ON A PLANE BACK: REVELRY TOOK A JET TO UNUSUAL HEIGHTS

By Howard Goodman
Inquirer Staff Writer

Delta Flight 392 - fairly hijacked by exultant and exhausted Villanova fans -flew from Lexington, Ky., to Philadelphia yesterday on something stronger than jet fuel.

Dozens of revelers, wearing Wildcat caps and T-shirts, clutching souvenir posters and programs, chanted Villanova fight songs and cheers as the plane taxied toward takeoff. The hum in the cabin was a blue charge that started the night before at wild Rupp Arena, a victory vibe that carried the jet much higher than 30,000 feet.

"I've been wearing this for three days," said Chick Hamlin, a Media high school teacher, tipping the brim of a blue-and-white painter's cap with the prophetic words: "Rollie and His Wildcats Are #1. "

"Exciting, exciting - there's no other way to describe it. " He was surrounded by passengers ordering the last drinks of a hallucinatory four-day weekend. They were all becoming aware that as the party was fading, a lasting piece of sports lore was growing.

And they had been there.

There weren't many superlatives left but "great."


"Great," said a smiling Irv Wisniewski, a former University of Delaware basketball coach to whom Final Four tournaments are old hat. This one, though, was special - a 66-64 victory over a Georgetown team that only perfection could beat.

"They build up the Super Bowl, and most of those are anticlimactic," he said. "This one was just what it was meant to be. It was meant to be a climax and it was.

"As the game was ending, I noticed, people weren't leaving. They were still coming in. And the way they stood and cheered the players when they got their awards - I loved the way the people appreciated them. "

Adam Lamb, a Penn freshman in a Wildcat baseball cap and face paint, also paid tribute to the Villanovans: "My dad and his friends go to the finals every year, and they said that this year there was the most cheering of any one. "

Georgetown student Nancy Sarkis, taking the flight all the way home to Boston, felt conspicuous wearing her "Hoya Power" pin. "Maybe I should cover it," she said.

Sad as losing was, she confessed: "I think it's kind of neat that Villanova won. They were the underdog, and they worked hard, and it was no fluke. I think Villanova definitely played a super game. They hit everything! We won so often. It seemed so impossible we could lose. "

CBS announcer Dick Stockton, ordering a Bloody Mary in first class, already had the game in perspective. He was among a group of television crew people who made a stop in Cincinnati for connecting flights. They were distinguishable by their natty sweaters and sport coats in network blue, and by their tennis rackets.

"I thought it was like the '75 World Series," said Stockton. The Cincinnati Reds beat the Boston Red Sox in that storied series, winning a seventh game that felt like a laughing afterthought after six thrilling games that were a model of see-sawing valor.

"As time goes on," Stockton said, "people will regard this championship as maybe the standout against which all the others will be measured. I think it will truly be seen as a classic, not this year or next year, maybe. I think it will stand the test of time."

Wild Horses!

As a national correspondent, I went out to Marlboro Man country for this story on a federal program to manage wild horse herds.  It was wonderful out there.  The photos in this fine spread were by the great Fred Blocher.

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The Farm

I'd known for years about The Farm, the band of San Francisco hippies who traveled cross-country by converted school bus until deciding to settle in rural Tennessee.  I was thrilled to get the chance to visit them and see how well they had kept to their ideals. They represented a strain of American communalism that is now, alas, all but dead.

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The Memphis Blues, again

One of the most enjoyable reporting trips I ever took -- to Memphis, Tenn., to write about the revival of Beale Street.

What sounds!

The Jedi homicide

Our courts reporter covered this trial, but the circumstances were so bizarre and the details so rich that the metropolitan editor, Bob Samsot, assigned me to write a reconstruction of the case after the verdict was in. Early on, I got the cooperation of the killer's father, which gave me great access to the son's bedroom and drawings, windows into his disturbed mind. The dead boy's parents also opened up to me, eager to show what a talented young man he had been. And the investigating detectives opened up their thick case file.

What made the story eerier was my realization, about halfway through the reporting, that I actually had met the murder victim a year earlier when covering the opening of one of the Star Wars movies in suburban Kansas City. I went out to write about the rabid young fans who waited days in line for the first screening, and the most rabid fan out there was this immature looking guy in a Beatles haircut and an old Army jacket bedecked with sci-fi movie trinkets. Ralph Cochran.

We didn't have a Sunday magazine at the Kansas City Times, but the paper would sometimes run long stories on Saturdays in a full-page format. That's how this story appeared. I'll never forget eating a late breakfast in a restaurant that Saturday morning and all around me, people were opening their paper and getting absorbed in the story. It was one of the most exciting moments I've had as a writer.

I was further honored when the story was reprinted in the book, Best Newspaper Writing of 1985.

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K.C.'s lost "Black Rialto"

Count Basie's death occasioned this look at the storied neighborhood of 18th and Vine, once one of the jazz centers of America, but in the 1980s a desolate stretch of empty lots and old brick buildings housing a handful of stubborn businesses.  Nowadays, I've read, 18th and Vine has been revived as a thriving tourist and entertainment center, with a hall of fame for KC jazz players and Negro League baseball. I'd like to think that articles like this one helped keep the memory alive.

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Orwell, on the eve of 1984

I wrote this profile in appreciation of George Orwell just as the year 1984 was upon us.

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An artist who feels

A profile of an artist whose works belie any disability.

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The Count returns

Count Basie, the jazz legend, returned to his adopted hometown of Kansas City for a triumphal concert that was the epitome of grace. He was in poor health and showing his age. I interviewed him in his hotel room, which was equipped like a hospital room. I have a memory of a bed pan, but maybe my imagination has embellished the scene. No matter. He gave the audience every bit of energy he had. It was an inspiring thing to see. And as it turned out, he didn't have long to live.

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Introducing ... computers in schools

An early story about a somewhat successful invention.

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