Welcome, welcome, welcome. Here. It is a time for a very
special community connection right here on Kay one. The one you trust first of
all day Lewis is here with you always bring friends. Buddy, brought a
good one today, don't you bring in Cecil appardly, gay coach. How
you doing very well? Thank you? Oh man, it's great to have
you here. You got a new book, Well, you got a book
that's out and I just read it because the other day, as a matter
of fact, nice to meet the guy who wrote the book. What's the
title. It's kind of a different one. It's I call Above the Rim,
actually, Tom. The history of the book is that I my mother's
family were people like to tell stories. They like told family stories. And
then as my as I got older and I told my mother, I said,
you've got to start writing these down. These are really good stories and
the history of our family. And I really encouraged her to write those down.
And then about that time I turned around and I was forty years old,
and I thought, man, I I need to be writing some stories
too. So the history of the book was that I was writing history and
different stories from my kids and my grandkids. And that's that's the reason that
all of those stories were kind of disjointed because I were written at the book
was written at different times about different topics, but it was primarily for my
family. Well, you know, I was able to follow along with it
too, because everybody has kind of a disjointed life and thought pattern when we're
living. Because although the calendar says you're going linear, you're not. You're
going all over the place. Now, this starts out from basically from when
you can first remember being around, which was what up in Kansas. Yeah,
that was my first teaching job, and I actually I had I'd been
in school five years. I worked on my Masters for one year, and
I was decided that I was going to UH get into coaching. There were
some options there. People still kind of tease me because I've had probably had
an opportunity to come up here in Bartlesville and played for Philip sixty six.
Oh wow, I had a I had an appointment and been contacted by UH
coach that time was Bud Browning, and he had had contacted me to come
up and talk to him. And you know, when I came back to
town in nineteen seventy three and I saw how many of those basketball players did
very well with the company economically. I sometimes I everybody said, well,
did you make a mistake, And there's certainly that that's certainly probably true.
But that's when I went ahead and get him to got into coaching. And
my first year I went to a little liberal Kansas and it was like it
was good experience. Well, you know, you did things just kind of
a little differently than most books would kind of imagine. Uh, speaking of
nonlinear you were going to school, you were an athlete, but in the
summertime you go out west to work. Tell us about that. Yes,
well that's been a major part of my life obviously, and the history of
that. It was. There were two fraternity brothers of mine that went the
year before. Now this is a disney Land, this is this was from
Osue and two of them, Yes, they got jobs and we were We
were sweepers. And if you've been anybody's been to one of Disney resorts,
you say, those guys walking around with pans and brooms, that's what we
did. Uh. The these two guys came back and it was like,
you know, the they talked about going to San Diego, they talked about
to the zoo. They talked about going to the bullfights in Tijuana. They
went to Hollywood, and they went to the beach. And there's part you
know if the Disney person, the people working at Disney at that time and
the summertime it exploded. You had about Disneyland had about six thousand employees during
that that was in nineteen sixty and probably four thousand and more college students,
and they would just work for the summertime. Disneyland was it hardly even stayed
open in those years in the winter. I think they were only open special
daies. Yeah, special days, maybe four days a week. But the
lifestyle for the Disney employees and particularly you know they're college kids, it was
really a lot of fun. Well he had, but he kept going back,
I mean yearsually just been there. I worked well, I worked actually
fourteen years, and I worked my way up. I started as sweeper,
making a like a dollar eighty cents an hour, and then I worked They
took me out of the area after the fifth year, and then moving the
office. I was in office flunky for a few years and then I was
then I was a supervisor and I was a summertime supervisor during that time,
of course I was still coaching, although at different locations than the one in
Kansas. But the I was probably this one or two summer supervisors. That
was very unusual. So after the tenth year, I think for the last
four years during that time, also at that time I had been I was
married to a California girl, and so that was that was the final four
years. It was a lot more fun as a boss to be. Now,
let's get back to you as a player. You, of course we've
known far and White as a great coach, but you had some great coaches,
and you had some other coaches who looked at you, who thought you're
a pretty fine guy yourself. Well, just gets to the above the rampart,
folks. I never played above the rails, but well I have those
are those are some other uh. One of the things. I don't know
if I mentioned this in the in the book, but in my life I
call these things. I call these forks. You have these forks in your
life where you you have a you have to make a you have to make
a decision, huh, or sometimes the decision has made for you. I
was very fortunate that I wasn't drafted for one thing, the draft board.
Let me slide. Now we're not talking to the NBA draft. We're talking
let's go to Vietnam. Placed that was that was a different fork, and
that one again said there are people a question or question between the pros and
the Philip sixty six ers. They were a question question whether I should have
maybe jumped in one of those. But I had an opportunity out of high
school UH to play. I had been contacted. You never know people who
really want you to come or not sometimes, but I was contact acted by
both the Kansas schools UH which which state and Kansas not Kansas State, but
which state had a really good basketball program in those days. And then I'm
father, I'm almost certain I could have gone to school to owe you.
And then there were a couple of smaller Texas schools at contact. But if
you grew up and I grew up in Stillwater, Common, there's only one
place, yes, And and you know Henry I at that time was it
was an iconic UH sports figure. And if you grew up and you know,
watching his team's play from the time you were eight and nineteen years old
until you you U wanted to play college basketball. We been silly for me
to go someplace. That's one thing that I had kind of I didn't even
go visit any of those schools Tom and I've I've now, you know,
as an older person, I wish I had gone and met those people and
gone to those campuses. They would have been good, you know, they
would have been good. But you only know what you know when you're that
is yes. And and I also I felt like I knew where I was
going to go because said mister I had called me in uh to his office
and said, if you want to play basketball up here, We said you'll
have a scholarship. And then once that was done, you know, I've
felt a little bit guilty and you know, going mooching off for a weekend
trip to some school knowing that I was, you know, not really interested.
Yeah, it did. I had that feeling. Not everybody has read
the book like we have. Time played for Henry Iva, the lad the
Big Eighth and rebounding yep, and Uh what schools were in the Big eight
back then, and there were seven others. I know you had to play
against some real legends in basketball. We played Kansas was a very very UH
had seemed to have the send most people to the pro. Uh. There
was a there was a kid from New Mexico named Bridges, Bill Bridges that
played at KU then was it uh formidable about six to eight to thirty.
And Missouri also had a very very good basketball program. But there were there
were good players at every one at those stops. Iowa State, Colorado,
and they of course the two Oklahoma schools. There were no Texas schools.
Then they came in, I like that rule and he started on that,
said they because that was the that was when the Big twelve was formed.
That kind of was It was kind of a neighborhood situation before then, and
then it got kind of tacky. Yeah, hey, you know, well
let's go. We've got this little bit of time left. But coaching in
Bartlesville was just something else for you, wasn't it. Yes, it was.
My wife had I had come through Bartlesville. She's got a family up
near Kansas City, and we'd driven through here when I was coaching in Oklahoma
City, and we could you know, just driving through Bartlesville isn't very impressive.
This we've been in nineteen sixty five, sixty six, and then lo
and behold, I'm in a high school coach there, and uh, it's
it's a unique, of course, bartles a unique community. Certainly still is.
But we were very pleased. Matter of fact, Tom, you know,
I left. We left Bartlesville for three years for another coaching job.
And then when I decided that I wanted to get out of coaching in nineteen
seventy three, we and I decided that I was going to look for a
different occupation. We said, well, let's just go move in Bartlesville when
we don't care what one job I get. But we liked Bartlesville so well
that that that was our That was our decision. One time when you were
coaching, and it probably was more than one. Heck, they almost had
Philip sixty six board meetings up there in the bleachers, didn't they. That
was the That was the first year, Tom and I have relived that that
time for one thing you were I was only keep in mind I had only
had twenty six, twenty seven year old kid, and I did not really
I did know the the I didn't say I didn't know the lay of the
land. But the Phillips was you know, this was after the city service
had left, and Phillips is pretty much a dominant always has been a dominant
citizen in Bartlesville. And I was twenty seven years old. I didn't know,
you know, I didn't even know what was going on. But it
was Thanksgiving. High school coaches our teams often scrimmage and they have the old
some of the old players come and usually have visiting other teams from other communities
come in. So we had pretty much a three or four hour scrimmage plans
scheduled at our gym. And at one point this one of the one of
the players Dad. In between the scrimmages, he kind of sidled up to
me and he said, you noticed that you have a that Phillips could have
a board of executive meetings up to the stands and tell and I'll tell you
the truth. I didn't have a clue what he was talking about, but
that was and later on I really did kind of tick them off one by
one. But John hotch And had a boy playing then, Bill Martin had
a boy playing there. Harry Brookman Brookby had a boy playing then, and
Boots Adams had a boy playing two and they were you know, they weren't.
They were just there to see their kids play basketball. But I didn't.
I was really oblivious, this guy, said Alan, And I'd have
to say that it did make me a little bit nervous. We got to
get him back again. We do Where can we in your book? And
first of all, it's a buffer, rim No, it's it's I That's
one of the things I told Dale the book. I just have a few
I did not they're not for sighting, and uh, it was. They
were. The book which was really the brainstorm of the book was my friend
Joe Williams. And Joe has written two or three books here in town,
went on the Lower Rock and and uh and on Bartlesville and Uh. He's
a close friend and he had seen he'd read several of these individual stories and
he said, why don't we just do a book? And I said,
Joe, you're crazy. You know we can't. I can't do this.
I just written some stories. But he was very instrumental in putting it together,
and he knew the ins and outs of publishing. And so that's it
was. It was and is just for family and a few close friends.
If you ever want to do it again, you know your buddy here.
Jale's got a couple going on there in fact, they're going to put one
on TV here before too long. We're going to talk about that in a
couple of weeks. Yes we are. I'm up alrighty, but I wanted
to mention d catch them, Cecil mcganna, Charlie Bowerman, Red and Murrall
and this guy right here that's right in with him Bartletal have so many great
basketball players that lived there, and I'm the only one that that group still
on that no where to fit. They only know something I don't know on
that. Nope, we got a spot for you a little bit later on,
so you come back all right a little bit. Gentlemen, thank you
very much for being with us today.