porter, who once felt ostracized from his alma mater, overcame a cocaine addiction and decided 10 years ago to help others battle the demons he was only too familiar with, died Saturday night from injuries sustained after he was beaten and left in a north Minneapolis alley a week earlier. He was 58.

Police in Minnesota have no suspects and are trying to determine if Porter's murder is related to his job as a probation officer. The medical examiner said yesterday that Porter died from multiple blunt-force injuries.

"We came of age together and co-mingled at such an intimate level, I almost can't describe it, it was almost at the soul level," said a former Villanova teammate, Clarence Smith. "When Mike Daly called me and told me Howard had passed, I should have been ready for it but I almost hyperventilated. That surprised me. But because of this thing we shared together, this connection, it's hard to explain, but it's almost like a little piece of me died with him."

Those close to Porter, although eager for whoever killed him to be apprehended, are trying hard not to think about how he died.

Rather they are celebrating how he lived.

"He always had his hat on," said Daly, another Villanova teammate. "He called it his lid and I swear, I never saw him with the same lid twice."

When conversation turns in Villanova circles to the greatest player to wear a Wildcats uniform, Kerry Kittles often gets a nod. Ed Pinckney earns his due. Younger fans wonder now where Randy Foye might stand when all is said and done.

But for those blessed with the luxury of long memories, two names usually are where the conversation begins and ends - Paul Arizin and Howard Porter. Now both are gone. Arizin died unexpectedly in December 2006.

Master recruiter George Raveling first spotted Porter at Booker High, a segregated high school in Sarasota, Fla. Fans, black and white, waited in line for hours to watch Porter play, eager to see the kid who averaged 35 points a game, shattered a backboard and would eventually lead Booker to a state title.

Not much changed at Villanova where Porter went on to become a three-time All-America, finishing his career with 2,026 points and 1,317 rebounds, numbers nothing shy of astounding considering he didn't play as a freshman.

"For a kid who grew up weaned on the Big 5, Howard Porter was Superman," teammate Tom Ingelsby said. "He was the reason I went to Villanova. I knew, with him, we had a chance to contend for a national championship."

Generally agreeable, Porter had something of a stubborn streak, teammates recalled fondly. Fran O'Hanlon, who graduated a year before Porter, remembers walking into St. Mary's gym and finding a distraught Dan Dougherty there. Now the Episcopal Academy head coach, Dougherty then was a Villanova assistant in charge of the freshman squad.

"I said, 'How's it going, Doc?' " said O'Hanlon, who was in Italy with his Lafayette basketball team and only yesterday learned of Porter's death. "He said, 'Not good. I told Howard my way or the highway and he took the highway. He's gone.' But then an hour later, Howard came back and apologized. That was Howard. I think Doc was more relieved than anything. I mean, can you imagine telling coach [Jack Kraft] he just lost Howard?"

Before Pinckney and Rollie Massimino pulled off the improbable upset in 1985, it was Porter and the 1971 Villanova team that captured the city. Beating Penn to advance to the Final Four, the Wildcats upended Western Kentucky in the national semifinal and gave the juggernaut that was UCLA its toughest battle before losing in the title game, 68-62.

Porter, who outscored Sidney Wicks, 25-7, in what had been billed as an epic battle, was named Final Four Most Outstanding Player.

"He was so wound up for that game," Smith, Porter's road roommate, remembered with a laugh. "It's the middle of the night and I hear Howard as if he was on television, saying, 'Porter's sweeper over Wicks, it's good.' He called his hook shot the sweeper and I remember saying, 'Howard, it's 3 o'clock in the morning, go to bed.' "

For Porter, the laughs disappeared quickly. After admitting he signed with an agent as well as inked an ABA contract during his senior year, Porter's Most Outstanding Player hardware was vacated (he remains the only player to be stripped of his award) and Villanova's spot in the title game branded with an asterisk.

The ABA contract and all of its legal complications sent Porter tumbling down the NBA draft ladder. Chicago finally took him with the 32nd pick.

"He was the hottest thing going in 1971," said Pat Williams, then the Bulls' general manager and now the senior vice president of the Orlando Magic. "Our coach, Dick Motta, told me I've seen the three greatest forwards in college basketball - Elgin Baylor, Gus Johnson and Howard Porter."

But Porter never lived up to his professional expectations. He spent 7 years in the league, his most productive in 1976-77 when he averaged 13.2 points per game with the Detroit Pistons.

A drug problem that began in the NBA spiraled out of control afterward. Porter once hocked his NCAA watch to get drug money and lived on his mother's sofa. Ashamed, he refused contact with his Villanova teammates.

Arrested and jailed in Florida for a parole violation in 1989, he went to Minnesota for his rehab.

In 1999, Daly and teammate Ed Hastings flew to Minnesota to watch fellow ex-Wildcat Chris Ford, then the coach of the Los Angeles Clippers, against the Timberwolves. They knew Porter lived in St. Paul, knew he had gotten clean. They coaxed him out to dinner, a simple meal that turned into a 4-hour cleansing.

"We told him, 'We're not mad at you, we've never been mad at you,' " Daly said. "He thought we hated his guts. He couldn't believe that we didn't. I think when we told him that, that's when he started feeling comfortable, not feeling like an outcast."

Slowly, Porter worked his way back into the fold.

When the Wildcats hosted UCLA at the Pavilion in February 2002, Porter was there, sitting in the Pavilion's balcony "sky box." Villanova exacted Porter's revenge that night, beating the Bruins, 58-57.

"All the students rushed the court and I remember seeing Brooks Sales and Ricky Wright reaching up to that box and Howard Porter hanging over the railing, high-fiving and pointing," coach Jay Wright said.

By then Porter had remade his life. He talked often to friends about his "ride with the devil," his description of his cocaine addiction, and once told Daly that he "should have been dead in the '80s."

Embracing his second chance, Porter began working as a probation officer in 1995 and remarried Theresa Neal, the woman his teammates called his blessing.

"You want to ask the 'why' question," Daly said. "He didn't understand for a long time why he was given a chance to put his life back together. He told me he had earned the right to be dead, but he got the second chance and he took it.

"So now, at the pinnacle of his life when he had turned everything around, to have it taken away, you could just drive yourself crazy asking why. I think right now we're all trying to focus on the positives. His gift, in the end, wasn't basketball. It was his ability to connect with other people. That's what we're all remembering now." *