Grand Canyon University Athletics
Coro: GCU museum honors Colangelo
9/21/2017 8:00:00 AM | General, Paul Coro
Grand Canyon building houses medals, memories and more
Four walls on Grand Canyon's campus contain five decades of impact on the city of Phoenix and the world of basketball.
About 2,200 square feet of GCU contains the life work of a Phoenix icon, who emerged from humble Chicago roots to change the sports and civic landscape for Arizona and beyond.
The Jerry Colangelo Museum is a tribute and a treasury. It is a celebration and a destination.
For no admission cost, the public can visit a collection of Colangelo's championship rings, gold medals, awards and trophies amid a display of his life through rare and memorable photographs and a personal video.
"I am humbled by what they chose to do and how they did it," Colangelo said. "This is world class. Everything (GCU President) Brian (Mueller)Â has done here is first class."
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The Jerry Colangelo Museum, located between GCU Arena and the main campus entrance, was a two-year project to honor a leader known for the rise of the Phoenix Suns and Arizona Diamondbacks and the restoration of USA Basketball before becoming affiliated with GCU in 2009.
The finished project is a dazzling display of mementos extracted from Colangelo's mind, office and storage facility.
"If we were going to do this, we had to do it right," said Dr. Randy Gibb, GCU's Dean of the Colangelo College of Business and the project manager. "It has to be to the gold standard. It has to be accurate.
"Brian Mueller's idea was to have this be a point of destination. You come to Phoenix and you're going to come to the Jerry Colangelo Museum."
Visitors will enter to two rows lining six double-sided, glass-case displays. A 10-foot high basketball hoop hangs on the far wall beneath a photo mural of the downtown Phoenix landscape. Each museum wall richly chronicles a time, a team or a tenet of Colangelo's life.
The cases, which surround a GCU seal on the floor, contain his five gold medals (three Olympic), 10 championship rings (including World Series, Hall of Fame, Olympic and WNBA), six trophies and tributes to GCU men's basketball head coach Dan Majerle, Suns legend Kevin Johnson and Diamondbacks legend Luis Gonzalez.
Many of the mementos came out of Gibb's visits to Colangelo's office and two weekend trips to a storage unit, where Colangelo sat on a stool as Gibb explored his space and mind.
"I just feel so honored to be able to do this for him and the community," Gibb said. "There were some really interesting back stories and personal connections. It's one thing to read his book and know his background but to really dive in. We all have this old Tupperware bin of family photos. To look into someone else's and get a glimpse into his life was an honor."
The museum extends the missions of the Colangelo College of Business to honor, educate and inspire.
"We want to honor Mr. Colangelo," Gibb said. "We want to educate people on what he's done. And we want to inspire future generations to follow what he has demonstrated."
The museum layout, created by ZE Designs, starts with the east entrance wall carrying the words Colangelo emphasizes in speaking to GCU students – "FAITH," "FAMILY," "FRIENDS," "COMMUNITY" and "PURPOSE" – with a GCU photo mural above the windows.
To the left of the entrance, the walls of a passageway to the GCU Basketball Practice Facility are lined with images of the Havocs student body and Majerle defending Michael Jordan as a player and coaching GCU.
The north wall starts the journey with a 40-minute looping video playing above the displays. In it, Colangelo expounds on the aforementioned values while standing in GCU Arena with photos and videos interspersed.
That wall carries "The Early Years," with photos of Colangelo as a baby, a 1957 high school graduate and a University of Illinois basketball player. It show his Chicago Heights childhood home, built by his grandfather with railroad boxcar lumber, and photos of tributes for Jerry Colangelo Gymnasium at his junior high and Jerry Colangelo Way on his childhood street.
It also shows Colangelo as he began his pro sports career with the Chicago Bulls, including a photo of him, the owner and the coach with a live bull on a Michigan Avenue parade float.
The south wall encompasses tributes to his tenure as managing general partner of the Diamondbacks, as current managing director of USA Basketball men's senior national team and as a key figure for GCU.
The Diamondbacks section features photos of the 2001 World Series, a ceremonial first pitch, Randy Johnson's 2002 Cy Young Award presentation and an image Gibb tracked down of Colangelo standing amid the downtown Phoenix baseball stadium construction site.
The USA Basketball section pictures the three Olympic gold medal teams that Colangelo assembled, acknowledges his role as chairman of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and displays his 2009 Court of Honor Award from the National Association of Basketball Coaches.
The other part of the south wall carries the words, "DOING BUSINESS GOD'S WAY," with a university and athletics history of GCU, his Athletes in Action Award and mentions of his various impacts on Christian, civic and GCU communities.
The west wall highlights his Suns tenure, from being the franchise's initial general manager in 1968 to a managing partner role through 2004. It has a Ring of Honor-signed basketball and photos of him at his Ring of Honor induction ceremony, the downtown arena construction site, the unveiling of the franchise logo and as a 27-year-old GM.
"One of the things I liked so much about the museum was what it represented," Colangelo said. "It wasn't so much about how I looked at it from my perspective but it was the perspective of the city of Phoenix and 40 or 50 years of history and how the whole thing was laid out – the statement, the early years, the Suns, the Diamondbacks, USA Basketball, the Hall of Fame, all of them."
There is room to expand with two more display cases, and Gibb is hoping the museum prompts more memorabilia to surface.
"What you see there seriously feels like the 4,000 iterations it took to get there," Gibb said. "It was, 'Found an error.' 'We can make this better.' 'We found a photo that has to be in there.' "
The museum is open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays and from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekends. It also will be open at night in conjunction with selected Arena events.
"What you see here is kind of the creme de la creme," Colangelo said. "It's these things that we felt are the most important to display. I'm proud of each and every one of them . . . It really does capture my life."
