From the Vault: Now & Then is an appropriate play on words and the title for our occasional dive into the archives of the popular magazine Now & Then, the print forerunner to Appalachian Places. The long-running Now & Then ceased publication in 2017 after more than three decades of compiling a treasure trove of Appalachian stories and experiences that will remain interesting and relevant for generations to come.
This From the Vault entry highlights a story from the Volume 9, Issue 3, Fall 1992 issue of Now & Then themed “Sports in Appalachia.” Written by Patrick Sloan, the story is about his experiences growing up in West Virginia playing and watching sports alongside now-famous athletes such as the late Basketball Hall of Famer Jerry West, who died in June and is widely considered one of the greatest players of all time. When he wrote the article, Sloan was a clinical psychologist at the Mountain Home Veterans Affairs Medical Center and clinical associate professor at Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee, where he still serves as professor emeritus.
West Virginians in sports talk about environment and destiny
By Patrick Sloan
The radio was the hearth around which our family and neighbors gathered on those stark, winter nights in the 1950s when Jack Fleming’s voice dramatized the basketball adventures of “Hot” Rod Hundley, Jerry West and their West Virginia University Mountaineer teammates. They seemed to be playing for us as they marched through each Southern Conference season and on into national tournaments. I was permitted to stay up to listen, regardless of how late the game. In a close game, our hopes for victory soared when Coach Fred Schaus deployed mighty-mites Ronnie Retton and Bucky Bolyard to apply the tenacious zone press defense.
The adults, mostly men, often adopted a favorite player. Herb White, who was to be my first coach, liked Willie Akers from Mullens for his strong rebounding and durability. Young neighbor Bob Swiger chose sharpshooters like Jerry West and Paul Miller. The journalist, Bob Earle, chewed tobacco and listened intently. Charlie Stalnaker seemed mostly to like the company, as he consorted and laughed a lot. An avid fan, Mom held her own with the men. Dad favored Hot Rod and recounted stories about him even after West joined the team and was clearly on his way to superstardom.
We all liked Hot Rod because he was a unique character and a bona fide All American — “one of the top five players in the whole country,” as Hundley himself reminded me recently in a telephone interview. Remarkable in skill and showmanship, he could shoot, pass, ball handle, dribble through and with his knees, lead cheers and tease opponents. He reminded Dad of Prewitt, the Appalachian soldier in From Here to Eternity who would not compromise his values under intense social pressure to be a boxer. Hot Rod also refused to do the expected at the expense of playing for fun or his individuality. Dad reveled in sophomore Hundley’s balking on the verge of breaking the Southern Conference Tournament scoring record. With the game clinched, he wasted two free throws with seconds to play by shooting first behind his back, then a hook shot. Hundley justifies such cavalier behavior now: “It’s a game. I never took it or myself that seriously. I don’t believe records make one person better or bigger than another one.”
A few years ago, former referee John “Sheriff' Tiano of Clarksburg told how Hot Rod surprised him with an around-the-back, blind pass of the sort Earvin “Magic” Johnson later patented with the Los Angeles Lakers. The fast-break play to the basket always brought the fans to their feet at Mountaineer Field House as the home team raced down court with the ball ahead of their opponents. But this time Hundley had passed the ball to the referee. The fans and the opposing coach went berserk when Sheriff reflexively laid the ball in the hoop without breaking stride — or swallowing his whistle. He says with a wink, “What else could I do? It was a beautiful pass.”
Hundley now takes himself seriously. Through sports, he says, “I bettered myself.” He was the first player selected in the National Basketball Association draft in 1957 (for the Minneapolis Lakers). He was elected to the NBA All-Star team while in Minneapolis and again after the Lakers moved to Los Angeles. And, he points out, “I’m the only play-by-play announcer (Utah Jazz) in the NBA who ever played.”
He sometimes feels he might have been even more successful if he had gotten more attention from his family. Although acknowledging Athletic Director Red Brown’s fatherly influence at WVU, he states matter-of-factly, “I sort of raised myself, had no direction. I wasn’t a very good student, lived in a hotel in high school. No on (family) cared about me — no one to get me up, push me to go to class to get a degree.” Just 12 hours short of graduating, he has insisted his children complete college.
My parents sometimes took me to WVU games, and I saw Hot Rod dribble behind his back and between his legs. This was long before it was in vogue, at least in the mountains. (Bob Cousy, the Boston Celtic master ball-handler, played beyond our radio reception.) I sat in disbelief as he mocked the referees and launched looping hook shots from the far comers of the court in a close game with arch-rival Pitt.
Hot Rod was like our own Paul Bunyan or Horatio Alger character, ascending from the poor side of his hometown of Charleston. West Virginians adored him. Outsiders could call him a hillbilly or a hick, but his wizardry could make a rival player request a refund of private school tuition, as Hundley’s skills and antics often left star players from better-endowed schools shaking their heads in exasperation and incredulity. He made us feel good about ourselves, proud to be from the Mountain State, even if it was considered a poor or backward place.
We did not mistake his clowning for ignorance. He knew exactly what he was doing and where he was going. He and West were supported at WVU by a whole cast of small-town, local boys and a few players recruited from neighboring states whom we embraced as extended family, welcomed reinforcements against the real outsiders, such as New York University, Villanova or Florida State.
Jerry West's teammate, Ronnie Retton, says of that era, “Most of the guys were from West Virginia — Jerry was from Cabin Creek (Chelyan), Bucky Bolyard from Aurora; I was from Grant Town. We were really close. When we went on long road trips, we were West Virginians — closer knit.”
Retton, after a few years of playing professional baseball in the New York Yankee farm system following college, returned to the Fairmont area to operate a coal mining cable business and raise five children, including Mary Lou, who won an Olympic gold medal in gymnastics in 1984. Her pluck and winning smile reminded many of us West Virginians of her father.
In close families, like many in West Virginia, leaving home to pursue athletic excellence takes a toll on everyone in the family. Ronnie Retton discussed his family’s consternation at allowing daughter Mary Lou to move to Houston at age 14 to train with Bela Karolyi, the Romanian coach who defected to the United States. “She wanted to go, it seemed like a chance of a lifetime. We never dreamed it would turn out with her winning the gold medal, but we took a chance. She called several times, crying, wanting to come home. We went to Houston I don’t know how many times, but she stuck it out. We had no way of knowing what would come after the Olympics, all the publicity, strangers coming to the house. We still get five or six letters a day, just fan mail for her.”
My brother-in-law, Jimmy Priester, tells me he talked with Mary Lou recently while she was visiting Fairmont. He described her as genuinely friendly, “not uppity,” traits admired by him and his Appalachian neighbors. I asked Ronnie Retton what advice an Appalachian father offered a future Olympic champion. He said, “I just told her the same thing I told all five of my kids: sports is like everything else in life, you get out of it what you put into it. Be dedicated. Always put into it your best.”
Whatever Appalachian value Hot Rod Hundley personified with his flair, Jerry West exemplified by stoic single-mindedness and determination, not to mention “fair” talent, as mountaineers wryly called it. Hundley’s Kanawha Valley successor to the title of the state's greatest player, West is now enshrined in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. It is his profile that makes up the NBA logo of a dribbling player. He is former coach and current general manager of the Los Angeles Lakers, the team for which he played (from 1960-1974). West expanded our horizons as WVU games began to be televised. The Mountaineers were surging into national prominence with a number-one ranking and notoriety in the wake of Hundley in basketball and Sam Huff and Chuck Howley in football.
Collegian West seemed only slightly less embarrassed than I was as I stood before him at age 12 in the kitchen of my friend Jim Kane, whose sister he was dating and would marry. Next to Jim, I was the second luckiest kid in West Virginia that summer day, but I was so excited I was speechless, and my stomach flip-flopped. Jerry seemed to sense my discomfort, so we went outside and passed baseball.
The following year, when West returned to Weston, Jim and I played two-on-one basketball against him. We used my neighbor’s dirt court at West’s request because it would be secluded from gawking crowds. Here I had played hundreds of imaginary one-on-one games by myself, pretending I was alternately West and Oscar Robertson, two premier players of their day.
I could hardly believe he was there, playing with us. I remember his serious intensity and how he remained patient with our horsing around. He taught me how to make a quick step past a defender that day, and that maneuver later helped me earn a scholarship to Fairmont State. I fantasized myself immortalized in his eyes because I scrambled eagerly into the creek after a loose ball, and he complimented my desire. He mentioned the “dive” some years later, making me feel special, memorable, competent.
In a telephone interview, he said he still recalls that day. “It’s nice to hear things that might have been positive for some kid,” he said. “That means a lot to me.” Perhaps it is our common roots that allows me to call him now, over 30 years later. But when the voice on the telephone says, “Jerry West,” my stomach is back in Jim’s kitchen.
“Growing up in West Virginia had a tremendous impact on my life,” West said. “I try to go back every year, just to slow down a little bit. What I miss most are the congenial people. There’s a serenity about West Virginia. I’m not a very good sleeper — but when I go there, I can sleep.”
West grew up near Charleston, the state’s largest city and capital, in the heavily industrialized Kanawha River valley. “I certainly didn’t view myself as a city kid at all because I never went to the city,” he said. “Chelyan was only 14 miles from Charleston, but we did not have a car, so it really wasn’t accessible to me. If I would go, it would be by bus with my parents for an hour or two, and not very often.”
He was homesick in his first two years of college. “I had a terribly difficult time adjusting to living on a university campus, was homesick for a town of 800 people. I had been a very good student in high school, raised in a family of very good students, but I couldn’t concentrate on school because I missed being home. I was unbelievably shy. When I went to West Virginia University in Morgantown, my goodness, it was like I was in Los Angeles. It was so big, I thought. When I went from Morgantown to Los Angeles, I couldn’t even believe the culture shock that was here in store for me. I had not changed a lot at that time. Dealing with the press was hard for me. I always felt so guarded for fear I would say the wrong thing.”
He is known for his humility, work ethic and leadership. These values, West believes, came from his family and extended family. “I had a large family that depended upon each other for support, along with the same types of people in my neighborhood. These were the factors that made me feel secure. When you get out in the business world, you don’t see that. Americans are unbelievably competitive. One thing I learned by living in West Virginia is to treat people the way I want to be treated.”
Richard Hoffer in a Sports Illustrated article described West as self-critical, gloomy, superstitious and uncommunicative with his family after a lost game. I asked if this characterization fit part of an Appalachian stereotype of stoicism, fatalism and superstition. First West set the record straight. “As far as not speaking to my family for weeks, that’s simply not true. There were times I wanted to be left alone so I could concentrate on what I needed to do.”
Cultural factors had little to do with his makeup, he believes. His personality came out of his individual character. “Growing up it seemed I was angry at everything. Even though outwardly I was not, inwardly I was.” He admits he is neither optimistic nor especially confident. That is what makes him competitive, he believes. “I really think that in some respects that’s a blessing,” he said. “It pushes you, makes you want to excel more, and you won’t give in. I like to win.”
This attitude has not made it easy for West. He frequently played the role of giant killer in tournament play, both at WVU and with the Lakers. The Mountaineers lost the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Championship by one point in 1958-59, and the Lakers lost the NBA finals to the Boston Celtics multiple times in the 1960s. “lf l didn’t play to my absolute maximum every night, there was a good chance we were going to lose,” he said. “I felt terrible if I left the floor and had anything left in me.”
West’s team finally won an NBA championship in the 1971-1972 season over the New York Knicks. “Since I’ve been here (with the Lakers) as general manager, we’ve had a couple of teams that couldn’t lose unless something awful happened,” he said. “I never played on a team like that here. Most of the teams I played on weren’t perfect. It’s really amazing, the enormous pain it causes to lose the championship after you play a successful NBA season.”
Like West’s Mountaineers in 1959- 60, our Fairmont State Fighting Falcons in 1968 came up short in the national championship game. We lost by three points in the final game of the small college National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). Because of my disappointment, I was surprised at the sight of jubilant supporters on our return to Fairmont. It was mostly family and friends, but their reaction reassured me and restored my sense of community.
My coach at Fairmont State, Joe Retton, was Ronnie’s elder cousin and also a native of Grant Town. Joe, himself an outstanding baseball player, became an exceptionally successful college basketball coach. He is a member of the NAIA Hall of Fame for being selected coach of the year an unprecedented two times and having his Fairmont State teams qualify for the national tournament 12 of his 19 coaching years.
Known for getting the most out of his local, smalltown players, Joe Retton had won 85 percent of his games, the highest among active college coaches, when he retired in 1985. I asked him recently how one meshes fierce individualism with the need for play and teamwork inherent in team sports. “Our players could not wait for practice,” he said. “It was fun, everyone working toward the same goal. Each player has a role, even the guys on the bench. There are differences in talent, but it must be a team concept.” Then everyone belongs, he and I agreed, just as it is in a well-adjusted family. “In all the things I’ve ever said to a kid,” he said, “on the floor or off, I never did something that I didn’t have the team at heart. We talked about life, not just basketball. You become a part of people.”
Joe Retton’s father immigrated to West Virginia from Italy as a teenager, already an accomplished coal miner. Retton said of his youth in post-Depression Grant Town, “We made play out of everything, didn't need television or parks. We taped rags for balls, used broomsticks for bats, played and competed. We were learning how to survive. Baseball was such a part of our community, learning how to be successful, it projected into other areas of life as well.”
I asked my former coach what traits characterize the mountain athlete. He said, “We weren’t too big for the game. You have to be consistent, respect each other, and it’s up to the coach to help show the players what it is to be a good citizen. Raised in the coal mining camp, we had to fight, dig and scratch to survive. Our parents and neighbors taught us how to work and to love, how to say and show, ‘I care.’ I won’t say these things are unique to us, but they’re a part of us.”
One teammate at Fairmont State, Dave Gardner, was from one of a handful of Black families in Weston. He recalls the importance of feeling like a full member of the team and being treated “like everybody else” by Coach Joe Retton. Gardner believes the strict fairness and consistent discipline were crucial to our team’s success and to his ability to confront problems in his own life later on.
Another teammate, John Jamerson, transferred to Fairmont State to play for Retton and became an NAIA All-American. Now himself the father of an NBA player (Houston Rockets’ Dave Jamerson), he recalls Coach Retton’s fatherly care for his team-family and knowledge of how to win.
Jamerson was from a Midwestern city and our only out-of-state player. Of his mountain teammates, he said, “People from the small towns sacrificed themselves for the team. Big city guys, the big stars want to be the center of attention. Our guys on the bench cheered for us, kept us going. The townspeople cared more for me, weren’t concerned with themselves, would invite me to join them. Everyone was for me because I could help the team. You don’t find that as much in the city.”
Under Retton’s tutelage I became part of a highly successful team and was able to see beyond the mountains in many respects. My first airplane ride was to the NAIA tournament in Kansas City in 1968. A teammate from the coalfields was terrified to look out the plane’s window. Another, from a neighboring coal town, was unmoved, showing me that one’s environment is not necessarily one’s destiny. As I reflected on it recently, I wondered why some West Virginians leave the mountains, and others do not. Given that perhaps the most famous West Virginia football player from that era, Sam Huff, was raised in a coal camp near Fairmont, I called and asked his opinion.
Huff, the Pro Football Hall of Fame linebacker (New York Giants and Washington Redskins) and now vice president of Special Markets for Marriott Hotels in Washington, D.C., was raised in Farmington (Number Nine coal camp), where a mine explosion in 1968 buried some of his relatives among the 78 miners who died. His manner has been described as bombastic, but I see it as mountaineer candor without dressing. In our telephone conversation he was personal and introspective.
“The New York Giants drafted me out of WVU to be part of a team,” Huff said. “That’s different than my brother, a coal miner, going to New York and getting a job. It’s easy for me or somebody to say, ‘Go to New York, Chicago, and get a job.’ But for him to leave his culture, have no relatives there, no ties, it’s too much to expect.
“Being part of a team is the greatest experience you can have. When you’re in the huddle, that’s the ‘comfort zone.’ It doesn’t matter if you're Black or white, Italian or Polish, you remember the value of cooperation. Teammates are friends for life, like family.”
Huff’s father was a coal miner. One of seven children, Huff said that growing up in Number Nine “taught me to be tough, not afraid of work, good work habits, basics that people in the city don’t have. My father taught me how to survive in the outdoors, fish, hunt, change tires and oil. My own son doesn’t know some of these things we took for granted. He can operate a computer but can’t change a tire. Appalachian people know how to survive.”
Huff made it to New York, went beyond the mountains and is surviving quite well. But his experience is not common. “I took my 32-year-old son back to Farmington recently,” he said. “My brothers and friends talk about when the mines reopen, they’ll be the first to be called back. They can do anything with their hands: fix a car, build an engine — anything — but they won’t leave. So, they survive day-to-day. It’s their ‘comfort zone.’ It’s hard to change a culture. I’d love to be there, but I can’t do what I do there.”
My father-in-law, Jim Priester, was reared in Number Nine a few years before Huff and preceded him in playing football at WVU. As a former player, coach and college teacher, he has observed most of the local athletes who have come and gone since his playing days at Mountaineer Field. He cites the uniqueness of the environment and of certain individuals as factors in the development of mountain athletes. “Deprivation sometimes seems to motivate those who have the mettle for it,” he said. “Both Sam and Jerry were combative in their own way, persevering, persistent. Sam was more outspoken. He’d hit anything that moved. Jerry had quiet intensity, but both wanted to get to the top. Jerry reminded me of Stan Musial (the Baseball Hall of Fame member from the St. Louis Cardinals), delicate but very competent. In any sport, I have never seen a more courageous player in my life than Jerry West, playing hurt with a broken nose, over and over again.”
The Mountaineers are long-departed from the Southern Conference, and Dad, Herb and Charlie have passed on. Mom still attends local high school and college games, often joining some of our sports friends and high school heroes of mine — Truman Wyant, Dale White, Butch and Sonny Thoms — and she travels to Morgantown to Mountaineers’ home games with a group of old friends. Sports offer a sense of continuity for her and the community, a nearly completed circle of people, time and events in a common experience of feelings and history.
Patrick Sloan, Ph.D., served as clinical psychologist at the Mountain Home Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and clinical associate professor in the department of Psychiatry at Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University, where he continues to serve as professor emeritus.
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