Most people think of the 24th Ward on the west side as the birthplace of Jewish politics and patronage, as the springboard of old-timers like federal judge Abe Marovitz and the late political kingmaker Jake Arvey. But Harry Heller sees it as a place where old-time Jewish sports legends like welterweight champion Barney Ross and outfielder Milt Galatzer were born; to Heller, Arvey will always be a baseball fan first, a party boss second, and Marovitz will always be a boxer–even though he traded his boxing gloves for jurist’s robes a long time ago.
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“There’s a Jewish sports mystique,” says Heller. “Maybe it goes back to when David threw the stone, or to the Maccabiah Games. There always used to be a lot of famous Jewish athletes–lots of Jewish boxers and ball players. The New York teams used to go around the country looking for outstanding Jewish ball players to please the Jewish population in New York. In Chicago, they found Phil Weintraub and Harry Danning.
Heller is the retired owner of a Glenview children’s camp–National Athletic Camp–which closed after 25 years in 1978, when he sold the land to residential developers. For the last 28 years he has been active in the Chicago Sports Lodge–for the last 10 he’s been its president. His group, with 1,200 members the largest local chapter of the B’nai B’rith, the international Jewish fund-raising and fellowship organization, bases all its meetings on some sports theme.
Heller’s B’nai B’rith chapter has one of the country’s largest memberships and is one of the highest fund-raisers. That may be due, in part, to his continual quest for “attractions”–sports celebrities he persuades to come to meetings.
