Local Connections: Hal Perry – Starter ON 2 USF National Championship Teams
Hal Perry should be a Ukiah icon. The eldest child in one of the very few African American families in Ukiah during the ’50’s, Hal was elected student body president and quarterbacked the football team, and, of course was a great, great basketball player. Hal returned to Ukiah from time to time in his capacity as a motivational speaker.
This article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle.
Harold “Hal” Perry, the energetic, outgoing guard who was member of the USF basketball teams that won back-to-back NCAA titles in 1955 and ‘56, recently passed away
Perry was a starter for the Dons during those championship seasons, a team that made history for having three African American starters, Perry and future Hall of Famers K.C. Jones and Bill Russell. He was a senior on the team that went 29-0 to win a second consecutive national title.
The players from those teams have remained close, appearing together at USF athletic department functions and in private, team-only gatherings. Former teammate Mike Farmer stayed in close touch with Perry. Perry was his friend and his attorney.
“When I got to USF, I had never talked to anybody like Hal,” Farmer said. “Every night, he would study to learn two new words. He played a number of musical instruments; he was just involved in so many things. I will always remember his energy and his enthusiasm.”
Farmer said Perry was the same on the basketball floor.
“It was like he was on roller skates sometimes,” Farmer said. “He was always clapping and jumping up and down and on defense, he was like a mosquito. He bothered everybody.”
Brother Manuel Perry said he remembers going to Kezar to watch his brother play with the Dons, when all of Northern California was swept up in their success.
“He was just one of the many on that team,” Manuel Perry said. “They were a cohesive unit. There wasn’t anyone who tried to stand out. I just remember how well they played and how efficient they were as a team.”
Perry, a native of Ukiah, graduated in 1956, earned his law degree at Lincoln Law School and worked for the district attorney’s office in Oakland before going into private practice.
Perry lived in Oakland and was active in the community, working with youth groups, the YMCA and was a member of the Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, where he sang in the choir, and Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Oakland.
“Harold was the talker in the family,” Manuel Perry said. “We all used to say that he was going to grow up to be a preacher or a lawyer. He was always engaged in activities where he ended up talking into a microphone. He loved that.”
In addition to his induction into the USF Hall of Fame, in 2008, Perry was inducted into the African American Ethnic Sports Hall of Fame.
He is survived by his children, Harold Jr., Eric and Gale and siblings, Rubin, Manuel and Barbara Perry-Daniels.
