Keeping the dream of a new arena alive takes money. Know who has some money? Business school alumni in their 70s.
I'm going to guess LaSalle has more multi-millionaires among its alumni than does the University of Loyola (IL) whose student body will begin their 12th year of cheering the Ramblers in the Joseph J. Gentile Center.
In the early 90s, Joe Gentile, '46 Loyola grad and owner of a car dealership, made a $3.5 million dollar gift towards the construction of a new basketball arena. According to reporting on andrewsantella.com, Mr. Gentile was moved to make the big gift through a combination of being sick and tired of watching a losing program and a fond nostalgia for the glory days.
Loyola basketball is like the LaSalle of the Midwest - fall from grace program with a great tradition of winning throughout the 50s and 60s including an NCAA championship. Gentile, an up and coming business man, reflects fondly on that sweet spring evening in 1963 when Loyola won its only title:
"It was a three-cigar night, one of the most exciting nights in my life," he says. "I'll never forget it."Time is starting to run out for us. LaSalle has a window of about 10-15 years before there aren't any more alumni who remember that 'three cigar night' in 1954. Where is the alum who did well and now wants to do good for the basketball program? Where's our Joe Gentile? This is a Catholic school so a Gentile shouldn't be too hard to find.
LaSalle has several expansion and capital improvement projects in the pipeline so this won't get done without an alum making the first move. Wealthy alum, if you bring the cigars to the ground-breaking, the Christian Brothers Brandy is on the English majors.
2 comments:
Can people in their 70's read the internet?
That's a bit ageist of you. My grandfather is 74 and gets all of his news on the internet. Unfortunately, he doesn't like cigars nor does he own a car dealership. Hey, if we could mass mail the Joe Gentile story out to the living members of the '54 class to inspire them, that would be the way to go. Until LaSalle contracts out some alumni relations duties to the Den, it looks like we will have to stick with this internet thing.
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