by Steve Beaven
But it feels as if something has changed, as if the ground has shifted. Evansville is no longer the underdog, no longer the small city with the little college, recovering from the unspeakable. Maybe that, all by itself, is worth celebrating.
EPILOGUE
IN EARLY APRIL 1982, three weeks after he led his team off the court in Tulsa, Dick Walters stood before a group of Aces boosters at a downtown social club for a postseason banquet. During a question-and-answer session, someone in the crowd piped up. “We’d like to keep you here,” he shouted, and the room broke into applause.
“It would be very difficult for me to leave here,” Walters said, motioning to his players seated nearby. “I’m so committed to these guys.”
The uncertainty of Walters’s future lingered long after the loss to Marquette. Wisconsin’s interest was no longer a rumor, and Walters no longer denied his plans to visit Madison for an interview. The narrative had already been set: it was Walters’s job if he wanted it—at a salary substantially higher than the $36,000 he made at UE. Walters was typically coy, saying the invitation to interview in Madison “came out of the clear blue sky” only after the NCAA championship game a few days before. No one believed him.
Once he returned from Madison, published reports suggested the Badgers had indeed offered Walters the job. Based on his annual flirtation with other schools, it seemed a foregone conclusion that he’d soon be packing his bags and selling his house.
But on April 4, back in Evansville, Walters met with Wallace Graves for forty-five minutes in the morning and spoke with him again that afternoon. Then the Tip-Off Club got involved. A booster had already given Walters a new Corvette as a courtesy car. Now a group of well-heeled Aces supporters agreed to supplement Walters’s salary as part of a new five-year contract. With three kids in school and the momentum of the ’82 season at his back, Walters seemed finally ready to settle down.
But there was little time to savor UE’s success. Walters had to reload immediately. Bullock, Leaf, and Harris were gone. Kenny Perry and Emir Turam eventually left, unhappy with their playing time. A fifteen-point upset of eleventh-ranked Purdue at Roberts Stadium in December 1983 suggested better times ahead. It was the signature win that had eluded Walters for five seasons. But the Aces couldn’t maintain that momentum. By spring 1985, the afterglow of the ’82 season had faded. Walters couldn’t restock the roster or recapture the enthusiasm that had carried Evansville to the postseason. Home attendance plummeted by almost 40 percent.
One night, Wallace Graves invited Walters to dinner at an upscale steak house and posed an uncomfortable question.
“He said, ‘Which one of us is more important to the university?’” Walters recalls. “I laughed and he said, ‘No, I’m not kidding.’”
Walters told Graves he understood his place at UE, that the basketball team was just one part of the larger campus community. The president ran the university, and the basketball coach worked at the discretion of the president.
“But I knew then he felt I had gotten too big for my britches.”
Graves fired Walters in 1985 and he never coached again. He believes other schools assumed he’d violated NCAA rules at UE. Why fire a coach who’d resurrected your program?
Ultimately, Dick and Jan divorced and Dick moved to California, where he dabbled in television commentary and worked for a company that manages college bookstores. Now retired, Walters says he regrets turning down the Wisconsin job. It was everything he’d always wanted: a big school in a major conference. The Badgers were the Big Ten’s doormat. But Walters knew how to rebuild a basketball program.
Walters left UE with a record of 114–87 in seven seasons. The coach and the city had never been a perfect fit. Evansville was an insular town and Walters was an outsider. He stepped on toes and said the wrong things. There was the annual question of whether he’d stay or go. But the city and the coach needed each other. Evansville rescued Walters from the anonymity of the junior college circuit and offered a challenge that no coach—before or after—had ever faced.
In return, Walters performed a modern miracle.
Evansville welcomed its new basketball coach in March 2018, soon after the end of another uninspiring season. But Walter McCarty needed no introduction. He’s an Evansville native with an NBA pedigree, and many of the hundreds who turned out to greet him on his first day were family and friends. On his way to the podium, McCarty stopped to wave, shake a few hands, and offer an elderly woman a peck on the cheek. It was a fresh start for the Aces with echoes of all the fresh starts before, from Sloan to Watson to Walters and beyond.
For Evansville fans, McCarty represents the latest, greatest hope to return Aces basketball to some semblance of its old self. After UE fired Walters, the Aces returned to the NCAA tournament four times, winning just once, and haven’t been back since 1999. The Aces play in a new arena downtown, and on a good night, the crowd is half of what it was back in the day. But, honestly, it’s not a fair comparison. So much has changed since the crash, now four decades ago. So many of the institutions that knit the city together are gone.
In 2010, Whirlpool moved production of its refrigerators to Mexico and closed the plant out by the airport, where FDR once toured to buoy the spirits of workers making fighter jets.
Whirlpool’s move left most of its remaining eleven hundred Evansville workers unemployed with limited prospects for jobs that paid such generous wages. The company had whittled the local payroll year after year, one round of layoffs after another. The end was inevitable. Still, closing the Whirlpool plant was an especially painful moment for the city. Once the Refrigerator Capital of the World, Evansville no longer churned out refrigerators.
Roberts Stadium was demolished after UE played its last game there in 2011. The stadium had been remodeled over the years, but couldn’t match the grandeur or the revenue potential of the new college arenas, with their plush suites and big corporate sponsors. Roberts Stadium’s successor, the Ford Center, seats eleven thousand. Next door, the Indiana University School of Medicine has opened a branch campus expected to bring five hundred new students, high-paying jobs, and millions of dollars in urban development.
Like the arena and the medical school, Walter McCarty faces outsize expectations. Aces basketball, even in its diminished state, remains central to Evansville’s identity. White-haired boosters from the McCutchan era still buy tickets and fetch their purple sweaters from the back of the closet each winter. They returned to campus for the rally to welcome McCarty home and made their way downtown to witness his inaugural season. McCarty’s credentials are impeccable. He played on Kentucky’s 1996 NCAA championship team and then bounced around the NBA for a decade. After retiring, McCarty took a series of assistant coaching jobs, first with the University of Louisville and most recently with the Boston Celtics. His mentors include Celtics coach Brad Stevens and former Louisville coach Rick Pitino. But almost as important as his résumé, McCarty grew up in Evansville. He’s one of us, a hometown kid, and that still means a lot in Evansville: all three finalists for the Aces job were Evansville natives.
The university and its new coach have done their best to reignite enthusiasm for the program. Before the start of his first season, McCarty made all of the requisite speeches around the region. After he threw out the first pitch at a Minor League Baseball game, he mingled with young families and posed for selfies. One day students found him strolling around campus, passing out donuts. Like Walters, he’s added amenities for his players. Only, instead of a Pepsi machine, he put an Xbox in the locker room. Like Watson, he’s installed a wide-open, fast-paced offense. But donuts and selfies are not rebounds or free throws. The Aces finished McCarty’s first season at 11–21.
Evansville is no longer an insular factory town, and its basketball program may never again be a national marvel. And yet, on some days, it seems as if nothing has changed. This winter, when McCarty leads his team onto the Ford Center court, Evansville will once again turn its attention f
rom snowfall predictions and presidential politics. McCarty has inspired new hope for the basketball program that Arad McCutchan built sixty years ago from a cramped office on the edge of campus. Frank Deford’s assessment from 1978 still rings true.
“It’s a basketball town,” he wrote, “in the basketball season.”
—April 2019
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I CONDUCTED NEARLY 250 interviews for this book. Those who were especially helpful include: Kay Barrow, Dick Walters, Stafford Stephenson, Craig Bohnert, Steve Sherwood, Valery Helton, Mike Blake, Lois Watson Ford, Cheri Partain, Charlie Butler, and Chris Weaver.
This book would not have been possible without the following:
Dan Conaway
Barry Harbaugh
Erin Calligan Mooney
Debra Gwartney
Tom Bissell
Michael McGregor
Paul Collins
Mike Blake
Mark Tomasik
Joe Atkinson, for providing advice, insight, and hours of raw video. His documentary, From the Ashes: The University of Evansville Purple Aces, is a moving tribute to the legacy of Evansville basketball.
Kyle Keiderling, whose book Trophies and Tears: The Story of Evansville and the Aces is a compelling and encyclopedic history of Purple Aces basketball.
Shane White and the staff at University Libraries
Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library
Eldorado Memorial Library
Chatsworth Township Library
Evansville African American Museum
Amanda Ford Beitler
Ian Pestrak
Lloyd Baker
Delaney Broderick
Alecia Giombolini
Peter Ames Carlin
Peter Zuckerman
Jack Hart
Steve Mayes
Carol Gray
Bob Boxell
Dave Coverly
Mike Moon
Larry Bingham
Keith Beaven
Nancy Beaven Korff
Linda Ford
Martha Beaven Hancock
Mom and Dad, for everything
A NOTE ON SOURCES
I RELIED HEAVILY ON the archives of the Evansville Press, the Evansville Courier, the Sunday Courier & Press, Chicago Tribune, the Eldorado Daily Journal, the Indianapolis Star, Evansville Living magazine, UE’s Crescent Magazine, the LinC, the Courier-Journal, Sports Illustrated, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Athletic, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. I also made extensive use of the video archives of WFIE-TV channel 14 and WEHT-TV channel 25. The authors of Evansville, at the Bend in the River: An Illustrated History provided crucial detail about the city’s first 150 years. The writings of Evansville historian Darrel E. Bigham were critical to my understanding of the history of race in Evansville and the city’s development during World War II. George Klinger’s research was especially helpful to understand the earliest days of the university and its relationship with the rest of the city. The work of writer Seth Davis provided detailed accounts of John Wooden’s life and career, as well as the Indiana State–Michigan State championship game. Evansville was fortunate to have three newspapers stocked with editors and reporters who cared deeply about Aces basketball. I am indebted to the work of Mark Tomasik, Dave Johnson, Tom Tuley, Anne Harter, Bill Fluty, Tom Collins, Pete Swanson, Rich Davis, Don White, and Pat Moynahan.
Books
An Evansville Album: Perspectives on a River City, 1812–1988, by Darrel E. Bigham
City of the Four Freedoms: A History of Evansville, Indiana, by Robert Patry
Drive: The Story of My Life, by Bob Ryan and Larry Bird
Evansville, at the Bend in the River: An Illustrated History, by Kenneth P. McCutchan, William E. Bartelt, and Thomas R. Lonnberg
Evansville: The World War II Years, by Darrel E. Bigham
Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century, by Emma Lou Thornbrough
The Road to Madness: How the 1973–1974 Season Transformed Basketball, by J. Samuel Walker and Randy Roberts
Trophies and Tears: The Story of Evansville and the Aces, by Kyle Keiderling
We Ask Only a Fair Trial: A History of the Black Community of Evansville, Indiana, by Darrel E. Bigham
We Face the Future Unafraid: A Narrative History of the University of Evansville, by George Klinger
When March Went Mad: The Game That Transformed Basketball, by Seth Davis
Wooden: A Coach’s Life, by Seth Davis
INDEX
African Americans, 30–32, 129–30, 182
Aguirre, Mark, 144, 185
airplane crash
about, 94
aftermath, 94–107
crash site, 96–97, 98, 100, 105–6, 115, 181
families of victims, 130–32
funerals, 107–10
investigation, 114–16
airport reception for team, 200–201
Akin, Ali, 174, 188–89
Ali, Muhammad, xii
Alston, Warren, 88, 110
American Agricultural Movement, 110
Arlington High School, 66–67
Arsenal Technical High School, 66–67
attendance, home game, 159, 186, 238, 239
Barrow, John, 21, 25, 82, 99
Barrow, Kay, 21, 25, 26, 82, 99, 103, 111–12, 204
Barton, Gary, 6
basketball camps, 8–9, 21, 112
Bates, Edie, 90, 134, 136–38
Bates, Marv, 89–91, 105, 109, 126, 136, 137
Beaven, Paul E., Jr., xv–xvi, 217–18
Belmont Abbey College, 211
Best, Patrick, 110
Big Ten, 141, 151, 209–10, 239
Bigham, Darrel E., 31
Bird, Larry, 6, 76, 82, 83, 84, 103, 157–58, 159
“Black Night in Evansville” (Fluty), 22–23
blacks, 30–32, 129–30, 182
Blair, Bill, 56–57
Blake, Mike, 74–75, 90, 152
Bobby Watson Show, 74, 75
Bohnert, Craig, 92, 100, 102, 153–56
Bohnert, Dolores (Dee), 92, 153, 154, 156
Bohnert, Don, 92, 102, 153–54, 156
Bohnert, Jeff, 92–93, 102, 109, 131, 153, 154
Bosse, Benjamin, 33, 34
Bosse High School, 39, 40, 126
Bougas, Cherie, 52–53, 69
Brand, Ron, 42
Brown, Bob
airplane crash, 99, 108
Duff, Mike, and, 5, 7, 12, 21, 26, 27
personality, 11
Smith, Greg, and, 78
Brown, Larry, 167, 168, 169
Brown, Warren, 28
Bullock, Theren
1979–80 season, 161–62
1980–81 season, 171–72
1981–82 season, 186, 192–93, 194, 197
background, 150–51
McKinstry, Rick, and, 233
NCAA tournament, 208, 212, 223, 227, 230, 231, 234
Perry, Kenny, and, 171–72
recruitment of, 130, 139
Walters, Dick, and, 171–72
work ethic, 160
Butler University, 60, 66, 151–52, 162
Byers, Jim, 98, 101, 110, 117, 142
Calton, Larry, 222, 223, 225, 229, 232–33
Carter, Jimmy, 110, 176–77
CBS, 214, 215
Central Turners, xiv
Chatsworth, Illinois, 166
Chatsworth High School, 167
Cherry, Jack, 58
Chicago Bulls, 8, 15–16, 23, 123, 124, 195
Chicago Tribune, 140
Chicago White Sox, 91
Chrysler, xv, 18, 35, 54
Clayton, Bob, 41
Clemons, Darius, 185, 186, 199, 224
Clemson University, 186, 220
Cofield, Bill, 209, 210
College of DuPage, 121–23, 128, 129, 141, 149, 176
Collins, Tom, 88–89
Corzine, Dave, 76, 80
Dauble, Al, 89
Deaconess Hospital
, 95, 98, 102–3, 104, 126
Deford, Frank, xii–xiii, xiv, xvi–xvii, 143–45, 241
DeGroote, James (Jim), 96, 208
DePaul University, 76, 142, 144–45, 158–59, 176, 194, 197–98, 219
Ditty, Preston, 56
Drain, Erma, x–xi
Drain, Jack, xi
Drain, Paul, Jr., xi
Drain, Paul, Sr., xi
Dreiser, Theodore, 29–30
Duff, Kay. See Barrow, Kay
Duff, Mike
basketball camp, 8, 9, 21, 53
Bird, Larry, comparisons to, 6, 84
Brown, Bob, and, 5, 7, 12, 21, 26, 27
death and funeral, 103, 107–8, 111–12
as football player, 10
as high school player/college recruit, 4, 5–8, 10, 12, 21, 25–28, 71
hometown’s love for, 6–7, 9–10
honors, posthumous, 204
math struggles, 69
Sloan, Jerry, and, 8, 9, 21, 22
as UE player, 52–53, 70, 82, 84, 88, 89
Watson, Bobby, and, 25–26, 27–28
Duff, Mr. & Mrs. T. C., 112
Eldorado, Illinois, 3–4, 6, 107–8, 111
Eldorado High School, 3–5, 10, 11, 26, 53, 54, 70, 71
Elliott, Bump, 142
Ensor, Stan, 235
Ensor’s First and Last Chance Saloon, 215, 221, 225, 230, 235
Entertainment and Sports Programming Network (ESPN), 158
Evansville, Indiana
economy, 18, 37
race relations, 30–32, 129–30
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, visit to, ix–xii, 240
as “Southern city,” 29–30
World War II, 35–37
Evansville College, xii–xv, 33–35, 37, 42, 44
Evansville Courier, xvi, 22–23, 33, 88–89, 131–32, 151, 210
Evansville Press, 35–36, 87, 140, 149, 164, 210
Fisher, Junior, 221, 225
Fluty, Bill, 22–23
Ford, Gerald, 177, 203
Ford, Paul, 207
Ford Center, 240
Franklin, Indiana, 182
Franklin House, 163
Frazier, Walt, 13, 14
funerals, 107–10
Furr, Byron, 71, 113–14
Furr, David, 71–72, 113–14, 138
Gadis, David, 179–80, 181–83
