Sports Center Saturday - Hubie Brown

Good luck. Hubie written on the back

I've posted about Coach Hubie Brown before. He's my mom's 2nd cousin (mine, once removed). I've never met him. I don't watch basketball either, which is a shame because my grandfather, Edward Brown Sr., was a basketball coach at H.F. Grebey Junior High School in Hazleton. My youngest sister loved playing basketball and despite her height, she was really good at it. I was not athletic. I can trip over flat ground. I did ask my dad if I could play on a softball team once, but that would have cost money so that was a hard no.

It's kind of cool having someone famous in your family tree. I've seen pictures of him online, but I got quite a surprise when I was home this summer and was digitizing old family photos. There were several individual and team basketball photos. I just continued scanning and figured I'd sort through them later. There was a large 8x10 photo that my mom put out. She said, "I can't remember who this was, but it was someone who gave the picture to my dad. His name will come to me." And with that I put the photo aside and kept scanning what I was working on.

A few days later I got to the 8x10 my mom was talking about. It was then that I noticed the young man was wearing a Niagara uniform. I didn't think much of it because we've had family move to New York, but something was nagging me about this photo. Why did "Niagara" ring a bell? And then I turned the photo over and saw that "Good Luck" was written on the back with "Hubie" signed under it. I jumped online and searched for "Niagara Hubie Brown" and got this site here.

It wasn't the same photo, but it 100% was the same man. The signature on the back isn't like what his autograph is now, but I don't know that Hubie is the one that signed it. I like to think it's his signature though.

I told my mom what I discovered and we were both a tad excited. She told me that the photo had hung on the wall in her childhood home. I posted the photo online and my 1st cousin once removed, Marianne Fraser nee Brown, commented that she was told that my grandfather, Edward Brown, had given Hubie his first basketball. I showed my mom the comment and she told me that that was what she had been told too. Truth or family legend? Don't know and I can hardly reach out and ask Coach Brown, but it's cool either way.