Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss

Here is a photo of the basketball court at Henry W. Seale Park (formerly known as Stockton Park) in Palo Alto. The PAHA calls it a “multipurpose bowl with basketball hoop.” It is quite near to 3134 Greer, where Kent lived from 7th grade on, and where he and Jerry Chang, and Mark House, famously (at least, according to Kristin Huckshorn of the San Jose Mercury News) would in the driveway bounce the basketball for hours on end, and where, not entirely incidentally, Lockhart helped his mother Marlinda Fitzgerald design and install a very unique surviving garden, itself fit for either PAPAC attention or Steve Staiger’s files as an arts landmark.  Kent later said that carrying and placing the 50-pound boulders, which supposedly came from San Simeon with the direct permission of William Randolph Hearst, was equivalent to putting in that many hours in the weight room. When they weren’t in the drive way, they were often around the corner at the single hoop at Seale Park; Kent and I re-lived those days in a shootaround in 1988, the year he was MVP of the SF Pro Am league that also featured NBA’s Scooter Barry and Lester Conner.

Seale Park, formerly Stockton Park until 1982 and named currently for a large land-holder who was part of the founding of Palo Alto and died in 1888, is getting some sprucing up; a sign says that the new restrooms were to be finished in March, 2011. I left a voice mail last week with Holly Boyd of the City hoping to find out, at the very least, whether there would be a re-dedication ceremony (apparently there was one in 2000). Although these matters are better first vetted via Roger Smith, Greg Betts or Annette Glanckoph, I did mention in my voice mail for the City engineer something about wanting to dedicate the new bathrooms “for a famous Palo Altan.”

Lockhart led Gunn to two SCVAL basketball titles in 1980 and 1981 and was also the Central Coast Section player of the year (and an honorable mention Street and Smith’s All-America).

At University of Texas El Paso (UTEP) he set a school record for most wins and most games in a four year career, for a team that was ranked as high as national top ten and was featured in Sports Illustrated (he played with Dave Feitl, Luster Goodwin and Jeep Jackson, and against John Stockton and Karl Malone). In the 1985 NBA draft he was selected by the New York Knicks, as the 119th player chosen overall, but broke his arm and missed the cut. After time in the CBA (playing for Cazzie Russell and Phil Jackson), he signed to play pro ball in Australia, where he was first team All Australia (a continent of 3 million square miles and at the time about 15 million people, as in he was among the top five players among that many people), and continued coaching and playing for about 20 more seasons at various levels. (He coached Andrew Bogut, for instance). He teaches art at a secondary school near Melbourne and makes sculpture. His mother sold 3134 Greer in 2007 and now lives Down Under with Kent. Continue reading →