A broadcast halftime guest to remember

Detroit, December 28-29, 1976, the Motor City Classic ...

Dick Vitale
(photo by Matt Cashore, USA Today sports)

     A few years before he became the World's
Ambassador of Basketball, he was the halftime guest interview on the Centenary College broadcast.

     We knew this could be interesting.

     We had seen his "act" the previous night when he coached the best basketball team the University of Detroit had ever had to a close victory against our team, the Centenary Gentlemen. He was, well, a wild man, frantically -- obsessively -- directing his Titans. 

     The next night, as our guys played a consolation -- third-place -- game, he came to our radio-broadcast position to talk at halftime. His team would play the championship game about an hour later.

     All Jim Hawthorne, Centenary's play-by-play broadcaster on KWKH-Shreveport (1130 AM on the radio) in the late 1970s, had to do was ask one question. Dick Vitale -- yes, the omnipresent basketball guru -- took it from there.

 You might have seen him, and especially heard him, a time or two over the past 40 years. 

     Of course, he talked and talked and talked. He was intense, excitable, enthusiastic, loud, funny, crazy. Pick an adjective.

     It was unforgettable. And to think that then, 1976, not many people outside of, say, New Jersey (where he grew up and first coached) and Detroit knew of this blind-in-one-eye, balding, babbling nut case.

     Dickie V., baby.

     A footnote to this lead-in: A couple of hours later, after his U. of Detroit team had struggled to edge a less-than-.500 Kent State team in overtime, Vitale -- did we say intense? -- and Kent State coach Rex Hughes engaged in a shoving match that had to be broken up. Hughes wasn't happy with the game's outcome; Vitale wasn't happy with his team's subpar effort.

     Saw it happen. Not a good scene. But here is a fact: Both Vitale and Hughes were basketball lifers, and both were head coaches for a short time in the NBA. One little skirmish didn't matter.

      We did appreciate Vitale coming on our halftime show. What Hawthorne -- who would go on to be LSU athletics' "Voice of the Tigers" for three decades -- remembers is telling.

      "He was sitting with me in a press booth at the top of the arena [Detroit's Calihan Hall]," Jim recalls, "and he told me, 'I just get so nervous.' "

       If Dick Vitale was nervous -- and maybe that's what took him out of coaching for good only a couple of years later -- think about how many TV viewers he made nervous over the next 40 years.

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     He was, and still can be, outrageously colorful -- dancing with cheerleaders, being the object of crowd-surfing, wearing goofy wigs, using his Vitale terminology ("diaper dandy," "PTPer," etc. ... here is the list -- https://dickvitaleonline.com/about/dick-vitales-dictionary)
     He also is outrageously positive and popular -- an emotional, wonderful friend of coaches, players, and the world. A charitable human being, always promoting good causes. The University of Detroit named its basketball court for him; he's been inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.     

     To listen to Vitale as the color announcer on TV basketball games, mostly college games but also a couple of years of NBA games, required patience and a good set of ears. Many people -- confession, I am one -- took it small doses, or not at all. Here is where the "mute" button came in.

     (My Dad loved basketball, but not Vit-al-ee, as he pronounced it in his broken Dutch/English. He always turned off the sound on Dickie V.'s games.)          

     Now, though, "mute" is not a happy word when we consider Mr. Vitale. This has been a tough time for the 82-year-old longtime Florida resident -- first melanoma, then lymphoma, chemo for months, and now vocal cords damaged to where surgery is required. He can't talk, and this week ESPN announced that he won't be back on the air for the rest of this basketball season.  

     It is no time for jokes about his voice.

     You know the sports world is rooting for him, and his full recovery.

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    We saw him, and he did that radio interview, in his greatest season as a coach. It was his fourth year as the University of Detroit coach, and his 1976-77 Titans went 25-4 (and one loss, to Minnesota, was reversed by forfeit).

      They won 21 games in a row -- Centenary was No. 6 in that streak -- and the last of those was a 64-63 upset (on a last-second shot) of No. 7-ranked Marquette in Milwaukee. Oh, Marquette went on to win the NCAA championship.

     Here is a funny Vitale moment: His dance at midcourt after that victory at Marquette: https://twitter.com/dickiev/status/804121343553925120

     Detroit made the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 15 years, and won one game, then lost in the Sweet Sixteen to state rival Michigan.

     That team included three future NBA players -- guards John Long and Terry Duerod, and forward/center Terry Tyler. 

      Earl Cureton, a 12-year NBA player, came to Detroit as a transfer while Vitale was the coach (and then athletic director for a year). When the 1977 team had a 40-year reunion, and Vitale attended, Cureton said this:  

    "Bringing back Dick Vitale is huge. Usually, when you talk Titans basketball, you talk Dick Vitale. His name always comes up. I had a great deal of respect for what Dick did during his career, not only in basketball, but what did for us out of basketball.

      "He taught us about the game of life. He prepared us for life after basketball and how important it was for us to get an education and go from boys to men. He kept us on the straight and narrow and was definitely a role model. Just to show there was a lot of respect for Dick, all of them coming back 40 years later to see him. There's going to be a lot of excitement for him coming back in the building.

      "For a mid-major ... to create that type of excitement and to create the group of young men he created, I think, was amazing. What he did at U-D was just phenomenal."

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     Charlie Vincent was a transplanted Texan who wrote sports for the Detroit Free Press for three decades and was the beat writer for U. of Detroit basketball in 1976-77 (later covered the Detroit Pistons and then became a popular, crafty columnist for years). He could be tough, though. Here is what he wrote after Vitale's team barely beat Kent State:

     By the end of that season, Vincent was a bit more complimentary of Vitale's work.

     Joe Falls was a Detroit sportswriting legend, covering 50 years, the Free Press' lead sports columnist during Vitale's U. of Detroit time (and one of my favorite writers on baseball). Here is what he wrote about Vitale's influence:

      That crusader, that non-stop talker, that entertainer came into our personal vision in 1976, and had us shaking our heads (and covering our ears). So much fun, so endearing. 

       We wish him well, and when he gets back to television, we might even turn up the sound. Because he is Dickie V., baby.

Surviving Shanghai: A Marine's story

      A girl with Russian Jewish roots meets a U.S. Marine in China.

     The first few years of Jim Randolph Jr.'s life were spent in miserable conditions -- in a Japanese internment/prison camp in Shanghai, China.

     Jim doesn't remember it; he was too young. Good thing.

     His mother could not forget. Her life would never be the same. 

Ida Roskin Randolph

     Ida Roskin Randolph was Jewish, from a family with Russian heritage whose ancestors fled -- "escaped" is another description -- from Russia to China when Communism took over the USSR. Ida and her parents grew up in Shanghai, and they were there when World War II broke out in the Far East in December 1941.

     In the end, hers is a wonderful "rest of the story" -- incredibly -- in west/central Louisiana.

James W. Randolph Sr.

     Ida was 17 when James Randolph Sr., 19, a U.S. Marine from Many, Louisiana, came into her life. It happened quite a bit: Girl from "overseas" meets American serviceman on duty, and they become a couple.

     They met through mutual friends, a girlfriend of Ida's was dating a Marine friend of Jim's. Jim found Ida attractive, and they were a match. Language wasn't a barrier; she had learned English in international school in Shanghai. Soon they were in love ... and they married. And soon, she was pregnant.    

     So James Jr. was born in Shanghai as an American dependent. He was 10 months old when the world was about to change, not -- in the short term -- for the better.

     James Sr. would have a 21-year U.S. Marine Corps career. In October 1941, he was sent from Shanghai to join the Pacific forces preparing for what became 3 1/2 years of combat against the Japanese. He made six stops of islands and countries in the Far East, survived it all and eventually returned to the U.S. as a decorated war veteran.

     And he would reunite with his wife and son in the U.S. Jim Jr.'s first memories of his father were when he was nearly 6 and they met in San Francisco in 1946.

     While Jim Sr. was in combat, Ida and Jim Jr. had been through a sort of hell of their own: prisoners of the Japanese. 

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The young coach, 1966

     We remember Jim Jr. as a high school basketball coach (and principal) in North Louisiana from the mid-1960s through the 1980s. A very good basketball coach, an organizer and promoter of the game, dedicated to it and to the relationships with the kids he coached. In the early 1970s, as a young sportswriter, we covered games that involved some of his best teams.

     We also knew that his first cousin is Stanley Tiner, our friend from late 1960s Louisiana Tech days and later our boss as editor of the afternoon Shreveport Journal, one of several newspaper editor positions Stan had over three decades. That included heading one Pulitzer Prize-winning staff in 2006.

     What we didn't know was Jim Randolph Jr.'s back story, and that of Stanley's "Aunt Ida." (Stan's mother was Jim Sr.'s sister.) Stan alerted us to the story, and provided Ida's photo.

     What Jim Jr. and Stan also share is Marines' duty. 

     Jim followed his father's path and joined the Marines at age 17 in 1958, immediately out of high school. Jim Sr. administered Junior's induction. His four years of service were during a non-combat time, and the tough Marine life  included some fun -- he played on camp basketball teams, including time as a player-coach. 

     Stan joined the Marines in the early 1960s and became a Vietnam veteran, a war correspondent and photographer. 

     Another commonality: They each went from the Marines to college -- Jim at Northwestern State (1962-66, health/P.E. major), Stan back to La. Tech (1967-69 for a degree in journalism).

     Even before he graduated, Jim (at age 25) had been named as a head basketball coach at Springhill High in April 1966. 

     His 12-season coaching career (four schools, 290 victories, a .625 winning percentage) included five playoff seasons at Zwolle (where he was high school principal for another five years) and ended in 1984 as the first successful basketball coach at Shreveport's Southwood High.

     He is 81 now, happily retired and living with wife of 28 years, Judy, in Rockwall, Texas, where he was high school principal for 10 years, the last of 25  fulltime years as a school administrator. He stays involved with his church (Lutheran) and in Marines' veterans activity.

     He doesn't push his early adventures. His family and some close friends know, and there have been stories written, but in North Louisiana, it wasn't common knowledge other than references to his being a Marine veteran. 

     Fact is: He and Ida were camp survivors.

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     Shanghai, the large southeast China port city, was a safe place in particular for Jews escaping the growing Nazi Germany terror. Jews were accepted there without visa requirements; some 20,000 fled there from eastern Europe from 1933 to '41. Many Russian refugees, such as the Roskin family, had been there for a couple of decades.

     The U.S. 4th Marine Regiment was based there from 1927 to 1941. Known as the "China Marines," they were protecting American citizens living and working in a city which had an international zone, a mix of many nationalities. 

     The Jewish population there was well-established and comfortable. But when Japanese troops took over Shanghai in 1941 -- on December 8 (note the date) -- they were instructed by Nazi Germany's leaders to round up the city's Jews and place them in a ghetto (known as Tilangiao).

     The Roskins, and the Randolphs (Ida and Jim Jr.), were in that ghetto. Jim was 14 months old when they rounded up.

     And by now, Ida was estranged from her parents -- their choice. They were appalled that a Jewish girl would out of faith, an American serviceman at that.

     "They disowned her," Jim Jr. recalled. "She gave up everything for our family, and she never saw her parents or her brother again."

     The Japanese were not as hell-bent on punishing, or killing, the Jews as the Nazis in Germany. Conditions were harsh, food was scarce and whatever work the prisoners were forced to do was labor, but most of Shanghai's Jewish population -- remarkably and fortunately -- survived. 

     Jim Jr. noted that "due to economic and personnel reasons, Japan shut down the internment camps a few years before the end of the war, and we were released."

     Ida, he said, "shut it down, almost totally. I don't remember her talking about it much."

     Jim did not remember the camp. "I didn't think a whole lot about it," he said. "It wasn't meaningful to me. Didn't make much difference."

     But he does have memories of the subsequent years in Shanghai; for instance, one story his mother did relate. "She said the Japanese were trying to find where her husband (Jim Sr.) was located," he said, "and they threatened to cut me in half if she didn't tell them. They did that with many women and their children. If that's a true story, I don't know."

     He also early memories of watching military troops marching, of Chinese "coolies" (low-wage laborers) attacking his mother and stealing a week's worth of food from her, and of living in a basement room and his mother having him sleep with her because she was afraid of rats gnawing on her little boy. (Pleasant dreams.)  

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     The Roskin parents and brother returned to Russia, and Ida learned they received harsh treatment and were forced to work on farm communes. In 1952, she got word her father had died. That was the last contact with her original family.

     But her new family soon was reunited. Ida heard her husband had survived and was back in the U.S. He sent for Ida and Jim Jr., and they took a ship from Shanghai to San Francisco.

     "I remember seeing the Golden Gate Bridge," he said, and he met -- first time in his memory -- James Randolph Sr.

      "He wasn't a big man -- about 5-foot-10, 165 pounds," he recalled. "By the time I was in high school, I was about 6-foot-1."

      They lived at Camp Pendleton in California before and after three years at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. When Jim Sr. was assigned duty in the Korean Conflict in 1952, he took them "home" to Louisiana, to Many near Jim Jr.'s grandparents. 

     Ida and Jim Jr. began attending church in Many, the Jewish girl converted to Baptist. She would become involved in that church and one in Hornbeck, about 18 miles from Many where Ida and Jim Sr. eventually settled.

     Ida, her son remembers, "was fluent in English, and she worked to hide her accent. She wanted to be accepted in her new world."

     Jim began high school in Many, making the varsity basketball team as a freshman in 1955. When Jim Sr. was assigned duty at a New England Marine base, they moved to Kittery, Maine, where he spent his last three high school years at Traip Academy (as an all-county forward in basketball and track/field competitor).

     From there it was on to the Marines, Northwestern State (he didn't play basketball, but was a fan/spectator and student of the game when he wasn't an all-night campus security guard), and then on to teaching and coaching.

      Preparing to teach history courses, he learned more of the Japanese occupation of Shanghai and appreciated the travail he and his mother had survived.

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     Much of Jim Jr.'s family -- two sons (one deceased), three grandchildren, one great grandson -- remained in North Louisiana. Two stepchildren and two grandkids live in or near Rockwall.

     One family member who did move far away is Jim's sister, Mary. Seven years younger than him, a Florien (La.) High graduate -- also near Many -- she met her future husband while they worked at Fort Polk, the U.S. Army base near Leesville, La. She moved with him to his hometown of Lansing, Mich.

      Near the end of Jim's working career, the lives of the two people who brought him into the world ended in Shreveport -- James Sr. at age 79 in July 1999; Ida at age 78 in late January 2000.

     It had been some 60-plus years since their meeting and courtship, in Shanghai -- the start of quite a story, a mix of Russia, China, Louisiana, Judaism, Baptists, and the U.S. Marines.

     Ida's obituary in The Shreveport Times said she was "a loyal wife, loving mother and devoted child of God."

     Her son will tell you that she was courageous, adventurous, generous and a person who sacrificed so much for a good life in the United States.

Jim and Judy Randolph, at home in Rockwall, Texas

A strange (spy?) story ... a mysterious disappearance