Ron Gilliam's deft shooting helped make him a basketball legend in Elmira and Brockport. His touch was even greater when it came to those who knew him best.
"Most people will have known our father as Ron the super athlete," said Ron Gilliam Jr., one of his five sons. "I always thought he was better as a father. As great as people gave him credit for things he did on the basketball court, the football field, the track, I always thought he was the best dad at home. I would never trade a moment of the home time for anything."
Ron Gilliam Sr. died Saturday at age 69 of an apparent heart attack suffered in his Ithaca home.
He is largely known in Elmira for averaging 33 points per game as a senior at Elmira Free Academy and still remembered at what is now known as The College at Brockportfor leading the Golden Eagles to the NCAA Division II Final Four in 1973. To this day, no player in Brockport history has surpassed the 27.3 points per game Gilliam averaged during his two-season career there.
Gilliam later shined as a professional playerin France before returning to Elmira, where he worked at the Neighborhood House (now called the Ernie Davis Community Center). He spent the last several years of his life in Ithaca, where he continued to help children and others in need through his work with the MacCormick Secure Center, the Southside Community Center and the Red Cross Homeless Shelter.
Gilliam Jr. said his dad was a mentor to any kid who crossed his path.
"He used sports to engage them, but then it was more a conversation that they saw that was genuine, wanting to bestow something on them," Gilliam Jr. said.
Injury a temporary setback
Gilliam Sr. grew up in Jones Court, a low-rent apartment complex in Elmira. He was the second-oldest of nine children and serious about sports at an early age. His younger brother, Dan, said Ron was adamant people get him the ball during pick-up basketball games so he could work on his shot. In two-on-two football, Ron was always the quarterback. Said Dan of his brother: "Always wanted to be the leader."
In track, he broke the Section 4 record in the long jump. His sophom*ore basketball season included a 47-point game.As a junior, he led Elmira Free Academy's boys basketball team to a 22-0 record and a sectional title, averaging 21.6 points per game. The next fall, Gilliam was hit high and low as he was tackled in a football game, leading to a devastating leg injury that shelved plans for him to compete in the Junior Olympics, ended his promising football career and kept him off the basketball court for more than a year.
"It killed me when I couldn't play," he said later. "For the first time in my life, I broke down in tears."
He returned to the court midway through the 1967-68 season during a post-graduate year. Gilliam scored 33 points per game, earned first-team all-state honors and led Elmira to 11 consecutive victories, along with another sectional championship. He finished with 1,089 career points, including a school-record 48 in one game.
Gilliam ended up at the University at Buffalo, where he averaged better than 20 points per game before leaving after his one varsity season. His first year there was spent with the freshman team because freshmen were not allowed to play at the varsity level then.
Gilliam and Guy Vickers, who played on the freshman team,were part of an ongoing protest movement by black students on campus, but they became targets of abuse by the group leading the protests after rejoining the teams.
"They gave Ron an ultimatum. Either you boycott or we're going to do something harmful to you," said Dan Gilliam.
Dan said Ron's apartment was ransacked and he was encouraged by Buffalo coach Len Serfustini to transfer. Gilliam contacted Brockport coach Mauro Panaggio, who died in April of this year at age 90, and ended up making the trip east to Brockport along with Vickers.
Soaring with the Eagles
Gilliam's two seasons at Brockport produced a combined 45-9 recordand left a lasting imprint on the program's record book. He still ranks eighth on the career chart with 1,447 points despite his abbreviated career. The 833 points he scored in 1972-73 are more than 200 beyond any other player in team history. Three times Gilliam scored 40 or more points in a game, with his quick release and high-arcing jump shot a great weapon before the 3-point line arrived. He was a second-team All-American as a senior.
"Ron has great confidence in his shooting and when he’s right, he’ll be hitting from 25-30 feet out," Panaggio said at the time.
During that 1972-73 season Gilliam also had 183 assists. That number ranks second in Golden Eagles history to the 228 his brother had that season, with Ron on the receiving end of a bunch of those passes. Dan said Ron taught him to get the ball into a shooter's hands in the best position to score.
The brothers talked then about the three D's: the desire to be the best, dedication to practice and discipline. Before games, Dan saw in Ron the focus that helped make him such a dominant player.
"He would play the game before the game," Dan said. "He's sitting there already dressed, I'm hot-dogging in front of the mirror, combing my hair, whatever, and I'm watching him through the mirror. He's just sitting here like this (looking straight ahead intently) and he's meditating."
Professional success
If there was one thing that worked against Ron Gilliam's hopes for an NBA career, it was his relatively small 5-foot-9stature. He was picked by the NBA's Buffalo Braves in the 14th round of the 1973 draft but was cut in rookie tryout camp. Jack Ramsay, the Braves' coach, helped steer Smith to professional basketball in France after he played two rookie games with the Philadelphia 76ers.
Gilliam proved he could play with top talent in college. While at Buffalo, he scored 30 points in an 83-75 loss to a Buffalo State team led by future NBA standout Randy Smith. Also during that 1969-70 season at Buffalo, Gilliam made a lasting impression on Calvin Murphy, a standout at the time for Niagara University and a future member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Murphy and Gilliam both scored 22 points in a Niagara win.
Greg Jones followed the Gilliam brothers from Elmira to Brockport. He shared a story with Dan Gilliam this week, reminding him the brothers were his heroes while also bringing up his own stint at the Calvin Murphy Basketball Camp in Houston.
"When (Murphy) found out I grew up with Ron Gilliam, he told me stories after stories about how Ron torched him at Niagara," Jones wrote to Dan.
Ron Gilliam went on to do the same to players overseas.
"He was very humble about it," Dan said. "He didn't come say, 'Hey, look what I did.'
"When you have certain people that have done things, they can be bigger than their city. He never let anyone feel like he thought he was bigger than them or where he was from. He was ultimately proud of being an Elmiran and helping anyone from Elmira be a better Elmiran."
Family first
Family was always at the forefront for Ron Gilliam, who took over the role of disciplinarian and protective father figure after his older brother, Robert, went to Vietnam.
Dan Gilliam and his sister, Linda Truesdale, both recalled an incident that displayed Ron's love of his family and the tough home life they had at times.
"One evening my brother (Robert) was home from Vietnam and Ron was home," Dan recalled. "Our dadcame in and started a ruckus with my mother and shot an ashtray at a glass mirror behind my mother and broke it. The glass stuck to my mother’s back while she was breastfeeding my twin sisters.
"We heard all that commotion and my mother called us out. ‘Ronnie, get out here and help me.’ We came out there in the living room and saw her bent over with the two girls and the glass sticking in her back. It was the first time I saw my two older brothers stick up to my dad. They told him to get out and they were about to beat him up."
Dan said he remembered Ron getting whipped so hard by his dad there were welts covering his body. That led Henry Hughes, a vice principal at EFA, to have a talk with their father. Hughes also often offered rides to Ron's siblings so they could watch him play basketball, including games at the college level.
Ron Gilliam Jr. and his dad often bonded over highly competitive games of backgammon. Late in life Ron spent nearly every day with those twin sisters, Jean and Jeanette, along with other family members. Truesdale said her brother was very dedicated to his son, Robert, who has some developmental challenges.
"He was like a third appendage to Ronnie," she said. "Where Ronnie went, Robert went. But that's how he was. When he embraced somebody, they were like a third appendage.
"With the great-nieces and nephews, a lot of the things they got were from Uncle Ron. They didn't know the icon on the basketball court, but they knew the icon, Uncle Ron, who poured into their lives and tried to just tell them about what they need to do in order to be successful. He just made an indelible impact on their lives.
"Even the kids at the community center. He was always trying to mentor somebody's kid. ... I think when the knees and stuff start going, you mourn that part of your life, but you use it as a way to show somebody else that there's more than just basketball."
Even during his college days, Gilliam understood that.
"When I was 10 or 11, Ernie Davis used to come home from college with John Mackey. Davis was my idol," Gilliam said back then. "One time when I was walking past a playground, I heard them say, ‘That’s Ron Gilliam.’ That made me feel good. But just names aren’t enough. A lot of athletes have been forgotten.”
Ron Gilliam made sure he didn't become one of those forgotten athletes.
"He not only went to the next level playing in Europe, when he played in leagues against big-name guys, he held his own," Dan Gilliam said. "He made it. He finally reached the plateau of being a consummate professional. And he did it in many realms. He did it on the court, he did it off the court, he did it with his family, he did it with friends. That's the Ron Gilliam, the Hall of Fame brotherhood, that I admire."
Funeral services
Funeral services will be held at noon Friday at His Tabernacle Church in Horseheads. The family will receive friends at the church from 11 a.m. until the time of the service. Burial will be private.
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