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.