By Jaime Harris – Part 2
Howie Evans friendship with tennis great Arthur Ashe had its connective tissue in their shared fight for the end of apartheid in South Africa. He vigorously advocated for women to be hired in positions predominated by men in numerous industries. And he led by example.
“In 2006, I approached Howie about becoming the paper’s WNBA correspondent. He said he’d give me a chance because he wanted a woman to cover women’s sports,” said current AmNews sports writer Lois Elfman. “After the New York Liberty season, he allowed me to delve into any sport I wanted to cover. His belief in my writing has allowed me a now-19-year journey.”
Take a moment to process that Evans was a founder of AAU basketball, today estimated to be a $15 billion-plus behemoth. Back in 1974, coaching the AAU Riverside Hawks along with Ernie Lorch, he took a group of 17- and 18-year-olds on a historic trip to the former Soviet Union. It was the first-ever collection of high school players from the United States to play in the USSR.
“Howie taught me to be proud of who I was and let me know that I could do whatever I put my mind to as a young Black man growing up in the South Bronx,” said former University of Pennsylvania star Anthony “Tony” Price, a member of the aforementioned squad who would visit Evans during his final years of life at Longleaf. “He put me on my first airplane ride and took me to Russia as a 17-year-old in high school. He taught me to dream big.”
NBA and college players born on the African continent are commonplace today. Not in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Evans was a vanguard in starting that migration when he recruited cousins Dud Tongal and Ed Bona from Sudan to Fordham University, where he was an assistant coach under College Basketball Hall of Fame head coach Tom Penders, having joined Penders’ staff in 1978.
Evans often expressed pride in Fordham alumni he knew when they were young students during his time at the Rose Hill campus who, decades later, ascended to the pinnacle of their professions, such as broadcasters Mike Breen and Micheal Kay, and communications executive Joe Favorito.
“Those are our guys,” he would reflexively gush when seeing them while covering a Knicks or Yankees game, or at some other event.
Some of his most noted and consequential work was with the awe-inspiring Hank Carter and the Wheelchair Charities, the Citywide Boys and Girls Basketball League, and Kelsey Stevens at the Dunlevy Milbank Center of the Children’s Aid.
Howie’s long association with powerful local politicians, including Charles Rangel, David Dinkins and Percy Sutton, enabled him to ensure that necessary resources were allocated to vital youth programs. His discussions with AmNews publisher emeritus, Wilbert A. Tatum, were masterclasses in various subjects, their brilliance and Black excellence on full display for everyone in the newsroom to absorb.
Editor’s Note: Jaime Harris is currently the Sports Editor of the New York Amsterdam News. Mr. Harris is also the nephew of Mr. Howie Evans. Next week in part 3, Mr. Evans, Joe Namath, Bryant Gumbel and Wilt Chamberlain.
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