Barry Benator Retires from JCC Basketball

Throughout his long and fascinating life, Barry Benator has always pushed himself to the limit.

When the longtime Dunwoody resident, now 81, was an undergrad student at Georgia Tech in the late 1960s, he wasn’t satisfied with enrolling in Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program for the required two years; he had to stretch it to four to secure the much-coveted Navy ROTC scholarship. Later, as he and his wife settled down to start a family, Benator wasn’t deterred from serving his country as a midshipman, stationed in a submarine for days on end, thousands of miles away from Atlanta.

And when he decided active duty was no longer compatible with raising young children, Benator stayed true to his Navy roots by joining the Naval Reserves, for which he served over the next 24 years. Even after leaving the Navy, Benator has continued serving others by voluntarily piloting ill and injured patients who lack adequate financial resources to and from their treatment centers.

So, perhaps, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Benator decided to keep playing in the Marcus Jewish Community Center of Atlanta (MJCCA) recreational men’s basketball league well into his 80s before finally deciding to step aside last month. Though Benator’s the first to acknowledge that his quarter-century-long career pales in comparison to that of his younger brother, Gene’s, legendary MJCCA softball run, the elder Benator was a widely respected fixture in JCC rec league basketball, both at the former facility in East Cobb and the current one on Tilly Mill Road, ever since he took the court as a 58-year-old in a men’s 40-plus league. As a fitting recognition of his perseverance and decades-long devotion to JCC basketball, his current team recently held a thoughtful retirement party that started with a gathering at PDK Airport showcasing the plane Benator pilots for angel medical transports and ended with a pizza lunch at a local restaurant.

It wasn’t an easy decision to call it quits, but it was undeniably the right one. Or, as he would quote Clint Eastwood to his teammates, “A man’s got to know his limitations.”

“Even in the 50-plus league, I found that I was going very slow compared to the others,” explained Benator when speaking to the AJT earlier this month. “And I was concerned because I was going slow, that I may cause injury to people behind me that altered their steps in order to avoid hurting me. I’m sorry I had to stop, because I just couldn’t move around well enough at my age.”

When revisiting his decades-long JCC hoops career, the elder Benator maintains a refreshing, self-deprecating sense of humor, fully acknowledging the considerable age gap between him and most of his teammates. “I was usually the oldest and slowest guy out there. So, my teammates pretty much carried us, and I contributed where I could.”

A solid two-way player who primarily operated on the perimeter and acquired the moniker “Iso” because of his penchant for scoring when he was isolated against a defender, Benator was a member of several teams that came in first in their respective divisions at both the East Cobb- and Atlanta-based gymnasiums. But the fondest memories that Barry carries with him into retirement — and he will still attend games as a fan when he’s not playing his new sport, pickleball, with his son — are not necessarily those of hoisting trophies with his teammates (the most recent of which occurred in 2015), but rather those of playing under the watchful eye of little brother, Gene, who officiated many of his games.

“He [Gene] really is a great referee. He showed me no favor, I can tell you that,” pointed out Benator, who also played JCC softball, but did eventually step aside after dealing with the injury bug one too many times.

For Barry, personally, joining a men’s basketball league as a middle-aged man and continuing to play for a quarter-century was a testament to his lifelong passion for basketball, which he developed in pick-up games growing up and intramurals with his Georgia Tech fraternity but was at one point hindered from pursuing.

Indeed, his basketball playing days were abruptly interrupted by his Naval duties and although he has absolutely zero regrets in how his Navy career panned out, the lack of recreational sports — and in particular basketball — was a loss of sorts.

“In the Navy on submarines, you’re at sea 70 percent of the time, so we didn’t have time to play a lot of sports,” added Benator. “We were always focused on the mission, which is to defend the country.”

In joining the JCC basketball circuit, Benator was able to find fulfillment. And by playing into his eighth decade, he has been a role model to younger generations of players: Age is just a relative construct and if you really love something, your birth certificate doesn’t have to dictate when it’s time to walk away.

“Basketball players, including the most athletic, usually hang up their basketball shoes long before their 70s,” said David Soloway, a stalwart of JCC men’s basketball and one-time commissioner of the JCC’s over-40 half-court basketball league. “Barry’s basketball endurance into his 80s has been an inspiration to many, including me. Sometimes when teenagers have watched the older guys play basketball, I’ve pointed out Barry and said he’s in his 80s; their responses to that verge on expressions of awe!”