Jene Grey, who was inducted into the Le Moyne College Sports Hall of Fame in 1991 for his basketball career, died in his sleep in September, according to his sisters, Vanessa and Leslie Grey. He was 68.
Not only was he was an all-tournament player – alongside the great Magic Johnson – in Syracuse University’s inaugural Carrier Classic in 1977, his family emphasized that a heart wrenching but courageous childhood decision by his mother set him on the path to become what his sister Leslie called “a superhero.”
The lifetime warmth, empathy and purpose that Leslie referenced quickly became clear at Le Moyne, where Jene was both a basketball star and a memorable student leader within the Le Moyne community.
“Everyone loved him and respected him,” said Dan Fiaschetti, who was a men’s basketball co-captain with Jene in 1978-79, their senior year.
Like Vanessa and Leslie, Fiaschetti and Tom “Fletch” Fletcher, another member of that basketball team and a friend of Grey’s, did Zoom interviews recently with a Le Moyne journalism class.
His sisters recalled traveling from New York City to attend games at Le Moyne with their mother, Shirley. “Her biggest dream was to see her child do well, and it showed in her face at the basketball games,” Vanessa said.
Fletcher said Jene’s athletic accomplishments paled in comparison to the hardships he overcame. After living in the Marcy projects in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood for the first 15 years of his life, Jene’s mother – working with the courts – sent her son to Delaware County and Camp Brace, which Vanessa called “a place for young boys who strayed away from their potential.”
Their mother made that decision, she said, because she feared he would be a target for violence or would get more deeply involved in street life. Her sacrifice paid off: Jene discovered a love for both academics and basketball at the camp, which eventually led him to stay with local residents Gary and Jackie Scavo, a decision that allowed him to finish high school as a basketball standout at Sidney High.
From there he went on to Le Moyne College. According to a Le Moyne athletics department website, the Dolphins had victories over five Division I basketball programs during his sophomore season. These victories, Fletcher said, happened in spite of Jene developing shingles on his forehead, making it almost impossible to see clearly out of one eye.
“He played with one eye and he was still killing people,” Fletcher said. “He had to keep his head down to protect his eye.” Somehow, Jene fought through it to help carry “the best Dolphins squad of the 1970s” to success, according to the website.
Jene and Fletcher had experience together that went beyond basketball. In the summer of 1977, Fletcher joined Jene on a visit with Jene’s mother and sisters to Bed-Stuy and the Marcy projects – home at the time to an 8-year-old Shawn Carter, who’d become famous as Jay-Z. As the two college friends walked down the street, Fletcher said, “everyone would open their windows and call out Jene’s name.”
That was basically the way people responded to him at Le Moyne, his old friends said. “Jene was a very social guy,” Fiaschetti recalled. Gary Frank, another classmate, described Jene as “good-looking and gregarious,” a student well-admired by the campus community.
A highlight of his career involved that 1977 Carrier Classic, played at the old Manley Field House. In a tournament with three Division I teams, according to Syracuse.com, he averaged 24.3 points in the two games he played – and that put him on the all-tournament team alongside Johnson, one of the greatest basketball players in history.
Though Le Moyne played Syracuse – and lost – for the first time at that tournament, their men’s teams played again last week in their first meeting as Division I schools, ending in a close and painful defeat for Le Moyne. It was “poignant and unfortunate” that Jene died without being able to watch that landmark game, Fiaschetti said.
Jene became the first Le Moyne player selected in the National Basketball Association player draft when he was chosen in the seventh round in 1979 by the National Basketball Association’s San Diego Clippers – a National Basketball Association club that had just left Buffalo. That Clippers team included Hall of Famer Bill Walton at the time. While Jene’s sisters said he did not make the team, he never forgot the experience of trying out.
Jene died Sept. 26, in Maryland, of an apparent heart attack, his sisters said. He had retired from a job as a senior accounts specialist at Walden University. He was a father and grandfather, and his sisters said he spent five years raising one of his grandchildren, who was born with special needs.
His life was “a story about how from small beginnings come great things, and about defying all the things he could succumb to,” said his sister Vanessa.
By a Le Moyne introductory writing and reporting class: Corinne Becker, Riley Brennen, Aliyah Brown, Mairead Conway, Grace Crooks, Richard Dann, Jordynn Firnstein, Payton Hirsch, Michael Leahy, Branwyn Lupton, Hannah Martz, Sophia Melone, Aidan Mingoia, Anthony Quinn, Joakay Shidoma, Emily Symans, George Vasilev and Lucy Webb.
