Sports Heroes: Where Are They Now?

“Freak” The Gentle Giant

By Frederick A. Hurst

Young Russell Orr was so much taller than his young peers that they named him, “Freak,” until, at nine years old, he started playing basketball at the Dunbar Community Center under the able coaching of his mentor, Howie Edmonds. At ten years old, he was six feet tall and scored 68 points as the star player for the Dunbar Cubs. At thirteen, he played for Bethel A.M.E. in the church league. He was too tall to play in the 10-13 groups, so he coached them and played first string on the intermediate 13-16 group, where, after two years, he began a stellar career in junior high and high school basketball.

By junior high school, it was readily apparent that Russell was a gifted athlete. He won records in the 100-yard dash and the running broad jump and even tried his hand at pole vaulting. In the eighth grade, he ran and jumped twenty-six feet. It would have been a record to this day if he had not fallen backwards to a meager twenty-three feet, which, of course, still won him the contest. But it was basketball that Russell loved and upon which he focused the bulk of his athletic energy.

He was the best basketball player at Buckingham Junior High School, where he played first- string center, forward, guard, “wherever I was needed.” But Ron Grassetti, a White player and a gentleman, won the coveted Peabody award. Both Ron and Russell knew that Russell was the better player but “that was the nature of the times.”

Russell played center and forward at the High School of Commerce, starting on the varsity squad for each of his three years. He had mastered the dunk shot, which he had used since he was twelve years old. His hands were always too small to cup the ball so he would dunk it just as effectively by tucking it between his hand and his wrist. Basketball was changing from the set shot to the jump shot and Russell also made it a point to master this new shot. As he recalls, the only players who could match his jump shot skills were Amos Hill and the famous “Gimp” (Eddie Gearing).

Russell’s high school success did not go unnoticed by the crowds or the college recruiters. He had a high school average of 19 points. He made All Western Mass. for his first two years, All State for his final year, and made Bell’s Sport’s Magazine’s five best high school basketball players in the country and was voted one of five best players in the state. Russell received 150 offers to college and accepted a full scholarship to Ohio State under the legendary Bobby Knight, where he would have played in the wake of such greats as Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek. The Ohio State coaching staff visited his parents and he visited the campus, but when the administration discovered that he was married, it withdrew the scholarship. Again, it was the nature of the times. Today, the colleges would take a man with Russell’s skills even if he brought his wife and extended family with him.

Instead, Russell went on to do what so many great Black athletes of his time did. He found somewhere else to test his competitive skills. He played in the industrial league for Milton Bradley, Breck and Spaulding, where he averaged 26 points and often scored in the forties. He also played four years with a team called, “Lucky’s Paradise,” and his team won the championship three out of four times. The pain of rejection was balanced by the pleasure of playing in the a league with other area greats—Jeffrey Brace (whom he admired and modeled much of his game after), Jay Griffin, Ernie Bird, “Gimp,” Randy Smith, Eddie Tyler. They won everything! During off seasons, Russell played in Drake, Pittsfield and Daily News tournaments. Russell’s life was basketball. It “was a game that I loved. I still do.” Though he’s no longer playing organized ball, Russell is coaching youngsters from 8-12 at Third Baptist Church.

Even as he pursued the sport he loved, Russell had to work for a living. First he worked for the companies that recruited him to play basketball, but, when he was 23, Roger Williams, of CEP fame, recruited him to be one of five affirmative action hires for American Airlines, where he started as a ramp service man. He worked for several airlines in different capacities and retired in 1999 from a management position at American. But I was most impressed by the job he held when he was fourteen years old, when, at six feet, two inches, he was the envy of all of us miserable tobacco pickers, who slid on our butts for small change in the hot sun for endless hours carefully picking the three lower tobacco leaves and piling them in baskets as sticky tobacco juice dripped all over our bodies. The baskets were bound for the stacking shed where, because of his height, Russell was paid a premium salary of $100.00 a week to work in the clean, cool shade of the shed as a stacker.

Russell was born and raised in Springfield at 541 Union Street, in a house his grandfather bought in 1916 for $600.00. His ancestors were a mix of Afro-American and Pequot Indian with a sprinkle of White. Three of his ancestors were members of the 54^th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry (the “Glory Brigade” of movie fame that suffered so much in the Civil War battle for Fort Wagner). He was raised under the watchful eyes of two caring parents, whose steady encouragement he credits for his success in basketball and in life in general. Russell recalls that his father labored on the second shift at Fisk and missed all except one of his high school basketball games. His father passed, but Russell, the gentle giant, cares for his ailing mother, and he is doing everything possible to pass his parents’ values on to his nine kids, 18 grandkids and 23 great- grandkids. n