Sadly, the visionary and community-minded young educator – whose name was Holcombe Rucker – was not among the assembled multitude when Connie Hawkins evoked such admiration. (Mr. Rucker’s “village” lost him to cancer in 1955.)
And Friday we lost The Hawk, whose tale is so rife with tragic “what might have beens” that ol’ Will Shakespeare himself must be salivating at such tragically heroic possibility.
A high school as well as schoolyard legend, Connie Hawkins’ promising college career (he’d have been a teammate of five-time Celtic champion Don Nelson) was de-railed by a casual “shoulder-brush” with a shady character named Jack Molinas – likewise his shot at the NBA.