FRESH MEADOWS — When Lisa Stith visits St. Francis Preparatory School, she is greeted by an image of her late father Thomas Stitch, Class of 1957, who is immortalized with a plaque on the high school’s Hall of Fame in the lobby.
“It makes me feel so proud of him when I see him up there on the wall,” said Lisa, whose father died in 2010.
Thomas and his older brother, Sam (Class of 1956), were star basketball players for St. Francis Prep and the first African Americans to play for the Terriers. As trailblazers, Lisa said they faced many challenges.
“It wasn’t easy for them in terms of racism,” Lisa said, “but they survived.”
Her uncle Sam, now 88, lives in Arizona.
The Stith brothers’ dedication was such that, even though they lived in Harlem, they would ride the subway for over an hour to Williamsburg, where St. Francis Prep was located at the time, to attend school.
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After each graduated from St. Francis Prep, they enrolled in St. Bonaventure University in western New York, where they played on the basketball team. Tom was a forward, and Sam was a shooting guard.
The brothers’ story is featured in a new documentary called “Brown n’ White: The Heart of ‘Bona’s Basketball,” by independent filmmaker Mike Camoin. The film looks at how St. Bonaventure, a small Catholic university with 1,500 students, rose in the late 1950s before becoming a basketball powerhouse in the 1960s and 1970s.
From 1957 to 1959, when both Stith brothers were at St. Bonaventure, the team posted a 62-13 record. The team advanced to the NIT semifinals in 1957, losing to the University of Memphis in a close game, 80-78.
Sam arrived at St. Bonaventure in 1956 and helped guide the team to a 17-7 record. A year after Sam graduated, Tom helped the team to a 24-4 record.
Camoin, a 1988 graduate of St. Bonaventure, said he got the idea for the documentary when he attended his class’ 30-year reunion in 2018.
“That drove me deeper and deeper into the past. And then I discovered this team in the 1950s — the first integrated team that rose to great heights,” Camoin explained. “The team was an NIT-going team. But when Tom and Sam Stith came along, they developed the program into a nationally ranked team.”
Part one of the two-part documentary explores how the Stith brothers helped plant the seeds for that success at St. Bonaventure. But their story really begins on the basketball courts of their Harlem neighborhood, Lisa said.
Their outstanding play came to the attention of Franciscan brothers from St. Francis Prep, who spotted them on the court one day and asked them to play against the Terriers. The pick-up team, led by the Stiths, beat the St. Francis Prep squad. The Franciscans offered the Stiths scholarships, and they enrolled.
Thanks in part to the Stith brothers, the Terriers had a lot of success on the basketball court, winning two Catholic High School Athletic Association championships and two national high school championships.
Both went pro following their time at St. Bonaventure.
Tom was a first-round pick for the New York Knicks in the 1961 draft. His NBA career was shortened by tuberculosis, and he played for only two seasons.
Sam was drafted by the Cincinnati Royals in the 1960 NBA draft and played in the league for three seasons, first with the Royals and then the New York Knicks.
Sal Fischetti, athletic director at St. Francis Prep, said the brothers certainly left a mark. “In all my time here, I’ve learned a lot about the legacy of the Stith brothers,” he said. “Truly a great memory for St. Francis Prep to have been a part of that.”
