by Steve Beaven
Graves had experienced a fair share of suffering and sorrow in his life. In September 1944, after graduating from the University of Oklahoma and joining the army, he was taken prisoner in France by Nazi soldiers. For more than five months, he wasted away, subsisting on a bowl of soup each day. He escaped in early 1945 during a forced march and ultimately made his way back to Texas. He was twenty-three years old.
Now here he was, a few pounds heavier, his hair gone gray, peering out at friends, neighbors, and colleagues, offering words of solace and determination. Graves lacked the sweeping eloquence of the ministers and politicians behind him. But his words rang true when he vowed that the University of Evansville would emerge from the crash of Air Indiana Flight 216 better and stronger, like iron tempered into steel. A new basketball program would be built as a living testament to the legacy of Bobby Watson and his team.
“Out of the agony of this hour,” Wallace Graves declared, “we shall rise.”
The riverfront in Evansville, Indiana, 1907. Courtesy of the Library of Congress
Evansville College changes its name to University of Evansville, 1967. Courtesy of the University of Evansville / Indiana State Historical Society
Future Aces coach Arad McCutchan, as a player, 1934. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
Coach McCutchan on the sidelines, 1973. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
Larry Humes, Arad McCutchan, and Jerry Sloan (L-R), c. 1964. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
Jerry Sloan announces his acceptance of the Aces coaching position. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
Bobby Watson on the sidelines with the Aces, 1977. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and Courier & Press Archives / Imagn Pictures
Mike Duff dominates smaller opponents for the Eldorado High School Eagles. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and Kay Barrow
Mike Duff rises for a shot against Western Kentucky, 1977. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
Kevin Kingston leads the fast break at Roberts Stadium, 1977. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
Aces guard Mark Siegel heads for the basket at Roberts Stadium, 1977. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
Aces guard John Ed Washington. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
University of Evansville president Wallace Graves. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
Tony Winburn (22), Mike Duff (40), and Steve Miller (42) during Evansville’s loss to Western Kentucky. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
Larry Bird can only watch as Mike Duff scores against Indiana State. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
Rescue workers drag a body bag from the crash site. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson
The tail of the plane that carried the Aces. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the Evansville Police Department
One of many services for the fallen. Courtesy of Courier & Press Archives / Imagn Pictures
Retired Aces coach Arad McCutchan, in white overcoat, attended many of the funerals after the crash. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
The 1977 University of Evansville Purple Aces in the parking lot at Roberts Stadium. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
Aces walk-on David Furr (left) wasn’t on the plane that crashed but was killed in a car accident two weeks later. Byron Furr (right) was killed in the same car crash that killed his older brother, David. Both photos courtesy of the author
(L-R) Theren Bullock, Eric Harris, Steve Sherwood, and Brad Leaf were among the first recruits after the crash. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
Brad Leaf on the court, c. 1982. From UE Athletic’s Twitter: “Brad Leaf lettered at UE from 1979 through 1982. He scored 17.6 points a game, leading UE to its first Division I tournament in 1982. 8th in UE history with 1,605 points, Leaf was a 3-time All-MCC First Teamer.” Courtesy of the University of Evansville
Aces coach Dick Walters rebuilt the basketball program. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
From the 1982 Evansville LinC yearbook: Eric Harris (L), Brad Leaf and Theren Bullock (T-R), and a crowd greeting the Aces after a win (B-R). Courtesy of the University of Evansville
Larry Olsthoorn and Theren Bullock greet Ace Purple. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson and the University of Evansville
Ed Siegel, whose son Mark was killed in the plane crash, in January 2014, in the documentary From the Ashes. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson
Kay Barrow, mother of Mike Duff, in 2015, in From the Ashes. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson
Lois Ford, Bobby Watson’s sister, in January 2014, in From the Ashes. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson
Stephen Troyer, one of the first rescuers at the scene of the crash, in 2014, in From the Ashes. Courtesy of Joe Atkinson
PART II
THE RETURN OF THE ACES
NINE
Memorial
LATE ON DECEMBER 13, 1977, Dick Walters and a small entourage of family and friends commandeered several tables at Alfie’s Inn, a neighborhood hangout not far from the College of DuPage in Chicago’s sprawling western suburbs. Walters was the head coach at DuPage and his team had just won its ninth straight game, routing the Harper Hawks by nearly forty points. Walters was only thirty years old, with a boyish face framed by feathery brown hair, high and delicate cheekbones, and a smile so white it nearly glowed. In the previous six years at the college, he’d won nearly 140 games and a state championship. He wore the finest suits, drove a flashy courtesy car from a local dealership, and gave his players a handbook titled P.R.I.D.E.: The Winning Edge, an acronym that stood for pride, respect, intelligence, desire, and enthusiasm. Walters ran his two-year program like he was coaching on the hallowed ground at Kentucky or UCLA. He craved a Division I head-coaching job and he’d grown tired of waiting. Despite everything he’d accomplished at the College of DuPage, Walters watched as other young coaches took jobs he wanted for himself. Just a few weeks before, Walters had spent an evening with Bobby Watson. Watson visited the DuPage gym to scout transfers, taking a seat in the bleachers to check out Walters’s players. After practice, Walters invited him to the modest little two-story bungalow on Coolidge Avenue that his parents had bought him. He introduced Watson to his wife, Jan, and the two men settled in to talk basketball near the big picture window that overlooked the front yard. It was a pleasant, if uneventful, evening. Walters had never met Watson. He liked him, though. Decent guy, eager to start a Division I tradition in Evansville.
The thing is, Walters had wanted that job. He knew it would be difficult to jump from junior college to Division I. He figured his only chance would be at a small college that hadn’t won much or at a school moving up from Division II. So, before UE hired Jerry Sloan, Walters called Arad McCutchan. Mac was polite, but blunt: “There is no way,” he said, “that UE will hire a junior college coach.” Walters sent a résumé anyway, custom-printed on the thickest, most expensive paper he could find.
Rumors about big-name schools chasing after Walters were a rite of spring, as certain as the green buds on the sugar maples. Walters often fanned these rumors himself. It was a pattern he’d use throughout his coaching career. He’d pursue a new job, tell the media that a big school was pursuing him, and almost in the same breath, say he couldn’t bear to leave the job he had. In March 1975, at the age of twenty-seven, he told a reporter from the Courier, the College of DuPage’s student newspaper, that he got offers every summer from major college basketball programs. He wanted to be a head coach at a big school by the time he was twenty-eight, he said. And then he pivoted nimbly, professing his love for the college.
“I’m very happy here,” he told the young journalist. “I feel I will never have a better coaching job than the one I have at DuPage.”
But now he’d fallen behind his ambitious schedu
le. Like Watson, coaches from Division I schools visited the DuPage gym all the time, looking for kids prepared for the physical and emotional rigors of big-time college basketball. For Walters, these visits were networking opportunities. He brought the coaches home or took them out to dinner, invited them to speak at his summer camps, and encouraged them to recruit his players. In fact, the only guys he promoted more than himself were the kids on his team, sending them on to big programs and happily taking credit for their success. He worked the phone, every day, calling coaches at Michigan and Illinois and elsewhere, tipping them off about young men who’d fit their program and looking for leads in his never-ending search for a better job at a bigger school with a nicer gym. When he wasn’t calling coaches, he was calling reporters. The Chicago media loved him, and Walters loved them back, always happy to oblige with interviews, sound bites, whatever they needed. In a major media market with big-league competition from the Cubs, White Sox, Bears, and Bulls, Walters drew attention to an otherwise-anonymous junior college program. He befriended reporters at the Chicago Tribune, the Sun-Times, and WMAQ-TV, young guys like Greg Gumbel who were on their way up and didn’t mind devoting a few minutes to the telegenic young coach in the suburbs.
That night at Alfie’s, Walters sat with Jan, his parents, and a group of boosters. The TV in the bar was tuned to the news, and Walters glanced over to check the scores. That’s how he heard: a plane crash had killed Bobby Watson and his team. Amid the low hum of the busy restaurant, Walters stared at the screen in disbelief, while the people around him continued to eat and drink as if nothing at all had happened.
For the third time in less than a year, the University of Evansville went looking for a new basketball coach. As ever, Aces fans harbored high expectations, forcing the university to swat down pie-in-the-sky rumors about who would replace Bobby Watson. John Wooden? Al McGuire? Even Jerry Sloan was asked by a reporter whether he’d return to his alma mater.
“I made that mistake once,” said Sloan, an assistant with the Chicago Bulls. “I see no reason to make it again.”
But UE wasn’t looking for a star. Fifty-five coaches applied for the job, and the eight finalists were not exactly household names. Coaches from Dodge City Community College, Southwest Texas State, Alabama–Birmingham, and Western Kentucky were among those who made the cut.
Stafford Stephenson and Ernie Simpson were interviewed for the job, and both enjoyed a measure of support from Aces fans and sportswriters. Simpson had been a brilliant high school coach in Kentucky, winning 166 games in seven years and sending top-notch recruits to Joe B. Hall at UK. Stephenson had been a graduate assistant at Wake Forest with Bobby Watson, and later coached at Wingate College, a two-year school in North Carolina. He’d grown up in small-town Marion, Virginia, the youngest of three. Now he was thirty years old, friendly, and ambitious, with a subtle southern drawl and a receding hairline that belied his youthful face. As Watson’s top assistant, he knew the campus community—the administrators and the boosters and the sportswriters. He also understood what the basketball program meant to the city. He would be a sentimental choice in Evansville, a young coach who had mourned alongside everyone else. Stafford and his wife, Tess, had gone through the motions that Christmas, for the sake of their two little girls. Thornton Patberg dressed as Santa and visited their house, as he did for UE faculty and staff every year. But the holidays weren’t the same. Stephenson had never suffered such a devastating loss.
Then, mercifully, December passed and the university sent Stephenson, Simpson, and graduate assistant Mark Sandy out to resume recruiting. They spent each week traveling to high school games and holiday tournaments, touching base with players and coaches who’d been on their radar before. They wanted recruits to know that UE was committed to having a competitive Division I basketball program again. Just like before, they listed everything that UE had to offer: a storied history, a rabid fan base, and a packed arena.
Those very same assets made Evansville an attractive destination for the coaching candidates. But the job also came with twin burdens unique to UE: The next coach would have to build a team from scratch, recruiting a dozen or so players, most likely total strangers who had never played a minute of basketball together. Molding a cohesive team out of such disparate parts required patience. The bigger challenge, by far, was whipping up enthusiasm for a new basketball program while respecting the one that was lost in the fog at Dress Regional Airport. The new coach would speak at the same Kiwanis Club lunches and Jaycees meetings. He’d schmooze with the same car dealers, flower shop owners, and alumni. And he’d have to win over several thousand students on a small campus where John Ed Washington, Bryan Taylor, and their teammates had lived in the same dorms, gone to the same parties, and eaten at the same dining hall as everyone else. Bridging the gap between the Bobby Watson era and whatever came next required a deft touch and sincere humility. As it turned out, striking that balance was nearly as difficult as building a winning basketball program.
When Arad McCutchan recounted the story of that horrific December night, it began with the redheaded girl in the hallway.
At 9:15 p.m., McCutchan dismissed the students in his class on the fundamentals of basketball coaching and gathered his things, getting ready to head home. It had been an unremarkable day on campus for the old coach, like so many hundreds before.
Until he heard that redheaded girl: “Does he know?”
“They sat me down in a nearby room before telling me,” he said, reliving that night for a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “But all those poor young kids—they just blurted it out.”
He bounced that night from Thornton Patberg’s house to Deaconess Hospital to the makeshift morgue and then, finally, home. It was 4:00 a.m., only nine hours since the crash. The chaos had turned to quiet and the depth of his loss was clear: The kids he’d recruited. Marv Bates. Bob Hudson. No one at the university knew the dead like Mac. He’d taught them or coached them or worked alongside them in the athletic department. He’d been retired from coaching for nearly ten months, but it was still his basketball program, the tradition he’d built over three decades, and now it was all gone, his life’s work, scattered in a cold muddy field.
McCutchan had bumped into Hudson a few hours before the crash, and they chatted a bit about an upcoming golf trip. They’d known each other since the ’30s, when they were students at Bosse High School. They’d worked side by side for decades. As athletic business manager, Hudson handled the athletic department budget and organized the annual College Division national championships at Roberts Stadium. He also coordinated travel for UE teams and often accompanied them on the road.
“I don’t know of anyone who so completely worked for the good of the University of Evansville as Bob Hudson,” McCutchan said.
He’d also known Marv Bates forever, since Marv was a student at Evansville College. How many times had Marv interviewed Mac? How many road trips had they spent together, whiling away the time until tip-off, talking about everything but basketball? And the players. Oh Lord. He’d promised their parents that if they turned their sons over to him, he’d take care of them like they were his own. And he did, with the haircuts, the tutoring, the popcorn, and the big sugary sodas he gave them each time they came over. But he couldn’t protect them from this, and seeing their parents at all of the funerals, whispering to them with an arm around their slumped shoulders, was excruciating, the parade of pallbearers, day after day of bottomless grief.
McCutchan talked about the aftermath with his family, the horror of it. But once the initial shock wore off, he didn’t wallow, not in public and not at home. The crash did not change him. He didn’t fall into depression. He was a resilient, stoic man, farm-bred, even-keeled in every way. He leaned on his faith, talked about it with friends who’d previously considered Christ a topic fit only for church. This is how they coped, Mac, his friends, and everyone who’d been swept up in the horror of that night. This was their test and the church was thei
r refuge.
“You know,” McCutchan said softly one day, “you find when something like this happens, you realize a strength you never knew you had.”
At first they seemed like an odd couple. Dick Walters was a talk-first, explain-later kind of guy, a hustler, always moving, never content. Wallace Graves made his way in the world at a more deliberate speed, as befitting a lifelong academic who was twenty-five years older.
But in the beginning, at least, they got along quite well. Walters had impressed Graves with his energy and ambition, the way he talked about recruiting and rebuilding. Junior college coaches put together a new team every season, and Walters was a master recruiter with deep contacts among high school coaches in Chicago and community college coaches throughout the Midwest. He was also young and articulate and clearly willing to pour every ounce of himself into the job. Graves knew that rebuilding would require workaholic intensity and harbored no doubt that Walters felt the same way.
