Collection is open for research.
Gift of Rich Patterson, August 2023 (RL2023-046).
Harry Glickman was born in 1924 in Portland, Oregon. He served in the 12th Armored Division during World War II. After the war, he completed his degree in journalism from the University of Oregon in 1948, but unable to find a job as a sportswriter right away, he gravitated to the field of sports promotion. In 1960, he founded the Portland Buckaroos hockey team. Although his attempts in the 1950s and 1960s to establish a professional basketball or football team in Portland were unsuccessful, in 1970 he founded the Portland Trail Blazers, a National Basketball Association (NBA) franchise. He was the Blazers' executive vice president from 1970 to 1987, general manager from 1976 to 1981, and president from 1987 to 1994. Glickman died in 2020.
Source: Obituaries in the Oregonian, June 11, 2020, and the New York Times, June 13, 2020.
Bill Schonely was born in 1929 in Norristown, Pennsylvania. After high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Marines, where he joined the Armed Forces Radio. In that role, he worked as a disc jockey, conducted interviews, and read news and sports reports. In 1952, he got a job at WAFB in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; in 1955, he moved to Seattle, Washington, and was hired by KOMO, where he announced games for the Seattle Totems hockey team and for some football and baseball games. In 1970, Harry Glickman hired Schonely to be the play-by-play broadcaster for the new basketball team in Portland, Oregon, the Trail Blazers. During the team's inaugural season in February 1971, Schonely blurted out "Rip City, all right!" after a long shot by player Jim Barnett. Schonely had gotten the phrase from when he called baseball games in Seattle, where players referred to line drives as "rips." The slogan "Rip City" would come to be associated with the Portland Trail Blazers.
Schonely continued as the play-by-play broadcaster for Trail Blazers games until 2000, when the team deemed him too old for the job, despite protests from fans. However, the Blazers brought him back as an ambassador in 2003, and in 2009 he broadcast the third quarter of an exhibition game. Schonely died in January 2023.
Source: Obituary in the Oregonian, January 22, 2023.
Harry Glickman letter to Bill Schonely, Coll 972, Oregon Historical Society Research Library.
Other materials relating to Harry Glickman and Bill Schonely at the Oregon Historical Society Research Library are an oral history interview with Glickman, SR 2094; and an oral history interview with Schonely, SR 1346, which is available online in OHS Digital Collections at
The collection consists of a letter from Portland Trail Blazers founder Harry Glickman to sports announcer Bill Schonely, confirming that Schonely has been hired to be the play-by-play broadcaster for the Trail Blazers' 1970-1971 season for a salary of $25,000. The letter also says that the team's organization will try to obtain a car for Schonely, that expenses for travel, meals and hotels will be the same for Schonely as for players, and that the cost of moving Schonely's household effects from Seattle, Washington, to Portland, Oregon, will be covered.
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