Barbara Olenyik Morrow is a journalist and author
from Auburn, Indiana, who has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist for editorial
writing. Her youth biography of novelist and conservationist Gene
Stratton-Porter was published by the IHS Press in 2010. Morrow’s other books
include From Ben-Hur to Sister Carrie,
in which she profiled five Hoosier writers during Indiana’s golden age of
literature, and A Good Night for Freedom, the well-received children’s picture
book about the Underground Railroad and famed Hoosier abolitionists Levi and
Catharine Coffin. Here she talks about her new youth biography of basketball coach John Wooden.
What inspired you to write about such an Indiana legend?
I
was a student at Indiana University in the early 1970s when the UCLA Bruins—coached
by John Wooden—dominated college basketball. Naturally, I rooted for the IU
Hoosiers, especially when they played UCLA in the semifinal game of the NCAA
tournament in St. Louis in 1973. Like other Hoosier fans, I was sorely
disappointed when Wooden’s squad defeated IU, paving the way for the Bruins to
win their ninth national title two days later. Nine national championships in a
single decade—that’s what Wooden achieved that March.
Two
years later, Wooden retired, triumphantly as ever, having just coached UCLA to
its tenth national championship. At that point he moved off my radar screen,
especially as IU Coach Bobby Knight began to make his mark on the game. IU won
the national basketball title in 1976, the year after Wooden’s retirement, and
the Knight-coached Hoosiers won championships again in 1981 and 1987. In the
midst of all that Hoosier hoops frenzy, Wooden and the UCLA Bruins—in my
limited worldview, at least—seemed “so yesterday.”
Then
came June 2010. Coach Wooden died, just months shy of his 100th birthday. Media
coverage of his passing was extensive, and tributes poured in from everywhere. President
Obama remembered Wooden as “an incredible coach and an even better man.” As I
followed the coverage, I became intrigued about the Hoosier roots of this coaching
giant whom I had given little thought to since my college days. I read how he
grew up on an Indiana farm with no electricity or indoor plumbing. I read how
his father knocked the bottom out of a tomato basket and nailed it to the barn
wall, while his mother stuffed rags in her black cotton hose and stitched them
up to make a ball—all so he and his brother could play a game that was taking the
Hoosier state by storm.
I
read, too, how Wooden loved poetry, studied Shakespeare and taught high school
English. And how he always lived modestly and was revered for his decency and valued
his Midwestern upbringing.
All
of this grabbed me. I kept reading. And soon I was inspired to write Hardwood Glory.
How did you go about researching
Wooden’s life?
As
I said, I started by reading. I soaked up information from Wooden’s two
autobiographies (They Call Me Coach
and My Personal Best: Life Lessons from
an All-American Journey) and delved into the many books written about his
coaching philosophy, leadership style, and pearls of homespun wisdom. I then read
biographies of athletes who played for Wooden (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill
Walton, among them), immersed myself in Indiana high school basketball history,
and researched the evolution of college basketball and post-season tournaments.
Given
that Wooden lived throughout most of the twentieth century (he was born in
1910), I knew I had to give historical context to his life. That led me to bone
up on major events and cultural forces in each decade of the 1900s—from America’s
entry into World War I, the Roaring Twenties and Great Depression to
civil-rights struggles and turmoil wrought by the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal.
Race relations is another subject I
researched. Wooden grew up in a time and place when segregation was widely
accepted, with “color barriers” the norm in sports and other aspects of
American life. I wanted to understand the various ways those barriers were
broken and to explore Wooden’s forward-thinking views on race.
My
research inevitably led to travel. I spent considerable time in Morgan County,
Indiana, Wooden’s birthplace. I visited the various communities in which he grew
up (Martinsville, Hall, Monrovia and Centerton), read family gravestones, and studied
old newspapers and yearbooks in Martinsville’s public library. Recent research
by Morgan County residents Curtis H. Tomak, Joanne Raetz Stuttgen, and Norma J.
Tomak served me well; they uncovered new information that corrected often-told
accounts of Wooden’s early life, and I made of a point – following my own
digging—to present the corrected accounts. Wherever I traveled, I interviewed
people. In South Bend, for instance, I was
fortunate to interview men who had played for Wooden at Central High School when
he coached there in the 1930s and early 1940s. Likewise, I was fortunate to
interview Gary, IN, resident Kevin J. Walker, who shared a journal written by
his father Clarence Walker, a member of Wooden’s Sycamore squad at Indiana
State Teachers College in the late 1940s—a pivotal time in the integration of
college basketball.
My
research would not have been complete without a trip to Los Angeles. There I
had the pleasure of meeting Wooden’s daughter Nan, who invited me to her home
where I viewed rooms full of family photos and Wooden memorabilia. I also spent
time at UCLA, where Bill Bennett, an athletics department official, gave me
access to a wealth of material and where I benefited from studying an exhibit in
the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame. The exhibit, known as Wooden’s “den,” contains
furnishings and personal items donated by his family and displayed exactly as
they had been in his suburban Los Angeles condominium.
I
would be remiss if I failed to mention that Steve Alford, UCLA’s newly named
head coach at the time of my visit, granted me an interview. We talked about
Alford’s Hoosier roots and how he lived in Martinsville in the early 1970s – a
time when his father, Sam, coached the high school team. Young Alford spent
afternoons hanging out in the very gym where Wooden had been a high school star
decades earlier.
At
my request, Coach Alford wrote the foreword to Hardwood Glory.
In doing your research, did you come
across anything about Wooden that surprised you?
I had
read that Wooden was highly competitive, but I did not realize the extent of
his competitiveness until I researched his early years of coaching. I am
indebted to Peter DeKever, a Mishawaka historian who drew my attention to a
basketball game in January 1937 between the South Bend Central High School
Bears, coached by Wooden, and the Mishawaka High School Cavemen, coached by
Shelby S. Shake. The after-game court fireworks, as reported in a South Bend
newspaper, revealed that Wooden was not someone to push around and that he
definitely had a fiery side.
I
also was surprised to learn about the intersection of the lives of Wooden, UCLA
Bruin star center Bill Walton, President Richard Nixon and White House Chief of
Staff H. R. “Bob” Haldeman in the 1970s, before and after Watergate. If I’ve
aroused your curiosity, good!
Why was Wooden such a successful coach?
He
lived by the saying “failing to prepare is preparing to fail,” and thus he made
the most of basketball practices. He put his players through repetitive drills
so that they instinctively executed “fundamentals” in games. He likewise put
players through grueling physical workouts so that their superb conditioning
enabled them to wear down opponents. Moreover, Wooden stressed teamwork.
Drawing upon a shrewd understanding of human psychology, common sense, and his
own deep-seated decency, he managed to tame egos and meld players into a unit
that made them all look good. The team, not the individual, was the star.
Is it possible for any modern-day coach
to match Wooden’s accomplishments?
I
think not. Today players bolt to the professional ranks after a year or two of
college, making it difficult for coaches to mold team unity and build upon lessons
taught and strides made the previous year.
Any other comments regarding Coach
Wooden?
It
seems rather fitting that Indianapolis will host the 2015 NCAA Final Four
Tournament. This March marks 40 years since Wooden made tournament history by coaching
the UCLA Bruins to their 10th national championship, a men’s record
that remains unrivaled. This year also marks 40 years since Wooden retired from
the game at which he excelled throughout his long life, as first a player and
then a coach. The very game, of course, that he learned to play . . . in
Indiana.
Do you have an idea for your next book?
Ideas,
yes. Always ideas. But nothing firm.
