Harry Glickman, founder and longtime executive of the Portland Trail Blazers who is considered the father of professional sports in Oregon, died Wednesday. He was 96.
A former promoter, Glickman secured Portland’s first major league franchise in 1970 when he lined up investors Herm Sarkowsky from Seattle, Larry Weinberg from Los Angeles and Robert Schmertz from New Jersey to pay the $3.7 million expansion fee.
With the money behind him, Glickman then did what he did best: promote Portland as a city deserving of first-rate entertainment. The expansion committee bought it, awarding Portland, Cleveland and Buffalo franchises on Feb. 6, 1970.
Operating under the motto of “you win with good people,” Glickman was a front office executive for the Blazers until his retirement in 1994, and he continued as president emeritus until his death. His motto paid off, as seven years after securing the franchise, the Blazers won the 1977 NBA championship. The team would later amass 814 consecutive sellouts from 1977-1995, the longest sellout streak in NBA history, and the longest streak in professional sports until baseball’s Boston Red Sox recorded a string of 820 sellouts from 2003-2013.
“The Trail Blazers have long been the beneficiary of Harry’s vision, generosity, and inspiration,” Jody Allen, chair of the Trail Blazers, said in a statement. “As the team’s founder and first general manager, his leadership was instrumental in igniting our city’s pride and passion for sports. I am grateful for Harry’s many contributions to the franchise over the years. He will be missed by many.”
Born and raised in Portland, and a University of Oregon journalism school graduate, Glickman and his deep voice became a fixture in the Portland entertainment scene starting in the 1950s as a promoter who staged some of the state’s largest events. The events ranged from performers such as Liberace and Judy Garland, to sports teams such as the Los Angeles Rams, who played an exhibition in Portland the season after they won the 1951 NFL championship.
He also founded in 1960 the popular and successful Portland Buckaroos, a minor league hockey team that broke attendance records and won three titles before the league folded 13 years later.
But it was the Trail Blazers that put Portland, and Glickman, on the map.
“I guess that’s what they are going to put on my tombstone: Brought the NBA to Portland. And you know, I will settle for that," Glickman said in June 2014. “I got Portland to the big leagues, and that’s because that’s where I thought we belonged. Still do.’’
Glickman’s feat didn’t come without some serendipitous twists and turns that included unintended help from Judy Garland and his own absent mind.
It was Glickman’s second attempt at securing an NBA franchise. Earlier in 1970, 10 local investors pledged $100,000 each, and Glickman planned on getting a loan and going public to make up the difference. But interest rates were more than 20 percent, Glickman recalled, and the idea and the group fell apart.
Shortly after Glickman’s first attempt failed, former Seattle general manager Dick Vertlieb, who had led a charge four years earlier to bring the NBA to Seattle, called Glickman to tell him of a potential investor. But there was a catch: The investor didn’t want to reveal his name until they could come to an agreement.
Turns out, the investor was Sarkowsky, the ex-brother-in-law of Glickman’s wife, Joanne.
Glickman and Sarkowsky came to an agreement rooted in a simple stipulation: Sarkowsky didn’t want to work with Glickman’s 10 former investors, but he would handle the financial burden if he could pick his own investment team.
While Sarkowsky worked on compiling an investment team, Glickman flew to Los Angeles for a meeting with the NBA expansion committee. During the meeting, Glickman’s pitch was met with mixed enthusiasm. One of the committee members, New York Knicks owner Ned Irish, famously asked, “How can I put Portland on the marquee of Madison Square Garden?”
Glickman, however, did have two strong advocates on the committee, namely Atlanta’s Tommy Cousins and Baltimore’s Abe Pollin, who was also the chairman. But even with their backing, the committee was skeptical about Glickman’s financial backing. Who were the investors? How much did they have?
Glickman, who had been unsuccessfully trying to reach Sarkowsky in the days leading up to the meeting, didn’t have the answers. He left Pollin’s hotel suite dejected, thinking his dream was dead.
“As I was leaving, Tommy Cousins told me, ‘We really want Portland in the league, but we need to see the money,’” Glickman remembered.
On his way out of the hotel, Glickman realized he had forgotten his raincoat in the bedroom of Pollin’s suite. When he reached the room, Pollin was holding the phone receiver.
“Abe says, ‘There’s some guy named Sarkowsky who wants to talk to you,’” Glickman said. “He said, ‘We are all set to go!’”
The committee told Glickman they needed to see a letter of credit for $250,000 from Sarkowsky’s bank by noon. After racing across town to get the documentation, Glickman was still late to the meeting.
But because Pollin was such an advocate for Glickman, and Portland, he excused himself from the meeting and locked himself in the restroom with two explicit instructions: Don’t make a decision without me, and don’t disturb me until Glickman gets here.
“It might have been the longest No. 2 in history,’’ Glickman recalled, chuckling. “Every time Abe and I would cross paths in the years following, that would be our first laugh.’’
After a three-hour meeting, the committee awarded Portland, Cleveland and Buffalo franchises.
“If I never went back to get my raincoat, I don’t know what would have happened,’’ Glickman said.
And if Glickman hadn’t promoted a Judy Garland tour along the West Coast in the summer of 1955, he might never have been championing Portland as a sports town.
In the 1950s, after serving three years in the Seventh Army’s 12th Armored Division that went through Belgium, France and Germany in World War II, Glickman was at the epicenter of Portland entertainment as a promoter.
He wanted to be a sportswriter, and in December 1947 he was set to work for The Oregonian, but the opening he was to fill went to Pat Frizell, who held the job before the war. Frizell stayed in England after the war, but returned in 1947, and there was a federal law requiring businesses to give servicemen their old jobs back.
It was then that Glickman was introduced to Tex Salkeld, a cigar-chomping promoter who staged boxing matches out of the Bachelor’s Club in St. Johns, and later “Deacon” Jack Hurley, who was considered a shrewd, but honest, promoter.
“I found, though, that I liked doing my own thing,’’ Glickman said.
By 1952, Glickman staged a boxing match between Harry “Kid” Matthews and Rex Layne that drew 11,361 at Portland’s Pacific International Livestock Pavilion. At the time, it was the largest indoor sports crowd in state history.
Two years later, in the summer of 1954, he promoted a fight between British champion Don Cockell and Matthews that drew 14,868 at Seattle’s Sick’s Stadium.
In between sporting events, Glickman was also dabbling in show business. He brought Holiday on Ice skating shows to Portland, and in November 1953, he promoted a concert by Liberace that drew a standing-room-only crowd of more than 5,000 to the Portland Public Auditorium.
And in 1955, he promoted the Judy Garland Tour that included the Hi-Lows and Frank Fontaine that had stops in Long Beach, California, Eugene, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver, B.C., and Spokane.
“We did pretty good in Eugene and Portland,’’ Glickman recalled. “But in Seattle, she canceled. Sick, she said. Then in Spokane, there was a show for servicemen, but she didn’t show. I went to her room and she said ‘Go tell them to …’ I almost dropped my teeth. I thought I knew something about show business, but after that, that was the end of that. She made a sports man out of me.”
He also staged NFL exhibition games in Portland, most notably a 1952 contest between the Los Angeles Rams and Chicago Cardinals that drew 29,000 to Multnomah Stadium, and a 1955 exhibition between the Rams and the New York Giants that marked the NFL’s first overtime game, a 23-17 Rams win.
Later, in 1958, he ran Multnomah Stadium for two years and was a member of the Multnomah Athletic Club for more than 50 years.
Glickman was born May 13, 1924, in Portland. His mother, Bessie, worked in the ladies’ garment industry and mostly raised Glickman by herself. Glickman said his father suffered from mental illness and was institutionalized, and his parents divorced when he was 5.
He attended Shattuck grade school and graduated from Lincoln High in 1941. He enrolled at UO and graduated in 1948 after his three-year stint in the Army.
“My mother remarried in the summer of my freshman year at Oregon and moved to Seattle,’’ Glickman said. “I wasn’t going to go up there and live with a stepfather and go to the University of Washington. I wanted to go to Oregon.’’
In 1999, the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communications inducted him into their Hall of Achievement.
In 1986, he was inducted into the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame and in 1992, he was given Portland’s First Citizen award for civic leadership. He is also a member of the International Jewish Hall of Fame.
“Harry was the definition of a true Trail Blazer,” Chris McGowan, president & CEO of the Trail Blazers and Rose Quarter, said in a statement. “Through his dedication and persistence, Harry not only created a successful sports franchise in a small western market, but has united hundreds of thousands of people around the world through a shared love of basketball. Rip City will forever be thankful to Harry and his forgotten raincoat.”
He served as Blazers executive vice president from 1970-1987, general manager from 1976-1981 and president from 1987-1994.
“Harry Glickman laid the foundation and established the benchmark for small market success in the NBA,” Neil Olshey, Blazers president of basketball operations, said in a statement. “He was the driving force that set the stage for the 1977 NBA Championship, a seminal moment that elevated Portland and allowed it to join the elite of professional sports franchises. His contributions to the city of Portland and the Trail Blazers are immense and for that we all owe him a great debt of gratitude.”
Glickman received the John W. Bunn Lifetime Achievement Award from the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in September 2019.
He is survived by his wife, Joanne, and son Marshall, who served as Blazers president from 1988-1995 and now lives in Bend. He is also survived by daughters Jennifer and Lynn, grandsons Joel and Laz, and granddaughter Sydney.
A private burial will be held for Glickman, and a public memorial service is planned to be held at Congregation Beth Israel at a later date.
-- Jason Quick