I'm just a blue-collar guy that goes to work ... In any job I've ever had, I've never thought about a time when I would leave. I just go to work.
-- John Chaney
A few years back, an old college friend was stopped at a red light heading down North Broad after a summer school class at Temple when John Chaney rolled up in the lane next to him. But instead of waving hello, Chaney started right in needling the guy all while gathering information.
“Where are you off to?” Chaney asked between cracks about driving as if the old friend were fleeing the scene of a crime.
My friend told Chaney that he was off to visit a friend who had just undergone surgery and was in the hospital. In a conversation that lasted the length of time it takes a signal to turn from red to green, Chaney somehow deciphered the name of the friend and which hospital he was in.
In fact, my friend wasn’t even sure if he gave Chaney any revealing information until he was getting up to leave the hospital room. That’s when a package filled with Temple Basketball shirts, posters and a handwritten get-well card arrived.
“Who does that kind of thing?” my friend asked when re-telling the story.
John Chaney, that’s who.
“It took me a while to realize that everything he did, he did for me,” said NBA star and Temple alum, Eddie Jones, a few years ago. “It was all for me, never for him.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As long as I'm in this city, I'm a lightning rod. People don't like me for a lot of reasons and I create all of them. I love it when they hate me. All my closest friends hate me. -- John Chaney ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On a day that everyone knew was looming, the 74-year-old Chaney finally decided to take a cue from the last line from one of his favorite old Frank Sinatra standards and begged a full house in a conference room at the university’s Liacouras Center on Monday to, “Excuse me while I disappear.”
Fortunately for the people close to him – which seems to be just about half of the city – Chaney will not disappear. We won’t let him. Oh sure, he might sleep in to 6 a.m. now, or he might turn up on TV here and there or find a seat in the stands “with some peanuts and a beer, telling lies.” He just won’t be stalking, ranting and cussing along the sidelines looking like an unmade bed with his tie off-center, top two buttons undone and a sweater vest hanging on for dear life. That’s all over.
But he’s not going anywhere. There are just too many stories to tell.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A blind man ain't got no business at a circus. --John Chaney ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Like the one where he tried to keep Ramon Rivas out of a huddle during a timeout so that his brawny center would not hear the play after his teammates ignored the coach’s plea not to pass him the ball even though he was wide open.
“There's a reason why a guy's open, you know what I'm saying? He's always going to be open if he can't shoot. There's a reason. They leave him open.”
During Monday’s announcement, Temple’s president David Adamany told of how Chaney donated money to the school’s plea for funds for the library. Adamany revealed the story as if it tales of Chaney’s generosity was a new thing, which is hardly the case. In fact, Chaney dipped into his own pocket to help pay for the new basketball arena and he was renowned for taking sponsorship money from the likes of Nike and turning it over to the school and the underprivileged.
“If you’re going to reach the ceiling, you have to lift the floor up,” he said Monday. “If you can get a youngster to reach that ceiling, he’ll reach back and pick somebody else up.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Winning is an attitude. -- John Chaney ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Surely, generosity from the well-heeled isn’t really a big deal and it’s not anything people should celebrate. It’s a duty, according to Chaney.
“I remember an old poem by a man named Walt Whitman who once said, ‘I celebrate myself.’ I didn’t come here to celebrate myself. I came here to recognize people and recognize this university for giving a 50-year-old man a chance to come and coach,” Chaney said.
Oh, but Camden’s Uncle Walt could have been writing about Chaney in his epic Song of Myself. After all, it’s the line following, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself,” that tells the story:
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
So Chaney should celebrate himself. After all, his allure and the reason why so many people love him has nothing to do with basketball.