The Long Hall :: Through 50 years, National Hall of Fame has evolved, like its honorees

Nov. 9, 2007

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by Bill Tanton, Lacrosse Magazine Online Staff

In any sport, there is no greater honor than being elected to the Hall of Fame.

That's true whether it's at Cooperstown, Canton or Springfield.

Why does it mean so much?

Perhaps no one has explained that better than pro football's Jerry Rice, who is often called the best pass receiver in National Football League history. Rice is a sure Hall of Fame choice but he won't be eligible for Canton, Ohio, until 2009. He's already getting nervous.

"Going in the Hall of Fame is everything," he said publicly. "That's why we play the game."

The 10 former players and coaches to be honored at the 50th annual National Lacrosse Hall of Fame Induction Celebration, presented by Bollinger, Saturday in Hunt Valley, Md., probably feel much like Rice.

Most honorees consider entering the Hall of Fame as great an honor as they will ever receive. Take Harvey Cohen, a lawyer and lacrosse organizer and administrator. To many, he's Mr. Long Island Lacrosse. Harvey was inducted in the Hall of Fame in 1988. He attends the induction ceremony every year.

"I was greatly honored when I went in," he says, "and I continue to be honored by it. Whenever I see any of the guys who are going in I tell them that they are part of a great fraternity now. I served on the selection committee for 12 years so I know how proud people are when they receive this honor."

Harvey is a committed lifer in this game. He's still the chair of the Long Island Lacrosse Hall of Fame and chair of the Port Washington Youth Activities Hall of Fame. His son, Barry, also is in the Long Island Hall of Fame.

Also typical is Col. Pete Cramblet, U.S. Army (retired). Cramblet also came off Long Island and became an All-America attackman at West Point in the `60s. His Army team won the national championship in 1969.

When Cramblet entered the Hall of Fame at the banquet at the Sheraton Hotel in Towson, Md., in 1986, his primary reaction was surprise.

"I was surprised when they called me and said I'd been elected," Cramblet says. "Of course it was a great honor. I had never given a thought to some day going in the Hall of Fame. In high school at Huntington I sat on the bench until my senior year. So I was always surprised when I won any honor, All-America or anything else. I just liked playing lacrosse. I liked to compete."

Cramblet, who served 28 years in the Army and now lives in Atlanta, has a son, Wyatt, who is a plebe at West Point and plays lacrosse. On the last weekend in October, Pete went back to the academy to visit his son and to attend a West Point Hall of Fame ceremony honoring his old teammate, Tom Cafaro. Cafaro entered the National Hall of Fame in 1988.

But then there's Dick Finley.

Some claim Finley was the best lacrosse player ever to come off Long Island. The argument may be specious since Jim Brown and Jimmy Lewis -- both Hall of Fame members -- also came off the island. Brown, the football immortal who also played lacrosse at Syracuse, and Lewis, from Navy's championship teams in the `60s, are usually ranked among the top two or three ever to play the game.

There's no question that Finley, who played at Syracuse and then for the Long Island Lacrosse Club, was a player of true Hall of Fame caliber. He was elected with the class of 1999, but when he was phoned at his home in Florida and given the news he said, "That was so long ago. That stuff doesn't interest me much any more."

He didn't bother to attend the ceremony.

Cramblet could understand Finley's response.

"I played against Finley for years," Cramblet says, "and he was a great player. But he was, well, laid back."

Not until the Hall of Fame's 36th year, in 1992, were women admitted. The first was Rosabelle Sinclair, a native of Scotland who introduced women's lacrosse to the U.S. at Bryn Mawr (Md.) School in 1926. Ms. Sinclair died in 1978. Including the five entering this year, there are now 68 women in the Hall of Fame. One of those, Nancy Chance, who entered in 2004, sees the whole experience as a confirmation of character.

"I didn't know there was a Hall of Fame until they called me and told me I was going in the [Greater Baltimore Chapter Hall of Fame]," she admits. "So it was an even greater thrill when I went in the [National Hall of Fame]. It made me think I must have done something right."

Today the annual ceremony in November is a glittery event at the stately Grand Lodge, 12 miles north of Baltimore. It wasn't always this way. For years the ceremony was such an off-hand thing that it was conducted on the field at halftime of a Johns Hopkins home game.

"That was all they did when I went in back in `84," says Bob Sandell.

In 1986 US Lacrosse -- then the Lacrosse Foundation -- went to work upgrading the event, eventually making it the classy, black-tie-optional affair it is today. Last year, 475 people attended, including 60 Hall of Famers from previous years. There were more acceptances than that this year.

Sometimes a new Hall of Famer approaches the evening with uncertainty, like Pete Eldredge, one of the heroes of Virginia's 1972 NCAA champion team. Another laid-back player, Eldredge had people wondering how he'd react. He surprised attendees by turning emotional. Some say he shed a tear or two. With some honorees, such as Nolan Rogers, a 2003 inductee, there is total gratitude.

"I never did anything in this game thinking I'd some day go in the Hall of Fame," says Rogers, who played at Duke in the 1950s and later distinguished himself as general manager of U.S. men's national teams for a dozen years.

"Whatever I did," Rogers adds, "I did simply because I love the game. When I went in the Hall of Fame it meant a great deal, being honored by my peers."