Remembrances and Thank Yous by Alan Cotler, W'72

Remembrances and Thank Yous By Alan Cotler, W’72, WG’74 When I told Mrs. Spitzer, my English teacher at Flushing High in Queens, I was going to Penn her eyes welled up and she said nothing. She just smiled. There were 1,100 kids in my graduating class. I was the only one going to an Ivy. And if I had not been recruited to play basketball I may have gone to Queens College. I was a student with academic friends and an athlete with jock friends. My idols were Bill Bradley and Mickey Mantle. My teams were the Yanks, the New York football Giants, the Rangers and the Knicks, and, 47 years later, they are still my teams. My older cousin Jill was the first in my immediate and extended family to go to college (Queens). I had received virtually no guidance about college and how life was about to change for me in Philadelphia. I was on my own. I wanted to get to campus a week before everyone. I wanted the best bed in 318 Magee in the Lower Quad. Steve Bilsky, one of Penn’s starting guards at the time who later was Penn’s AD for 25 years and who helped recruit me, had that room the year before, and said it was THE best room in the Quad --- a large room on the 3rd floor, looked out on the entire quad, you could see who was coming and going from every direction, and it had lots of light. It was the control tower of the Lower Quad. 1 My parents drove me down to college and were more nervous for me than I knew. New Yorkers did not know Philadelphia existed. I watched on black and white TV my New York Football Giants play the Eagles at Franklin Field in Philadelphia with a weird looking clock behind the end zone. As a 13 year old I did not know that field belonged to a college called Pennsylvania or that Franklin Field and that clock would become an iconic and familiar venue in my life. My parents and I had dinner at a Horn and Hardart in Center City; there were virtually no restaurants in Philly in those days - and certainly nothing open on a Sunday night. Philadelphia’s night life then was as jubilant as a night time walk in a dark cemetery. We hung some posters in 318 Magee, I set up my desk, my parents hugged their only son and drove back to Queens. Years later they told me they couldn’t get over how matter of fact I was about being left alone on the eerily deserted and quiet Penn campus. The next morning I embarked on my mission. I wanted to shoot a thousand jumpers in the Palestra before the other recruits (Corky Calhoun, Bob Morse, Ron Billingslea, Billy Walters and Dave Tritton) showed up. I was happiest when I worked out in the gym -- dribbling, stopping short, receiving imaginary passes, feeling the openness of the arena, imagining the thousands of empty seats filled with people watching the 10 players on the court competing, working, living out their dream of playing for a championship. I loved flipping my right wrist at the top of my jump and watching the backspin of the ball gracefully rising higher and higher and then descending with a perfect ripple through white laced netting that had a fiberglass backboard behind it. I loved the Palestra. Its closed-in structure had fans on top of the court on all four sides. It was a cozy feeling with a perfect geometrical configuration for shooting jumpers. The depth perception could not be better. That week alone in the Palestra was pure joy. It was a familiar feeling being in the protective confines of a gym. Outside was a city, a campus, a life that was uncertain and unsettling. I sweated through the cruddy grey T- shirts that the equipment manager, Mike Nazerock, gave me. Mike, who every jock would come to know and love, had a patch over one eye. There was no writing on the cheap shirts, only a number indicating its size. The sweat drenched through the shirt like a wet rag; felt great. The humidity in the 45 year-old building made sure you knew how hard you were working. I dribbled in many imaginary games under many imaginary game-like circumstances that week. Seventeen seconds left, Quakers down by one --- Cotler in the corner from 20… gooooood! Quakers win the Big Five Championship! I loved that ending --- I could hear Al Meltzer in my head over and over. The only other sounds were outside my head --- the harmonious screeches of my Converse sneakers, and the pounding of the leather ball on the very hard Palestra floor --- there was no give to it like I was to find out later there was in Madison Square Garden. You jumped higher in the Garden because of that cushion of air under the hardwood. I can thank the cement like hard floor of the Palestra for my artificial right hip. 2 Truth be told, I chose Penn primarily because it was Ivy… and they had sucked at hoops for the last number of years. I thought it was my best chance to play college basketball. I was not thinking about national rankings or winning NCAA titles. Who knew the freshman coach Digger Phelps would become Notre Dame and ESPN Digger? I had 10-15 scholarship offers from some pretty good basketball programs and academic institutions. I really wanted Princeton because of Bradley but I never heard from them. It’s just as well. Things worked out fine. During my senior year of high school Penn’s coach, Dick Harter, had me come to the Palestra for a Villanova/Penn game. It was a jam packed Big Five double header with explosive fan reaction. The energy was incredible; afternoon games at Flushing High were not like this. I was sold. With the Wildcats demolishing Penn by 30 at the half, I saw a banner in the Penn section: “You may be beating us now, but you’ll be working for us later.” I was double sold. That first week at Penn was the beginning of my love affair with the Palestra. I would come to spend a couple of thousands of hours of my life there. It was a solitary first week. I also became comfortable with the campus. I walked through an empty cluster of buildings and learned where everything was. I stared at the artful and imposing Engineering buildings on those cool breezy summer evenings across from the Palestra and that huge football field where my Giants always beat the Eagles. I would sit on the benches on the main campus and look at College Hall and Van Pelt Library. I couldn’t believe I was there and all alone on that College Hall green. I wasn’t in Flushing any more with my gang of buddies and basketball mates. I didn’t know just how much I didn’t know. I didn’t have any clue what was about to happen to me, the people I would meet, the crush of school work, the uncertainty and anxiety about girls, fraternity life, debating whether I had the energy or interest to make my Finance class at Deitrich at 8 am, the crazy and arbitrary events of life that were ahead, the absurdity, logic and illogic of it all. I was lucky. I met and was guided by a number of special and accomplished people during those four years. Some of them were as loving, caring and thoughtful as one can hope for. They all had an impact on me at Penn and beyond. I wish I could have realized this at the time, as much as I realize it now. More than anything I would want to thank them in person. But I can’t --- many of them have died. This is the best I can do to thank a few of them with this essay --- Irv “Moon” Mondschein, Richard “Digger” Phelps, John Wideman, Bernie Cataldo, C.J. Burnett, E. Digby Baltzell, Dick Harter, Chuck Daly, and my teammates Corky Calhoun, Bob Morse, Ron Billingslea, and Billy Walters. 3 Moon Irv Mondschein would be surprised and laugh if he saw this --- Moon was a special human being. No one laughed, smiled and was as upbeat in life as Moon. He was the first Penn person I met when I began my friendship with the Palestra. The morning after my parents drove away down Spruce Street that summer night, as I waved goodbye I felt a feeling I never knew before --- isolation. I was unmoored. I was anxious, excited, really not sure of anything. Up to this point my life was secure every day. I was a high school basketball star with many friends on and off the court. My identity and brand were established in the small world from Bayside Avenue to Union Street in Queens. I had grades, a jumper, and was All New York City third team (probably the only one with grades). Every day I studied, played ball in the school yard, which was known as “Cotler’s Court,” watched my sports and ate at my favorite hangouts. I was “solid,” as we used to say at the school yard. This first morning strolling around an empty campus, I had no brand, I didn’t know where I’d be eating, and I had no idea how smart the kids were from outside Queens, let alone, around the rest of the country.

Load more