Post by 01- PirateDave on Mar 6, 2015 14:34:46 GMT -6
Man’s giant claim: Wilt’s my father
Wilt Chamberlain. (AP Photo)
TOM MAHON, Daily News Staff Writer mahont@phillynews.com
POSTED: Wednesday, March 4, 2015, 10:17 PM
AARON LEVI says the late Wilt Chamberlain is his father.
The knee-jerk response is to say, “Get in line.”
Wilt, after all, once boasted he’d slept with 20,000 women, so he could have conceivably (pun intended) left a gym full of offspring behind.
In 2006, Gary Pomerantz wrote about Chamberlain in the book “Wilt, 1962: The Night of 100 Points and the Dawn of a New Era.”
Now, Pomerantz is writing about Wilt’s son, or someone who claims to be. Which is big news because, as far as anyone knows, Chamberlain never had children.
In the March 9 issue of Sports Illustrated, Pomerantz documents Levi’s journey to find his biological parents.
Levi, a 50-year-old, 6-5, printmaker and digital artist in San Francisco, was adopted in 1965 by an Oregon couple. In old side-by-side photos, he looks like a young Wilt.
Pomerantz writes of Levi meeting his 76-year-old English-born birth mother in the autumn of 2010. “Elizabeth,” which is not her real name, tells Levi she is positive Wilt is his father.
She says she met Chamberlain — who died in October of 1999 — in a San Francisco jazz club. Claims they went out a few nights later and, after too many drinks, ended up at Wilt’s apartment. Says she called Chamberlain 5 months later to tell him she was pregnant, but never saw him again.
Levi says he doesn’t want any money from Chamberlain’s estate, which is a good thing because Pomerantz talks to Sy Goldberg, Chamberlain longtime lawyer, who says there isn’t any.
What Levi does want is closure. He contacted Chamberlain’s sister, Barbara Lewis, who says she won’t give a DNA sample. Wilt’s other sister, Selina Gross, didn’t return calls.
Now, he’s considering reaching out to some of Wilt’s nephews, who he found on Facebook, hoping one of them will help.
Says Levi: “My life would be completely different if I had done this 20 years ago, when Wilt was still alive.”
good luck to all!