City Line: A lifelong love affair keeps going and going
It figures that it was basketball that first told Billy Lake something was wrong. What was up with his shooting arm? Why wasn't he jumping right?
It figures that it was basketball that first told Billy Lake something was wrong. What was up with his shooting arm? Why wasn't he jumping right?
Some guys move on from hoops in adulthood, to golf or tennis or shuffleboard or something. Billy wasn't one of those.
"We lived here," said Patti Lake Quinn, standing in her kitchen in Havertown, pointing out the back, to the playground at Annunciation BVM Church. "He'd go out there and shoot 'em up every day after work."
Billy was a vice president of a small printing company, but he had a schoolyard game. His mantra: "If you're going to play basketball, you have to throw a little flair into it."
"He used to leave the Shore because there weren't enough basketball players down there," said his brother Kevin.
This week, there was a little group sitting around the kitchen on Brookline Boulevard, in the final stages of planning for the ALS Association Greater Philadelphia Chapter 25th annual Billy Lake basketball marathon, on Oct. 15 at Haverford College.
A quarter-century since Billy died of the disease, a quarter-century of both the hoops marathon and a girls' summer league basketball league in his name.
The local ALS chapter believes the marathon is its longest-run ALS grassroots fund-raiser. It was checking but thinks it could be the longest-running one of this kind in the country. Also, the league became an institution. The numbers are down in recent years because of the dominance of AAU ball in women's hoops, but thousands, especially in Delaware County, played in the league or watched someone who did. They have heard of Billy Lake without ever knowing him.
They picked the right way to honor him. A friend even ran the name of the league by him.
"I'm still alive," Billy joked.
He'd thought he'd hurt his finger playing basketball. Then, maybe Lyme disease? The correct diagnosis came nine months later. Billy was 42 in 1992 when he died, 19 months after the diagnosis, leaving Patti and their four young children. Billy Jr. walked into the kitchen this week. It was his 25th birthday.
The fund-raiser isn't just a family affair.
"You put something out in Havertown, people will support it," Kevin Lake said. "And if you serve beer, that will help."
Next Saturday's marathon will start at Haverford College at 9 a.m. and finish at Casey's in Drexel Hill, probably going to closing. It's a marathon.
The venue for the hoops marathon has moved around from Prendie to Drexel Hill to Bonner to Haverford. Things were slowing down around the 20th, everyone was kind of thinking that might be a good time to stop. Except right then Patti contacted Haverford women's coach Bobbi Morgan.
"Within five minutes Bobbi e-mailed me back," she said.
Morgan had a player on her team with a mother who had died from ALS. This marathon has become a team project that continues.
"When we were celebrating the 20th, we were looking for something big," said Dan Quinn, who married Patti Lake about a decade ago. It was kind of perfect, since Dan already was a coach in the Billy Lake League. (To the consternation of the rest of the table, they don't mind pointing out Dan's team won the senior division this summer and Patti's team won the junior division.)
Around the time they talked to Morgan, they'd also contacted St. Joseph's coach Phil Martelli, and Martelli got high school teams involved. So there will be action on two courts throughout the morning and afternoon, with high school teams and also groups of hoop players that took part over the years. The oldest has been a regular in a weekly pickup game for six decades and still throws elbows.
They're not sure how long they'll keep going, except every year Joan from the ALS Association calls full of enthusiasm, asking what the plans are, and they get back around the kitchen table, updating their website, BillyLake.com
"Everybody works and knows what they're going to do, you don't even have to tell them," Kevin Lake said. "They show up and say, "Oh, I'm going to do hot dogs.' "
Over the years, they figure they've raised over $500,000 for ALS research. And a man who loved basketball still is at the center of it. The Monsignor Bonner Hall of Fame is inducting a new class in a couple of weeks. Billy Lake never played organized hoops for the school team, but he is among this year's inductees.
@jensenoffcampus