More than a coach - Marty Biegel

He is frail now. The years have taken their toll on legs that once pounded and paced the sidelines of Fairfax High’s gleaming basketball court. On a recent Sunday, the slight Jewish man in the red wind-breaker and baseball cap reading “Coach” shuffled with a cane into Canter’s Delicatessen.

Marty Biegel, 86, was heading for a table across the room, and when he got there a group of tall black men rose to cheer:

Biegel, the father figure who helped raise them.

Biegel, the wizard who turned them into champions.

Biegel, the bridge-builder between blacks and whites.

“What’s up, Mr. B?” they said one after another, lining up to give him bear hugs.

“You’re looking good, fellas,” Marty shot back, beaming up at them. “What the hell happened to your Afros?”

Once again, Marty Biegel was back with his boys.

A story that began in angry debates over school desegregation in Los Angeles continues as a love affair today, between a teacher and the players whose lives he changed.

Nearly 40 years ago, in 1969, Biegel took over the basketball coaching job at Fairfax High School. He was a pint-sized scrapper from New York, a history teacher with a heart of gold and no illusions about his new post: The mostly white, Jewish school near Hollywood was strong academically, but pitiful in sports. The chess team won medals. The football players? Don’t ask.

Then Biegel got a gift — a product of good timing, an earthquake and decades of agitation for civil rights.

In 1968, school district boundaries were redrawn, allowing black students living south of Pico Boulevard to attend the school at Melrose and Fairfax avenues. Its numbers grew from 35 to 1,000 in four years, and Fairfax became one of the few city schools to achieve racial balance on its own, without a court order.

Much of Los Angeles fretted when blacks began appearing in white schools during the 1970s. Not Biegel.

He celebrated the new black athletes in his gym — players who could go to the basket with either hand and leap high above the rim. An orthodox Jew, he’d look heavenward and murmur a prayer.

“We’re winners!” he would crow. “We can take anybody!”

Full Story from the Los Angeles Times

Related Links: Marty Biegel - So Cal Jewish Sports Hall of Fame