Looking back over the half-century history of The Arizona
Daily Star Sportsmen’s Fund, I am reminded how it all began: Eyes—that was how
it all started, for I could not erase my memory of those wide-eyed children in
Europe during World War II.
When I
shed my G.I. uniform and returned to my desk at the Star, I remembered a
Christmas party my fellow soldiers and I had put on for French youngsters in
the Vosges Mountain village of Hunaweir.
Why not, I thought, put on a Christmas party for youngsters in Tucson?
The idea became reality after the visit to my sports department of a newcomer
to Tucson, Clermont D. Loper, who had just been named executive director of the
YMCA. The year was 1946.
I mentioned
my idea to my visitor, “Why not put on a Christmas party for poor kids?”
“That’s
a great idea,” Loper said, “but let’s not call them poor. Let’s call the ‘less-chance’ and let us give
them a chance.”
We
talked about how we would go about it along with Ricki Rarick, the classified
ad manager for Tucson Newspapers. He was
excited about working for youngsters because as an outstanding golfer, he
already had been working with young caddies at El Rio Country Club. The three-way discussion resulted in naming
The Arizona Daily Star Sportsmen’s Fund.
The first venture would be a Christmas party. I took the idea to the Star’s publisher,
William R. Mathews, who approved and started off the project with a $50
donation.
The
Christmas party was held in the Rendezvous Room of the old Santa Rita
Hotel. Nick Hall, the flamboyant manager
of the hotel, donated use of the room.
Fred Stofft of Howard and Stofft helped us get started by donating odd
items of sporting goods. Other firms
donated candies and drinks and many celebrities from the local coaching world
came to hand the gifts to the ‘less-chance’ youngsters. As youngsters were getting their gifts, we
heard noises of a scuffle in the alley behind the Rendezvous Room. Lope—that is how he was popularly called—and
I went into the alley where we found a number of youngsters. They said they had been invited to the party
but were arguing about coming in to the party because they were so poorly
dressed. We took them into the party.
Now the
key part of the new program was to begin.
The Christmas party moved to the Fox Tucson theatre with movies, gifts
and refreshments. Lope said he wanted to
start a YMCA camping program and suggested the Sportsmen’s Fund might want to
become a sponsor of less-chance kids. The
plan was for the Y to select the campers, and Ricki and I would raise necessary
funds. On the pages of the Star sports
section I began a direct appeal to Tucsonans for cash gifts; it was a copy of
The New York Times annual “fresh air fund”.
Ricki came up with the idea of raising funds by sponsoring special golf
matches. Over the years the Sportsmen’s
Fund brought in celebrities including Bing Crosby, Phil Harris, Randolph Scott,
and Jim Garner. Local golf pros
including Dell Urich and Jimmy Hines donated their services, and the
celebrities came without fees.
In
addition many sports event were sponsored by the Star Sportsmen’s Fund
including annual sell-out appearance of the Harlem Globetrotters, a benefit
baseball game between the Trotters and the bearded House of David, and spring
training exhibitions matching the Cleveland Indians and Frank Sancet’s
University of Arizona nine. Some of the
state’s most spectacular sports events were sponsored including the first
American appearance of the Chinese gymnastics team that brought Secret Service
agents to Tucson to protect the visitors; the performance of the great Olga
Korbut with the Russion gymnastics squad and Nadia Comenici’s stunning
gymnastics skills with the Romanians.
Tucsonans
supported the Sportsmen’s Fund programs with enthusiasm, and the first summer
camp was held in the Chiricahua Mountains with Ev Palmer as the Y camp
director. When Lope brought Clarence S.
(Chick) Hawkins to Tucson, the camp was moved to a site in the Catalina
Mountains. The camp site was on the
ranch of Elizabeth Wood; Lope had convinced her to donate the beautiful ranch
to the Y for camping.
Clermont
Loper, now retired and living with his wife Ardis in Scottsdale, recalls “Chick
and his wife LaVerne worked as a team, a wonderful team. While Chick handled the many details of
running a camp, LaVerne became a mother to the boys and girls who came to
camp—many getting their first vacation off the hot summer streets of Tucson.”
A
winter camp was added to summer camping and now the project began to spread
throughout southern Arizona. The
Sportsmen’s fund brought youngsters to the Triangle-Y Ranch Camp from Benson,
Nogales, Willcox, Casa Grande, Eloy and the Safford area. In addition, Christmas parties were taken to
outlying areas—to the Indian reservation to the southwest of Tucson, into
Sonora, Mexico towns. When a strike hit
the Ray-Sonora area one winter, a car-load of gifts were taken there for a
Christmas party.
I
recall that Mike De La Fuente helped us sponsor a Christmas party across the
line in Nogales. He was the promoter of
bull fights, and so the party was held in the ring. I can remember covering up parts of the
animals killed in the ring before we brought in basketballs and footballs for
the kids. I have a vivid memory of
taking gifts to a small village in Sonora.
When we got to the school on a cold December day the teachers had lined
up the children from the doorway all the way out on the dirty street. We were invited to walk down the row of
children, and I still remember looking down and seeing how many of them were
barefoot.
I
remember, too, how it was that the Harlem Globetrotters first came to
Tucson. One day I got a call from Bill
Veeck, the dynamic promoter of the Cleveland Indians. He asked me to drive out to the Lazy Vee—his
ranch 22 miles east of Tucson at the foot of the Rincon Mountains. When I got there, Veeck introduced me to a
short, pudgy man. “Abe Chanin.” Veeck
said with a wide grin, “meet Abe Saperstein!”
Then Veeck proceded to tell the boss of the Globetrotters that he had to
bring the great show to Tucson for the Sportsmen’s Fund and to give us a
special arrangement. Saperstein agreed
and that started a long and wonderful love match between Tucsonans and
Meadowlark Lemon and his talented, comic teammates.
When I
left the newspaper and began teaching at the University of Arizona, Tom Foust
took over promotion of the Sportsmen’s Fund and he has directed the program to
even greater achievements. This year the
Arizona Daily Star Sportsmen’s Fund turns 50 and the remarkable relationship
between a newspaper, the YMCA and Tucsonans continues as a beacon of community
pride in caring for ‘less-chance’ boys and girls.