DAVIS, Calif. -- "I never use the phrase 'giving back,'" says Gordon Baranco, "I prefer the term 'sharing.'"
Indeed, the retired Alameda County Superior Court judge knows a thing or two about sharing. As a UC Davis student-athlete, he starred at point guard for the outstanding men's basketball teams in the late 1960s, helping the Aggies capture three straight Far Western Conference championships. Assists were yet an official stat in those days, but UC Davis fielded two of its all-time top scorers with John Frost and Al Steed in that era, with Baranco distributing the ball accordingly.
As a professional, Baranco's history of community service is extensive, ranging from his founding of the Alameda County Homeless and Caring Court, to serving on boards for numerous entities, such as the Glide Memorial Methodist Church (made famous by the 2006 film The Pursuit of Happyness). As an alumnus, Baranco and his wife, Barbara Gee, generously contribute to Team Aggie and support an endowment named for his beloved coach, mentor and friend: the Bob Hamilton Scholarship Fund.
Chronologically, Hamilton's role in Baranco's life largely came in that order: coach, mentor, then friend. "He meant it out of love," said Baranco. His motto was 'I am your teacher, I am your coach, I will do anything I can for you, but I'll become friends with you after you stop playing.' I always felt I had a good relationship with him, and in our senior year, Frank Stonebarger and I were co-captains, so he gave us a little slack. But it was after I stopped playing basketball that he and I became really good friends. And we remained friends until I kissed Bob goodbye three days before he died."
Baranco hailed from Oakland, where he had been a member of a powerhouse Oakland High basketball team. The choice of UC Davis arose from a family rule that he must attend a University of California school: his parents were alums of Cal and UCLA while his brother was enrolled at Berkeley. Baranco also wanted to play basketball in college. At the time, the NCAA was split into two divisions – University Division and College Division – and Baranco knew the latter was more his level. In 1965, he arrived at UC Davis to major in political science and play basketball for Hamilton, who ran the freshman team; and Joe Carlson, who coached the varsity squad.
It took no time for Baranco to get his first lesson. In his first week as a freshman, Coach Hamilton sat him down and had him break out a blank sheet of paper. Baranco filled in his class schedule first. Then he designated two hours of studying per course unit, and at least eight hours for sleep. Each activity had a color code.
"I made my own chart all the way through undergraduate and also through law school, exactly the same chart he laid out then," he said.
Baranco played for Hamilton on the freshman team his first year, as was required at the time, as part of a formidable trio with Frank Stonebarger and Bob Guild. A year later, that group united with Cal Aggie Athletics Hall of Famers Alan Budde and John Frost. The Aggies won a school-record 21 games in 1966-67 – a benchmark that lasted for almost three full decades – winning the first of three consecutive FWC titles and making the first of three straight trips to the NCAA West Regional. As luck would have it, UC Davis drew the same first-round opponent each year: UNLV, still known as Nevada Southern in the first of the three meetings, which played under future Portland Trailblazers coach Rolland Todd.
Carlson stepped down from the men's basketball helm after that 1966-67 season, with Hamilton being elevated to head coach.
"That was quite an adjustment," Baranco recalls. "Joe Carlson was very low-key, very quiet. Bob Hamilton will never, ever be accused of being that. But I knew from my freshman year that Bob Hamilton was a teacher. Every time we thought we had a question – 'what are we going to do if X, Y and Z happens' – he always had the answer. He was really educated, really a teacher."
Baranco fondly remembers being taught how to shoot the ball. Sure, he had been a successful player throughout high school, good enough to compete at the next level, but had never had the task broken down in the way his new coach could. ("I used to make some baskets and have no idea why they were going in.") Coach Hamilton was so insistent that his players knew the game that he had each student-athlete learn every position. For example, Baranco found himself playing center in practices, just to raise his understanding of what a teammate like Budde will do during a game.
Baranco graduated in 1969 with his degree in political science, earning the school's W.P. Lindley Award as the outstanding scholar-athlete, and now looked for the next step. Getting an undergraduate degree was all but assumed in his family: "I'm an African-American baby boomer, so there was no question from the time I was a little boy that I was going to college." However, his family, or his godmother – a school teacher halfway across the country in Louisiana – continually asked him what he was doing next, what he wanted to be.
"I used to think, what am I going to do to shut these people up?" says Baranco.
Like many of his contemporaries, Baranco had a hero: the great Thurgood Marshall, who argued the landmark Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, assumed the role of U.S. Solicitor General when Baranco was a freshman, and began his 24-year service as a U.S. Supreme Court justice midway through Baranco's undergraduate years.
"I knew how to shut these people up," said Baranco, "I'll tell them I want to be a lawyer. My father said, 'You're hard-headed and argumentative, and you think you're smarter than everyone else, so yeah, you need to become a lawyer.'"
Still heeding the family policy of attending a UC school, Baranco narrowed his choices to Cal's Hastings College of the Law, and UC Davis' relatively new King Hall School of Law. The latter program offered some financial assistance, making the decision much clearer.
"And I'm so happy I went to that law school," Baranco said. "It was a more relaxed atmosphere, I was more comfortable in Davis, I had friends there. And that's when the Coach and I really became friends. And now, UC Davis' law school, in terms of social justice and being relevant to the community at large, is considered one of the leading law schools."
Baranco was one of seven African-American students in the King Hall School of Law class of 1972, including the likes of Elihu Harris, who served Oakland as both a California State Assembly member then later as the city's second black mayor; and Willie Lott, Jr., who like Baranco served as a Superior Court judge in the Bay Area until his retirement. Oddly, Harris succeeded Lionel Wilson (1979-1993), the city's first black mayor and a man whose twin sons Lionel and Robin were part of King Hall's first graduating class in 1969.
After completing his J.D., Baranco began a career of law in the public sector, starting with roles in the offices of the California State Attorney General and the San Francisco District Attorney. In 1980, he was appointed to the Oakland-Piedmont-Emeryville Municipal Court by Governor Jerry Brown, then elevated to the Alameda County Superior Court by Governor George Deukmejian four years later. He served the people of his home county until his retirement in 2016, earning numerous accolades for his work in education and his humanitarian efforts along the way.
Baranco also kept his ties to UC Davis throughout his career. For the remainder of Coach Hamilton's tenure as head men's basketball coach, UC Davis competed in the Far Western Conference, then later the Northern California Athletic Conference, with Cal State East Bay (then known as Cal State Hayward). Baranco always looked forward to the date on the schedule when the Aggies paid their annual visit to Pioneer Gym, knowing that it was an opportunity to meet the student-athletes and their parents. When Bob Williams later took over as head coach in the 1990s , the tradition continued – again, allowing Baranco the occasion to stay connected with his alma mater and its basketball program.
On Saturday, December 9, 1995, Baranco was granted the opportunity to deliver a speech at his alma mater, but unlike previous visits, not during commencements. UC Davis held a dedication ceremony to rename the court of then-Recreation Hall in honor of Coach Hamilton. The initial plan was to have the Cal Aggie Athletics Hall of Fame coach on hand for the festivities, held around a men's home game against CSU Bakersfield. However, Hamilton's health took a turn that very week. He passed away on the previous Thursday at the age of 73, and the Saturday event pivoted to a memorial service in his honor. A lone bagpiper played "Amazing Grace" at the center of the court, with Hamilton's family on hand. Of the dozens and dozens of program alumni – 178, according to the team's all-time letterwinners list – Baranco earned the privilege of expressing his gratitude for Coach Ham on behalf of all former players during the event.
A few years later, UC Davis launched a grant-in-aid program, ending its long tradition of non-scholarship status. Baranco was among the lead donors for the Bob Hamilton Memorial Scholarship, an award whose recipients include Ryan Howley, now a vice president for the wealth-management firm Bessemer Trust; and Neal Monson, who later graduated summa cum laude from BYU's Rueben Clark Law School and now practices in the Dallas area. Baranco says he gets even more joy from meeting the recipients than the recipients get from earning the award.
"When we found out there was going to be an award named for [Hamilton], I knew I would be one of the first contributors, and I continue to contribute to that scholarship," Baranco said.
Also inspiring Baranco to contribute to a scholarship fund are the rising costs of the UC system, and a college education in general. When he first arrived at UC Davis, tuition was still free for California residents under the state's 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education. The "education fee" did not yet exist, meaning students of the era paid $78 per quarter in registration fees and ASUCD membership (a little less than $600 in today's dollars). In fact, it was during Baranco's undergraduate years that this model began to shift at the state-policy level, with students and their families shouldering an increasing amount of the financial burden in the decades to follow.
Fully cognizant of this trend, Baranco refuses to fall into the back-in-my-days trap. The importance of any financial aid has grown, spurring his interest in supporting an endowment fund like the one named for his coach. "This scholarship becomes more and more important. I used to earn all of my room-and-board money in the summer. There is no way that any of these students can do that," said Baranco. "We really have to affirm that education is so important. It's the equalizer. As an African-American, that was drilled into me by every relative and every neighbor: get an education first. And I really got a good education at Davis."
Finally, returning to campus also reunites him with Marietta Hamilton, the coach's wife, a dear friend to Baranco and – more than 30 years since Coach Ham's depature from UC Davis – still a regular at all Aggie home basketball games. Baranco met her while attending Sunday church services as an undergraduate. He was a freshman, just two weeks into his time in Davis, but Mrs. Hamilton recognized her husband's young player.
And it bears repeating, the retired judge does not see his contributions as giving back, but as sharing.
"I was raised in a household that was supposed to share. When you're a teammate on a basketball team, you're supposed to share the ball," he says. "So for me, it's about sharing, if you're able to. We have two children. They graduated from college and went on to advanced degrees. So we are more able now to share with the basketball program, and I always felt that I would and could."
Not for nothing, Baranco's and Gee's children followed in their parents' example: Lauren, who earned her degrees from Columbia and NYU, has worked for Alameda County for more than 10 years. Brandon, a graduate of UC Merced and Mills College, now serves as an official with the City of Oakland. This should be little to surprise in an extended family that holds education in such high regard.
"One thing that sold me on UC Davis, sold my parents on UC Davis, and continues to sell me on UC Davis is that athletes are students first," Baranco said. "I always believe that you have to be a student first and an athlete second, and UC Davis continues to do that. Bob Hamilton personified that belief. Whenever someone had a final or a midterm, he didn't go to basketball practice. You took that test. So the Hamilton Scholarship Fund is very, very special to me."
ABOUT UC DAVIS:
With the addition of equestrian and women's beach volleyball in 2018, more than 700 student-athletes represent the fifth-ranked public school in the nation on one of 25 intercollegiate athletics teams.
UC Davis, a national leader in Title IX gender equity and leadership, is centrally located between San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, and the Napa Valley; and offers an unrivaled student-athlete experience that features the ideal combination of elite academics, Division I athletics and personal growth.
Ranked annually in the top 10 in diversity and students' social mobility, UC Davis is uncommonly committed to preparing student-athletes for life after graduation with Aggie EVO — an innovative student-athlete outcomes program that helps young women and men develop passions, gain real-world experience, and enjoy a successful launch to full-time employment or graduate school. Through Aggie EVO, Intercollegiate Athletics provides unmatched resources and a vast network of working professionals to ensure post-graduation success for its student-athletes.
