Life After Basketball: Fran & Nancy O’Hanlon Are Right at Home in Avalon
Fran O’Hanlon captained the Villanova Wildcats in 1970, his senior season.
Fran O’Hanlon was enjoying a night in the Bongo Room during Memorial Day weekend in 1986. While The Fabulous Greaseband played classic oldies, O’Hanlon was looking forward to a summer at the shore.
It was then that Avalon was about to become more than his favorite vacation destination. Sometime between “Woolly Bully” and “Hang On Sloopy,” it was about to become a lifestyle.
Near the bar in the large rock ‘n’ roll venue inside the old Avalon Hotel was a young lady spending time with friends with whom she would share a summertime rental. Among the group was former Penn basketball player Tom Crowley. He recognized O’Hanlon, who had played at Villanova.
The young lady, Nancy Callery, remembers Crowley pointing to O’Hanlon and saying: “See that guy. He’s my hero.”
Summertime story short, O’Hanlon wandered over and was introduced to Callery. By Labor Day, they were dating. By 1990, they were married.
They have been summering in Avalon ever since.
“It’s Philly South,” O’Hanlon says. “Everybody goes to Avalon.”
O’Hanlon has enjoyed it all in Avalon: the biking, the swimming, the tennis and – years ago – the legendary Saturday morning pickup games at the 8th Street courts. He is about to enjoy it more, having chosen to make it his permanent residence, now that he has retired from a lifetime in basketball. He spent the last 27 years as the head coach at Lafayette College, where his teams won 361 games and three times reached the NCAA Tournament – twice without the benefit of scholarship players.
A Big 5 Hall of Famer from his career as a Wildcats guard, O’Hanlon was an eighth-round draft selection of both the 76ers and ABA’s Miami Floridians in 1970. He played a year in Florida before spending 1975-82 playing pro ball in Sweden. His coaching career began in Venezuela, then Israel. He also served as a Temple women’s assistant coach before moving on to Monsignor Bonner High School outside Philadelphia, then served as a Penn men’s assistant under Fran Dunphy. From there, it was to Lafayette, in Easton, Pa., where he and Nancy raised their children, Tim and Gigi.
Always, though, there was the summer; always, there was Avalon.
That tradition started decades ago, when Nancy’s father – the late Dr. Gerald Callery, an orthopedic surgeon at Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia – would rent a shore home for his family every summer. As O’Hanlon recalls it, the good doctor occasionally would arrive by a plane able to land on water. By whatever mode of transportation, Fran and Nancy O’Hanlon never missed an Avalon summer. By 2000, they would own a home near 45th Street and Ocean Drive, across the street from NFL quarterback Joe Flacco.
As Tim and Gigi grew, they too became wrapped in the beach-town lifestyle, Gigi often earning summertime spending money at the Nancy Lynn Creamery on Dune Drive, Tim once taking a job some might find more alluring than being a major-college basketball coach: He got to drive the tramcar in Wildwood.
“There were times when they were young when they would say, ‘All my friends are back home or at the mall,’ ” Nancy said. “And I would be like, ‘Oh, my gosh, are you kidding me? You’re at the Jersey Shore. You are in the sun, with the waves.’ But looking back, they appreciated it. They understood how special it was.”
There have been changes over the years. The Avalon Hotel is gone, the O’Hanlon children are grown; Tim is 29, Gigi 28. And those basketball battles on 8th Street, the ones O’Hanlon often would win with his before-his-time “three-point range,” are different but never forgotten.
“I remember Sports Illustrated doing a big thing on it when Avalon basketball was really hot,” O’Hanlon said. “We had great games. For 10, 12 years, there were college players, ex-college players and more. It was huge at that time. You would get up at 7 o’clock on Saturday or Sunday morning to go play. It would go to noon. Everybody was there.”
Legend holds that the tradition began even before O’Hanlon’s time, when Basketball Hall of Famer Paul Arizin, a 1950 Villanova grad, used to play. But, among others O’Hanlon remembers playing with and against in Avalon are former NBA players Eddie Mast and Tim Legler, current Penn coach Steve Donahue, longtime NBA scout Steve Rosenberry, and former La Salle star Mike Arizin, Paul’s son.
“So many players from Philadelphia were there,” O’Hanlon says. “It was great in the ’70s and ’80s, and it probably even touched the ’90s. I still go over there, but it’s not the same as it once was. A lot of little kids are playing there now. I play more tennis now, up on 39th Street.”
O’Hanlon still enjoys “The Camaraderie Classic,” which unfolds each May at the 8th Street courts. It’s a tournament of about 10 teams, most consisting of recent alumni of Philadelphia-area college programs, organized by the Arizin family to raise money for breast cancer awareness.
“A lot of the old guys come back and hang out,” he says. “It’s like a reunion. It’s really cool that they do it. A lot of the younger guys play. Us older guys, we just sit there and cut up the guys who are playing. We tell each other how good we used to be. We tell lies, and we compliment each other’s lies.”
In any exaggeration, there is truth. The truth was that O’Hanlon, a graduate of St. Thomas More High School, was one of the best guards ever to spring out of the Philadelphia Catholic League or the Big 5. As it would happen, he would be just as successful in coaching, guiding Bonner to a Catholic League championship in 1988 before moving on to the college game. Thrilled to be able to work so close to his roots, he chose to stay off the coaching carousel and made Lafayette his home – in basketball season, at least. But at 73, he found it time for a break, readied his Easton house for sale, and set off for Avalon. Of course.
“He was not usually there in the ‘off’ season, because he was coaching,” Nancy O’Hanlon said. “But I would always go once a month during the year, just to get away and enjoy it. So, I think it’s going to be a little different for him, being there in the offseason. But he has a lot of friends in Avalon, a lot of coaches from Philadelphia. He can ride his bike and go swimming before dinner. It’s great. I think he is going to enjoy it. I know I will.”
That’s the plan, set in motion at the Bongo Room, once owned by Phil Matalucci whose family has deep roots at Villanova. Just the same, O’Hanlon knows he just might have the urge to coach again.
“You are coaching basketball forever, and now you wake up and say, ’What am I going to do today?’ ” he says. “‘What time is lunch?’ I don’t know if I want to coach full time, but I wouldn’t mind helping out somewhere if it presented itself. I am open to whatever. I still have a lot of energy. Maybe I will be a grade school coach. Who knows?”
Some team just might be able to use a coach with 361 Division I victories and three NCAA Tournament watches.
“You never know,” Fran O’Hanlon says, laughing. “Everybody wants to coach.”