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They sat around a table, men from the golden age in Indianapolis Public Schools, at least when it came to basketball. They’ve spent hours planning a reunion, these sons of the 1950s and ’60s, and the first thing you wonder is why Nov. 2 in Hinkle Fieldhouse will be so important to them.
“A lot of us,” Ralph Taylor said, “are at that sunset time.”
Taylor was an integral part of the 1965 Washington team, one of five state champions that IPS produced in those two decades, and also one of the 32 Indiana All-Stars and 49 coaches or players inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame. Across the table from Taylor was Clarence Crain, who played on the 1968 Shortridge team, one of the five state runners-up. Down the way was Hallie Bryant, from 1953 Attucks, one of the seven Mr. Basketballs in the ’50s and ’60s from IPS.
Next to him, Roger Wathen, who was on the 1961 Manual state runners-up with the Van Arsdale twins, before he put together a Hall of Fame basketball and track career at Indiana Central. At the end was Charles “Binkey” Brown, the first African American MVP at Shortridge, in 1954.
They have all helped put out the hue and cry to IPS players from those decades, hoping to draw a crowd of their peers Nov. 2. They grew up when the Dust Bowl at Lockefield Gardens and Meadowood Park in Speedway were the beating hearts of basketball in the summer.
“All of us knew each other,” Crain said. “We played together in the summer around the city. It just was a natural camaraderie that was there when we got on the court.”
That was yesterday. A plaque next to IUPUI’s sand volleyball courts now marks where the Dust Bowl once was, and when these men talk of childhood dreams of playing in the tournament in Butler Fieldhouse … well, it’s Hinkle Fieldhouse now and it no longer even hosts IHSAA tournament games.
“In my years, we called it the Big House,” Crain said. “There was a chant from every team when they came off the court, ‘We’re going to the Big House!’”
The pride, the feeling of it all … these men look at today’s teenagers and wonder if they understand.
“I don’t think they do; there’s no institutional knowledge left,” Taylor said. “One of the things I look at today—people always talk about IPS in a very negative way, but when I look at the players who played in the ’50s and ’60s, I see guys that were successful in different careers. They just counter the stereotype that IPS didn’t really produce any worthwhile individuals.”
Brown still hears the echoes from being Shortridge’s first black star in the early ’50s …
“Now they don’t have to go through the things I had to go through when I was coming up. They called me the trailblazer. I remember going out of town, and we went to have our after-game dinner, and they wouldn’t feed us. They said, ‘We won’t feed them, but we’ll feed the other guys.’ Our coach said, ‘If you don’t feed them, you’re not going to feed us.’ A lot of times, little towns we’d go to, we’d be dribbling down the floor and we were called names. I had to learn to live with it, and I believe that made me a better person.”
Wathen, a sophomore sub on Manual’s 1961 team that lost the state title in overtime to Kokomo (and later a teacher for a half-century) still recalls the experience of playing with the Van Arsdales …
“They were the only white guys who ever blocked my shot. They were also probably the most gentlest Christian men I’ve ever met. Even when they came back from playing pro ball, they hadn’t changed.
“That’s why this get-together is so very important. Because we remember those times, and it’d be nice for those who don’t know about that to know about that. And yet I can’t remember hardly any time when we had any kind of issue with each other playing basketball.”
Taylor still knows what the 1965 Washington state title meant to him …
“It was one of the most important days ever. I remember watching the great Attucks team in grade school, and that really was my inspiration. That’s kind of like the culmination of a lifelong boyhood dream of being like the Attucks teams.
“I remember the way our team basically brought together varied, divergent communities on the west side. You had Stringtown, which was Appalachia. You had The Valley, which had this saying that if you were not [of] a certain persuasion, you had to be out of The Valley by 6 o’clock. We just … galvanized communities.”
Brown still looks back on playing in summer with Oscar Robertson, the most important face on the Mount Rushmore of IPS basketball …
“Oscar was the type of person, that if you were on the fast break, Oscar would really pass to you. But I’ll tell you one thing, if he passed to you and you missed the layup, he wasn’t coming back to you. You can forget running down the floor; you weren’t going to get it. He was the one you looked up to. He was the man.”
Crain has never forgotten the sting of Shortridge’s 1968 title-game loss to Gary Roosevelt—“Runner-ups are OK, but they’re not the championship”—nor the regional loss to the mighty George McGinnis and Steve Downing Washington team his senior year in 1969.
“I can remember almost every play in that game. I remember the practices beforehand.”
Bryant still values growing up with the legendary Ray Crowe as both his elementary school coach and high school coach next door at Attucks.
“I was very non-verbal at the time. I let my basketball do the talking for me. My dad and my coach—I tell people those were my two role models. I didn’t hear my dad use profanity. Coach Crowe, he gave respect and demanded respect. That’s why even now I find myself using the same type of belief system they had. Those values carry over into whatever life you live.
“I think athletics brings out the best in people down through the years; black, white, it doesn’t make any difference. When you’re on the playing court, you forget about all that. It broke down a lot of barriers. Bringing people together, that’s what I cherish. You can’t place a price tag on it.
“My principal used to say, ‘The whole world is watching us.’”
These men aim now to have a day to relive those special times.
“Back then was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Brown said.
“Meant everything,” Bryant said. “Even now, you reflect back—and I’ve been around the world with the Harlem Globetrotters—how high school basketball is tops because of the energy. You’d see people crying, you’d see people excited, you’d see them laughing.”
The unbeaten 1969 Washington Continentals brought on dusk for the golden era. It would be 11 years before the next IPS state champion, with Broad Ripple in 1980. By then, the magical sense of what high school basketball meant to the city schools had clearly started to fade. The suburban powerhouses—the Lawrence Norths and Pikes and Carmels—had arrived.
“I’m glad I played when I played,” Downing said. “I don’t think the kids today have any clue. When I talk to them they say, ‘Yeah, my grandfather said this or that,’ but I don’t think they have appreciation for what it meant. Not only for the schools but the city, too. I can remember Mayor Lugar coming in and talking to us after we won the city tournament.”
It’ll all be alive again next weekend, because all those friendships will be.
“They last forever,” Wathen said.
Taylor mentioned a phone conversation he had the other day, discussing the reunion with a player from that era. They talked 30 minutes. He’d never met the man in his life. That’s what Nov. 2 is about.
“Old friends reconnecting,” Taylor said. “And it’s not at a funeral.”•
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Lopresti is a lifelong resident of Richmond and a graduate of Ball State University. He was a columnist for USA Today and Gannett newspapers for 31 years; he covered 34 Final Fours, 30 Super Bowls, 32 World Series and 16 Olympics. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at mjl5853@aol.com.
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