MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Yesterday started like all typical sunny, lazy day within the summertime.
Present up for work at 9 am, scan your social media pages to investigate cross-check your folks, after which start interested by an early afternoon exit to stroll your canine. At the very least that was what was going by means of my thoughts when my boss, Michael Fragale, walked into the workplace to inform me that Jerry West had simply died.
“Higher get to work,” he stated.
Speak about having a basketball fly by means of your entrance window!
As somebody accountable for writing obituaries for the division, oftentimes you’ve got some issues ready in case one of many college’s dwelling legends passes. That was the case with Scorching Rod Hundley and Sam Huff, each of whom had been experiencing declining well being previous to their deaths.
However Jerry West, the person who all the time exhibited such vitality, vitality and vigor?
Peter Pans simply do not die, till they do.
The place to begin with a person who achieved a lot? What do you embrace and what do you permit out?
It is not possible in a brief period of time to put in writing about all of Jerry West’s achievements from his 86 well-lived years on Earth.
How are you going to encapsulate all that he has meant to the folks of this nice state and people who love and adore West Virginia College?
Who do you discuss to when he meant a lot to all people?
When you do not know the place you’re going, the most effective place to begin is all the time at first, and for me the start is a file cupboard of interviews that I’ve stored by means of the years, together with some conversations with West. My interviews with him quantity to a few half-dozen transcribed phone calls spanning in size from roughly 20 minutes to a half hour.
Some folks offers you 10 or quarter-hour of their time earlier than their consideration wanes and so they wish to finish the interview and get on to extra necessary issues of their day. I’ve had folks a lot farther down the pecking order try this to me.
However not Jerry.
He was all the time prepared to spend as a lot time as wanted to reply any questions I had, notably concerning West Virginia, West Virginia College and his Mountaineer basketball teammates. I instantly realized the best method for me to get fascinating responses from Jerry was to get him speaking about his expensive buddy Willie Akers or his fellow classmates.
I recall as soon as asking him why there have been so many excellent basketball gamers within the state within the mid-Fifties when he was enjoying at East Financial institution Excessive.
I repeated to him the story the late Eddie Barrett had instructed me about Virginia Tech coach Chuck Noe trying on the field scores of the highschool video games in Virginia and the scores being within the 40s and 50s, after which trying on the West Virginia field scores and seeing the scores within the 80s and 90s and Noe deciding that he wished these West Virginia gamers.
That naturally acquired Jerry going.
“We performed the Kentucky all-star crew, and so they had been imagined to have the most effective gamers in America,” he recalled. “Effectively, because it turned out we had the higher gamers. We performed them twice and beat them twice. It was only a very high-caliber group of men that we had in West Virginia at the moment.
“Fashion of play was an enormous a part of it,” West defined. “I feel coaches had been just a little bit restrictive than some coaches in sure areas. Most coaches most likely inherit their teaching philosophy from coaches that they performed for. In that cut-off date, once I was being recruited for faculty, Maryland performed a really slowed-down recreation, and I type of appreciated that faculty just a little bit, however I simply could not go there and play that method. It simply did not appear like it could have been enjoyable for me to play like that.”
On the time, West Virginia coach Fred Schaus had lately retired from the skilled ranks, and with first-time assistant coach George King, they had been nonetheless younger and athletic sufficient to get out on the ground and provides the blokes some pointers and tips that the majority different coaches could not.
King performed on an NBA championship crew with the Syracuse Nationals and West recalled going up towards him many instances within the outdated Discipline Home.
“Possibly the place I developed just a little little bit of confidence was as a result of George King was there, and I used to play towards him,” he famous. “He was very skilled and really sensible, and I discovered that I may play towards him okay, and that it wasn’t going to be embarrassing for me.
“It was an important surroundings for any of us who wished to be taught, and extra importantly, to interact two folks that had performed basketball at a special stage than any of us had ever performed.”
Staff constructing was the key to Schaus’ and King’s successes in teaching, one thing Jerry clearly realized throughout his profession.
The good issues West achieved later with the Los Angeles Lakers, Memphis Grizzlies, Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers as an govt had their roots in these well-rounded West Virginia basketball groups of the late Fifties.
Schaus was capable of persuade Akers that he was higher off being a supporting participant to Jerry West at West Virginia College than he was being the main scorer at Virginia Tech or Wake Forest, the place among the different prime gamers within the state on the time had been going.
Willie had one easy want when he selected to signal at WVU and play basketball together with his buddy Jerry West.
“I wished to win,” he stated.
So, he got here to WVU and teamed with Lloyd Sharrar, Bobby Joe Smith and Jim Ritchie to seize the rebounds and play protection whereas guards Joedy Gardner, Don Vincent, Bucky Bolyard, Ronnie Retton and Lee Patrone dealt with the basketball. It was Jerry who made the powerful pictures and rose to the event at any time when it was required.
Each single participant on the crew would knock over their grandfather to get a free basketball, that is how pushed they had been.
“We had been very, very aggressive children,” West recalled. “Simply because a few of them had been fun-loving does not imply they weren’t aggressive. They had been nice folks and for somebody as quiet and shy and backward as me, it made for a very completely different scenario when it comes to type of getting out of my shell and making me giggle just a little bit as a result of I wasn’t going to vary my demeanor. I used to be far more critical.”
I witnessed that Jerry West seriousness first-hand once I was as soon as requested to be part of a talking program that included West in Lewisburg, West Virginia.
Jerry was selling his new e-book and I had simply written “Roll Out the Carpet,” so the thought was for me to go on beforehand and heat up the gang for a half hour earlier than West took the stage.
After telling some humorous Scorching Rod Hundley, Wil Robinson and Levi Phillips tales, it was time for me to exit and head again to the Inexperienced Room. It was there the place I crossed paths with West, shook his hand, and stated hiya in a considerably flippant method.
He checked out me, shook my hand and nodded, however his consideration was already on the duty at hand. He had the main target of a prize fighter about to enter the world, partly as a result of his e-book was so private and revealing and he was about to reply some very uncomfortable questions. It was then once I realized that there are frequent human beings and there are elite human beings.
Jerry West was an elite human being. He was the one individual we West Virginians aspired to be, and he understood the heavy tasks that entailed.
For everybody on the market within the Mountain State (and past) studying this, do your self a favor and examine Jerry West’s life. Research how he handled others with empathy, dignity and respect. Research how he all the time honored his commitments and carried out himself professionally.
The blueprint to a profitable life is contained inside Jerry West’s private story – the successes, the failures, the nice instances and the heartaches, all wrapped up into one.
He epitomized all of the values we West Virginians maintain so expensive to our hearts, which is why it is so troublesome for us to say goodbye.
Within the meantime, decrease your West Virginia flags till after West Virginia Day on June twentieth in honor of West’s reminiscence as a result of there’ll by no means be one other Jerry West – ever.