October 12, 1999, the day of Wilt Chamberlian’s death, was the worst day of my life. Suddenly, without warning, a huge Wilt-sized hole opened up in my Universe. He had been the center of my world for decades. For me, he was part of my daily life, whether I saw him or spoke to him or not. He was the center of my world. He was my family. He was the person I came home to after my world travels. He was the huge strong being that I orbited. Now what?
I moved forward as if sleepwalking through a haze, handling my brand new business CompletePT Pool & Land Physical Therapy. It was only a month old, and Wilt had been instrumental in bringing his high visibility to aquatic therapy. (The photo above was from the grand opening of the Wilt Chamberlain Rehab Center in Miami, FL, 1993, where we created a thriving aquatic therapy program.)
I don’t know why I thought I was the only person who could be hurting so badly at his loss. I’ve since learned how many people had Wilt deep in their hearts for many unique and powerful reasons. We all lost someone special 25 years ago, and just like the day JFK was shot, we all remember exactly where we were when we heard the news.
What follows are the reminiscences of 11 people who knew both Wilt and me. We shared our hearts about Wilt these past few days as I collected each person’s thoughts, one by one. This is my gift to those of you who wished you had known Wilt – or had known him better. It’s obvious we all loved him and had great times with him. Now I hope you have a few laughs, smiles, or even a tear or two as we remember this man who was ONE of a KIND!
Bobby Kersee, legendary Olympic track coach since the 1980s
I don’t think a lot of people knew what a kind, gentle giant Wilt was. How kind-hearted, how generous he was. But I’ve seen him in a different light. I really believe that without Wilt Chamberlain, I wouldn’t be where I am today if you look back at my career. It was Wilt who got me started, developing a team outside of a college team. I ran at the beach and Wilt was playing volleyball at the beach. I watched him play volleyball. He came to the UCLA track where I was coaching and he’d be working out on the track. I got to know him and he got to know me.
I asked him for $30,000 to start a club team outside of the college scene. He quizzed me. What were my expectations to win? How was I going to use the $30K? What’s important? What’s not important? What’s my financial budget look like? Why would you spend it that way? How is it going to benefit the girls? I told him about the great young athletes I thought could be developed into stars. We started Wilt’s Athletic Club in the ’81-’82 season. We took them to the Milrose Games in the Garden in NYC to showcase them. We had a great relay team and won, but Valerie Brisco Hooks ran past her teammate, missed the hand-off but finished the race. We were disqualified, but they saw our speed. Wilt got us a yellow-ish van with purple lettering, “We have the Wilt to win.” We could pick up athletes and get them to practice or take them to meets.
Wilt is the one that got me started financially on the club level. By 1984, we were the sprint team: Florence Griffith, Alice Brown, Jeannette Bolden, and Valerie Brisco-Hooks. I was a brash, young coach that believed in these athletes, looking for somebody who loved track and field. Wilt was enthusiastic about the gift he gave and how it turned into something. He was one of those “owners,” came out to the track and sat there. “Why’d you do that, coach?” questioning me. He felt I was doing it right but was looking for me to find the reason why I was doing what I did. He had a coaching mind. He wanted to test it and test me. He taught me a lot, how to be confident, how to market things. A very wise man. He knew when to talk and when not to talk.
When he passed away, I was in the Atlanta Braves locker room working with their athletes. I had to sit in the hallway and cry. He was beyond a friend to me. He was hard on me as a coach because he invested in me. Looking back, I can understand why today. The intelligent man that he was, he saw something in me as a coach that I didn’t see in myself at that time.
Bobby Kersee and I smile even while we grieve the loss of Wilt at the Memorial Service I held for him. Jackie Joyner-Kersee is on the phone. Bobby dropped everything to fly in and out just to be there.
Patty Van Wolvelaere, Olympic hurdler, member of Wilt’s WonderWomen
The last time I saw Wilt was in June, 1999 at the San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon. There’s always something that reminds me of him. We had so much fun together on and off the track. Like when you and I met up with Wilt at the Jabberwocky in Encinitas to dance the night away back in mid-70s. When I talk to other members of the WonderWomen team, we talk about having a reunion, and that’s when he seems like he still should be here. I think about him all the time.
Patty Van Wolvelaere, Wilt, Lynda Huey at Wilt’s pool.
John Carlos, Olympic bronze medalist 200M, 1968
I played in the Canadian Football League in Montreal, so when the Olympics were there (1976), I knew my way around. I walked into a nightclub one night and they put the lights on me. Wilt was sitting in the corner. I went over to him and he said, “What you doin’ here? This is my town.” I said, “No, this is my town. You just visiting.”
I saw him the week before he died. He was driving down the 405 and broke down in some small car they gave him, with his damn legs up in his nose. He was hot as hell, cussin’ and carryin’ on. I went up to his house, saw his pool, where you could swim outside from the inside. He told me at that time that he stopped taking the medicine they were giving him. Making him feel like a damn Zombie. So he stopped.
Only a week later, I was doing a radio show about what me and Tommie did at the 1968 Games. Had a headset on and I heard “Hold on.” I heard “Wilt Chamberlain.” Host went to commercial. When he came back, he said, “Wilt Chamberlain dead.” My heart stopped. He switched to talking about Wilt. He started asking me about Wilt’s personal life. I said, “You know what the word personal means? That means private.”
There was a lot to Wilt. Humanitarian, hands on. He took initiative to help girls in sports before any other guys even started to think about it.
John Carlos and I at a brunch, gathering of athletes in Santa Monica, 2019.
Robert Klapper, MD, orthopedic surgeon
I think of Wilt all the time because the technology that I am now using that is AI and virtual reality began when I tried to take care of a 7’1” 300 lb. zero fat athlete. There was no prosthesis made for that dimension and that led me to explore using a CAT Scan to give the engineers in Indiana the dimensions with which to build a custom prosthesis for Wilt’s hip. This is the technology that we now are using and will be the future for joint replacement surgery. I think of Wilt as the inspiration for that technology.
Just like Kobe Bryant inspired the whole idea of biologic medicine by going to Germany for Orthokine treatment for his knee, Wilt absolutely inspired the world of arthritis surgery.
Wilt and Dr. Klapper
Willie Banks, Two-Time Olympian, Triple Jump World Record Holder
Wilt used to come to the track at UCLA where I was. He had been a triple jumper and he was impressed when I jumped a U.S. national record as a freshman at UCLA. He sponsored Wilt’s WonderWomen and my baby sister was on that team, so I heard so much about him. He was always my favorite basketball player; I was a major Wilt fan. As a kid, I was a Laker fan because of him. I always liked athletes who changed the sport and he sure changed basketball. No one can describe how impressive he was. His loud booming voice. He was always opinionated about sports, talked to me about how I could be a better athlete and a better person.
If I could talk to him now, I’d like to tell him of how he inspired me to do great things, how I’ve risen to be the highest-ranking person in track and field in the U.S. I have a seat on the World Athletic Council, which used to be the IAAF. Only 26 on the board, and I’m the one from the U.S. I wonder what he would think I should do next?
Bob “Vogie” Vogelsang, Volleyball player and coach
I met Wilt in Italy when he was playing for the Globetrotters and I was playing for the Washington Generals. I went up for a dunk that Wilt wasn’t expecting from me and got his attention. The next time I went up for a dunk, I ran into a solid brick wall.
When I heard Wilt had started playing volleyball, I invited him to come down to the beach. We were playing Gin Rummy. I said, “Wilt you’re looking at two cards, you’re cheating.” He denied it. Then he accused me of looking at two cards, and I said, “I’m not looking at two cards, I’m looking at three.” He wanted to know how I did that.
I was probably Wilt’s best friend, watching all kinds of sports at his house. We both did a lot of things in jest. We went to Super Bowl parties at Hugh Hefner’s house, bringing home girls to my tiny 1-bedroom apartment right on the beach. I guess they thought, “he’s not a millionaire like Wilt, but he’s a lot of fun.”
We went to play in a AAA tournament in Santa Cruz, but there weren’t any rooms for us at the Dream Inn overlooking Cowell’s Beach. They said they had the Honeymoon Suite open, so we took it. I stayed in the bed all morning with a few different women while Wilt chatted with people at the beach. Then Wilt got tired of me acting like Wilt and took over the bed and I went down to the beach. I think we took 3rd or 4th place and we beat the #2 seeded team. Wilt wasn’t really a AAA player, but he could win if he played with a AAA player and would listen to him. (Vogie was AAA and Wilt listened to him that tournament.) Wilt got his AAA rating in that tournament with me.
This was the first time I saw Wilt, playing with Vogie in the Santa Cruz AAA tournament. I didn’t know either of them yet. I was just a spectator on what then was my home court.
One time I was scheduled to play with Wilt in a tournament, then the #1 player, Larry Rundle, asked me to play with him, saying, “We’ll win this tournament.” But I stuck with Wilt. When Wilt heard that I’d had turned down winning the tournament to play with him, I told him, “We’ll score more girls with us playing together than with us playing apart.” Wilt got that.
Wilt was smart in all the games he played, basketball, volleyball, and tennis. Of course, when he played with me, he never did anything wrong – everything was my fault.
Alan Silber, criminal defense attorney
Holy shit, is it really 25 years? Is there any possibility we’re getting old?
Wilt was such an unusual person. He was nothing like the public thought he was. I was glad to have that chance to move in with you and Wilt in his house to watch the 1992 Olympic Games. He was just a nice man. I never saw him be inconsiderate. The moment that I really remember was when we were watching Lithuania playing basketball, because Wilt loved Arvydas Sabonis. At half time Wilt began reminiscing about his loss to the University of North Carolina in triple overtime in 1957. He was sharing those thoughts with me, and he remembered every play. He said it was the worst loss that he suffered in his entire basketball career.
George Starke, Offensive Tackle, Washington Redskins 14 years
Wilt’s favorite pastime other than chasing women and playing racquetball was playing Yahtzee, a dice game. He and I played racquetball together. It’s a game where you have to control the center of the court. I had to move that Big Muthafucker out of the center of the court. Now here I am a pro football player that’s used to banging people out of the way. We both were banging each other like crazy in a court that isn’t sized for a 7’2” 300 lb. man to play a 6’5” 250 lb. man. I think he liked the fact that I could bang as hard as he could bang. We would fight it out and have a good time playing racquetball. I spent at least 10 evenings with him, playing Yahtzee all night long. Mostly it was a guy thing. He liked that we could bang each other hard and it was nothing personal when we wore each other out on the racquetball court. And he could play some Yahtzee!
Tracy Sundlun, Coach of Wilt’s WonderWomen, Co-Founder of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon Series, President/CEO of World Athletics Road Running Championships, San Diego 2025. Head Manager of the U.S. Olympic Men’s Team 2016.
I think of Wilt shockingly often. Not a week goes by that I don’t have a conversation with somebody about him, not about sports, just normal things. When I watch a basketball game, it pisses me off that he doesn’t get the recognition for being the seminal athlete and player in that sport that he was.
Wilt raised the profile of women’s sports. He recognized how great our women athletes were, he supported them and he promoted them. Not just track and field where he had both Wilt’s WonderWomen in the 1970s, then Wilt’s Athletic Club in the 1980s; he had Wilt’s Little Dippers, a women’s volleyball team. Wilt just naturally did things that others wouldn’t do. He didn’t live or think in a box; he had a global view. You introduced him to me at the UCLA track and we immediately became friends. He supported Wilt’s WonderWomen, our current team, which had been the La Jolla Track Club. He became a celebrity founder of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon series and when we needed some positive press, he stepped up. ESPN nominated Wilt for the top male athlete of the 20th Century. So all the media wanted to talk to him. He said, “I will talk to you, but only if you write about my marathon.” We delivered a great event that grew into a series. It was the #1 running series in the world for almost 20 years. That probably wouldn’t have happened without the platform Wilt had to create media attention.
He was bigger than life. I don’t think there’s anybody today that has that stature, except maybe Taylor Swift. His impact on women’s sports is so evident today, and they don’t even know that.
Left to right: LeRoy Perry, Jr., D.C., Wilt, Tracy Sundlun
Robert Lipsyte, Sports Journalist and Young Adult Fiction writer
I thought about Wilt a couple of weeks ago. He is often compared to Bill Russell to his disadvantage. Wilt was brute force; Bill was a person of delicacy. But as I thought about that, Wilt never hurt anybody – a man of that size back then when others weren’t that big. He played with a kind of restraint, which was incredibly admirable. His sensitivity and sweetness never transcended the public consciousness. I always gave him the benefit of the doubt because you were his friend.
LeRoy Perry, Jr., D.C, Team Doctor for Wilt’s WonderWomen
Wilt Chamberlain was one of the most important people in my life. He and coach Tracy Sundlun appointed me the team physician for Wilt’s WonderWomen in 1975. As a result of treating the female athletes, I met many international male athletes (the boyfriends of the girls). This started my interest in the sport of track and field. Steve Williams was the fastest sprinter in the world at that time, so when one of his friends told people to see me if they got hurt, that’s what started to happen. I attended the 1976 Olympic Trials with Tracy and Wilt and their athletes. Steve Williams pulled his hamstring and asked me to help him. The medical establishment was anti-chiropractic and wouldn’t let me treat patients in the medical tent. Steve and I had to go to a weeded area behind the medical tent so I could evaluate and treat him. Being the fastest U.S. sprinter, the press followed him. They took photos that appeared in the major American and European newspapers. That started a controversy that the AMA never forgot.
Wilt and I co-founded the Foundation for Athletic Research and Education (FARE) a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit for the purpose of doing research with athletes on how to improve their health and apply that to our general population. In many ways, Wilt was my mentor, friend, and greatest supporter. He not only started my career, he made it meaningful.
Dr. LeRoy Perry, Jr. and Wilt