by Town Historian Al Dumas
In the heyday of the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s, the Catskills area experienced some of the grand highlights of the sports world like nothing before or since. The grandeur of the hotel industry was in full swing! In the Monticello area, there was the Concord Hotel which hosted boxing legends including: Rocky Marciano, Muhammad Ali, Sonny Liston and Joe Frazier with Mike Tyson and Michael Spinks following in the 80’s.
Kutsher’s Hotel hosted many sports legends starting in the 1950s. Basketball great Wilt Norman Chamberlain was a bellhop during his collegiate years at Kutsher’s. In fact, there was a documentary produced about Chamberlain’s time at Kutsher’s that won an award from ESPN His legendary rise was facilitated by Kutsher’s Owner Milton Kutsher. Mr. Kutsher brought legendary coach Arnold Jacob “Red” Auerbach of the Boston Celtics to Monticello to assist with bringing other basketball greats to participate in the Maurice Stokes Memorial Games.
These games were played at the Clair Bee Fieldhouse at Kutsher’s Country Club in honor of Maurice Stokes, a black player for the Rochester Royals out of Rochester, New York. Stokes had sustained a brain injury in March of 1958, which lead to paralysis. His teammate and friend Jack Twyman spearheaded a tournament with the assistance of Milt Kutsher and Wilt Chamberlain to help raise money to assist Stokes.
When Stokes died of a heart attack on April 6, 1970, a memorial game was held to support other NBA players. These memorial games lasted through the 1970s with players from the New York Knicks, Boston Celtics, Philadelphia 76ers, and the New Jersey Nets all coming to Kutsher’s to play for the lucky crowds.