SPEAKER_06 0:14

Welcome to the Pan Am Podcast, brought to you by the Pan Am Museum in Garden City, New York. This podcast and our museum are dedicated to celebrating the legacy of the world's most iconic airlock, Pan American World Airways. My name is Tom Betty, and I'm the host of this program. Thank you for joining us. This program is sponsored by the generous support of Mr. Adam Aaron, the CEO of AMC Entertainment Holdings, Incorporated. The Pan Am Museum Foundation is a nonprofit organization. Please visit our website for more information at the Pan Ammuseum.org. Again, our website is the Panamuseum.org. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. If you are using Apple Podcasts, please consider leaving a review. It will help others discover this program. If you're not familiar with Pan Am, welcome. We are honored to have you here, and for you to learn about what we're all about. If you already know of Pan Am, worked for, or flown on the airline, or just love our history, it's good to be with you again. So with that, let's get this episode in the air, so to speak. Welcome aboard your Pan American jet clipper. And I must say that this is definitely in the top 10 of my favorite Pan Am stories. And until now, this story is not widely known. Junius Kellogg was born on March 16, 1927, in Haverstraw, New York to Lucy Lee Williams and Theodore Kellogg. At a very young age, the family moved to Portsmouth, Virginia. Young Junius always excelled in the classroom as an outstanding student, but also was an exceptional athlete in every sport he attempted. While in high school, Junius made the Virginia State High School All-Star team, as well as earning high marks in academics. After graduating in 1946, he was awarded a scholarship to West Virginia State. However, he was drafted into the United States Army after only one semester. While in the military in 1948, Junius was named First Army All-Around Athlete. The next year he was offered a basketball scholarship to Manhattan College as the school's first African American scholarship recipient. When eligible to play in the 1950-51 season, the 6'10 Kellogg made an immediate impact on the team. But in January 1951, after reporting that someone was attempting to bribe him, Junius helped authorities uncover the biggest betting scandal in collegiate basketball history, and was subsequently hailed a national hero for his honesty and courage. But despite this, a career in the NBA eluded him, mainly because being the whistleblower embarrassed some of the league's executives and star players that were likely involved in past betting schemes. After graduation in June 1953, he was invited to join the Harlem Globetrotters, even though he still dreamed of becoming a professional basketball player in the NBA. That dream was shattered and his life forever changed on April 2nd, 1954, when a horrific car accident left him paralyzed from the shoulders down. While recovering in the Bronx Veterans Hospital, Junius was approached to be head coach of the Pan Am Jets, a wheelchair basketball team sponsored by Pan American World Airways. In addition, Pan Am offered him a job in the accounting department. He became the first African American coach in the history of wheelchair basketball and with the Pan Am Jets brought the sport to people throughout the world. Junius coached the United States wheelchair basketball team to a gold medal at the Tokyo 1964 Paralympic Games. Let's take a listen to a two-minute clip from the United States Olympic Paralympic Museum in Colorado Springs. There is a link in the episode description to watch this video.

SPEAKER_07 5:58

So I've never heard of anything like this before.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

Kellogg rejected the offer, alerting his coach Ken Norton and the district attorney of that fateful meeting.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

You know the young man had to be afraid.

SPEAKER_03 6:19

Soon after, police uncovered widespread point shaving and gambling in the college basketball landscape. Over 32 players across the nation admitted to taking bribes to fix over 80 games.

SPEAKER_09 6:42

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

I like to put it in context of being a Jasper. What does it mean to be a Jasper? To be admirable. And that tells you the type of person he was, the type of man he wanted to be, to stand up to all those injustices and just be the man that his family probably brought him up to be takes a lot to stand up and do that in the face of all that adversity.

SPEAKER_00 7:07

I think the story here is about integrity, character, honesty, and courage. That was what it's all about. He's my role model. He's also my hero.

SPEAKER_03 7:21

Junius Kellogg refused to stain his integrity in an era of perverse gambling and racial tensions. Because to him, integrity was never optional.

SPEAKER_06 7:33

Inspired by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, he left coaching and devoted his professional life to community activism through the New York City Development Agency and the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association. Junius Kellogg has been inducted into the National Wheelchair Basketball Association's Hall of Fame as well as the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame. He died at age 71 on September 16, 1998. Now on to our interview. As he made the transition to being a full-time writer, the years spent in biological research proved a valuable asset in hunting down details and interviewing hundreds of people. He has a particular fondness for American stories of hidden historical figures. Bruce has authored numerous nonfiction articles on topics as diverse as dogs, sports ethics, gardening, and negotiation skills. He is the author of six books and is currently writing the book Juni and Me about the 48-year friendship between Junius Kellogg and his best friend, Bob Otton. Bruce holds two degrees in the sciences and an MBA in management. He was also certified as a New York City paramedic. He now lives in Denver, Colorado. Welcome to the program, sir.

SPEAKER_04 9:27

Thank you very much. I appreciate your time and I'm glad to be here.

SPEAKER_06 9:31

So, Junius Kellogg, tell us a little bit why you picked this particular gentleman to study.

SPEAKER_04 9:39

It was kind of an accident. As a matter of fact, I was I was certain that there had been a book written about his life because he was such a key figure, especially in sports, in the early 1950s. And as I began to search for books, I lo and behold, there was nothing really written about his life. I am a writer primarily interested in the topic of what I call uncovering hidden American stories. Interesting. I love especially marginalized people, people who are lost to history and to time. And I just like to reach back and find folks. And so given that, I started on the topic of Junius Kellogg, and I reached out to a place called Manhattan College, which is where Junius Kellogg went to school. Prior to the time he went to Manhattan College, he was born in 1927. He had a very hard life. The family was very poor. He was the oldest of 11 children. He grew up in Portsmouth, Virginia. Everything about Junius' life, as you can imagine, was defined by racism. And so as he was growing up, the rampant racism of the day affected everything in terms of he and his family. He was a very good basketball player, especially since their grand facilities at this uh so-called separate and equal educational system was a packed dirt uh court out and back of a school and a and a couple of beat-up old backboards. Nevertheless, Junius Kellogg was in a sense a freak of nature. He was in in in team pictures of him going back to his high school football team and his high school uh uh swimming team, whatever he was doing, he always towered over everybody else. Uh it's it's very easy to pick Junius out uh in a team picture. How tall was he? That's kind of debatable. I I believe it was 6'10 when he was uh fully, fully uh uh grown. Um some of the texts said 6'8, uh, however, uh, and and his very good friend Bob Otten, who I will talk about in a minute, uh, Bob and Junius remained friends for 48 years, which given the the era, the time, was quite unusual for a white basketball player and a black basketball player to uh form a friendship back in 1951 and lasted all the way until 1998. But the interesting thing about, in terms of uh the context of what you just asked, Bob was six feet six inches approximately. And the first time he uh looked, he he saw Junius Kellogg, and Junius Kellogg came through the uh dorm room door, uh he said, I was looking up to Junius Kellogg like I was back in Cub Scouts. I mean, the man was huge. Uh, he he barely made it through the doorway. And so I think the 6'10 figure is is much more uh is is much more uh telling, much more typical. Junius, uh, as I mentioned, uh um went through quite an ordeal before he ever got to Manhattan College. He uh he didn't have any plans after high school. I mean, who is going to give him a chance coming from Portsmouth, Virginia in a segregated school? It was West Virginia State University, and that's a historically black uh college or university. And um, he lasted one semester before he was drafted by the Army. And uh so he packed his bags, went off uh to the Army, and he was drafted and went into the Army for about three years. Um, and he became a platoon sergeant, but during that time he kept working on his basketball skills. By the time he was um he was released from the army uh in uh 1948, he was voted the first Army all-around athlete. That's how that's how good he was. And he was not only great in basketball, he was great in football, he was great in running, he did some boxing, he he liked to play ping pong. Um, he was sort of like the Jim Thorpe of his era in a way. Um, he kept uh excelling at every sport, but it was basketball he liked the best. He finished with basketball in the army, and he had something like 90 offers from various uh uh various universities. They all wanted Junius. But let's remember that uh Junius, uh, and and this goes back to my my observation about about the era, racism was rampant. We don't think of it quite as as he might back in the day, but he wanted to go to a school that was in a larger city, and he wanted to go to a school that had a uh a large African-American community. Then parenthetically, his coach in the army happened to be the brother-in-law of Ken Norton, who is the head coach of Manhattan College. So he referred Junius, and Junius liked it very much. Uh, Junius came from a deeply religious family with a very with very close bonds. And as a result, in this family, they wanted him or to go to a religious-oriented school if he wanted to do so. And that's exactly what he did. He started at Manhattan College in 1941, and then he uh was ineligible for the first year because of the West Virginia State University. Then he began to play in 1950, had an immediate impact. And let's just give a little background because this is going to come into play as we talk about the Pan Am Jets. In the early 1950s, uh polio, which is again rearing its ugly head, polio was uh kind of the it was the the COVID of its day, except it was in many ways much more serious. So that will have an influence here. He was a World War II veteran. However, in his time in the army, even though uh Truman uh supposedly integrated uh the army, um, he was subject to racism there. So he started at Manhattan College, had an immediate impact. Now we come to uh a date in history, uh January the 16th, 1951, or actually a few days before that. Junius was a very honest and upright, noble person. And a teammate from the year before came into his dorm room and he was shocked by seeing this teammate walk through the front door because this teammate was an out and out racist, was uh rided, uh rode Junius constantly uh with other teammates, making fun of him, etc. And he couldn't understand why this man would come to see him. Um, but he let the guy talk, the man's name, whose name was Henry Poppy, uh said, Hey Junius, how would you like to make a thousand dollars? And all you have to do is miss some baskets, throw the ball out of bounds. Now, at that time, and this is why this is so significant in terms of Junius Kellogg's life, at that time, a lot of people being coaches, universities, even the newborn NCAA and other basketball institutions, the NBA, they all knew that what they call point shaving was going on. There was a published spread in the newspapers. And so um let's say a school was supposed to win by 10 points, and instead somebody fixed it, so maybe the school won by 14 points or six points, whatever the gamblers and mobsters wanted them to do. Junius turned around the next day. He couldn't sleep. First of all, Manhattan College is a very good school. He said, I'm a poor black man from Portsmouth, Virginia. This is the chance of a lifetime. Secondly, Junius came from this family I referred to that was deeply religious and had a great sense of moral value. He said, I can't do this. And no matter the out matter what the outcome is, I'm gonna report this. He reported it to his coach, and lo and behold, uh, Tom, this set in into effect a uh a whole set of dominoes falling on each other. The coach called or the chief of detectives, who was his friend. Chief of detectives called the chief of police, they called the DA's office. The DA went back to the university. The next day, Junius did very well in a in a basketball game, but the next day, the coach essentially told him, Hey, why don't you meet me in my office tonight for an important meeting? So they met for a meeting, and lo and behold, it wasn't just uh it wasn't just Junius' coach, it was an entire cast of characters. Uh huh. They basically, and this was Dick Tracy stuff back in the day.

SPEAKER_06 20:13

And for for our listeners, what is the the year?

SPEAKER_04 20:17

This is 1951, early in 1951, January 1951. Well, he blew the whistle. Now, during this one particular game, Junius was awful. He really was. He missed passes, he he he tripped over his own feet. He was so bad that the coach had to sit him down a few times, and a backup center uh helped them win the game. The point is, in Junius' mind, listen, you know, everybody's gonna be out to get me. There were mobsters in Madison Square Garden who were taking bets. He said, if I if I'd blow this opportunity, who knows? I could I could wind up in a bad position here. Nevertheless, nevertheless, against everybody's uh uh expectations, Manhattan College won the game. And uh Junius admitted he had very little to do with the victory that night, but what was significant is that he stood up to the mob when everybody else was afraid to do so. Now the name Junius Kellogg resonated or reverberated across the entire world of sports. Junius is in a sense or became uh defined by his willingness to stand up to all of these people. And it's very interesting. When all was said and done, something like in excess of 85 basketball games were fixed, 35 players and mobsters were indicted, some went to jail. Not surprising, the ones who went to jail were the African American players when they did nothing more or less than what anybody else did. But this was the mentality of the era. And so Junius Kellogg became defined by this moment. Well, I should say, I should back up and say that his friend Bob Otten uh was the one who told me about the fact that Junius was drafted again just months after he uncovered this scandal. And why would he uh Bob Otten felt, his friend Bob Otten felt that it was revenge in a way. There were politicians on the take. There were mobsters giving them money, a lot of gamblers. That's Bob's theory. It's never been proven. The other thing is that although many uh uh universities were implicated in this, there were many that weren't. There is there are records of, let's say, some detectives intentionally knocking recordings uh off the table, breaking them, so the other colleges uh wouldn't wouldn't be included. Uh, there was also pressure at the end, and this is very significant. The NBA wanted no part of this scandal because the NBA had professional basketball players in it who had played at the collegiate level. And there's every possibility that they were trying to influence games as well. But Junius Kellogg blew up uh this entire thing. Uh Junius Kellogg graduated. There was a very touching conversation between he and Bob Otten. Uh Junius came on campus after he graduated and he said, Bob, um, I don't know what to do with myself. I cannot get into the NBA because of my color. The NBA had at that time had a few black players, but not that many. And it also is theorized that one of the reasons that Junius could not get into the NBA wasn't so much his color, but the fact that this guy was an honest guy. And there were influences that said maybe we shouldn't have such an honest guy here because he's likely to uh blow the whistle on other dishonesty. Nevertheless, he could not um he could not get any teams to take an interest in him. What occurred uh was that um the Harlem Globe Trotters had an interest in Junius. And he really didn't want to go to the Harlem Globe Trotters because he said they're gonna make me into a clown. It's a clown show. But Junius and Bob had this discussion, and Bob said to Junius, you know what? Get your strength up, get better, get more fit, get your skills down better. The NBA cannot exclude black players forever. They will notice you and you will have a shot. And Junius said, you know, it's not a bad idea. Let me think about it. And that's exactly what happened. There were something like 57 players who tried out for the um Harlem Globetrotters in his class, if you will. He made the team. He made the team. Now, this is where this is where this story starts to weave in to Pan Am. It's an interesting association. Here's an important date. Um, April the 2nd, 1954. Junius Kellogg and a teammate were um driving down to Arkansas to participate in a pickup game. Um, the the players they needed to raise money until the regular Harlem Globetrotters season started. Um money was not money for sports was not exactly what we have in this day and age. Um, the guy's name was Boyd Bowie. He was known as the one-arm wonder. He was the driver, and Junius's six foot ten frame was trying to cram into the passenger seat of this beat-up old Chrysler. Who knows what year it was? It could have been a 49 or 48, but if you've ever seen an old Chrysler, they look more like tanks. Um, and there were three people in the back, and they were anxious. They were driving from Chicago down to Pine Bluff, Arkansas. And um uh this guy, Boyd Bowie, who only had one arm, mind you, um uh went to pass uh another vehicle at a high rate of speed. He lost control, the car started to flip. It flipped five times.

SPEAKER_06 27:21

Oh my.

SPEAKER_04 27:23

Of the people in the car, the three guys in the back, Boyd Bowie in the driver's seat, and Junius Kellogg. Junius Kellogg was the one who was very badly injured.

SPEAKER_05 27:36

Oh no.

SPEAKER_04 27:37

Junius Kellogg um almost went into, not almost, he went into a coma. And the people on the scene said, is he alive yet? Does he even have a chance? And they didn't know. The ambulance, the ambulance uh people, um, I don't, I can't even call them paramedics in that day or emts. They were just drivers. The the key thing here is that they treated Junius as though he was a living person and not someone who had passed away. They put Junius on the the door of the car. That's how badly mangled it was, carried him to the ambulance, tied his legs to the ambulance because ambulances weren't built to carry six foot ten athletes, and took him to the Davis Hospital uh in Arkansas, where he hovered between life and death, and then they transferred him to the um the VA hospital in Little Rock, Arkansas. And they was nine, it was 1954 technology, where they put his head in the halo. He was completely immobilized. His mother, who was the rock of his life, she scraped together the airfare. I don't know what airline, and probably not Pan Am, but she scraped together the air, the money to make it to a hospital. And they basically told her, Mrs. Kellogg, um, prepare for the worst. But she was determined that he was going to live. And so she sat by his side. This is the kind of family this was, or most any family, but she sat by him his side 14 to 16 hours a day. She wasn't naive.

SPEAKER_06 29:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 29:34

But she said, um she she said that uh this is um this is my mission. My mission is to see you to be at least able to sit up in a wheelchair. And uh no one believed that that could happen.

SPEAKER_06 29:52

So he's in a coma right now in the hospital. I know he's in a coma. Um do they know that he wouldn't be able to walk again?

SPEAKER_04 30:00

No, um, as a matter of fact, um, and this is something that uh a theme that's that's quite interesting. Junius became sort of a publicity tool. I hate to say it. I mean it happens now, but um it happened a lot then. Um, Junius Kellogg was a 1951 hero. He he was a 1950s hero. He was a veteran, he stood up for morality uh and all of that stuff. And so the reports that initially came out of the hospital, and frankly, the Little Rock Hospital, even though uh President Truman had said, well, we're going to integrate the troops, etc., the hospital itself was segregated. It was it was Arkansas in the year was in the 50s. In the deep south, it was 1954. I mean, um, and even though um, you know, it's the whole thing between uh what is it, du jour and de facto segregation, um even though it wasn't officially supposed to be, it was. And so um Junius is hovering here between life and death. And his mother's belief, his mother's belief helped save them. And we talk about some of the nightmares he had as he was, and and in one nightmare he was screaming. And so the first miracle that happened was the doctor came in, he said, Junius, if you can scream, I can take the trach tube out. And that's what he did. Junius was afraid that he would choke to death, but that didn't happen. And then the second thing that happened was you know, you remember names when you do a book like this. You sometimes can't remember why. But uh but a hospital attendant named Inez Faubusch, who just passed away at 103 or 104, looked down at his hand. He said, She said, Junius, you're moving your thumb. And the doctor said, impossible, impossible. You can't be moving your thumb, he's paralyzed. And this talks to your question. And um, so she worked with Junius, and lo and behold, he first moved his thumb and then his fingers, and then his hands, and then his arms a little bit. And a little bit later on, he started to he had some tightening in his shoulder. Now he shouldn't have felt anything, but they were working with him in rehab, and he said, I don't care how much, I don't care how much this hurts me, work my shoulder. And he got feelings back in his shoulder. So to answer your question, no, he never walked, but he did regain much more than they thought. He had a ruptured spinal cord, it wasn't severed. Now, who knows in 2022, maybe they could have gotten more function, but this was a long time ago.

SPEAKER_06 33:06

And how old was he in 1954?

SPEAKER_04 33:09

27, 28 years old. He was still a fairly young man, but when he joined Manhattan College coming out of the army, he had already gone through three years, he was already 24, 25 years of age. He wasn't by sports standards, uh and he wasn't exactly young. Well, um what happened was he was staying down in the in the um in the uh Arkansas VA, the Little Rock VA, and the press was reporting, oh Junius is happy and he's making progress. They were they were taking pictures of Junius standing at the parallel bars, and they said Junius can't walk very well, he can't walk far far, but he can take a couple of steps. That was pretty much a patent lie. And Junius, one day, about a year later, um uh this would have been around 1955, uh around March of 1955, he called up Ken Norton at Manhattan College and he said, please get me out of here. Use your connections. I helped basketball, I helped Manhattan College redeem its name, I helped the NCAA, I helped um the future NBA, please get me out of here and transfer me up to the Bronx VA, at least. So I can get back to Harlem and I can get back to my friends. And within a very short time, they transferred him up there. Now, here is where slowly Junius Kellogg begins to meet Pan Am.

SPEAKER_06 34:59

And this is a great spot to take a quick break with a commercial from 1957.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

Pan American, world's most experienced airline. You can be in the case. Listen, listen, let's see what it is, slipper slippers. And so easy to get to when you go to the Mexican, the world's most experienced airline.

SPEAKER_06 35:42

Welcome back to our interview with author Bruce Wolk on the incredible story of basketball legend Junius Kellogg.

SPEAKER_04 35:52

There was a gentleman who's now lost to history named Bernie Hangber, H-A-N-G-B-E-R, who is an administrator at the Veterans Administration Hospital. And despite everything that the papers said, Junius isn't Junius was normally a very happy, good-natured person, was in depression. Who wouldn't be? This was a world-class athlete. Um, not only he was, we haven't even gotten into the fact, Tom, that he was a scholar as well. Um, he he loved sciences, he loved English literature. Um, but in terms of sports, Junius uh had every intention of trying to continue on with sports, at least for a little while.

SPEAKER_06 36:39

I was going to ask you what he was studying in college.

SPEAKER_04 36:44

Um, primarily physical education, because that's what they said he should be studying. What Junius really loved were a lot of these other courses. However, he it was very funny uh because uh Bob Otten, who is his roommate, um uh Bob Otten, who was raised um as a Catholic in a German household, was struggling with German and with Catholic church history, whereas Junius was breezing through all of this stuff. And um so um Junius said, Don't worry, Bob, keep plugging away. You'll get there. And that's exactly what he did. Um, so um Junius there is in in this situation of depression. The brothers from um from Manhattan College visited him and tried to help him out of his depression. But this guy, Bernie Hangberg, said, you know, I know somebody. His name is Saul Welger, W E L G E R, but but it's it was pronounced Welger, Welger with the J, the J sound. He was at that time working for Pan Am World Airways. Now, here is another influence from the 1950s, again coming into play that I mentioned at the very beginning. Um, Saul uh had polio. Saul was a tremendous athlete. He had tremendous upper body strength. And so he took to wheelchair sports, especially basketball. And uh Junius, uh Junius, of course, was the the former Division I athlete, the former Harlem Globetrotter. Um and um uh Bernie said, Saul, why don't you go to why don't you go to the Bronx VA and just get to know Junius and and and become his friend because Junius loves um athletics so much. And that's what they did. Now, let's talk about Pan Am a little bit. And this is perhaps the most exciting hidden part of this story, at least for me, and Pan Am is concerned. Um again, uh there are people kind of lost time, but it's it's very interesting. There is uh, and she's still very much alive, and a wonderful lady named Patsy Maguire. She was the daughter of John Maguire, who was assistant the assistant controller of Pan Am Airways, and she contracted polio, as did so many children of that era. Now, the controller is a larger-than-life character by the name of John S. Woodbridge. Uh, John S. Woodbridge um could be the subject of a Hemingway novel because he was an John Woodbridge was also an ambulance driver in World War I. And he saw many serious battlefield injuries. And and what he did was he became interested in Patsy McGuire and her paralysis at the time. She fully recovered pretty much, but he wondered all of these veterans from World War II and all of these poor souls who had polio, what can I do that will bring the airline into this situation? He went to upper management, and this is how the Pan Am Jets were started. And so around uh 1954, when Junius was injured, maybe a little bit before, the Pan Am Jets emerged as a team. Uh, they wore the Pan Am logo on their uniforms, and on the backs of their wheelchairs was also the Pan Am logo.

SPEAKER_06 40:52

That's incredible. I I would like to think that I have some knowledge of Pan American World Airways. And when we first started chatting, this was brand new to me.

SPEAKER_04 41:04

Um, it's an amazing story. Now, if we take every other accomplishment that Pan Am has done or did in its history, I can make a very good argument that Pan Am Airways is responsible for the rise and the popularity of adaptive sports in the world.

SPEAKER_06 41:28

That's fascinating.

SPEAKER_04 41:30

Not just the United States and the world, because I'll give you a few examples. We have the time. Uh, so between um uh John Woodbridge and John McGuire, they fielded uh the Pan Am Jets team and they were very good. Even more, not more amazing, they took these guys that were, let's face it, if you were in a wheelchair back then, it's not so easy now. But if you were in a wheelchair back then, you were the object of of pity.

SPEAKER_06 42:04

And then added to that, he's African-American in the 1950s.

SPEAKER_04 42:08

I also want, I also want to say that more racism uh kind of crept into the the situation as well, um, even on the team. But he gave McGuire and Woodbridge, hired these folks to be accountants, computers, or you know, very early computer support, reservations, and bookkeeping. And so they they not only had dignity of jobs, they were an athletic team. And they and they were a very interesting uh athletic team. Um, this would this would lead to uh many other things. Now, the coach of the Pan Am Jets, the original coach, decided to leave for reasons who knows, but he decided to leave. Uh, the team was without a coach. And this gentleman, Saul Welger, went to uh John McGuire and John Woodbridge, and he says, I think I have a solution for you if the man is interested. He was talking about Junius Kellogg. Took him quite a while to convince Junius to consider becoming uh even playing wheelchair basketball, uh, let alone to become a coach. Because optimism is a is a powerful thing. And Junius said, well, if I got feeling back in my shoulders and hands, maybe I can get it in my entire body and I can run up and down the court again. That never happened. And so finally Saul went to Junius and said, Junius, it couldn't hurt, could it, if you just watched a practice? Just come out and watch a practice with me. And Junius did. Immediately fell in love with the game because he saw wheelchair basketball as having the same dynamics as regular basketball. That's exactly what occurred. He fell in love with the game and he agreed, at least in part. So the critical date here is November 1956. He's on the ward of the Bronx VA and the telephone rings. And they said, Junior, Junius, you have a phone call. And of course, the guys being who they were, they were all in wheelchairs, they were all paralyzed to some degree. Um they were kidding him. Oh, you must have a bait or something like this. I can just imagine the banter uh going back and forth. Uh, but that's exactly what occurred. It was it was John Woodbridge. He said, Junior, so I'd like to offer you the job to be the head coach of the Pan Am Jets. And he didn't know what to say. He said, Thank you. He he was floored. After two years or more going through what he did, going through his near death, to have the chance to coach a basketball team and to be on the floor with the team and to represent worldwide, not only as a coach, but as you mentioned, as an African American coach, as a disabled African American coach.

SPEAKER_06 45:32

This is such a great story.

SPEAKER_04 45:34

And by the way, I I probably will repeat myself and repeat it again. Junius became the first black coach in the history of adaptive sports. I'm talking across the board. Find the sport, pick the sport, any sport you want to. He was the first African-American coach, and this was enabled by Pan Am. Would not would not have happened.

SPEAKER_06 46:00

Such a great story.

SPEAKER_04 46:01

Um, and so it's very touching. The team, the team at that time was practicing at Forest Hills High School. He slowly rolled on to the court. Somebody handed him a whistle, and it was the first time that he had a clipboard and a whistle as a coach. And he looked at them and they looked at him, and they all realized, I think, I think they all saw in each other that it was a kind of redemption. Okay, this guy was a formal Harlem Globetrotter, former Division I athlete, went to the NIT National Invitational Tournament twice, and the man who stood up for sports across America, he's going to be our coach. And and that's what happened. Now, as you know, um Junius, and I'll go into some of his the things that he accomplished, but I think he he coached basketball all the way up to the point where he was an Olympic coach. And so he coached uh the US Olympic team both in 1960 and 1964, and he won gold medals. And so this is this is this is very interesting. But before that, as the coach of the Pan Am Jets, and this is something that's kind of interesting to me, uh, and I think to other people as well, by courtesy of Pan Am, Junius and the and the Pan Am Jets traveled the world, introducing not only the the airline to the world, people that didn't know more about it, but the sport of wheelchair basketball. And I'll give you two quick examples. In 1957, he went on a goodwill tour. The team went on a goodwill tour to Brazil and 2,000 people showed up at the airport to see the team. Uh, as he got off the plane, this little girl in in leg braces came up to him and uh handed him some flowers, and he didn't have a lot of arm strength. Junius could not play, interestingly enough, he could not play wheelchair basketball, he could coach it. And so with all of his strength, he helped this little girl up into his lap with the flowers, and it was so touching that he made the front page of every newspaper in the country, and they called him Calago. I I can't, I can't, I can't speak in Portuguese, but neither can I. No, but but uh calago or calago, I don't I don't know how they would do say it. But everywhere he went, people screamed for him. He was he was a champion, this African-American man who grew up so dirt poor, the oldest of 11 in Portsmouth, Virginia, presented himself to the people of Brazil. One game they played in Rio, apparently, and the crowd screamed for him to go out on the court and shoot a basket.

SPEAKER_05 49:19

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 49:20

And he he tried to say, I don't have the strength, I can't do it, I can't do it. And I don't know, you call it divine intervention or anything else. He goes out on the court, throws the ball up, and makes a basket, and the crowd goes wild. It was the last time that he ever scored a basket in a game or an and um then I'll give you uh one one more story.

SPEAKER_06 49:46

I just love this. This is such an incredible and inspiring story.

SPEAKER_04 49:50

Oh no, it is. I mean, it it um um he went toward the end of his stay uh uh with with with Pan Am. Now the team disbanded in 1964. Um, but uh in 1963, he went on a trip to Israel with the airline. The airline did not go to Israel at that time. Um they they uh I think they used LL or another airline, and he played basketball. The Pan Am Jets played basketball in front of something like 150,000 people with with the team. And um he met with the prime minister's wife, uh, he met with educators. Um, I know that he and John Woodbridge um made a movie together, a 12-minute movie about that trip. I think it's been lost to time, as so many old movies uh get that way. And yet he was just uh loved. So here's the PS part of that story. A year or two later, uh both Brazil and Israel entered teams in the Paralympics. Both teams did extremely well. That would not have happened, I don't think, um, had not Pan Am uh introduced the sport to these countries to such an extent that they did. So we get to the point now where Junius in 1959, kind of in between these two events, uh, finally took the Pan Am Jets to the national championships and they won. Um they had won once before early on, but the competition each year got more and more intense. Now, I just want to say a couple of things and then we can we can talk about the Olympics if you would like. Sure. Just very quickly in all this, this this is a feel-good story, and I feel good telling it, but to not recognize that there was some inherent racism of the day would be to do junius um and a lot of other folks uh an injustice. Junius did encounter, believe it or not, racism on the Pan Am Jets. I don't know why we should think that um all of the attitudes would be erased. Sometimes people get more bitter after an accident, sometimes they get more loving. But Saul Welger, his friend, stood up for him the same way that Bob Otten stood up for Junius when uh he was at Manhattan College. So good people come from everywhere. And then one other one other incident I'll just tell you about. There was a very famous um, I guess, adaptive sports games uh near London, though these games, the Stoke Mandeville games, that occurred, and they they accused the Jets of being uh too aggressive and acting like, quote, Harlem Globe Trotters. It was not such a thinly veiled aggression against the fact that Junius wanted the Pan Am Jets to succeed. So now we come to the Olympics and his role in the Olympics. As I mentioned, he took the Pan Am Jets to Tokyo and he took the Pan Am Jets, I believe, to Rome. And both times the the team, which was not completely composed of the Pan Am Jets, but many players, including his friend Saul Welger, were on the Olympic team, and both times Junius coached them to Olympic gold. And it's it's an amazing, it's the the whole story, it's it's an amazing story, and it's uh it's a story of um of courage and it's a story of faith, and it's a story of overcoming obstacles. And um believe it or not, this is just uh part of the beginning of Junius's amazing story. He would go on to great uh other great things with his life.

SPEAKER_06 54:16

You had mentioned earlier that Panam gave jobs to the players. Did they give a job to Junius?

SPEAKER_04 54:25

Yes, I'm sorry. He was um he joined the accounting department. He would have wanted to go into the public relations because he was so good at it, but um, he apparently kept the books not only for the team, because that was essential to do, but for a hotel chain that the airline was involved in. I I think um uh to pick up a loose piece, Mr. McGuire offered Junius the job in November of 1956. And he said, Junius, when you get stronger, when you get out of the wards, we'll give you a job. And I think that probably happened later in 1957.

SPEAKER_06 55:05

1957, an African-American accountant, that that is very progressive for that era.

SPEAKER_04 55:14

They were a Pan Am is from everything I've read, a very progressive airline. Was everything perfect? No, of course not, but they were much further along than so many uh other organizations, and they breathed life into Junius Kellogg. Now, it would be naive to say that Junius didn't have a great publicity value for them. There was the publicist at Pan Am who almost from the start of Junius' employ wanted to write a book on Junius's life. Well, he was still a young guy at the time, but the book never got off the ground. But nevertheless, there was that push. And also Junius, during that period of time that he was with the Pan Am Jets, developed a not a deep friendship, but a nice friendship with a guy named Roy Campanella. And Roy Campanella, the famous uh uh catcher for the Brooklyn and then LA Dodgers, was involved in a motor vehicle accident and was paralyzed. It appears as though some of the letters written to the papers about uh can't be hang in there and do well, that was they were kind of placed, but they did develop a relationship. And uh going around again a full circle within a full circle is that uh Junius and Roy Campanella, uh, while he was still with Pan Am Jets, went to see uh uh several uh professional basketball players play for the um uh for the Harlem Globetrotters who would go on to be professionals, such as Will Chamberlain. Will Chamberlain started with the Harlem Globetrotters, but uh that's kind of outside the the area here. But there was a great influence that Pan Am had, certainly not only on the life of Junius Kellogg, but in a bigger picture on the entire history of wheelchair or what's what are now known as adaptive sports. Fascinating.

SPEAKER_06 57:24

And he was also good friends with Jackie Robinson, correct?

SPEAKER_04 57:28

He was good friends with Jackie Robinson. Um, and uh, if I'm not mistaken, Jackie Robinson once interviewed him.

SPEAKER_06 57:34

You're right. And we have that interview from 1960 that we can play for you and our listeners, and then we can talk about it.

SPEAKER_08 57:44

Oh, I'd love to. Today, my guest is a most courageous young athlete, Junius Kellogg of collegiate and professional basketball fame. We'll meet Junius and hear the story of this lion-hearted gentleman right after we hear this important message. Junis, I just want to say right now that uh it's good to see you. You look wonderful and well, um tell me about the world champion Pan American wheel um chair basketball team and chair coach.

SPEAKER_10 58:13

See, uh Jagger, this this team is comprised of about 15 fellows who were paralyzed when they were kids, say three and four, and they spent between nine and sixteen years in the hospital, each of these fellows. Man, most of them, uh in fact, all of them out of the hospital, um, three-fourths of them are married and have families, and uh these are the fellows who comprise when we have a basketball team. Pan American World Airways has done a tremendous job in having the handicap also. And uh they found out that these fellows could compete in athletics and they sponsor this, and we are deeply grateful to them. Prior to my injury, uh I never knew this thing existed, as uh I know quite a few people in the country don't. And uh even if I had thought of it, you you you probably thought of a bunch of fellows who were handicapped who were just having some sports for themselves. But this is the most intelligent thing I've ever seen. These fellows pushed from the dead start in his chairs for sixty hours in about eleven seconds.

SPEAKER_08 59:12

In eleven seconds?

SPEAKER_10 59:13

In eleven seconds. We had to mention wheelchair games uh at Bull of a Park every year, and a fella who wanted this here wanted uh section or eleven sections. But uh you would have to see this to to uh to really get the true picture. And and another fascinating a fascinating thing about this group of men is about 13 fellas, they play all sports. See, we're making preparations now for the Paris Olympics in London. And uh last year there were 38 nations competing against the old chairs, and it was set up just like a regular Olympic village. And the sports uh they in the field is for the discuss, the gentleman, the sharp foot, and uh they have racing, basketball, snooker swimming, ping pong, fencing with fall and saber from the chair.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:03

Is this where that you won your championship? What do you want to do? Judas, you know, uh this is a story I think this certainly should be told. Um you have tremendous courage. Um I I wish that uh the people would really know the great job that you've done. Thank you very much, Jack and it was a pleasure being here. Well, that just about does it for now, fans. See you soon.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:29

My thoughts on the interview with Jackie Robinson. Um, first of all, it was a very gracious thing for Jackie to do. Also understand that uh Junius was interviewed by many people, including Dick Van Dyke and Mike Wallace. But in terms of this, uh this with Jackie Robinson, I think uh part of it was him being proud of Junius and Junius being proud of to be with Jackie. There was also some publicity value to it. Um, and and Junius got in his talking points. And that there's nothing wrong with that. Um, it's um the airline did a great deal for Junius, and Junius in turn wanted to do a great deal for the airline. That's my first impression. Um, whether or not they were fast friends, I don't know. Uh Jackie Robinson, um, like Roy Campanella, their stars had risen and they were ahead of Junius in in terms of uh a broad base of popularity uh and on the professional level. Nevertheless, the important thing here is that Junius really stood at the crossroads of history. And his friends uh cut across all sports, politics, entertainment. One of the funny stories from from Junius uh was back in the day when the scandal occurred, Hollywood rushed and uh and rushed out and made a uh a movie about the scandal, except the scandal featured only uh white white actors, and Junius Junius noted that and he said, That's interesting. I I'm I'm you know, I'm played by a white actor, but he knew Jackie. He, as everybody else, loved Jackie Robinson, and I'm I'm sure that from time to time they kept in touch.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:24

So, what happened to Junius after Pan Am?

SPEAKER_04 1:02:28

It's very exciting and to me, very interesting. The Pan Am Jets uh disbanded in 1964. He still did uh a little bit of coaching after that, but for other teams. One of the magic moments in Junius' life is that he got invited to hear Dr. Martin Luther King speak down in Washington, D.C. on the mall in August of 1964. And that had a profound effect on Junius' life. Uh Junius maintained a very serious kind of uh public persona for a very long time. Um, certainly he couldn't rock any boats or anything like that, but Junius was a very um, very serious about uh racial um injustice in this country and wanted more for uh African Americans than was being given to them. Um he wanted um African Americans to come to the forefront. There was even uh kind of a controversial quote that Junius once gave about wheelchair basketball. And he said, if, and these are his words, if more brothers would join the sport, we would dominate in that sport like in many others. And so he became uh very involved in community activism. He would eventually join the New York City Development Agency, which was an agency that worked with the poor of New York City to give them block grants. He first started with what's called the Harlem Youth Project, which came out of a program uh that Lyndon Johnson uh started uh back in the day. Unfortunately, the the program was so ill-conceived that faded away. Uh and Junius's uh part of that after he got that job was to kind of close down several sections of that job. But Junius would go on to city government, and over the years, in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the shoulders down, this man would become deputy director of this multi, multi-million dollar New York City agency.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:59

He would um um go on to, he did coach, he continued to coach. Um, he he coached high school kids, he cold coached able-bodied athletes, he never lost his uh love of the game. And through it all, the other side of the story, which is why uh my book is titled Juni and Me, he maintained this relationship with Bob Otten. And um Bob Otten maintained until the day that he passed away in 2019 that it was Junius who saved his life, not the not the other way around. Um and um and Bob loved uh Junius dearly, but the story the story is one of such love and compassion that most of it or a great deal of it could not have happened without the chance meeting of Junius. Kellogg from Portsmouth, Virginia, making his way back to the Bronx VA to meet with these men who would introduce him to Pan Am Airways.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:12

Interesting. Did he uh marry? Did he have a family, Junius?

SPEAKER_04 1:06:17

Junius married briefly. He was married for about 10 years. Um, her name was Clementine Rigsby. It was difficult in those days, especially for uh a person in a wheelchair to form a real uh enduring long-term relationship. It's not that it never happened. She wanted other things for herself. I was able to interview her brother, and she was a very strong-willed woman who, in the beginning, said, I don't care what anybody thinks. Uh, I love this, I love this man and we're going to get married. But a lot of times things are easier to say than to carry out. And also understand that when they met, I mean, the uh Americans with Disabilities Act was not even enacted at that time. And so a person in a wheelchair had to be carried up and down steps, had to be tended to. A junius was 6'10 and probably weighed 270 pounds by that time. Um, it wasn't, it was very difficult, but he was married briefly, and it was another love story. She met him at the Bronx VA. She was a social worker. Interesting.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:33

Uh, when did Julius pass away?

SPEAKER_04 1:07:36

He passed away in September of 1998. And Bob Otten was at his bedside along with other key people in his life, and uh he became very sick. Um, he developed an aneurysm. Uh, Junius died at 71 years of age, which considering the catastrophic injury that he had, um, it's it's it's a testament to genetics, but also the fact that he was a very good athlete and and and tried to push himself. But um, he died of uh they actually treated the aortic aneurysm and he recovered from that and some other minor surgeries, but he developed an infection in his heart and they couldn't control it. So the the very end of the story, sadly, is that um they approached Bob Otten um to help. This is the um at that time the now it's called the United, United Spinal, but then it was called the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Uh Association. They put Junius's name up uh for the Hall of Fame, the bet the real basketball hall of fame. Um you could go in as an athlete, you can also go in as a contributing member. He missed making the Hall of Fame by one vote. Again, again, uh Bob Otten felt um this isn't Junius talking because he had passed away by then, that that he embarrassed the NBA. Junius embarrassed the NBA uh because they knew that um there were some professional basketball players in the very early days who were, quote, tainted. They had taken money, they might have influenced games, and Junius embarrassed them. And uh one sports writer uh from New York, um, he said that Junius not getting into the Hall of Fame was a tragedy of of great of great proportion because they knew they they knew that he deserved to be there, and he never was. And this is why I've tried to uncover his story a little bit.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:03

And this is why we're doing what we're doing with this program.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:07

It's exciting, it's very exciting. Tell us a little bit about your book. Well, the book is called Juni and Me. It's primarily written in Bob Otten's first person voice. Bob and I met, oh gosh, um about we we met, uh I think around 2013. We talked nearly every day. I interviewed him. I went up to Connecticut to interview him a few times. Um, and it's about their friendship, about the friendship between Bob Aden and Junius Kellogg. And um along the way, I had the chance to interview many other people associated with Junius's life. But as the book unfolded, I found that the story of Bob's love for Junius was so strong that to not focus on that would have been a mistake. And he deeply loved Junius, and um um um um it's it was a great story of of love and courage. And uh we haven't even gotten into the fact of Bob's side of the story, where when on the court, Junius basically wasn't couldn't really defend himself, um, especially when they played schools in the south or midwest. And um Bob, who was a pretty big tough guy himself, think nothing of going out on the court after a play and just leveling anybody. And interestingly enough, interestingly enough, it was Junius who yelled at Bob and told him to lose his temper uh and uh to not let them get to you that way to get even. And Junius's life is a study in a human being getting even because his life was so much bigger than his disability, and it's a very good lesson for every all of us, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:16

Well, thank you very much for your time. I I cannot stress how moved I am by this story. It's so inspirational, and I hope our listeners uh feel the same way that I do. And I I I can't wait to find more material and read your book uh because it's so inspiring.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:40

Well, and I I in turn uh deeply thank you for your time and for giving me this opportunity and and uh certainly to congratulate you for the wonderful work that you're doing.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:52

Well, thank you again.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:53

Okay, thank you very much. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:02

Pan Am was a pioneer in air travel and still stands as one of the most iconic and innovative airlines in aviation history. That legacy lives on at the Pan Am Museum in Garden City, New York, where you can explore the rich history of the aircrafts and individuals at the heart of the company known as the world's most experienced airline. For more information about the Pan Am Museum, check out our website at www.thepanammuseum.org. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. As was once a tagline in one of our commercials, we would greatly appreciate your support to help the Pan Am Museum continue making the going great. You can also support the museum by shopping on our online store for all things Pan Am accessories, apparel, jewelry, books, models, and posters. We want to hear from you. If you have a question for us or want to share your story, our email address is podcast at the Pan Ammuseum.org. As flight crews once said to passengers departing for their destinations around the world, thank you for flying, Pan América.