There's a young Polish woman who sits near me at work who, today, brought in a guide, in Polish, of the town in Poland in which she was born. The name of the town looked like a comic strip curse. Something like STKPRRYJ.
It reminded me of my father.
My father grew up poor in Philadelphia and somehow earned a scholarship to Philadelphia's Temple University. One class behind my father who was Temple class of 1951, was the great star of the Temple Owls basketball team. All-American Bill Mlkvy, a 6'4" forward, class of 1952 who was nicknamed, ingeniously, "The Owl without a Vowel."
In one college game, March 3, 1951 to be exact (my father was a few weeks short of graduation) Mlkvy poured in an unheard of 73 points in a game versus Wilkes University, his hands, I can only guess, like wild birds. At the time, it was an NCAA record.
Mlkvy averaged 21 points per game as a collegian and also tallied rebounds in the double digits. (Accurate stats weren't kept for rebounds in those days.) In his junior season, Mlkvy averaged an astounding 29.2 points per game. He was less of a success as a pro, playing one season for the Philadelphia Warriors and averaging just over 3 points per game.
Mlkvy went onto become a dentist (this is all I could find out about him) graduating from Temple University Dental School in 1955.
