Monday Night, March 6, 1967, AFH
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Praying for your wife and you @jojoandme
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@nuleafjhawk Made me laugh.
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Thank guys for your thoughts and prayers. We got an excellent valve repair but it came with complications. Planned 4 day recovery has become 10. Home in six more days.
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Praying those complications are resolving
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Yes. Thank you. Still in ICU but long term future looks good.
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@JoJoAndMe I am glad to hear the long term future looks good. I am wishing you all the best.
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I'm ack home after what turned out to be a 10-day hospital stay for my wife's heart surgery. Wasn't expected to be open heart, but that's what it turned out to be. The good news is that the vitral valve was repaired. Going to be a month-long recovery with rest and exercise, but she'll live longer with more vigor.
Thanks to approxinfinitty revising the site. I'm now onboard so I can comment. Approxinfinity encouraged me to post excerpts from my journal of Adventures and Misadventures as a Jayhawk. Here's another. Enjoy!My Dad took me to my first KU football game when I was seven-years-old. (Yes. I'm 80, but still in good health!) The Jayhawks beat the Santa Clara Broncos 21–9 on September 27, 1952, having beat TCU at home the previous Saturday. In those days, and for many years, the Jayhawks always opened their season playing Texas Christian University, either at home or on the road. It was a beautiful, jacket-less fall day. (Much like the ISU game when I was a yell leader! Ha.)
My first KU “football heroes” probably came out of that game – the running backs Charlie Hoag #21 and Bob Brandenberry #44. (Charlie Hoag also played on the 1952 National Championship basketball team.) Later that fall or the next, I remember my mother driving me to Downtown Kansas City to a sporting goods store and buying me a leather helmet, a pair of heavy canvas football pants and a long-sleeved off-white football jersey. I picked the number 21 for them to iron on the back of the shirt.
J. V. Sikes was the head football coach in ‘52, and the Jayhawks went 7-3 but 3-3 in what was then the Big 7 Conference. The next year they went 2–8. Sikes was fired and replaced by a highly touted, successful coach at powerhouse Massilon, Ohio, high school. Chuck Mather went 0-10 in his first season. His record improved slightly each year, when in 1957, he finally had a winning season at 5 - 4 – 1 and was fired. What I remember about those years was that KU football players wore white pants, bright blue jerseys and yellow helmets (Yellow Helmets!). I also recall the first face guards – a single composite grey bar or a plexiglass strip. (Invented by Paul Brown of the Cleveland Browns. Did ya know?) Mather was replaced by Jack Mitchell.
During these years Dad took me to a number of KU football games. He never had season tickets, but we always seemed to have good seats. Our routine was to drive to Lawrence via K-10 highway to the ATO fraternity house for lunch. As we approached Lawrence and Haskell Indian Institute (as it was known in those days), we had a curious habit of trying to predict whether an Indian (or more) would be standing on the corner of the intersection by Haskell’s stadium! (There was a convenience store there, which made it likely.) It was just a fun thing to do. We didn't have to worry about being accused of racism in those days.
There was always a good gathering of alums at the ATO house in those days. And, pre-television, the games ALWAYS kicked-off at 1:30 p.m. After lunch, we’d walk over the hill to the stadium, buy a program and take our seats. Sometimes we’d rent canvas seat-backs for $1 each. On homecoming weekends, my Mother would always join us. Students would have five-gallon buckets filled with long-stemmed mums outside the stadium. Dad would buy her a big white or yellow mum with a blue and red “KU” affixed atop it using dyed pipe cleaners to wear on her dress or jacket.
That's enough history for this morning. If I get a little encouragement, I'll post more memories. All the best to each of you. I enjoy our civil conversations. -
Great stuff. My earliest memories of the stadium were grade school/jr high in the 70s when I worked with our 4-H club selling cokes in the stands. We carried trays with 15-20 cups of 'Iced-cold Cokes!' up and down the steps of the stadium. I usually left very sweaty and very sticky.
The cups were blue, white or red with the historic Jayhawk mascots around the top ridge. The cups were created by Packer Plastics, a manufacturer in Lawrence. I also distinctly recall our gathering area to refill was in a dark, concrete closet in the bosoms of memorial stadium. All gone with the new stadium.
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@JoJoAndMe loved reading this. thank you for sharing.
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@bskeet Fun to share. Amazing what we remember and how we remember it. You even remember how sweaty and sticky you felt!
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Here's another entry . . . from way back. Fun to share. Hope you enjoy.
From all my KU experiences, my one regret is that I didn’t get to see a game in Hoch Auditorium. In 1927 the basketball games moved from Robinson Gymnasium to the newly constructed Hoch Auditorium next door to Robinson which seated 3,800 for basketball. Being a theater, it had an unusual configuration for basketball. The floor was in front of the stage with additional bleacher seating on the stage! The floor was hard, Coach Phog Allen complained. Two corners of the floor met at walls by the stage. And, both teams had to use locker rooms in still-standing Robinson Gym. That meant that both teams ran between buildings before, at half-time and after games . . . sometimes in snow storms!
When K-State opened Ahern Field House in 1951, Coach Allen pressed his long-standing hope for a new basketball venue. He obtained funding from the state legislature, but construction was held up by the federal restriction on steel during the Korean War. To get past the restrictions, they re-labeled the plans as an armory with two rooms designated for ammunition storage. The guise worked. The initial steel came from surplus steel designated for the Korean War. Architects on the project later reported that they considered the project as just a “big barn” with a dirt floor. (Which it was, originally!)
Coach Allen wanted the building named in honor of Coach Naismith, the inventor of the game and the University of Kansas’ first basketball coach. However, by a vote of the student body, the facility was named Allen Field House.
As the 1955 school year approached, the “Big News” (pun intended) was that the first nationally recruited basketball player, Wilton Norman Chamberlain from Philadelphia, was coming to KU. “Alerted” by a reporter that the 7’ 1” Chamberlain had enrolled at KU, Coach Allen responded, “I just hope he comes out for basketball.”
Wilt was, in my opinion, the best college basketball player . . . ever, and most likely the best to play in the pros. (If you had the first pick in the “All-Time Pro” draft, would you pick Wilt or Michael Jordan?) We could have a debate here.
Opening night of Allen Field House was March 1, 1955, and I was there, with my Dad and 17,286 other fans, an attendance record that stands to this day. Kansas won the game 77 – 67 over Kansas State. I had the program for many years, but it was later ruined in a basement flood. I really don’t have any specific memories of that game except that the iconic Jayhawk on the small, overhanging center court scoreboard had a red light bulb for an eye that lit up each time KU scored – two flashes for a field goal and one flash for a free throw. Interestingly, that first Jayhawk on the scoreboard was the 1929 version. Maybe that was a request by Phog Allen who had coached during those years.
Prior to the ‘55-’56 season, (when freshman were still not eligible to compete at the varsity level), Wilt dominated in the traditional Frosh vs Varsity game before 14,000 at Allen Field House, scoring 42 points with 28 rebounds. Always the wit, Allen commented, “Wilt could team-up with two Phi Beta Kappas and two co-eds and give us a battle.”
But then it was discovered that Allen would be unable to coach his prized recruit. Most unfortunately, Kansas state regulations required state employees to retire at age 70. Chamberlain really wanted to be coached by Allen. Coach Allen and the administration tried everything, but could not get an exception made.
It may have been a contributing factor as to why, after KU’s crushing three-overtime defeat in the 1958 NCAA Championship Game, Wilt chose not to return for his senior season. But the biggest reason seemed to be Wilt’s frustration with the college game at that time. Opposing teams would triple team him; and in one game, the Hank Iba coached Oklahoma State Cowboys passed the ball 160 times before shooting.
That 1958 championship game was played at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City. I truly believe that had Coach Allen still been coaching, KU would have won that three-overtime game. I watched it on black and white TV at home. Why we didn’t go to that game, I’ll never know!
By the way, in the days of the Big Seven Conference, the Pre-Season Basketball Tournament at Municipal Auditorium was always a big attraction. My Dad often took me to a game (or two) as each “session” (afternoon or evening) was two games). Every team played three games, so the tournament participants finished 1 through 8. To make it an eight-team tournament, they always invited a school from outside the conference . . . and it was never a school that had any chance of winning the tournament. The neatest thing about it, from a young boy’s perspective, was that all the teams stayed at nearby downtown hotels, so they would just walk to and from the Auditorium. If you arrived very early, you could stand outside and watch the players in their warm-ups walk into the arena.
