{"id":50097,"date":"2019-05-13T11:27:46","date_gmt":"2019-05-13T15:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=50097"},"modified":"2019-05-13T11:40:54","modified_gmt":"2019-05-13T15:40:54","slug":"learning-about-the-team-one-player-at-a-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/learning-about-the-team-one-player-at-a-time.html","title":{"rendered":"Learning about the Team: One Player at a Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was looking at old newspaper clippings of my Dad\u2019s career as the head basketball coach at Stamford High School in Stamford, Connecticut. Here\u2019s one with a photograph from 1964.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Stamford Advocate (Stamford, Connecticut), 10 December 1964, page 30<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I wondered if his former players had also kept newspaper clippings or memorabilia from that time in their lives. So, I decided to research each member of the team and learn more about their lives \u2013 and, if possible, where they were now.<\/p>\n

Looking at the first basketball player mentioned in that 1964 article, I started to research team co-captain Roosevelt Penny<\/a>. I quickly found the announcement of his birth published in the newspaper in 1947.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
Stamford Advocate (Stamford, Connecticut), 30 September 1947, page 12<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, he was born on 30 August 1947.<\/p>\n

Tragically his father, Roosevelt Penny Sr.<\/a>, a U.S. Navy veteran of WWII, died less than a year later in April 1948. He was only 21 years old.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Stamford Advocate (Stamford, Connecticut), 24 April 1948, page 6<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Digging deeper, I was surprised to learn that basketball star Roosevelt Penny Jr. had also died young, at the age of 47.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Stamford Advocate (Stamford, Connecticut), 6 May 1995, page 6<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to this obituary he was survived by his wife Luciene (White) Penny<\/a>. I found another article in the Stamford Advocate<\/em> about Luciene and her sisters, Dawn (White) Martin and Gayle (White) Hillman<\/a>, when they were rehearsing for a play written by Dawn that was based on Dawn\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>
Stamford Advocate (Stamford, Connecticut), 29 November 1998, page 3<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I also learned that she had died on Saturday, 25 May 2013 \u2013 just six years ago this month.<\/p>\n

Searching online for more information I found her photograph here<\/a> \u2013 published by the Howard K. Hill Funeral Home \u2013 and I realized that I had known her.<\/p>\n

\"Photo:<\/a><\/p>\n

In researching members of my father\u2019s basketball team, I was surprised to see that some of them had already passed away.<\/p>\n

Online archives \u2013 such as GenealogyBank\u2019s extensive Historical Newspaper Archives<\/a> and document collection with over 2 billion records \u2013 can help us document the lives of our relatives and teammates, one person at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this article, Thomas Jay Kemp searches old newspapers to learn more about members of the Stamford High School basketball team his father used to coach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12557],"tags":[12,2020],"class_list":["post-50097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-stories","tag-genealogy","tag-newspaper-archives"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/photo-0513-2019-featured-graphic-basketball-team.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}