George Thornton: Jumping into life

(Ninth in a series)
      George "Petey" Thornton came to Louisiana Tech University in the fall of 1968 as a basketball player ... and a high jumper. He loved both pursuits, but high jumping would have to wait a year.
      He lettered four times in each sport, but no question he was much more successful individually in track and field.
      Tech basketball coach Scotty Robertson would not allow him to high jump after his freshman  season, wanting him to use the off-season to develop his basketball skills. But in his second year at school, he joined Coach Jimmy Mize's track team, although he got a late start and limited practice.
       In four years, he finished second twice in the Gulf States Conference meet, clearing 6-10 in 1970 in only his second meet of the season and 6-6 in 1971. Tech switched conferences and he won the Southland Conference title in 1972 with a 6-9 jump, using the fairly new "Fosbury Flop" technique from about the mid-point of that track season.
       Because he needed a fifth year in school to earn his degree, and his basketball eligibility was done, he had the 1972-73 school year to work on his high jumping. It paid off.

George Thornton "flopped" his way to two conference
high jump championships, 1972 and 1973

       He did not break the school record (7 feet) held by Tommy Stinson then, but based on consistency -- six jumps of 6-10 or slightly better that season -- he became the best high jumper in school history to that point.
       "I'm very happy about it now," he told me for my April 1973 column on him in The Shreveport Times. "If I had had to come back for my fifth year and not been able to compete, it would have been a real sad year. I'm an athlete, I want to participate."
       He again won the Southland title by clearing 6-10 1/2, and helping Tech win the conference championship. He also qualified to compete in the NCAA Championships in Baton Rouge that summer, but did not place.
       His desire to compete in track, taking time away from off-season basketball work, might have caused some difficulty with Robertson, who -- as mentioned in the previous blog piece -- could be a controlling coach.
       "We didn't have the closeness we had before," George said a couple of weeks ago, "and I think that did it."
       But he credits Mize, the gentlemanly longtime Tech assistant football/head track and cross-country coach who is 98 and living with Mrs. Mize in Baton Rouge, as a positive influence.

Tech track and field coach Jimmy Mize holds the 1973 Southland Conference
championship trophy; George Thornton is at far right, bottom; longtime Tech
athletic council chairman Harold Smolinki (left) made the presentation

       "Coach Mize allowed me to do the best I could," he said. "He didn't have the way to show me better technique; I don't think many track coaches then could specialize in a lot of events. But he gave the chance to travel to other cities and states, and I saw a lot of other athletes perform. It was a great experience."
       And it helped lead to a brief coaching career.        
       After he graduated from Tech in 1973, Thornton returned home to Kirkwood, Mo., and was a teacher-coach at the high school from which he graduated five years earlier (he was inducted into the school's athletic Hall of Fame). He was the head cross-country country and assisted in track and field and wrestling, and he enjoyed it all.
      He wanted to coach basketball there, but the job didn't come open. To increase his financial status, after a couple of years, he moved into the insurance business and eventually started his own insurance agency.
      Then came the metal services business -- "you can make money on stuff people throw away," he said -- and it keeps him and Judith busy. Arranging time for a lengthy interview with him, and even a second shorter one, took a little doing.
      Life has had "its ups and downs," including the tragic death of a brother in Kirkwood and the recent death of another brother. But there remains a large family and "the good thing about playing sports," he says, "is that it taught me to keep pushing, to work hard, and you will overcome, and things get better."
      He's returned to Ruston, and Tech, a couple of times -- once for an alumni basketball game/reunion, one for a banquet honoring Scotty Robertson.
       He remains fondly thought of by those of us who were at Tech in the late 1960s.
      "Petey was a great guy. ... I loved Petey," Buddy Davis wrote to me. "He was such an upbeat, nice guy who was always smiling and happy. He was the kind of person that if you had a downer of a day or whatever, his disposition could lift you up."
       "I can't say anything but good things about him," Robertson said in 1973. "He always did what was asked of him, and he contributed."
      "I think I've accomplished a lot of things," Thornton said then. "I've learned respect for a lot of people and I think I'm respected by a lot of people. They know me when they see me and they speak to me. Everything is OK."
      I would say, 42 years later, that for Louisiana Tech's trailblazing black athlete, it's still OK.

The superstar, the giving coach and George Thornton

(Eighth in a series)
      George "Petey" Thornton enjoyed playing for Coach Scotty Robertson and loved being Mike Green's basketball teammate for three seasons at Louisiana Tech University.
      They are linked in history, the coach and the first two black scholarship players in the program's history. The three seasons (1969-72) they were together was a great era for Tech men's basketball.
      When Thornton looks back on it, as he did when we talked a couple of weeks ago, he says that "Scotty did a lot of special stuff for me."
      There is more to that than just basketball knowledge and guidance in life. For instance ...
      "He let me drive a Tech station wagon," Thornton recalled, and made me wonder. "I had a '55 Chevy and I was driving back from St. Louis with Mike Palmer (his roommate, also from that area). We were close to Ruston and the car threw a rod and was leaking oil, and we had to leave it on the road, and hitchhike in [to the campus].
      "Scotty gave me the money to get the car fixed, then I sold it."
      The coach, he added, also "bought me some shoes."
      Oops. This sounded like NCAA violations to me. When I said that to Thornton, he laughed. Then I added, "If he did that for you, imagine what he did for Mike Green and some other guys."
      And, well, all those years ago -- late 1960s/early 1970s -- there was always speculation. The confirmation came in the form of an NCAA probation a couple of years later.
---
      There are many words to describe Coach Scotty Robertson: smart, demanding, controlling, aggressive, ambitious, charming, brash, personable, giving. Maybe too giving.
      He was a fine athlete in the late 1940s/early 1950s in basketball and baseball at Shreveport's Byrd High School and Louisiana Tech, and he learned those sports well and applied that knowledge when he went into coaching.

Scotty Robertson: For four basketball decades and at many
stops, he knew what he doing (nola.com photo)

      Those of us who were influenced by him and respected him can tell you that he was a thorough and excellent teacher of basketball, a super strategist. NBA people thought so; over 25 years after leaving Tech, he was with nine different organizations in the league.
      Mostly he was an NBA assistant coach, a strong voice on the bench. He had head-coaching shots (first coach of the New Orleans Jazz; interim with the Chicago Bulls; three years with the Detroit Pistons, where he helped set the foundation for the franchise's "Bad Boys" championship teams).
      If you saw his teams play at Byrd High and La. Tech, you knew they were disciplined and tough and hard to beat (his Tech record for 10 seasons, 161-86, .652). You also knew that he had many fans, people he charmed and who believed in him; and he had many detractors. OK, some people flat did not like him.
      He was a sharp dresser, blond, fair-complexioned and when he was fired up -- and he could get that way -- he would turn red. Opposing fans loved that.
      (Reminds me of a banner hanging one night when Tech played at Northwestern State in  Natchitoches. In a play on words of a popular song that year, it read, "Sitting here watching Scotty blow." That had us laughing, but not with Coach Robertson around.)
      Those of us at Tech knew that Scotty at times might bend/break NCAA rules. He would do what he needed to help his program (and help himself). When the rivalry with Southwestern Louisiana, and Coach Beryl Shipley's integrated team became more intense than ever, so did the bending and breaking.
      Shipley claimed he did it for "humanitarian reasons," to aid the kids. Scotty might've said the same.
      We had heard that 7-foot Charlie Bishop might have had some "help" in choosing to play at Tech -- help for him and his family -- although his hometown (Summerfield, La.) was nearby Ruston and always Tech territory. There were other transfers and highly recruited freshmen who might have received more than the scholarship. Don't have proof; it was just the talk we heard.


Mike Green

      So if George Thornton received some extra benefits, how did Mike Green -- a lithe 6-10 forward/center with an above-the-rim game, a phenom from McComb, Miss. -- not all that near  Ruston -- end up at Tech? How the next year did Robertson convince sought-after junior college guards Andy Knowles and Jim Jenkins to join Green?
      The story we heard was that Scotty went into McComb and "outbid" major-college powers, and came away with Green signing with Tech. Among those powers: University of Houston, which was always suspected of doing what it needed to get players (including Louis Dunbar of Minden, La., the best player I ever saw play in high school other than Robert Parish).
      I don't know for sure.
      I do know this. After Robertson left for the NBA in 1974, the NCAA left Tech with a two-year penalty -- no postseason play, loss of scholarships, no off-campus recruiting. The violations included car/insurance payments, purchase of clothing and small cash payments.
       It was not, however, the scope of the violations slapped on Shipley and USL and it was not the "death penalty" (two years of no basketball) the Ragin' Cajuns received. So, comparing the rule-breaking impact, Tech wasn't in the same league.
---


Shooting against Northeast Louisiana (photo
provided by La. Tech sports information) 

      My opinion, and I know  sportswriting friend Buddy Davis and many others will agree: Mike Green is the best basketball player in Louisiana Tech history.
       Yes, better than "The Mailman." Karl Malone was the much better pro player, a Hall of Famer, an all-time NBA star. But he was not anywhere as dominant at Tech (1982-85) as Green, who was All-Everything.
       Green set most of the significant scoring and rebounding school records, including career points (2,340) and one-season average (30.9 per game as a senior, 1972-73). He was the fourth player picked in the 1973 NBA Draft, chose to play in the rival American Basketball Association, and played seven pro seasons (459 games) -- three in the ABA, four in the NBA when the leagues merged.        He had per-game averages of 17 points and 9 rebounds in consecutive ABA seasons before his career declined and he was traded several times.                       
        And, yet ... he is not in the Tech Athletic Hall of Fame. His No. 22 jersey is not one of those Tech has retired (No. 44 Jackie Moreland, No. 32 Malone, No. 12 Leon Barmore). Certainly, it has nothing to do with basketball credentials. Whatever the standards are, he hasn't met them.
         He was not as quiet or as humble as George Thornton, who was not a problem player. Green was more brash, and obviously, off-the-court issues did not endear him to influential people at Tech who are in on the Hall of Fame selections. He remains among the nominees.
---
       Maybe Green's large presence took away from Thornton's game, just as not being able to dunk the ball (outlawed at the time) did, but George was like everyone -- even opponents and opposing fans -- who saw Green play. He was in awe.
       "I couldn't believe a guy who was 6-10 who could jump like that," Thornton told me recently. "I knew I could jump ... but he could block shots, he could shoot. If he could have dunked, he would have been even greater."
       In Thornton's first year at Tech, a team with only one senior and not much experience went 12-13. In the three years, Thornton was on the team with Green, the records were 17-5, 23-5, 23-3 -- a combined 63-13 (.829). There was a conference championship the first year, an NCAA Division II tournament spot the next year, Tech's best-ever season to that point the next.
       (The only Tech season better than 23-3 was the 1984-85 team's 29-3. Those Malone-led Bulldogs made the NCAA Tournament's "Sweet Sixteen" -- the only time that's happened -- and missed the Elite Eight by an overtime, last-second loss to Oklahoma at Reunion Arena in Dallas).
       About the only hurdle Green and Tech could not conquer was USL and its mercenaries. Led the spectacular long-range shooting guard, Dwight "Bo" Lamar (31.2 points a game in his college career), the Ragin' Cajuns beat Tech in six out of eight meetings, including the last five. The NCAA did a better job stopping USL than the Bulldogs.
---
       A couple of years after they left Tech, Green came with his ABA team to play against the St. Louis Spirits. He called Thornton and they went out to eat.
       "He wanted some White Castle hamburgers, these little hamburgers," George recalled, laughing. "He loved them. He ate about a dozen of them, and we had a good time. It was fun. I'm thinking, 'Here's this guy making all that money and he wants these little hamburgers.' "
       For Thornton, there was a bit of regret in his Tech basketball career.
       "I knew I was a good player, but I think Scotty didn't really let me reach my potential like I could have," he said recently. "There were games that I was playing well and he took me out and never put me back in."
       One such instance he recalled was perhaps his best game, one I referenced in my 1973 column on him in The Shreveport Times. He made a school-record 10-of-11 shots from the floor for 20 points.
       "That's what I'm talking about," he answered when I recalled that game for him.
       "I was like anyone else," he said. "I wanted to score. If I had 20, I wanted to score 45. But I didn't get the chance."
       And yet, he talked with Robertson about it on a return to Ruston years later.
       "He said, 'You know, George, I made some mistakes.' No one is perfect. I accepted what he said. He had lots of kids to play and he wanted to let his stars be stars, like Mike Green."
        (Next: Jumping into life) 

Thornton and Tech: Chasing after USL

(Seventh in a series)
     When George "Petey" Thornton became the first black athlete at Louisiana Tech University in the fall of 1968, integrating the basketball program, it was not a surprise. The time had come.
     By that season, the University of Southwestern Louisiana -- "first program to integrate a major sports team at a large public university in the Deep South" (as a 2011 Sports Illustrated story described it) -- had had black players on its team for two seasons and was building a dominant program.
     In my freshman year at Tech, 1965-66, we heard USL had a black player on campus -- Leslie Scott of Scotlandville, La. (near Baton Rouge), sitting out as a transfer from Loyola (Chicago).
     By the next season, Scott was eligible, but only a bit player. Because Beryl Shipley, rightly credited with being the first coach in the South to break the color "barrier," had brought in a guard from Indianapolis (Marvin Winkler) who had broken Oscar Robertson's high school career scoring record in Indiana and a 6-9 center from Birmingham, Ala. (Elvin Ivory), who the word was could jump and take a quarter off the top of the backboard. And, yes, as we found out, those guys could play.
     (But Tech's great team of 1966-67 beat the USL team twice and won the Gulf States Conference championship, thank you.)
     The talk was -- "word on the street" as a friend of mine at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram always put it years later -- that those USL players, and some in future years, were well taken care of with extra benefits (read: money) and academic breaks (read: manipulation).
     Proof? Well, the NCAA came down on USL's program after the 1972-73 season with 125 rules violations and gave it a two-year "death" penalty, suspending the program and vacating results of the two previous seasons in which the Ragin' Cajuns -- led by fabulous talents Dwight "Bo" Lamar, Roy Ebron and Payton Townsend -- reached the NCAA Tournament's "Sweet Sixteen." 
     That was the end of Shipley's college coaching career. He always had his detractors -- opposing coaches, especially, and the NCAA investigators -- and he had his revisionary apologists. USL people, boosters and media and fans, felt as if the university was a scapegoat and an example for NCAA righteousness; many of us don't exactly see it that way.
     To the end of his life, such as in the SI story published a month after his death in 2011, Shipley didn't own up to much of the wrongdoing -- he had his own version -- and blamed USL officials for betraying him and having him take the fall. That's how it felt to me.
     Debate it all you want. Here's the point: Other schools felt they should recruit black players, too. Coach Scotty Robertson at Louisiana Tech, who battled Shipley and USL for nine seasons, for one was pretty darned competitive.

George "Petey" Thornton:
His Tech basketball photo

     Enter George Thornton.
     (Just a note of comparison: USL integrated its team two years before Tech; Tech integrated its team two years before LSU -- with Collis Temple Jr. of Kentwood, La.)          
---
     Robertson did not share his plan to integrate the program with the players on his team.
     "We knew it was going to happen," said Bud Dean, who had just finished his sophomore season (after a redshirt year). "What I remember is we had several black kids visit [the campus] that spring (1968), three or four, a couple from Hammond (La.). ... But Coach Robertson, that [alerting the players of his plans] wasn't the way he handled things."
     "I don't remember Scotty prepping us for that," said John Whitmore, Dean's roommate and the only senior on the 1968-69 team when Thornton was a freshman. "I was from a small school (in Mendota, Ill.), so [integration] didn't bother me."
     However, Robertson did share the news with a couple of young sportswriters.
     Here is a message my old friend Orville K. "Buddy" Davis sent me a couple of weeks ago:
     "You remember the time when Scotty was concerned about you and me running a story in The Tech Talk [school newspaper] about him [Thornton] about to join the team because he was wondering about how some in Ruston might react. He preferred to keep it as low-key as possible."
     One of us -- me -- did not recall that.
     "I can see our conversation on the steps leading out from Memorial Gym like it was yesterday," Buddy reminded me.
     That did bring back the memory.
     "I sure remember cuz Scotty cornered me one day outside of his office," Buddy added. "He and I later laughed about it and how times changed to where the only color that mattered was red and blue and if Tech won or lost."
---
     Most of the Tech players -- but not all -- were fine with George joining the team. In town and on campus, the "welcome" wasn't as warm.
     Dean and Whitmore, who in the fall would be in the dormitory room next to Thornton and Mike Palmer, a 6-7 white freshman forward from St. Louis, played against him in an informal (and against-the-rules) scrimmage on his campus visit. They were impressed.
     "Petey was the perfect guy to be the first African-American player for us," Dean said. "He was not a pretentious, outlandish person. He was quiet, kept to himself. We all liked him and he got along with us. We knew the time had come, but he didn't bring undue attention to himself."
     "I took personal responsibility to make him feel part of the team," Whitmore said, "and I think Bud did, too. ... [George] was a personable guy. You could talk to him. He was a humble guy. He didn't act like he was better than anyone."
     But here in the late 1960s, the civil rights movement still prevalent and resentment among white people strong in the Deep South, there were moments of trepidation.
     Whitmore remembered several black students at Tech and some lived in the dorm, where there was a shot or two fired through windows.
     Thornton's recollection: "The only people [on campus] that I sensed didn't want me there were the campus security officers. I got called 'boy' a couple of times. I had a nice car once and they stopped me said, "Hey, boy, where'd you get this car?' "
     He also recalled times when people would not speak to him as he crossed campus. But there were a couple of instances when he found out that his basketball teammates would stick up for him.                               
     Once was on a visit by several players, Thornton included, to a pool hall in Ruston. When the pool-hall operators wouldn't allow him to enter, all the players left. Same on a basketball trip to Mississippi and a stop at a restaurant. When Thornton was refused service, the rest of the team walked out with him.
     There was a game in South Louisiana when the razzing from the stands was audible and repetitive. "They were calling me names," Thornton said, "and Coach [Robertson] said, 'Stay close to me.' " But major problems were avoided.
     As for his teammates, he said, "I know the players didn't all like me, but nothing was said to me directly."
      However, there was one thing that caused a stir in the dormitory, the "only point of contention," as Dean put it. It was a picture of white girlfriend from the St. Louis area that Thornton had on the desk in his dorm room.
      "I remember we had some football players that made some comments about it," Dean said, "and some came [from another floor] to look. Our response [basketball players] was that 'it's his business; why would it be your business?' We thought maybe that's the way it was done in St. Louis."
      Word got back to Robertson and Thornton said, "He called me into his office and said, 'George, I know this is OK up north, but people here aren't used to this.' He suggested I put the picture in my desk drawer, and I did. I didn't want to make trouble.
      "I knew they'd hung some people on trees down there [the South], so I stayed close to my friends on campus. ... I knew where my place was. Scotty said, 'We don't want any trouble,' "and advised him to avoid joining a fraternity. But there was no trouble attending services at a Church of God in Ruston; "they accepted [me] and that felt good."
      He found friends, too, among the [black] janitors in the Tech gym, who in his second year at school "invited me and Willie Odom to their house and we got a nice home-cooked meal."
      Odom was a walk-on from Shreveport, a 6-2 forward who I had seen play in high school for Bethune. "I asked Coach to keep Willie on the team," George said, "and he did, so I felt they had some respect for me."
---
      There was respect for his basketball talent, too, although he didn't develop into a "star."
      "He was a good teammate," Dean said. "He was such a gifted athlete. He was not a great player, but he had talent. He was strong, he could run, he could jump. He didn't have a great shot. He'd have to take a pencil and draw in a shot. ...
      "Petey was not a shooter or scorer offensively. He could score off offensive boards and breaks but not off the dribble or in a pattern."
      "He was very athletic; he could run the floor very well," Whitmore said. "He was what today they refer to as 'long.' He didn't shoot that well, but he was an excellent team-type player."
       "I wasn't very good," George said of his arrival at Tech. "I was tall and lanky. But I learned how to move; I knew what to do, how to fit into a team."
        And the big addition to the program in his second year was the second black player on scholarship, Mike Green. Thornton was a good fit; Green was the player to carry a program.
       (Next: Playing with a superstar)
          

                

"Petey" Thornton: No flop, then or now

  (Sixth in a series)
     It really hasn't been that long ago. But the significant events of 1968 fade with age.
     So it is with the athletic career of George "Petey" Thornton of Louisiana Tech University.
     He came out of Kirkwood, Mo., with credentials as the top big-class basketball player and one of the top high jumpers in his state. In the fall of 1968, he became Louisiana Tech's first black athlete on scholarship.
     Before the era of integrated athletics in the Deep South, it was an unwritten rule that a school's first black athlete "had to be a good one."
---
     Actually, it has been that long ago.
     I wrote those first four paragraphs to lead my column in The Shreveport Times on April 26, 1973. The headline: "Petey" Thornton No Flop.
     So, yes, the events have faded with age ... 42 years later. Because I thought of the trailblazing athletes at my schools when integration in athletics happened, I revisited the story of Melvin Russell at Shreveport's Woodlawn High School (previous four blog pieces) and now it's on to George Thornton at Louisiana Tech.
     Perhaps the "had to be a good one" phrase I wrote in 1973 was politically incorrect. Maybe I could have expressed that differently; didn't mean for it to be racially insensitive. Point is, the transition needed to be as smooth as it possibly could be.

George and Judith Thornton (photo from Judith's Facebook
page taken early in 2014)

     Thanks to George and a lot of other people, it was.
      For the first time in those 42 years -- and I am bothered to admit this because I should have done this years ago -- I talked to George recently, and in fact, interviewed him about those times and his life since.
      He remains the upbeat, friendly, soft-spoken and poised young man he was in the late 1960s and early 1970s when he was a black-athlete pioneer at Tech and a darned successful athlete at that.
      He has some stories, recollections of those times -- a mostly positive experience and, yes, a few regrets. But those have more to do with his own athletic career than any racial or social overtones concerning Tech and the Deep South.
       "I enjoyed Louisiana Tech," he told me in our talk. "I learned a lot, plus the education I received. I met so many good people there, and they treated me well."
       The education meant a B.A. degree in education, which he earned in five years, and an education in life because of the path he traveled.
        As for basketball, he was a four-year letterman but never a "star," a swing player between guard and forward at 6-foot-5 and 185 pounds, and not a starter until his senior season when he averaged 12.0 points and 7.2 rebounds a game.
         But he was a solid contributor to a conference championship in his sophomore season and then played on two of Tech's greatest teams -- with records of 23-5 and 23-3. Neither of those teams won conference titles because they were edged out by the notorious University of Southwestern Louisiana (USL) teams. (More on that later.)
         In his last three seasons, everyone knew the team's star was the second black scholarship player in the program, the hugely talented 6-10 forward Mike Green. (More on him later, too.)
          "When I first wanted to recruit a black player," Tech basketball coach Scotty Robertson told me in 1973, "I wasn't necessarily looking for a super player, just one who could make it in school and help our program. And 'Petey' had those credentials."
          Green was the super player. It was "Petey" who paved the way for him and the black players who followed.
          And George's contributions extended to track and field. He was a four-year letterman and two-time conference champion in the high jump, competed in the NCAA Championships, and helped Tech win the conference title in 1973.
          (The "flop" reference in the headline of my '73 column is a word play on the high-jump style -- the backward flip over the bar, body and then feet -- which became the standard style in the mid to late 1960s, replacing the old "Western roll" -- leading with one leg -- of decades.)
          George was Tech's first black athlete in track and field, too. But that fact did not faze him.
          "I did not pay attention to that," he recalled. "I knew I was the first in basketball, and the first athlete, but what I came there for was the education."
         He felt he'd be fine in what was an almost all-white university -- Tech did have a few black students at the time -- because "my high school was 70 percent white and 30 percent black. I figured I could get along with all kinds of people ..."
---
          He is 65 now; he and Judith have been married for 26 years, they live in St. Louis (Kirkwood is a suburb) and there are five daughters, two sons, 13 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren. For a decade, George has beens president/owner of St. Louis Avenue Metal Services, and Judith helps him run the business.
          He left Kirkwood in late summer 1968 at his mother's suggestion. He wanted to play at Kansas, but that chance never came. What was intriguing were some junior-college offers that included "some benefits such as cars, "but I wanted to  go to a four-year school. ... My mother is the one who looked after the [recruiting] process. She said 'you need to get away from your friends in this area' and suggested I look around."
          When a recruiter from Louisiana Tech came to Kirkwood High -- he doesn't remember who it was, but says Robertson did not come to the St. Louis area -- he was invited "to come down and looked around."
           On his visit, several factors sold him -- he received a friendly reception everywhere; "they had a beautiful black lady who showed me around the campus ... they knew how to get my attention," he said, with a laugh, "and the training table really attracted me; all the athletes eating in one place, and the food seemed really good." What clinched it was "they promised it would be a four-year deal, even if I got hurt. That was worth $100,000, I figured."
           So Louisiana Tech it was. It would be a new experience for everyone on campus and in the community.
            (Next: Moving into a new era)                   
                      

     



             

My schools' basketball pioneers

Melvin Russell, as a Woodlawn High School
senior guard in 1968-69

(First in a series)
     I have thought of Melvin Russell and George "Petey" Thornton a lot lately, and they will be the subjects of the next few blogs.
     Those names might be familiar to old-time basketball fans in North Louisiana because they were trailblazers -- the first black players (first black athletes, period) at the schools from which I graduated.
     Both broke the color barrier in the 1968-69 basketball season -- Melvin at Woodlawn High School, four years after I graduated there, and George at Louisiana Tech University. He was a freshman when I was a senior working in the sports information department.
     They were admirable young men, and to me, they remain admirable young men as they hit their mid-60s.  They are, in my opinion, success stories, and that's in life, as well as in athletics. They were championship caliber.
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     One of my recent reads was Strong Inside: Perry Wallace and the Collision of Race and Sports in the South by Andrew Maraniss, the detailed and fascinating biography of the first black basketball player in the Southeastern Conference.
     Wallace was a kid who grew up in Nashville and stayed close to home to play at Vanderbilt, the rare SEC school where academics actually matter more than athletics. He had been a great leaper, great player, at Pearl High School, which won the first integrated state championship tournament in Tennessee.
     As you can imagine, in the late 1960s (he was a freshman in the 1966-67 season and joined the varsity the next season), he caught hell on trips to Ole Miss and Mississippi State and Auburn and Alabama -- among other tough venues.
     But even on the relatively progressive Vanderbilt campus and in town, acceptance of his place on the team and in the university often came grudgingly and with difficulty. He was "profiled" and ostracized repeatedly and this was a polite, soft-spoken, clean-cut young man who was very studious and determined to success in the classroom, as well as on the basketball floor.
     Long story (467 pages) short: He was an All-SEC player, graduated with a degree in engineering, earned his law degree from Columbia University in New York City, worked as a trial lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice and now is a professor at American University's Washington College of Law. His jersey No. 25 was retired by Vanderbilt (but it took more than three decades).
     Reading the book, re-living those rocky days of the civil-rights movement in the '60s, made me think of the basketball trailblazers I knew.
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George Thornton, Louisiana Tech, early 1970s

     Neither Melvin Russell nor George Thornton had as rough a time as Perry Wallace. But their transitions into Woodlawn and Louisiana Tech -- and into the basketball programs -- weren't seamless; there were hardships and challenges.
     That's just the way it was for black athletes integrating programs and black students integrating what had been all-white schools.
      I had done stories on Melvin and George in the past, but those stories did not deal with race relations -- not in any detail -- or with the issues they faced. So in talking to them the past couple of weeks, we talked about those times.
       They were not familiar with each other -- maybe just name recognition -- although they played in college at almost the same time (George was a year ahead of Melvin in school).
        I thought maybe they had played against each other -- Melvin played for Centenary while George play for Tech -- but in a strange twist, the two years that their teams could have met were two years that the Tech-Centenary series was interrupted (they had played twice or three times a season for 25 consecutive years prior to that).
       They each have their examples of where they faced racial prejudice, and I think it'll be a good read to see what they had to say.
       So I'm going to do some blog pieces on each, take them back to their Woodlawn and Louisiana Tech days, and follow the "whatever happened to ..." format that worked so well for our sports staff at the Shreveport Journal in the early and mid 1980s. And we'll tell you where they are now.