AT 70, POPS HOLDS COURT 5 DAYS A WEEK.Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY Dennis McCarthy may refer to:
SHERMAN OAKS - Golf, sure. A couple of sets of tennis, why not? Slow-pitch softball in a senior league one or two nights a week, OK. Just don't slide. But running up and down a basketball court five afternoons a week, banging bodies with guys half or a quarter your age - matching them step for step, elbow for elbow - c'mon, 70-year-olds aren't supposed to be doing this anymore. Pops is. Every afternoon at 3:30, Kurt Ralston puts down his scissors scissors Cutting instrument or tool consisting of a pair of opposed metal blades that meet and cut when the handles at their ends are brought together. Modern scissors are of two types: the more usual pivoted blades have a rivet or screw connection between the cutting ends and hair dryer, and grabs a basketball. He walks out of the Sherman Oaks hair salon A hair salon (also called 'Hairdresser' and 'Hair Parlour')is a place where one goes to get their hair cut, as well as styled, highlighted or coloured. There are many different types of hair salons that one can choose to go to. he's owned since 1964, and drives over to the outdoor basketball courts at Sherman Oaks Park for a couple of hours of street ball. It's full-court basketball without refs, which means just about anything goes if you've got the guts and can lie with a straight face. ``Pops will hatchet hatchet: see tomahawk. you in a heartbeat immediately. See also: heartbeat ,'' says 27-year-old Troy Howard, as 15-year-old Jordan Alajou nods his head in agreement. They've both got the black and blue marks to prove it. ``He has spunk, guts, and a beautiful three-point jump shot,'' says Lavant Brooks, who at 38 is closest in age to Pops, who turns 70 this week. ``When we're running out of gas and slackening, it's Pops yelling, 'C'mon, pick it up.' He doesn't know how old he is.'' Oh, he knows, Ralston says. He just doesn't pay any attention to it. As far as he's concerned, he's still an 18-year-old senior playing football at Hollywood High
In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. someone to knock down. ``In street ball, you play to 13, and if you lose, you sit down,'' Pops says, taking a short break between games Thursday. ``I don't like to sit down.'' He's been lucky over the years, he says. No major injuries that have sidelined him from playing basketball at least five days a week, which is what you have to do if you want to still be playing the game hard at 70. ``If you're only playing on weekends, forget it,'' Pops says. Judy Ralston, Pops' wife, smiles when she sees the young guys marvel at her husband's stamina and toughness, his refusal to ever give up. A few of them know the story, but not many. Pops doesn't dwell much on the past because he's way too busy squeezing every inch of life out of the present. He was Kurt Reichbaum as a kid - a 9-year-old Jewish boy just recovering from scarlet fever scarlet fever or scarlatina, an acute, communicable infection, caused by group A hemolytic streptococcal bacteria (see streptococcus) that produce an erythrogenic toxin. when the Nazis took over his grandmother's house in Austria in 1939. He had been too sick to travel with his older brother and cousin to rejoin his parents, who had come to check out America a year earlier because they knew the Nazis were coming to overrun Austria. ``The SS man living in his grandmother's house looked the other way when she put Kurt on a train to Italy so he would escape the camps,'' Judy says, as her husband hits a 20-foot jump shot. The kid was 9 years old and alone. On the train, he befriended an Italian sailor who took pity on him and helped him gain passage on a ship headed for America to find his parents. ``There was no communication possible between his parents living in Chicago and their relatives still in Austria,'' Judy said. ``They thought everybody, including Kurt, had been taken to the concentration camps and were dead.'' No one was expecting the kid to step off that ship in New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of . Only by chance did an uncle living in New York read the passenger list in the newspaper, and see the name Kurt Reichbaum. ``He met Kurt at the dock, and after a few days, put him on a train to Chicago and his parents,'' Judy said. When Kurt was reunited "Reunited" was a #1 hit in the United States in 1979 by the Washington, D.C.-based group Peaches & Herb. Preceded by "Heart of Glass" by Blondie Billboard Hot 100 number one single May 5 1979 Succeeded by "Hot Stuff" by Donna Summer with his parents, he learned he wasn't a Reichbaum anymore. His father had seen the name Ralston up on a building, liked it, and adopted it for his family. ``My husband's a survivor with a big heart,'' Judy says, watching him guard a kid a quarter his age. ``He knows he's lucky to have made it through his life.'' So a little street ball with the kids is no sweat - even at 70. The Nazis missed him 60 years ago, and now he's eluding e·lude tr.v. e·lud·ed, e·lud·ing, e·ludes 1. To evade or escape from, as by daring, cleverness, or skill: The suspect continues to elude the police. 2. Father Time. CAPTION(S): photo Photo: Soon-to-be-70 Kurt Ralston is pursued on the basketball court by much younger Troy Howard of Sherman Oaks. Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News |
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