About 200 well-wishers turned out at the Clubhouse in Wainscott Friday to celebrate Howard and Kenny Wood's induction into the Suffolk Sports Hall of Fame the night before.
Howard led the first East Hampton High School boys basketball team to the school's first state championship in 1977, and Kenny did likewise in 1989. In nominating the Wood brothers, Scott Rubenstein, Bill McKee, Bill Barbour, and Michael Sarlo said in a letter last June to the Hall of Fame committee that honoring them for their notable high school, college, and professional careers was "obviously long overdue."
"Kenny and Howard's teammates want to make sure that this gets addressed. . . . These two guys from a small town set the tone for everybody coming up the ranks," they said.
Chris Vaccaro, the county Hall of Fame's president, who agreed, announced the Woods' coming induction in January, saying that Kenny and Howard's "basketball careers are now legendary . . . they've been fixtures on the East End since their playing days. Now they will be immortalized as Suffolk County legends."
Their induction last Thursday was the first time since 1996 that East Hampton natives were honored in the same ceremony. In '96 the Woods' late coach, Ed Petrie Sr., and the tennis great Paul Annacone were inducted into the Hall of Fame.
The brothers also were fellow inductees in the East Hampton High School Hall of Fame's inaugural class in 2012.
The boys basketball team's record in Howard Wood's junior and senior years was 42-2. "He still holds the record of pulling down 30 rebounds in one game," his plaque at the high school says. "In 1986, he was voted by the coaches as one of the top 25 Long Island high school players of all time."
Kenny Wood's 2,613 career points set a state public high school record. He was Suffolk's player of the year in 1989, and his 31-point-per-game average in his junior year remains a Bonac record, according to his plaque.
Both Woods went on to star in college, Howard at the University of Tennessee, and Kenny at the University of Richmond. The elder Wood was a key part of the Volunteers' team that made the school's first N.C.A.A. Sweet Sixteen appearance, in 1981. Kenny Wood and his low-seeded Richmond teammates scored a huge early-round upset of Syracuse — a hitherto unheard-of thing — in an N.C.A.A. tournament during his career there. "Without Kenny they wouldn't have won," Rubenstein has said.
Named as an all-S.E.C. Legend in 2018, Howard Wood, after playing a season in the N.B.A. with the Utah Jazz, embarked on a decade-long pro career in Spain's premier league. Kenny Wood, who was the 1977 team's ball boy, and who also is in his college's Hall of Fame, played professionally in South America and Spain.
Both Woods have said that Petrie, who mentored them throughout their years growing up here, was the best basketball coach they'd ever had.
At one point during Friday's party, Rubenstein, who had busied himself serving hors d'oeuvres to the crowd, went behind the bar, and, after calling for attention, toasted "Mr. and Mrs. Wood on behalf of Bonac basketball!" The impact that their sons had had upon the East Hampton community was obvious given the turnout that evening, he said.
"Yes, Howard and I were co-captains," Rubenstein said later. "I used to say that Howard and I averaged 28 points a game — Howard with 25 and me with 3." Rubenstein is the managing partner of the East Hampton Indoor Tennis Club, which shares the property with the Clubhouse.
"When we went to speak before the service organizations, the Lions Club . . . Rotary . . . I'd say, 'Howard shoots the ball, I shoot the bull.' We made a great team," he said with a smile.
As for their late coach, "Ed Petrie loved the sport and taught us to respect it and to give it all we could, and not only to respect the sport, but to respect each other and ourselves. Coach would have been very proud tonight," Rubenstein said, looking about him. "He would have been very proud."
