If you're looking for Frank McNamara's name in Georgetown basketball annals, it's not at the top. No matter.

McNamara grew up in Norwalk, CT before his family moved to Washington during World War II, graduating from Gonzaga College HS in 1945. With its scholarship athletes still in wartime service, Georgetown opted to restart basketball in the fall of 1945 with a call-up from the general student body, from which McNamara, then a freshman, made the team. McNamara was on the bench throughout the season, but was never called into an intercollegiate game, as he relayed to this site when the Georgetown Basketball History Project was being constructed.

The 1945-46 team was an anomaly in Georgetown basketball, for when coach Elmer Ripley and the scholarship players returned to the Hilltop a year later, none of the 18 man roster was retained, leaving McNamara's career over before it started. McNamara returned to the intramural ranks and graduated from the College in 1949 and the Law Center in 1951 before serving two years in the military.

An obituary in the Stamford (CT) Patch reflects a life well lived: a 35 year career in litigation, with numerous honors ranging from Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut to a former State Chairman of the American College of Trial Lawyers. One of the first lay members of the Fairfield University Board of Trustees, he received an honorary doctorate from Fairfield in 1983. McNamara also served as the CEO of the Charles E. Culpeper Foundation, whose namesake bought the rights to the Coca-Cola Bottling Company of New York for $160,000 in 1917 and left his estate to the foundation in 1940.

"During over three decades in active charge of the philanthropy of the Charles E. Culpeper Foundation, [McNamara] had a major role in the disbursement of over $120 million in charitable funds to worthy beneficiaries," writes the article. "These beneficiaries have included undergraduate institutions of higher learning as well as hospitals, medical centers and medical schools, arts and culture activities, and legal programs. During the period of his leadership of the Foundation its assets grew from $8 million in 1968 to over $200 million when he retired."

Away from work, McNamara was an avid skier and golfer, and an owner and breeder of thoroughbred horses. This site's brief experience with Frank McNamara came from an e-mail which asked why he wasn't listed on the 1945-46 team. A phone call soon followed and when I told him that season information from 1945-46 was incomplete, he did not hesitate to overnight mail a number of articles he had kept from those years. Though he never played in a varsity game, he always took great pride in being a member of the Hoya basketball family.