Webb Weekly Interviews Travis
Courtman
From the January 9, 16, 2008, Webb Weekly - By David Kagan
Law, basketball and tennis Williamsport’s Ronald Carl Travis has engaged in all three pursuits during his lifetime. And with his clear dedication to excellence in each, he has gained a degree of fame for his accomplishments in or on all three courts.
Ron Travis, Esq. first became interested in going to law school in his late teens, when, as he said, “Some friends of mine had some legal problems, and the lawyer who jumped into the case saved their futures, as well as their freedoms. It seemed to me that earning a living with one’s mind and being able to help others who were in need was a good way to support myself.”
After graduating from Lycoming College in 1967, Ron matriculated at Dickinson Law School that fall. He did extremely well academically his first year, and was invited by the Law School Dean to join the Law Review there, considered “the highest goal of the students,” according to Travis. He told Dean Laub, “’Thanks, but no thanks,’ because I wanted to be free to play basketball, and the Law Review took your every non-classroom minute.”
As shocked and upset as Dean Laub was at first (he even “made noise about not allowing me the scholarship which I won for being in the top 10”), a few years later as Ron’s graduation neared, it was the Dean who set up a law clerk job interview for Ron with the Chief Justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Philadelphia, John C. Bell. Ron got offered and accepted the job. Ron believes that, ironically enough, Dean Laub had actually grown to like and respect him, and then helped him get that important first job because “I was the only person who ever turned down the chance to work on the Law Review so I could play basketball!”
After a year in the City of Brotherly Love, Travis and his wife, Pam, decided to return to Williamsport to live and work, and to be near his wife’s family. They figured that life back in good old Northcentral Pennsylvania had to be better than in Philly, where in a one-year period, their apartment had been broken into twice.
By August 1971 the Travises were back in Billtown, with Ron employed by the law firm of Candor, Youngman, Gibson and Gault, doing insurance and criminal defense work. Newly admitted to the federal bar, Lawyer Travis was assigned his first criminal case, one he described as “a real ugly alleged rape of one inmate by another at Lewisburg Penitentiary.”
Travis successfully defended his client, obtaining “a finding that the sex was by consent to pay off a gambling debt,” averting “a possible 40-year sentence in isolation if convicted of rape.” The gratitude his client showed him (he still hears from him several times a year now, over 35 years later) convinced Travis to continue taking federal appointments during his career.
Those appointments have included eight first-degree murder cases. In 1996 the federal death penalty was reinstituted, and since then Travis said, “I have tried the only two death penalty cases which have gone to trial here.” The first resulted in a death penalty, but which was later vacated; the second in a life sentence verdict instead. In two other cases, Travis was able to convince the Attorney General not to seek the death penalty. And in the fifth death penalty in which Travis was involved since 1996, the federal government dismissed the case.
Of these defense efforts, Travis stated, “The death penalty work is what is most rewarding to me since I do not believe that society should kill someone to establish that it is wrong to kill someone, as this just keeps the circle of violence spinning.” And of his federal inmate clients, he said, “Most keep in contact with me, at least around the holidays, and they do appear to really appreciate that lawyers are willing to help them even though the rest of society seems to treat them with scorn.”
Of his civil defense work, Lawyer Travis said, “I also have some good memories, but the one which sticks out is that of a young man from another county who suffered a serious head injury as a child. He was on a bike and was struck by a car. For whatever reason, his parents never did anything about that, and they went to a lawyer five years after the incident and wanted to do something. The lawyer told them the statute of limitations had passed and they were out of luck.
“The parents happened to talk with someone who knew me from basketball in that other county and told them to call me. They did and because the accident happened when the child was under 18, the statute was tolled (the running of the time period suspended) till the child turned 18, and there were two years after turning 18 to do something about the case.
“I took the case and was able to get him a nice settlement, which is in trust and enables him to have a normal life. Every Christmas he sends me a card and a little gift and gives me an update on what is going on in his life.
“When I hear the jokes about what scum lawyers are, I am tempted to tell that story, but I realize that people do not really care about the good lawyers do. Heck, I once got an intersection changed to make it safer to enter a major highway as part of settling a traffic accident case. But what the public wants to do is talk about the hot coffee case.”
When asked to comment about his present law-related experiences and about his future plans and possible retirement some day, Lawyer Ron Travis replied, “Two former clients (a married couple) were in town for Thanksgiving and stopped in the office to tell me how they have gotten out of the drug life and what they were doing. They had told their children, ‘This man saved Mommy and Dad’s lives.’ They told me that they have a picture of me hanging on their wall in their house, and when people ask who that is, they tell them that I saved their lives. How can one have a greater reward than that?
“Along those same lines, about six months ago I had a 20-year-old black kid who was being sentenced for selling drugs. He came from a broken home, dropped out of school and had been raised in the thug life. He told the judge in open court that I was his hero and that no one had ever cared as much about him as I had. He promised that when he got out of federal prison he was not going to go back to that life and that he was going to get a GED and take some college courses and try to get into counseling when he was released. The court reporter was so moved by what he said that she drew up the transcript and sent it to me, as she had never in 20-plus years heard a client say anything close to that about the lawyer.”
Ron Travis is happy about the body of work that he has accomplished so far in his law career in Williamsport. “I cannot second guess the decision to return to Williamsport to practice law,” he said.
About the possibility of retirement, he mused, “Each February I go away for the month and, lying in the sun, the temptation of retirement does loom. Yet, after about two weeks, I miss the work and worry about cases, and by the time it is time to leave, I am ready. I just do not see retirement as an option as long as I am able to work, as long as my mind holds out, and I hope to continue to do what I have been doing till the day I die.”
When did Williamsport Attorney Ron Travis’s interest in athletics begin?
“When I learned how to throw rocks and was able to translate that into throwing a baseball,” he replied. “Baseball was my first love, and my Little League coach at Salamanca (in western New York State) was actually Paul Owens, who later became the General Manager of the Philadelphia Phillies. I got into basketball as sort of a fluke, because I couldn’t play baseball in the winter.”
When Ron was just 11 years old, he began to hang out at the school gymnasium after school “to throw a basketball against the wall” until it was time to leave for his pin-setting job at the local bowling alley. The high school basketball coach at Salamanca, Clair Wescott, took an interest in Ron, talked to him, helped him learn the game, and even let him practice with the team when they needed an extra body.
“Looking back, I had to be a real hoot for the high school players, and they would abuse me on the court. But each day I would come back and try to be a little better.”
Ron never got to play high school basketball for Wescott, as Ron’s family moved to Olean, New York, before he was of high school age. At Olean, however, Ron actually played against Salamanca. “He (Salamanca Coach Wescott) didn’t care for the fact that he got me started and now I wanted to beat him,” Ron confessed.
The Travis family moved to Williamsport before his junior year in high school. Not making the basketball team that year, Ron played, instead, with men in the YMCA league.
During that year, he grew six inches to a height of 6’2”. Williamsport basketball Coach John Berry heard about “this high school kid playing with the men” and sought him out the fall of his senior year. Ron made the team as a starter, and that 1961-62 squad went 21-3, also winning the district championship. He remembers “beating St. Joe’s, a great team that everyone thought would beat us. I threw down a couple dunks in warm-ups and scored 16 points, and people started asking, ‘Who’s the lefty?’ That’s how I got the .nickname which I carry today."
He considers highlights of those years to be scoring 82 points at Freeland against “a team with players from Lehigh”; 66 points against “a team made up of LaSalle seniors, which included Fatty Taylor and Larry Cannon” (future pros); and 56 against “a team with Manny Leaks,” another future pro.
But, perhaps, he is most proud of the 54 and 63 points he put up in back-to-back games in La Plata, Maryland. The first game was against John Thompson (the Georgetown Hoyas’ coach soon after), the recently retired Sam Jones (of Boston Celtics’ fame) and John Hummer (from Princeton and another soon-to-be pro). The second was against Jerry Chambers (the University of Utah’s star, the MVP in the NCAA 1966 Final Four tournament, who then played professionally).
From his marriage in 1969, through law school, his first law job in Philadelphia, his return to Williamsport in 1971 and until 1976, when his first child, Kelli, was, born, Ron and his wife Pam traveled often and widely on his “basketball traveling circus” trips as a player in city, intercity and YMCA leagues. In 1971 his Lancaster YMCA team won the national YMCA championship.
He fondly remembered those days:
“One night I might be matched up against 6’lO” Ron Krick, from West Reading (Krick led them to three consecutive PIAA Class C championships, 1959-61). The next night it might be Pee Wee Kirkland (a former Norfolk State University player and well-known New York City “street player”).
Ron admitted, “From December through the middle of April, we were off somewhere every weekend for basketball games ... lots of miles on the car and on the hip and knees. But I thought that the body would never fall apart how wrong that was. When I was 31 (in 1976), I ripped my left knee totally apart on the basketball court.”
That’s when Lefty decided to play tennis as a means to help with his rehabilitation. And once he began hitting that yellow ball, his competitive juices began to flow on the tennis court also.
Once his knee healed, it became a three-court world for Travis — the law year-round; basketball in the late fall, winter and early spring (his “traveling circus” teams until about 1990; Williamsport’s Salvation Army and Ohev Sholom synagogue courts after that); tennis in the late spring, summer and early fall.
According to Lefty, tennis quickly became “a blood sport” to him, as he began playing in local tournaments, both in singles, and in doubles with his friends, Doug Kohler and Charlie Pagana. “The three of us were able to move past most of those who were still playing tennis as a game for gentlemen, as we lived and died with each match,” he admitted.
Continuing with his confession, “During those days more than a few of my rackets came to be broken - tossed when things didn’t go well. But the more I played, the better I got, and the serve became a weapon.”
Lefty, Doug and Charlie expanded out and began “going on the tour of lower New York State” also, playing in Painted Post, Elmira. Corning, Hornell, Silver Lake, Cortland and Rochester.
“For a couple of years, Kohler I were the winners of all of the New York doubles tournaments that we entered, and I won all of the 35-and-over singles.” Lefty had come a long way from when he had bought that first racket, a $10 Slazenger, back in 1971 and started to hit balls against a practice wall in a park across from his home in Upper Darby.
Commenting on their “tennis touring days” back in the late 70s and 80s. Travis said, “Looking hack, that was insane to do that to our bodies. Six or seven matches in 90 degree heat on hard courts for some $10 prize. But it wasn’t the prize as much as the competition which drove us.”
In 1991, at age 47 Lefty decided to play even more serious tennis in United States Tennis Association sanctioned 45- and-over singles’ tournaments. That first year, after some humbling tournaments where he experienced early-round losses, he finally won an event in Wilkes-Barre.
The next year he won 45-and-over singles’ titles in York and Bethany Beach. Then in his third year, three victories — at York, Bethany Beach and St. Mary’s. At age 50 he entered his first National event, making it to the quarterfinals in a 50-and-over Clay Court event.
From then for about a decade, until he had his hip replaced in 2005, Ron played “at least one national event a year.” He considers his best moment to have been when I was 52 and got placed in the draw - 8 were seeded and 8 were placed.”
Courtman, Ron Travis — lawyer, basketball player, tennis player — is now down to two courts at age 63. “The basketball is gone, but so is the hip pain. The knee still talks to me and swells from the tennis, but it is not so bad to make me head for the golf range.”
Although this self-labeled “hacker from Williamsport” now limits his basketball to avidly following and attending Lycoming College and Williamsport High School contests, and now admits that “tennis is not life or death,” Lefty still hopes that “by the time I turn 65 I will be able to move well enough to go compete in the National 65-and-over Grass Court championship.”
Clearly, his competitive juices will never stop flowing—and Ron “Lefty” Travis will continue to love all three of the courts that have been such important parts of his life.
