TROY, Mich. – Mitch Albom’s 14th annual Say Detroit Radiothon brought out countless big names from the world of sports and entertainment on Thursday at the Somerset Collection in Troy.
“We arrived at six in the morning, and there was a man here with a $10,000 check,” Albom, the longtime Detroit Free Press columnist and author, said. “We got off to a great start and five minutes in, Alice Cooper called from London, and he was our first guest.”
Last year’s event raised $2.23 million – the most money in its history – at Say Detroit, a nonprofit Albom started in 2006.
It runs an after-school learning center and free family health clinic, along with a housing program for Detroit families.
They have also begun revitalizing the city’s recreation centers, opening the sprawling “Say Play” center at Lipke Park on Detroit’s east side.
The rec center has a basketball court, football and baseball fields, and an educational complex.
“We’ve been in operation for 10 years now,” Rick Kelley, Say Detroit’s executive director, said. “We have over 200 kids a day at our center.”
“We’ve improved test scores, math, English, you name it,” Kelley said. “We got a lot of momentum from the community saying you need to do this again somewhere else.”
That someplace else came in the form of an announcement of a new Say Play facility at the legendary St. Cecilia’s gym on Livernois and Stoepel on Detroit’s west side.
The gym, which was part of the old St. Cecilia’s church, first opened up as a rec center in 1967.
The decision to revive it came at the suggestion of Mayor Mike Duggan.
The iconic gym became the home of generations of Detroit hoopers — including Dave Bing, Isiah Thomas, Steve Smith, Jalen Rose, and Chris Webber.
“Everybody talks about what it was like in New York; what it was like in Philadelphia; what it was like on the West Coast,” Bing, the former Detroit Mayor, said. “None of them were better than St. Cecilia’s.”
When Bing was a rookie with the Detroit Pistons in 1967, he trained at the gym during a contract holdout. He eventually convinced the Pistons to buy the gym a working scoreboard.
Bing, along with former police chief Ike McKinnon and former Piston and U of D Titan Earl Cureton, had created the “Ceciliaville” initiative and had been working for years to fully restore the gym.
“Kids came from all over the city to play ball or to feel safe at St. Cecilia’s,” McKinnon said. “It’s still the same as you remember.”
Similar to its east side counterpart, the new St. Cecilia’s will keep the gym and add an academic wing, a STEM lab, and a football field. Kelley says the change will happen in phases, and money is still being raised toward the full construction.
Earl Cureton passed away suddenly on Feb. 4, 2024, and he was represented at the event by his wife, Judith, and his daughter, Sari. McKinnon said that Thursday was a day that his friend would’ve
“Earl would be so happy,” McKinnon said. “He always said he was a kid from Mack and Bewick on the east side of Detroit who had to take two buses to get here. Look at what we’ve done.”
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