Jack Twyman died on Wednesday of this week at the age of 78. In an era of ESPN, 24 hour sports coverage, and endless highlight shows, guys like Jack Twyman are all but forgotten, and you have to be pretty much over 60 years old to have any memory of seeing Twyman play in a Hall of Fame NBA career that ran from 1955 through 1966, but his is a career - and a life - worth remembering.
A native of Pittsburgh, Twyman went to Central Catholic High School, and he is easily the greatest basketball player to come from Central. An All-American at the University of Cincinnati, Twyman played with the Rochester / Cincinnati Royals in the NBA, and when he retired in 1966, he had scored over 15,800 points in his career. In the 1959-60 season, not one, but two players averaged over 30 points per game for the first time in NBA history. One of them was Wilt Chamberlain. The other was Jack Twyman.
He was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983.
However, for all of his many accomplishments on the court, Twyman should be most remembered as a humanitarian. In the 1958 season, his Royals teammate, and fellow Pittsburgher, Maurice Stokes was seriously injured in a game, an injury that caused him permanent paralysis and lifelong brain damage. Twyman had himself declared Stokes' legal guardian, and, as such, saw to his care until Stokes passed away in 1970. After that, Twyman devoted much of his efforts to raising money for down-on-their-luck former NBA players.
I conducted a tour today at the Heinz History Center for a group of fifth grade boys from Butler County. Large pictures of both Twyman and Stokes hang on the wall in the basketball portion of the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum at the History Center. I gathered the kids around and told them the story of Jack Twyman and Maurice Stokes. I'm not sure how well the story resonated with nine 11 and 12 year old boys, but one of the adult chaperons with the group said, "That was doing God's work". Indeed.
RIP Jack Twyman.
God's work indeed.
ReplyDeleteNicely written my friend.