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Welcome, welcome, welcome. Here. It is a time for a very

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special community connection right here on Kay
one. The one you trust first of

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all day Lewis is here with you
always bring friends. Buddy, brought a

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good one today, don't you bring
in Cecil appardly, gay coach. How

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you doing very well? Thank you? Oh man, it's great to have

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you here. You got a new
book, Well, you got a book

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that's out and I just read it
because the other day, as a matter

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of fact, nice to meet the
guy who wrote the book. What's the

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title. It's kind of a different
one. It's I call Above the Rim,

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actually, Tom. The history of
the book is that I my mother's

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family were people like to tell stories. They like told family stories. And

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then as my as I got older
and I told my mother, I said,

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you've got to start writing these down. These are really good stories and

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the history of our family. And
I really encouraged her to write those down.

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And then about that time I turned
around and I was forty years old,

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and I thought, man, I
I need to be writing some stories

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too. So the history of the
book was that I was writing history and

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different stories from my kids and my
grandkids. And that's that's the reason that

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all of those stories were kind of
disjointed because I were written at the book

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was written at different times about different
topics, but it was primarily for my

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family. Well, you know,
I was able to follow along with it

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too, because everybody has kind of
a disjointed life and thought pattern when we're

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living. Because although the calendar says
you're going linear, you're not. You're

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going all over the place. Now, this starts out from basically from when

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you can first remember being around,
which was what up in Kansas. Yeah,

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that was my first teaching job,
and I actually I had I'd been

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in school five years. I worked
on my Masters for one year, and

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I was decided that I was going
to UH get into coaching. There were

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some options there. People still kind
of tease me because I've had probably had

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an opportunity to come up here in
Bartlesville and played for Philip sixty six.

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Oh wow, I had a I
had an appointment and been contacted by UH

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coach that time was Bud Browning,
and he had had contacted me to come

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up and talk to him. And
you know, when I came back to

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town in nineteen seventy three and I
saw how many of those basketball players did

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very well with the company economically.
I sometimes I everybody said, well,

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did you make a mistake, And
there's certainly that that's certainly probably true.

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But that's when I went ahead and
get him to got into coaching. And

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my first year I went to a
little liberal Kansas and it was like it

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was good experience. Well, you
know, you did things just kind of

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a little differently than most books would
kind of imagine. Uh, speaking of

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nonlinear you were going to school,
you were an athlete, but in the

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summertime you go out west to work. Tell us about that. Yes,

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well that's been a major part of
my life obviously, and the history of

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that. It was. There were
two fraternity brothers of mine that went the

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year before. Now this is a
disney Land, this is this was from

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Osue and two of them, Yes, they got jobs and we were We

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were sweepers. And if you've been
anybody's been to one of Disney resorts,

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you say, those guys walking around
with pans and brooms, that's what we

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did. Uh. The these two
guys came back and it was like,

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you know, the they talked about
going to San Diego, they talked about

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to the zoo. They talked about
going to the bullfights in Tijuana. They

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went to Hollywood, and they went
to the beach. And there's part you

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know if the Disney person, the
people working at Disney at that time and

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the summertime it exploded. You had
about Disneyland had about six thousand employees during

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that that was in nineteen sixty and
probably four thousand and more college students,

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and they would just work for the
summertime. Disneyland was it hardly even stayed

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open in those years in the winter. I think they were only open special

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daies. Yeah, special days,
maybe four days a week. But the

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lifestyle for the Disney employees and particularly
you know they're college kids, it was

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really a lot of fun. Well
he had, but he kept going back,

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I mean yearsually just been there.
I worked well, I worked actually

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fourteen years, and I worked my
way up. I started as sweeper,

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making a like a dollar eighty cents
an hour, and then I worked They

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took me out of the area after
the fifth year, and then moving the

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office. I was in office flunky
for a few years and then I was

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then I was a supervisor and I
was a summertime supervisor during that time,

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of course I was still coaching,
although at different locations than the one in

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Kansas. But the I was probably
this one or two summer supervisors. That

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was very unusual. So after the
tenth year, I think for the last

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four years during that time, also
at that time I had been I was

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married to a California girl, and
so that was that was the final four

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years. It was a lot more
fun as a boss to be. Now,

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let's get back to you as a
player. You, of course we've

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known far and White as a great
coach, but you had some great coaches,

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and you had some other coaches who
looked at you, who thought you're

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a pretty fine guy yourself. Well, just gets to the above the rampart,

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folks. I never played above the
rails, but well I have those

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are those are some other uh.
One of the things. I don't know

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if I mentioned this in the in
the book, but in my life I

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call these things. I call these
forks. You have these forks in your

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life where you you have a you
have to make a you have to make

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a decision, huh, or sometimes
the decision has made for you. I

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was very fortunate that I wasn't drafted
for one thing, the draft board.

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Let me slide. Now we're not
talking to the NBA draft. We're talking

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let's go to Vietnam. Placed that
was that was a different fork, and

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that one again said there are people
a question or question between the pros and

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the Philip sixty six ers. They
were a question question whether I should have

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maybe jumped in one of those.
But I had an opportunity out of high

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school UH to play. I had
been contacted. You never know people who

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really want you to come or not
sometimes, but I was contact acted by

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both the Kansas schools UH which which
state and Kansas not Kansas State, but

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which state had a really good basketball
program in those days. And then I'm

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father, I'm almost certain I could
have gone to school to owe you.

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And then there were a couple of
smaller Texas schools at contact. But if

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you grew up and I grew up
in Stillwater, Common, there's only one

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place, yes, And and you
know Henry I at that time was it

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was an iconic UH sports figure.
And if you grew up and you know,

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watching his team's play from the time
you were eight and nineteen years old

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until you you U wanted to play
college basketball. We been silly for me

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to go someplace. That's one thing
that I had kind of I didn't even

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go visit any of those schools Tom
and I've I've now, you know,

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as an older person, I wish
I had gone and met those people and

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gone to those campuses. They would
have been good, you know, they

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would have been good. But you
only know what you know when you're that

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is yes. And and I also
I felt like I knew where I was

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going to go because said mister I
had called me in uh to his office

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and said, if you want to
play basketball up here, We said you'll

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have a scholarship. And then once
that was done, you know, I've

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felt a little bit guilty and you
know, going mooching off for a weekend

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trip to some school knowing that I
was, you know, not really interested.

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Yeah, it did. I had
that feeling. Not everybody has read

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the book like we have. Time
played for Henry Iva, the lad the

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Big Eighth and rebounding yep, and
Uh what schools were in the Big eight

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back then, and there were seven
others. I know you had to play

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against some real legends in basketball.
We played Kansas was a very very UH

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had seemed to have the send most
people to the pro. Uh. There

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was a there was a kid from
New Mexico named Bridges, Bill Bridges that

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played at KU then was it uh
formidable about six to eight to thirty.

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And Missouri also had a very very
good basketball program. But there were there

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were good players at every one at
those stops. Iowa State, Colorado,

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and they of course the two Oklahoma
schools. There were no Texas schools.

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Then they came in, I like
that rule and he started on that,

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said they because that was the that
was when the Big twelve was formed.

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That kind of was It was kind
of a neighborhood situation before then, and

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then it got kind of tacky.
Yeah, hey, you know, well

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let's go. We've got this little
bit of time left. But coaching in

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Bartlesville was just something else for you, wasn't it. Yes, it was.

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My wife had I had come through
Bartlesville. She's got a family up

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near Kansas City, and we'd driven
through here when I was coaching in Oklahoma

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City, and we could you know, just driving through Bartlesville isn't very impressive.

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This we've been in nineteen sixty five, sixty six, and then lo

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and behold, I'm in a high
school coach there, and uh, it's

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it's a unique, of course,
bartles a unique community. Certainly still is.

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But we were very pleased. Matter
of fact, Tom, you know,

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I left. We left Bartlesville for
three years for another coaching job.

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And then when I decided that I
wanted to get out of coaching in nineteen

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seventy three, we and I decided
that I was going to look for a

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different occupation. We said, well, let's just go move in Bartlesville when

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we don't care what one job I
get. But we liked Bartlesville so well

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that that that was our That was
our decision. One time when you were

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coaching, and it probably was more
than one. Heck, they almost had

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Philip sixty six board meetings up there
in the bleachers, didn't they. That

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was the That was the first year, Tom and I have relived that that

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time for one thing you were I
was only keep in mind I had only

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had twenty six, twenty seven year
old kid, and I did not really

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I did know the the I didn't
say I didn't know the lay of the

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land. But the Phillips was you
know, this was after the city service

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had left, and Phillips is pretty
much a dominant always has been a dominant

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citizen in Bartlesville. And I was
twenty seven years old. I didn't know,

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you know, I didn't even know
what was going on. But it

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was Thanksgiving. High school coaches our
teams often scrimmage and they have the old

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some of the old players come and
usually have visiting other teams from other communities

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come in. So we had pretty
much a three or four hour scrimmage plans

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scheduled at our gym. And at
one point this one of the one of

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the players Dad. In between the
scrimmages, he kind of sidled up to

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me and he said, you noticed
that you have a that Phillips could have

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a board of executive meetings up to
the stands and tell and I'll tell you

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the truth. I didn't have a
clue what he was talking about, but

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that was and later on I really
did kind of tick them off one by

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one. But John hotch And had
a boy playing then, Bill Martin had

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a boy playing there. Harry Brookman
Brookby had a boy playing then, and

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Boots Adams had a boy playing two
and they were you know, they weren't.

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They were just there to see their
kids play basketball. But I didn't.

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I was really oblivious, this guy, said Alan, And I'd have

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to say that it did make me
a little bit nervous. We got to

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get him back again. We do
Where can we in your book? And

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first of all, it's a buffer, rim No, it's it's I That's

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one of the things I told Dale
the book. I just have a few

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I did not they're not for sighting, and uh, it was. They

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were. The book which was really
the brainstorm of the book was my friend

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Joe Williams. And Joe has written
two or three books here in town,

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went on the Lower Rock and and
uh and on Bartlesville and Uh. He's

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a close friend and he had seen
he'd read several of these individual stories and

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he said, why don't we just
do a book? And I said,

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Joe, you're crazy. You know
we can't. I can't do this.

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I just written some stories. But
he was very instrumental in putting it together,

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and he knew the ins and outs
of publishing. And so that's it

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was. It was and is just
for family and a few close friends.

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If you ever want to do it
again, you know your buddy here.

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Jale's got a couple going on there
in fact, they're going to put one

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on TV here before too long.
We're going to talk about that in a

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couple of weeks. Yes we are. I'm up alrighty, but I wanted

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to mention d catch them, Cecil
mcganna, Charlie Bowerman, Red and Murrall

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and this guy right here that's right
in with him Bartletal have so many great

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basketball players that lived there, and
I'm the only one that that group still

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on that no where to fit.
They only know something I don't know on

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that. Nope, we got a
spot for you a little bit later on,

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so you come back all right a
little bit. Gentlemen, thank you

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very much for being with us today.