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The legendary sports columnist Jimmy Cannon grew up with Frankie McGuire, the youngest son of 13 children. His dad was a traffic cop stationed at Canal and West Streets across from the Hudson River. His mother was left with 13 children to rear when Frank was four years old. Frank's older brothers and sisters watched carefully over him as he was growing up in the tough streets. The nearby Greenwich House, a neighborhood settlement house, which were numerous in those days between the World Wars, attracted young McGuire when he was nine. Frank was tutored by a black cartoonist, Ted Carroll, who was the basketball coach at Greenwich House. Frank never scorned a friend from the old neighborhood, always inviting one of his boyhood buddies who served time to Johnnies' games. In the period Frank coached St. John's, 1947-1952, Carroll, who was by then a noted cartoonist, regularly attended St. John's games and sat behind the player' bench. His St. John's career saw him play against Westminster in the first Madison Square Garden college basketball doubleheader on Dec. 28, 1934. After World War II, he taught history and coached basketball at Xavier on 16th Street in Manhattan. He developed several very good players, notably Jack Byrne of Manhattan and George Kaftan of Holy Cross. In 1947, longtime St. John's mentor Joe Lapchick left the Johnnies to coach the second-year New York Knickerbockers. The surprise choice to replace Lapchick was McGuire. McGuire's St. John's teams won 103 games (and reached the NCAA Final in 1952) before he moved on to North Carolina, where his teams won 164 games and the NCAA championship in 1957 (against Kansas and Wilt Chamberlain in triple overtime). He coached the Philadelphia Warriors in the NBA to a 49-31 record during the 1961-62 season, his only season with the Warriors (on March 2, 1962, Chamberlain scored 100 points against the Knicks). At the University of South Carolina, where McGuire coached from 1965-1980, his teams won 283 games. He died after a severe stroke in South Carolina on Oct. 11, 1994 at the age of 80.. | ||||||
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PERFECTLY FRANK...
As seen in the March 2000 Issue. Coaches come and coaches go and you remember them mostly for their X's and O's, and sometimes, if you get close enough, for qualities that transcend the arena. That' s how we remember Frank McGuire. It really started the year after his North Carolina team won the NCAA championship (1957). We were in Chapel Hill on business, and Frank invited us to his home for lunch. There were just the four of us: Frank, his wife, their little boy, and us. His son had been born with cerebral palsy, but he sat quietly in his chair alongside of us, apparently oblivious of everything around him…until we opened a magazine to check out a point with Frank. The movement appeared to agitate the boy. He began making gurgling sounds and then suddenly flung an arm out at us, knocking the magazine out of our hands.It shocked us and we looked over at Frank for help. He was smiling. He reached over and patted the boy gently on the head.“ "Frankie can't read," he told us. "But he likes pictures. That's why he reached for the magazine. He wanted to see the pictures." We looked at Frank and his wife and we marveled at the gentleness and love we saw. We picked up the magazine and moved closer to the boy and started turning the pages to let Frankie see the pictures. Frank told us that everyone had questioned him about trying to raise the boy at home. They told him that the boy would be better off at an institution, especially as he aged. " We considered it," Frank said. "But every time we would visit one of those places, we would look at all those poor little lost kids and know we could never let go of Frankie. I would give him the care he would need." And so the McGuire's brought up their son until he needed the kind of help they could no longer provide. Our visit taught us much about Frank McGuire, the man. And we went on to learn all about his incredible generosity to his friends, players, and family. We have always wondered how many people were aware of the relationship he had with the quiet, grey-haired man who always sat beside him on the bench during McGuire' s entire coaching career. His name was Buck Freeman. He had coached Frank at St. John's and before that he had coached maybe the greatest basketball team in the country-the St. John's Wonder Team of the late 1920's that later became the Brooklyn Jewels, the greatest professional team in the east. Buck coached the Jewels throughout the '30s and then dropped out of sight. Always a heavy drinker, he had become an alcoholic, and it was Frank McGuire who eventually rescued him from the gutter. Frank made him his top assistant and watched over him for the rest of his life. It wasn't always easy. Buck would have his bad times and Frank would have to seek him out, dry him out, and work him back into the line-up. That was the pattern of their relationship until the day Buck died. It worked because of Buck's genius and his understanding of himself. He always knew that if you have one friend like Frank McGuire, you'd never have to worry about where your next meal, next set of clothes, next pillow on which to lay your head, and the next warm, encouraging word would come from. Frank McGuire won a lot of big ones in his time, including conference titles, the NCAA championship, coaching in the NBA, Coach of the Year honors, writing books, and the Basketball Hall of Fame. And wherever he is now-and the odds are 10,000 to 1 that it's somewhere Upstairs-he' d be delighted to know that his winning streak is still going strong. The people who knew him best have established the perfect monument to him. It is called the Frank McGuire Foundation, and it is dedicated not to the big winners, but to the high school coaches in his beloved New York and metropolitan area who have had the greatest impact on young people's lives. Nobody gets a trophy, a plaque, or a loving cup. The proceeds from the annual dinner go right into the athletic programs of the winners' schools. The millennium has arrived - in more ways than one. | |||||||
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FRANK McGUIRE HONORS •
*Coached
University of North Carolina to NCAA Basketball Championship, 1957.
• * Awarded Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree from • * Presented with Key to the City of New York by Mayor Wagner in Madison Square Garden • * Elected to National Basketball Hall of Fame, 1977. • * Appointed to Commission of Presidential Scholars by President Jimmy Carter, 1978. • * Appointed to National Basketball Hall of Fame Board of Trustees, 1979. • * Awarded the "CYO Meritorious Service Award" by the Catholic Youth Organization in New York City presented by His Eminence Terence Cardinal Cooke, 1979.
• * Elected to Nike Hall of Fame, 1980. • * Elected to Madison Square Garden Hall of Fame, 1982. • * Awarded Doctor of Humanities from the Savannah College of Art & Design, 1982. • * Became a member of the Board of Trustees. • * Elected to St. John's University Hall of Fame, 1984. • * Received John F. Kennedy Award, 1985, as the Outstanding American of Irish Descent for Services to God and Country. • * Three-time recipient of the Order of the Palmetto Gentleman. (the highest honor bestowed on a South Carolinian). • * Made a Kentucky Colonel, 1985. • * 41 year basketball coaching career. • * 725 career basketball victories. • * 550 collegiate basketball victories.
• * Winner of National Coach-of-the-Year Awards at three schools:
• * One of two coaches in collegiate history to take two teams to the NCAA
Basketball Championship Game: | |||||||
Frank
McGuire, whose achievements as a player and coach spanned 5 decades, was a
true son of New York. He was born in Greenwich Village on Nov. 8, 1913, when
the Village (there was no SoHo, Tribeca or East Village then, these
geographical "aliases" arising in the 1970's) was populated largely by Irish
and Italian working people, gaining their livings working the nearby docks,
as New York was the biggest port in the world then. There were among the
Irish Villagers a good number of firemen and policemen, too.