Al Hamik devotes column to our Jerry King (Posted 6/23/09)

Saturday, September 27, 2008

By Al Hamnik
Times Columnist | Tuesday, June 23, 2009 |

Jerry King might not have been alive today to talk about how basketball saved him while growing up on Calumet City's notorious "Sin Strip."

He ran with a gang called The Little Demons.

On almost a regular basis, they were caught raising hell and placed in a holding cell at the police station until their families came to get them. Fortunately, his uncle was a Cal City cop.

"I was Jerry King, the hoodlum," he said, and not proud of it.

King and older brother Norbie were both raised by their grandparents, a blue-collar couple committed to working around the clock to provide three squares a day for other people's children.

"My dad left when I was 3 months old and my mom was an alcoholic and a drug addict for 26 years," King said. "We ran those streets until 2, 3, 4 o'clock in the morning. Stealing and hanging out with the winos was a way of life. That's what we did for fun and nobody cared because everybody else on the streets was gambling and watching the strip shows.

"It was an easy place to fly by night."

King could step outside his home and smell the vomit and cigar smoke wafting from the nearby Yo-Yo Club, Bar X Ranch, Rip Tide, Zig-Zag Tavern, Follies Brassiere and The Playhouse.

"It was like two-and-a-half blocks of Las Vegas," he recalled. "There were five houses on The Strip and mine was one of 'em, right across from The Playhouse. Cynthia The Body and Sally Rand were there. As a matter of fact, Cynthia The Body did a fire-eating exhibition at my 10th birthday party.

"It beats having a clown."

The Times' recent series on "The Sin Strip" brought back a mixed bag of memories for King, who, thankfully, met industrial arts teacher/coach Andy Ramian while a student at Wentworth School.

Ramian saw great athletic potential in the skinny little kid and like an eagle swooping down on its prey, snatched King off the streets, pulled strings, and got him into Bishop Noll. The other alternative was T.F. North, but Ramian told King he wouldn't get the same media coverage there.

Despite Norbie playing football for the Meteors, Jerry picked Noll, where he starred for John Dermody and to this day, doesn't know who paid his tuition, guessing it probably was Ramian.

King knew one thing for sure: He didn't want to end up working in the steel mills like his grandfather did. If basketball could be his meal ticket out, why not?

Following his graduation from Noll in 1965, King attended Trinidad Junior College in Colorado -- UCLA and UNLV had quit recruiting him because his grades were so poor -- and he finished up at Western Colorado State College. Along the way, his game earned him countless honors and awards.

"Andy Ramian ... the guy definitely was my dad," King said. "Even while I was in college, he had my report cards sent to him, too, to check up on me."

Eventually, King returned to the Region, coaching boys basketball from 1970 through 1982 at Whiting, Noll and then Crown Point. He later teamed with Purdue Calumet to hold his "Strickly Shooting" camps before retiring and moving to Anthem, Ariz., where he now lives with his wife of 40 years, Bunny.

"I'd go back 20 years later to those same bars and see the same guys, fatter now and bald, sitting there going: 'Oh, I could've been this or I could've done that,'" said King, who might've been singing the same blues.

"If it wasn't for basketball, who knows? I might not be here now."

This column solely represents the writer's opinion. Reach him at al.hamnik@nwi.com.

Jerry King and Bunny may be reached at  jkingaz @ qwest.net.