To his right were his University of Virginia basketball teammates, and to his left were his grandchildren. His mother sat proudly in the front row, across the aisle from his high school friends.
Ralph Sampson has made an impact on multiple generations throughout his life and, on Sunday in the Newcomb Hall Ballroom on Grounds, the 7-foot-4 UVA icon flashed a wide smile that rivaled his wingspan as he soaked it all in.
Sampson, with the help of those he invited on stage, including UVA President Jim Ryan, unveiled a portrait that will now have a permanent spot at his alma mater.
Sampson speaks to a packed house in the Newcomb Hall Ballroom. The crowd included former UVA student-athletes, coaches and members of Sampson’s family. (Photo by Emily Faith Morgan)
The photo, captured in August by then-University Communications photographer Emily Faith Morgan, places Sampson in 6 East Lawn, where Sampson lived as a fourth-year student in 1982-83. The picture will live on in Newcomb, per Sampson’s request, as part of the University’s historic portrait series.
Sunday, his mother’s birthday, marked the 46th anniversary of Sampson’s first official recruiting visit to UVA.
A three-time National Player of the Year who led the Cavaliers to an NIT championship and a Final Four appearance, Sampson graduated from UVA in 1983 with a degree in rhetoric and communications studies. The first pick in the 1983 NBA Draft, Sampson went on to a decorated professional career and was inducted in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012.
“During a speech at Valediction a few years ago,” Ryan said, nodding to Sampson’s introduction to 2022 Final Exercises weekend on Grounds, “Ralph encouraged graduating students to ‘leave a footprint here at UVA and stay connected to the school because there’s no other place like it in the world.’
“Ralph has been leading by example, because he left an enormous footprint at UVA. And I’m not just talking about his shoe size. I’m talking about the mark he left on this place and the example he set for others.”
Sunday’s ceremony provided numerous instances of Sampson’s legacy. The crowd of around 180 included Cory Alexander, an All-ACC basketball player for UVA in the 1990s who hails from Waynesboro, some 30 miles south of Sampson’s native Harrisonburg.
“I was a huge Ralph Sampson fan growing up,” Alexander said. “I loved everything he did. We talked about running with his thumbs up and the high socks (Sampson’s style). (I) even wanted to wear the huge No. 50 on my shirt.”
Cory Alexander leads a panel discussion alongside former UVA women’s basketball player Debbie Stroman, who attended the University during Sampson’s time with the Cavaliers. (Photo by Emily Faith Morgan)
Alexander, an ESPN broadcaster, hosted two panel discussions Sunday, one alongside members of the Harrisonburg community and another with former Wahoo student-athletes.
Marc Iavaroni, who played basketball at UVA before Sampson’s arrival, but later coached him as a graduate assistant, remembered being asked about Sampson by his Philadelphia 76ers teammates.
“I had an easy answer,” Iavaroni said. “I said, ‘As good as he is as a player, he’s better as a person.’”
Clayton Justice’s first-grade teacher in Harrisonburg once told his mother, “If Clayton was so interested in learning addition and subtraction as he was about Ralph Sampson, he’d be a grade A student.”
Justice, who idolized Sampson as a child and later befriended him as an adult, was overcome with emotion Sunday as he recalled seeing Sampson three years ago at his retirement ceremony from the Rockingham County sheriff’s office.
