I was standing around waiting for some items to come up at auction when I spotted a stack of magazines on a table. They were vintage copies of Look magazine from the 1940s and 1960s, and some women’s magazines.
I’m always looking through books, magazines, documents and any other papers or ephemera on the auction tables. I’m very curious about what transpired before I breathed my first breath and what people wrote about it. I’m just plain interested in how people lived.
I flipped to the Table of Contents of a Look mag dated June 10, 1958, with a cover photo of comedian Bob Hope wearing what looked like a Russian Ushanka hat. As I scanned the list of stories, my eyes stopped on this title: “Why I Am Quitting College” by Wilt Chamberlain with Tim Cohane and I.R. McVay. I immediately found the article on page 91.
It was an essay written by Chamberlain in his own voice with some assistance.
Chamberlain was and still is a powerhouse to so many people because of his dominating skills on the basketball court and his prowess off it. Two things stick in my mind about him – the miraculous 100 points he scored in 1962 against the New York Knicks early in his career and his claiming to have made love to 20,000 women in an autobiography written in his later years.
A friend of mine who was a few grades behind Chamberlain at Overbrook High School in Philadelphia in the 1950s questioned whether the latter was true. He was not alone; many others doubted it, too, and Chamberlain was roundly criticized.
As I read the story in the magazine at auction, I tried recalling Chamberlain’s voice in my head, wanting to hear him speak the words rather than my reading them. I found a YouTube video of his career and bits and pieces of interviews with him to help re-create the voice. He talked fast – just as my Philadelphia friend – and clearly.
In the magazine essay, he wrote about his decision to leave the University of Kansas (commonly known as KU) to go pro after his junior year, his reasons for choosing the university in the first place, how players went after him on the floor, how he didn’t consider schools in certain parts of the country and a host of other issues.
Chamberlain had arrived at KU in 1955 after being recruited by 200 colleges. Look magazine paid him $10,000 for the exclusive right to tell the story of his decision to leave the college. The magazine wanted to make sure the story wasn’t leaked, and put him and a friend up in a hotel for two weeks until it was published, according to a book about the Harlem Globetrotters called “Spinning the Globe” by Ben Green. Chamberlain played for the team for a year after leaving KU and before joining the Philadelphia Warriors.
Here’s some of what Chamberlain had to say in Look magazine in 1958:
On why he would not be returning to KU in the fall:
“I need money to help my family. There are nine of us, six boys and three girls, and we’ve always had a struggle to get along. My father, 57, still has to work as a handyman for $60 a week. My mother, 56, has to go out as a domestic. I want to fix it so they can stop working and enjoy life more.”
On being pressured to sign with a college:
“Coaches seldom try to sell you on education. If you want to study you can get a good education at any school and they know you realize this. So they try to sell you on other things – campus jobs, summer jobs, big athletic programs, affluent alumni. … They do a snow job on you.”
On being menaced on the court and from the stands during college games:
“One good result came out of all those things they tried (calling him names, throwing pillows, cups, pennies). I never lost my temper. This helped me to do what some of my sponsors hoped I would do. Promote interracial goodwill. But I don’t know whether I would have been able to control myself through another season.”
On colleges that recruited him:
“Actually, most of them were wasting their time, because I just wasn’t interested in most of the schools. … I wasn’t interested in the South or Southwest, naturally, because I am a Negro. Some Southern schools got in touch with me, before they realized my color. … It was like I told the Missouri alumnus who intercepted me once on one of my visits to the K.U. campus and asked me if I’d like to be the first Negro to play at his school. I told him I’d rather be the second.”
On rumors that he was being paid by KU alumni, which he denied:
“They (the NCAA) asked how I could afford my ’56 Oldsmobile convertible. I explained how cars have always been a hobby. Back in my junior year at Overbrook, in ’53, I bought a ’49 Olds for about $700 from what I’d saved working at Kutcher’s. In ’54, I bought a ’51 Buick for $600 and my turn-in. In ’56, I bought a ’53 Olds for $900 and my turn-in. I saved the money from summer jobs. I got my present car last year, and I’m still making payments on it.”
And at the end:
“My mother wants me to stay in school. But they are letting me make my own decision again, just as they did when I chose K.U. … It’s a crucial one to have to make when you’re 21, even when you’re kind of an old 21 like me. But I think I’m justified.”
The rest is in the history books. Chamberlain died in 1999 at age 63. At auction, the box of magazines did not sell.
