CLASS OF 1953 WHO'S WHO & WHERE - The City College Fund

Herbert Hershfang, B.A.: My most vivid memory of ouryears at City is of its NIT basketball game with Kentucky at MadisonSquare Garden in March of our freshman year, 1949-50. Cityhad earlier beaten San Francisco, the defending NIT champion.But, with no national all-star, and not being listed among the top20 college teams, City had a big challenge ahead. They were facinga team that had won the prior year’s NCAA championship, was theSoutheast Conference champion and had at least two national allstars—itsplaymaking guard Ralph Beard and its seven-foot center,Bill Spivey. (Our tallest player, I recall, was 6’5” Ed Roman; 6’2”Ed Warner was our most skilled rebounder.) Most of us lucky enough to be there, cheering allegaroogaroo gerra, lost our voices, as for seven minutes during the game, Kentucky couldn’t advance the ballpast midcourt. By the end, City had inflicted the worst defeat ever on an Adolph Rupp-coached team,winning 89-50.I used this event to introduce Marvin Kalb as guest of one of the monthly dinner meetings of judges inthe Boston area about 20 years ago. Marvin, Class of ’51, had gone on to be renowned as, among othernotable achievements, a CBS foreign affairs commentator; at the time of the dinner, he was head ofthe Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. “Glad you brought that up, Herb,”he responded, adding a memorable coda. Marvin, covering the team for “The Campus” newspaper,was allowed to remain in the dressing room as Nat Holman, City’s famous coach, delivered his team“message” — even if I can’t vouch for exactness: “Guys, you’ve done great and I’m proud of you. Butwe’ve never been up against as talented a team as Kentucky and this looks like the end of the road forus. And I’m especially sorry since, as you probably know, Adolph Rupp hates Jews and Negroes.”Although 63 years have passed, I still have fond memories of my work on “Observation Post” and ofmy very helpful and fun colleagues, among them (and here I wish my memory were fuller): Nat Halebsky,Martin Deutsch, Herman Cohen, Al Fiering, Walter Porges, Hank Wexler, Dick Kaplan, Marv Kitman.