Browsing through the new book section in the library I picked up John Wooden’s book A Game Plan for Life: The Power of Mentoring. After reading it I know he is a man I would like to have known. Wooden was the heralded coach of the UCLA basketball teams that won many national titles and coached two of the great ones - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bill Walton. He wrote the book in two parts: I - the seven mentors in his life and II - seven people to whom he has been a mentor. He gave the etymology of the word mentor which I found interesting. Mentor was the friend of Odysseus in the Greek epic poem The Odyssey; Odysseus asked Mentor to look after his family and his home when he left for the Trojan war. As an English major in college Wooden understood the concept.
Those he named in the first part were his father Joshua, Earl Warriner, Glenn Curtis, Piggy Lambert, Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln, and his wife Nellie, and just because he hadn’t personally known each of them he read deeply the stories about them that gave him great inspiration. As he said in the chapter about Mother Teresa he learned: “You should never expect a reward in return.” Of Lincoln he wrote: “Lincoln … modeled how to move past disappointments without carrying grudges.”
The second section bore the testimony of those he mentored including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, Dale Brown, et al. Wooden never called Kareem except by his birth name Lewis and helped him through plenty of tough spots. When Kareem went to UCLA he was bothered by people who called him insensitive names such as the time when he and Wooden entered a restaurant and a woman cried out, “Oh, look at the big, black freak.” He wrote that he could see Wooden was bothered by the remark as much as he was, but he remained calm and cool thus mentoring him. Kareem loved literature and poetry and with Wooden found someone to talk to.
Walton wrote amusedly how he always wanted to rebel around Wooden’s rules and challenged him by wearing long hair and a beard. Wooden told him, “Bill, I acknowledge that you have a right to disagree with my rules. But I’m the coach here, and we’re sure going to miss you.” A pile of hair covered the barber’s floor soon after.
Wooden died just this past June, only months short of 100 years but he kept a clear mind throughout his life. In the last chapter he wrote , “As I finish this book, I am nearly ninety-eight and a half years old.” I believe he must have lived a good life.
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I read in my hometown paper this 100 year old headline: Johnny Burke Gets Tanked Up On Firewater and Proceeds to Make Things Lively. Here’s how the story went: Saturday after Johnny Burke acquired a good-sized jag, and as is usual with him under those circumstances he proceeded to make himself decidedly obnoxious, ending up by throwing a billiard ball through the big plate glass of the Goodman pool room. He was promptly taken in charge by Marshall Fallon and incarcerated in the little shack known as the city jail, but in searching him Ed evidently overlooked a match or two, as about suppertime frenzied cries of help and fire were heard to emanate from the bastile. Of course, the offender received fines and costs plus this: “Johnny was ordered to leave town forthwith never to return, and if he does show up again he will be arrested on other charges and not let off as easily as he was this time. Burke is not a bad fellow when sober, but as soon as he gets outside a little firewater is always looking for trouble and usually finds it.”
While I found the story of the troublemaker to be fun to read the thing that struck me was the reference to the city jail. We used to play in it during school noon hours since it sat just on the north side of the school grounds and as I remember was never locked. A small building, it had some steel bars and stood built solidly with walls made of 2 x 4 lumber laid sideways on top of each other in a cribbed style. Some names and initials were carved on the walls, so of course legends grew in our minds as to who of infamy may have stayed in it. The building still exists and was purchased by a member of the Sturlaugson family and moved to a farmstead near Hatton, ND.
