Story by KL ChouinardTwitter: @KLChouinard
Helen Bellamy, herself a member of a tall family, struck up a conversation with a young man of great height at a mixer in 1957. They compared hometowns, and as it turned out, her father worked at a job near his hometown of New Bern, N.C. A lively conversation was sparked.
And on this day when Helen met her future husband of 53 years for the first time, she was struck less by Walt Bellamy's 6-foot-11 frame and more by the way in which his composed manner affected other people.
"They just didn't carry themselves the way that I felt that people should carry themselves," Helen said. "But when they met Walt, they stood up."
Over the next few years, Bellamy put himself in position to stand tall a number of times.
In the summer of 1960, two months after marrying Helen, Walt stood at the center circle ready to jump the opening tip of the gold-medal game of the Rome Olympics. The United States went on to defeat Brazil, 90-63. Over the course of eight games, the U.S. won by an average of 42.4 points. Four members of that skilled team – Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas, and Bellamy himself – went onto professional careers that landed them in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
Bellamy held the 1960 team in high esteem in part because its members were all amateurs. After the Olympics, he went back to Indiana University for his senior season. In his final Big Ten game, he collected 28 points and 33 rebounds, a single-game conference record that still stands.
The Chicago Packers chose Bellamy with the first overall pick of the 1961 NBA Draft, and he lived up to the expectations. He dominated the paint on both ends with an explosive, above-the-rim style of play. In his first season, he averaged 31.6 points and 19.0 rebounds, and his point total still stands as the second-highest by a rookie in league history.
"He was named Rookie of the Year," Jim Washington, who would later play with Bellamy for three seasons in Atlanta. "He was a serious player."
Bellamy's rookie season holds a great deal of importance for another reason. Barely a decade after the NBA's color barrier was broken, and during an era in which unspoken racial quotas were still clung to by a number of teams, Bellamy, Woody Sauldsberry, Horace Walker, Andy Johnson and Sihugo Green comprised the league's first all-black lineup during a 1961 Packers game. (The Packers later moved to Baltimore, and then Washington where they became the Wizards.)
Bellamy earned a spot on the All-Star team four times. For his 14-year career, he averaged 19.4 points and 13.2 rebounds per game. With the exception of a single game played for the New Orleans Jazz after an expansion draft, he spent the final 4 1/2 seasons of his career in Atlanta with the Hawks and made the playoffs four times.
At that point in his career, Bellamy – playing in a #8 jersey that simply said "Bells" on the back – had developed a more sophisticated game that suited his age. While the explosive dunks and blocks still made up part of his game, so too did some of the things he did further from the basket that helped star guards Lou Hudson and Pete Maravich: screens, dribble handoffs, pick-and-roll plays, and a face-up game that mixed jump shots with graceful swoops to the rim.
"He was probably more difficult to guard (than the traditional post-up centers)," Washington said. "Walt and Nate Thurmond were much like the centers of today, where they could shoot the outside shot and take the ball to the basket. It was much more difficult to guard a guy like that."
In 1974, when Bellamy left the NBA, he had the sixth-most points (20,941) and third-most rebounds (14,241) in league history. At the time, Bellamy trailed only Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell on the all-time rebound list. To this day, he still ranks 11th.
After leaving the NBA, Bellamy remained in Atlanta because he and Helen, a middle-school science teacher, loved the city and had set down roots here. He stayed active in a number of organizations, most of which focused on politics or kids.
In 1977, he was chosen to be the sergeant-at-arms who stood at the door of the Georgia Senate.
"He escorted Prince Charles to the Georgia Senate and introduced him to the legislature," Helen said. "That was part of the job: he introduced dignitaries when they came in."
Bellamy was also, in no particular order, a four-time delegate to the Democratic National Convention, the commissioner of Atlanta's Police Athletic League, an active member of the NAACP, a special events director for a scholarship fund for minority students, a mentor at the local YMCA on Campbelltown Road, a board member for a nursery school, and a member of the local Shaw Temple A.M.E. Zion church as well as the Clinton A.M.E. Zion church back in New Bern.
In 2010, three years before he died at age 74, Bellamy returned to Springfield to stand for a second Hall of Fame induction. Already a member as a player since 1993, his 1960 Olympic Team, a group consisting of college students, AAU players, and an army soldier, was honored with one of the Hall's rare team inductions.
"This was the authentic dream team," Bellamy once said comparing his group to subsequent U.S. Olympic teams. "I like to think that we were the best team that has ever played basketball."