By Ed Piper
A tall man on the sidelines of August 22's opener at Torrey Pines drew one's attention, soon talking to Falcon boys basketball co-coach Jake Gilliam, a former star on the campus at 6'9".
Ty Humes, a former Syracuse crew and ice hockey player, stands closer to 6'5" now. He was amiable and outgoing, full of stories of being born in the Bronx and growing up in Manhattan, New York, as he chatted with this reporter, who is 6'5", and Gilliam, who came over to say hi to both before moving to another spot in Ed Burke Stadium prior to the Vikings' football game in Del Mar.
The slender Humes is also a former San Dieguito Union High School District board member. "They put me in," he said, when a situation came up on the board. He had been head of the Del Mar Foundation, which raises money for the elementary schools in the area.
That latter position was non-controversial, but the high school board has a long history of over-involved parents and a vocal community that has strident views on anything related to their young students.
Ty's own kids, he said, handled his board service in different ways. His daughter, who graduated from TPHS two years ago, tried to hide whenever attention was brought to her because of her father's prominence.
His son, who plays for the Falcon freshman football team, handles it totally differently. Humes chuckled: "He would ask for favors because his dad was a board member. He tried to take advantage of it."
Back to his roots in New York, we talked about the feature of life that existed in NYC when the city had six or more prominent daily newspapers--and editions in both the morning and afternoon. The papers were the people's Internet back then.
Ty enumerated the newspapers: the New York Post, the New York Daily News, Newsday--which was on Long Island, but now calls itself "New York Newsday" to make the city connection--the New York Times, and others.
He knows Ron Gladnick, the former Torrey Pines football coach who also built up the programs at Catholic (USDHS) and St. Augustine. "He told me, 'You're welcome to be on the sidelines any time. Just make yourself at home.'" He doesn't know Sean Doyle, the present coach at Cathedral.
In pre-Internet days, he reminisced, he and his friends went through the names of every starter for New York pro teams back in the day, and could name specific data about each player from memory--no Internet to look it up on. "We could remember all that stuff," he laughed.
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