Johnno Bothwell's Basketball Career

*By Florence Bothwell Cosby*
*1927 - 1930*

November 23, 1927
Johnny Bothwell led the cager attack with 23 points. He tossed them in right and left handed with equal skill.

My father never finished high school; his family needed him to work back then. He came to this country from Scotland as a small child with his parents, a brother, and a sister. At age 11, he ran away from home, wanted to be a merchant marine, lied about his age, and even got a tattoo. I remember it well, JEB 1918, although it was stretched and faded by the time I was born.

December 21, 1927
Johnny Bothwell scores 22 points to set the pace in the Richmond Borough Basketball League.

His mother found him at the docks in St. George and took him back home again. Find something else to pass your time, she told him. He did. He played basketball.

February 10, 1928
Bothwell leading borough league scorer averaging 14 points per game.

My father was ambidextrous. Although his left hand was dominant, back in those days children were made to use their right hands, their left ones were often tied behind their backs, as was the case with my father when he went to grammar school in New Brighton. But his right hand was strong as well, and soon became as skillful as his left one. I remember him using both when I was a kid. He ate with his left hand, wrote with his right, fixed things around the house with his left so that often the door handles turned opposite for the rest of us. But when he played basketball, he used either hand, and both with equal skill.



November 28, 1928
Bothwell won the plaudits of the fans with a spectacular field goal from mid-center. This southpaw shooter was a veritable flash last night, contributing 14 points to his team's total.

My father played for the Richmond Borough Basketball League, as well as the Industrial Athletic Association. The teams were sponsored by local industries, such as Gulf Refining, Best Foods, and Wesson Oil. They were composed of men such as my father who were minor league athletes, but whose passion for basketball brought them their share of fame among the teams of Staten Island, Brooklyn, and New Jersey.

December 2, 1928
Gulf cagers, defending IAA champions, won their 1928-1929 season opening game with Bothwell's field goal in the final minutes of play.

My parents met when my father was playing basketball. My mother was his most enthusiastic fan. She would yell from the stands, John-O, John-O, and the name stuck. Soon even his teammates and the newspapers were writing about Johnno Bothwell. It is the name I remember everyone calling him when I was a kid, it was how he signed all those greeting cards my mother kept in an album and which I still have in the attic. Birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine's Day, with roses and glitter and deckled edges like old cards had, and he signed them all Love, Johnno.

December 6, 1929
The brilliant performance of Johnno Bothwell last night helped the undefeated Gulfites to gain their fifth successive league triumph.

My father gave my mother a small gold basketball, to be worn on a chain around her neck, to show how much they cared for each other, to show she was his girl. I have it still; it is in my jewelry box, and I take it out every now and then, to read the inscription Altarians 1928. It comforts me to feel its smoothness in my hand, to remember that my parents once shared in its meaning. Five years later they would marry, and my father would move into the big house where my mother lived with her parents and remaining younger siblings. They lived there for ten years together before the twins were born, and it was there that my mother waited for him to return from The War. We stayed in that house until the winter of 1947, when we moved to Great Kills, on Robinson Avenue.

January 10, 1930
Bothwell's work on the local courts has attracted attention for the past year and it seems as though this season the New Brighton boy has really found himself...

My mother kept a scrapbook of newspaper clippings from the games and seasons in which my father played and excelled. She titled it, "Johnno Bothwell's Basketball Career." It is yellowed with age, brown and brittle around the edges. It is a small book, the size of a journal with a now-faded blue cover. The string is loose that binds the pages, and it creaks as I turn the musty pages. Inside the front cover there is a photograph of my father, in his Gulf uniform, holding the ball, in his left hand. There is a secret smile of pure pleasure on his face, and a look in his eyes that I know other athletes will understand. The scrapbook is here in front of me as I write this, as I reach back into the past to pay tribute to my father, his life, his passion, his love of basketball.

...and before the season is over he should be ranked with the great stars of the game.


John E. Bothwell, Sr. Gulf 1928	John E. Bothwell, Jr. THS 1960	Cameron J. E. Cosby YMCA 2010

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Content Copyright 2010, Florence Bothwell Cosby. All rights reserved. Published with permission.
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