Globetrotters show youth how to handle life

Curly Neal and Handles Franklin visit children at PAL center

By Rob Cullivan

The Gresham Outlook, Jan 28, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Jim Clark / The Outlook

Harlem Globetrotter icon Curly Neal helps 8-year-old Alissa Belmont spin a basketball on a ball point pen during an appearance at the PAL Center on Thursday, Jan. 22.

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When Chris “Handles” Franklin was growing up in Pennsylvania, he bounced all over the place.

“I would take a basketball everywhere,” he said. “I would dribble when I went to the store, when I watched TV.”

A lot of people around him got kind of tired of his dribbling, he admitted.

“They’d say, ‘Chris, you dribble too much!’ ”

The joke’s on his detractors, however.

“Now I get paid to travel around the world and dribble.”

That’s right, Handles now dribbles for the Harlem Globetrotters, the world’s most famous basketball team, which is set to make an appearance at Portland’s Rose Garden on Saturday, Feb. 21.

Handling life

In anticipation of their upcoming appearance, the Globetrotters sent Handles and the legendary Fred “Curly” Neal to the Police Activities Youth Center in Rockwood the afternoon of Thursday, Jan. 22.

The PAL Center provides a variety of after-school activities for young people, including a homework club, computer classes, sports and art, and the Globetrotters support such youth programs, Handles and Curly noted.

Handles told the dozens of children in the center’s gymnasium to stay off drugs and stay in school, shun cheating and listen to their teachers and parents. He stressed the importance of education, noting he had a master’s degree.

“Don’t ever let someone tell you can’t be somebody!” he shouted at the youngsters.

He then displayed a deft handling of the ball, at one time lying on the ground and dribbling as three youngsters tried unsuccessfully to steal it from him. As one boy almost got the ball away, Handles playfully teased him.

“Are you trying to make me look bad?” he said.

Legendary mentor

Handles also acknowledged a quiet, smiling man decked out in Globetrotter garb and standing on the gym’s sidelines, as his mentor and friend — Fred “Curly” Neal, who played for the Globetrotters from 1963 to 1985.

Anyone who grew up watching the baldheaded Neal play remembers an exemplary ball handler and classic clown who was immortalized for a generation of tube watchers when he and teammates such as Meadowlark Lemon were turned into Saturday morning cartoon characters in the Globetrotters’ own series as well as on such shows as “Scooby Doo.”

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