The Season of Justin and J.D.

            Among Fayetteville High School’s (FHS) many memorable sports teams, the 1961-62 basketball team must be rated as one of the best for both its talent and accomplishments.The team had a 27–2 record and did not lose a regularly scheduled game to a team in Arkansas. It was ranked first in the state during most of the basketball season. One of its players scored more points during the year than any other Bulldog basketball player had ever scored in a season. Another set a record for most points scored during his years playing for the FHS team.

            The 1961-62 basketball season belonged to Justin Daniel, who set the single season scoring record, and J.D. McConnell, who set the record for most career points by a Bulldog. These two tall, talented basketball players led a dominant team, backed by a good supporting cast of players, to the best season an FHS basketball team had ever had. 

Silk and Wool

            Both Justin and J.D. were extraordinary athletics, but in different ways. Though both were tall, J.D. was a finesse player with a smooth game built on deceptive, deadly passing skills, a classic jump shot, and elusive drives to the basket. J.D. glided up and down the court exerting little apparent effort.  With his head turned to the right, he would spot a teammate open on the left and hit him in stride for an easy layup or short jump shot.  His was a thinking man’s game, more the nuance of small moves than the bombast of slam dunks.  For him, the action was not only in front of him but also on the periphery of his vision, where a teammate might break free or an opponent become inattentive.  Then came a quick pass, a solid screen, or a sudden jump shot, usually with good results.  

            Besides his fluidity and uncanny passing, J.D. had one other huge advantage playing guard and, sometimes, forward.  He was usually much taller than the player guarding him, while just as quick. He was 6 feet 4½ inches in a league where guards rarely reached six feet and forwards were only a little taller.  When J.D. was at the guard position, it often seemed an adult was playing with kids.  

            Justin was not a finesse player.  If J.D. was silk, Justin was scratchy wool.  At 6 feet 4 inches, a little shorter than J.D., his job was in the middle with his back to the basket, getting rebounds and taking the ball to the basket with alacrity.  Yet, he also had, when needed, a delicate touch with his jump and hook shots.

            Justin typically was guarded by the opponent’s tallest player, so he rarely dominated his matchups with superior height -- many teams had centers as tall as him or taller.  Justin did his damage with a hard charging game of getting the basketball, whatever it required, and putting it into the basket, however it needed to be done.  

           Justin got his height early. I know because he was my cousin, who lived just a few blocks away, both of us within a half-block of Jefferson Elementary School.  Although he was four years older, I saw him often in my grade school years because I sometimes hung out with his brother Morris, who was only a year older than me.  I think I was in the third or fourth grade when Justin -- who was already tall -- had such a fast-growing spurt that, for a while, he found it difficult to do such basic tasks as bend over and tie his shoes.  

            During my first year in Little League (I was 9 and Justin was 12), he was a terrifying baseball player. He was by far the best player in the league and famous for how hard he pitched and for hitting eye-popping home runs at the Fayetteville City Park that not only left the field, but went over the street and hit a big apartment building a few hundred feet away. If you were a batter facing his fast ball, you went to the plate regretting that your mother had let play baseball so young. If you were a pitcher standing barely 40 feet away from this guy, you had to fear for your life.

            I learned much about how to play baseball from Justin, Morris, my cousin Jerry Durning (aka Monk, who was a very good catcher), and others who lived in the south part of town.  On Sundays during the school year, and almost any time during the summer, pickup games were formed on the lower field of Jefferson. Justin lived just a few steps from this field and usually was one of the people who picked the teams.

            In those games, which were great fun, we were scared about one thing in particular:   We feared that Justin would hit a ball about 350 feet over the trees in left field and break the picture window of the car repair shop across the street. If that happened, we would all be in big trouble.

            Later, for a couple of summers, Justin, Morris, Jerry and I (and others) played “sock ball” using the Jefferson building as a backstop.  I think Justin started game; I continued playing it years after he quit.  The first step in the game was to make the sock ball.  To do that, we cut open an old golf ball and extracted the little rubber ball in the middle.  Then we took old socks with holes in them and started wrapping them around the little ball.  With two or three socks properly wrapped around the little rubber ball, then sewn together, you had a baseball size “sock ball” with some heft, but also one that would not travel too far when hit or hurt too much if it hit you.  

            A strike zone was drawn in chalk on the side of the building and a batter’s box outlined on the asphalt.  Some rocks were set down around an imaginary infield to delineate where a ball, if passing there on the ground, would be a hit.  Otherwise, grounders were outs as was anything caught in the air.  A fence beckoned for home runs.  Other trajectories of hit balls were subject to prolonged, sometimes bitter, debate as to whether they were hits or outs.  

            The main thing to avoid in the game was hitting a hard line drive to the left of third base, which could bust a window.  Mr. Tincher, the Jefferson custodian, was a really nice guy, but he had to charge you 50 cents for a window replacement, and that was enough to buy a few visits to the Palace Theater.

            And so we played a schedule of round robin games, kept standings, and had fun for a summer or two, until Justin and Jerry outgrew sock ball and went on to organized sports.  I still traded baseball cards with Justin every once in a while, but once you get into high school you don’t want to mess around with kids.
            The year that Justin was terrorizing the Little Leagues, I was on the McIlroy Bank team with J.D.  I have a picture somewhere that proves it, but without that I would not remember it for sure.  The picture shows that J.D. was plenty tall when he was 12 years old.  With the age difference, we weren’t pals.

One Fine Team

            In addition to Justin and J.D., the 1961-62 FHS team had several very good athletics.  One of them was George Coppage, who excelled in football and was not afraid of contact on the basketball court. You could usually count on him to give you four good fouls a game.  He was listed in the program as 6’ 2’’.  I doubt he was quite that tall. (Coach Smith listed me as 6 feet 1½ inches three years later, which would have been true only if I had been measured standing on a very thick book.)  After he graduated, Coppage was signed by Frank Broyles to play football for the Arkansas Razorbacks.

            The team also had Freddie Rice, a junior who was listed at 6’ 7’’, taller than either Justin or J.D.  Freddie played forward because the center position was already occupied, and he had several high scoring games.  Though Freddie lacked some of the athletic ability of Justin and J.D., he was good enough to get a University of Arkansas basketball scholarship after he graduated in 1963.  He averaged over 14 points a game for freshman Razorback team and had a memorable game in which he broke the record for most points scored in a game by a UA freshman. He played a few games his sophomore year at UA, but did not return after that.

           The picture of the team shows one African-American player, Thomas Lackey.  I do not know if he played in any games during the season.  Likely, FHS’s Arkansas opponents had no black basketball players and, at this time, would not have taken too kindly to integrated teams. (That was still true in 1964-65 when we played against teams from segregated high schools in Hot Springs, El Dorado, Texarkana and other cities.)  Also, FHS likely would not have been able to play a black player in the Arkansas state tournament.  (In 1964, Robert Wilks and Louis Bryant were the first African-Americans to play in the Arkansas state basketball tournament.)  The schools in Missouri probably had African-American players during the 1961-62 school year, so Lackey may have played in some games against those teams

The Season 

            The season was one of streaks.  Fayetteville won its first fifteen games, lost its 16th in Missouri, then won twelve straight.  Early in the season, the team was ranked first in the state by the two major polls that did such rankings.  It stayed at number one through the end of the regular season.
            I attended a few of the games and listened to Wally Ingles broadcast many others. When FHS played at home, the gym was packed.  The action was inspiring for a fledgling basketball player like me.  Justin always looked confident, though often scowling; apparently he was frequently irritated at something or someone.  J.D. was always relaxed, moving around like he was taking a stroll between classes. (One thing that struck me about J.D.:  big feet. His shoes seemed twice as long as mine.)  Both Justin and J.S. had plenty of swagger on and off the court.

From FHS Yearbook. Justin is shooting, J.D. (42) and Coppage (back to camera)are running in to rebound.
I think No. 14 is Troy Steele and no. 40 is Freddie Rice

            One other FHS player that I particularly liked to watch was Troy Steele, a 5’ 10” (or smaller) guard who was quick and a hustler.  At least early in the season, he played quite a bit and seemed to energize the team.  Sadly for the team, he was no longer playing for F.H.S. at the end of the season and missed the state tournament. He had to leave the team because he got married during the season and was expelled from the high school.

            As I watched the two dominant players on the court, and thinking about it later, I often wondered how Justin and J.D. got along.  They had such different personalities (cool vs. intense) and backgrounds (north Fayetteville white collar vs. south Fayetteville blue collar), I doubted that they were inclined to be close friends.  I never found out if there were any conflicts between the two. I hope that they saw each other as good teammates and had healthy doses of mutual respect.  

            After winning the Ozark Conference and going undefeated in Arkansas, FHS traveled to Little Rock in early March to play in the state tournament.  I am sure that the team members and Coach Smith expected to win the state AA-AAA championship.

            FHS easily won its first two games.  The second game was against the Green County Tech Eagles, whom they beat 66 -59, though they did not shoot very well.  Their scoring for that game was:

Player              FG/FGA          FT/FTA            Rebounds       Fouls   Total Points

Rice                 5-13                 2-4                   17                    3          12
Coppage         3-9                   2-2                   3                      4          8
Daniel              6-12                 2-2                   10                    1          14
Faucette          3-6                   4-8                   5                      5          10
McConnell       4-10                 3-4                   10                    0          11
Backus            5-7                   1-2                   5                      2          9
Stuckey           0-2                   0-0                   2                      0          0
Adams             0-1                   0-0                   0                      2          0
Durham           1-1                   0-1                   2                      0          2
Allen                0-0                   0-0                   0                      1          0
TOTAL            26-61               14-23               62                    19        66

            The stats show that Freddie Rice had big game with 17 rebounds and 12 points.  Justin and J.D. had so-so nights for them, but Coppage, Faucette and Backus had joined with Freddie to make up the difference.  Coppage had his usual four fouls.

          The next game was the tournament semi-final game against North Little Rock, which had a 21–6 record.  Over 7,000 people showed up at Barton Coliseum to watch it.  The night was frustrating for the FHS Bulldogs.  Though NLR was smaller, it out rebounded the Bulldogs and, according to the Northwest Arkansas Times account, intercepted “seven key passes.”  Clearly, the team suffered from the loss of Troy Steele as a ball handler.

            Fayetteville lost the game by 59-54, but had chances at the end to pull out a win.  Ultimately, the game was decided by free throws.  FHS hit 10 of 15 free throws while NLR made 19 of 25.  In comparison, FHS made 22 baskets while NLR made 20.
          Both J.D. and Justin had big games, scoring 42 of FHS’s 54 points.  Unfortunately, the other FHS players were mostly shut out, unlike during the previous game.  Only four players scored points.  Here is the FHS box score for the game:

Player              FG/FGA          FT/FTA            Rebounds       Fouls   Total Points
Rice                 2-8                   2-2                   4                      2          6
Coppage         2-5                   2-2                   2                      4          6
Daniel              7-10                 4-8                   7                      2          18
Faucette          0-0                   0-0                   0                      2          0
McConnell       11-18               2-9                   9                      2          24
Backus            0-4                   0-0                   0                      2          0
Stuckey           0-1                   0-0                   1                      2          0
Durham           1-0                   0-0                   0                      0          0
Allen                0-0                   0-0                   0                      0          0
TOTAL            22-46               10-15               62                    16        54

            Though the season ended sadly for the FHS team, it still was a fabulous year.  This team had the best winning percentage in the history of FHS basketball team.  The next closest was a 28-3 record in 1947-48.  
            During the season, Justin scored more points (504) than had ever been scored in a season by an FHS player.  Also, J.D. set the record for the most career points scored by an FHS player (869).  Both were showered with honors, including all-district and all-state.  Both were selected to play in the Arkansas High School All Star game in August 1962.  

           
          
 Although Kentucky scouts had come to watch J.D. play, he (apparently, I don’t know for sure) did not receive a basketball scholarship offer from them.  According to the NWA Times, both Justin and J.D. received basketball scholarship offers from the University of Arkansas and some smaller schools.  Some people expected Justin to sign to play professional baseball.  
            Both accepted the UA basketball scholarships. They were joined at UA by two Arkansas players who also were in the 1962 Arkansas All-Star basketball game: Ricky Sugg of Berryville and Steve Rousseau of Dewitt, Arkansas. 

And After The Season
            Justin and J.D. played on the Razorback freshmen basketball team (the Shoats) during the 1962-3 season.  At the time, freshmen were not eligible to play varsity sports.  In a dozen games, J.D. scored 156 points, 13.1 points per game.  Justin scored 116 points, averaging less than ten a game.  He decided not to return for his sophomore year.

          One day, I think it was in late summer 1963, I got a call from Bubba McCord who told me that a baseball scout who was thinking about signing Justin to a pro contract wanted to see him in a tryout.  The guy asked if we would help him with it. I was needed to pitch to Justin and Bubba would catch.  Of course, I jumped at the chance.

            When we showed up at the fairgrounds, it was clear that I was much more nervous about Justin’s tryout than Justin, who seemed to be nonchalant about the whole affair.  Bubba and I did our best to impress the scout while Justin did his thing.  I tried to throw strikes so Justin could blast them, which he did.  Justin was sufficiently impressive:  he signed a professional contract with the Kansas City Royals.
            In 1964, at the age of 19, he played for Wytheville, VA in the Rookie League.  His stats are on-line:  he hit .288 in 212 at bats with seven doubles, 3 triples, and 4 home runs.  Not bad, but before the season was over, he was sent home.  The word was that he had an injury.
            During the next ten years, Justin was a top player in the Northwest Arkansas Industrial Basketball League and on Fayetteville semi-pro baseball teams.  In 1964-65, he averaged almost 30 points a game in basketball and in 1965 his baseball team, Ken’s Sporting Goods, won the semi-pro title with the benefit of his pitching and hitting (including two home runs in the final game).  In 1971, Justin was the MVP in the Arkansas semi-pro baseball tournament and his team, Farmers Insurance Group, won the state championship.  And on it went year after year.  
            At some point, I think it was in the early 1970s after I had left Fayetteville, Justin started a business dealing in baseball cards. This grew into a retail business selling sports cards and memorabilia, with a store, Justin’s Clubhouse, just off of College Avenue.  Justin ran the business until his death in 2006, at the age of 61.

J.D. and Freddie Rice as Sophomore Razorbacks, 1964

            J.D. had a good four seasons with the University of Arkansas basketball team.  His stats for the four years are as follows (from HogStats.com):   

                        GP   FG-FGA   Pct  FT-FTA   Pct  Reb  Avg   PF  Pts   Avg
1962-63+         12   69-156      .442  18-25   .720  131 10.9   23  156  13.1
1963-64           23   80-187      .428  19-33   .576  123  5.4    40  179   7.8
1964-65           22   99-227      .436  43-63   .683  153  7.0    44  241  11.0
1965-66           23  120-259     .463  37-46   .804  196  8.5    47  277  12.0
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                68 299-673      .444  99-142  .697  472  6.9  131  697  10.3
+ Stats on freshman team, not included in totals
           

             After graduating from UA, J.D. studied medicine and became an M.D.  When I was living in Little Rock in the 1970s, I would occasionally see him at the Y.M.C.A or at some city league basketball game. I do not know where he is now or what he is doing.  However, when I googled “J.D. McConnell” and Little Rock recently, I got a picture showing a tall, gray-haired guy with big feet hitting a drive at a Little Rock golf course. It was J.D. The picture’s caption was: “J.D. McConnell of Little Rock watches his tee shot on the first hole while playing a round of golf with friends on a spring-like day at War Memorial Park in midtown Little Rock, January 31, 2011.”  He retired and, the last I heard, was doing quite well.  

February 10, 2011 (updated, December 12, 2016)

Birch Bay, Washington

Dan.birchbay@gmail.com

Marx, Che, Eldridge, and Seale at the Oklahoma Tire and Supply, Fayetteville (Arkansas) Square, 1970

The photographs below show a strange little march held on the Fayetteville (Arkansas) square. It took place, I think, on July 4, 1970. However, I have found nothing in the local newspaper to verify that date or any other one.

The most striking visual impression of the photos is the juxtaposition of the familiar Oklahoma Tire and Supply and Campbell-Bell signs with jolting images of Che Guevara, Karl Marx, Bobby Seale, and Arkansan Eldridge Cleaver, plus a couple of Vietcong flags. That combination of images was rarely seen on the square. 

This small march was one of many protests in Fayetteville during the last part of 1969 and the first half of 1970. On October 1969, the anti-Vietnam War Moratorium March was held with about 600 participants (according to the local paper). On May 8, 1970, another large anti-war march was held, with 750 protesters (according to the local paper) walking from the University of Arkansas campus to the Fayetteville square. At the end of the march, 57 people were arrested when they refused to move from the entrance of the Selective Service office. This march came not long after the shooting of students at Kent State University.

On July 4, 1970, I just happened to be on the square on a hot Saturday morning when the pictured protest took place. And I just happened to have a camera with a telephoto lens with me. I am not sure how many pictures I took, but I can find only these three slides of the march.  

The young people shown marching were among a handful of people, found in most towns with large universities, who were radicalized in their opposition to the Vietnam War and to racism and to capitalism. No doubt some of the marchers considered themselves communists and/or revolutionaries. Most of them were students at the University.

People with radical views were not very popular in Northwest Arkansas and even less popular elsewhere in the state. Likely if such a demonstration had been held in Fayetteville in the early 1960s, or in any other Arkansas city except Fayetteville or Little Rock, it would not have passed unnoticed, without condemnation, or, maybe, without violence, in reaction to the symbols carried by the marchers. However, by 1970 such a march attracted little attention in Fayetteville.

I do not recognize most folks in the picture, but I did know the guy in the second picture who is dressed in white and is carrying a flag at the head of the procession. I think I recall his name, but will not give it here in case I am mistaken. I also remember seeing some of the guys wearing berets around the U of A campus.  

I have to wonder where the folks who took part in the march are now and what political beliefs they have. 

.

Barry Switzer's Bootleg Boy: The Arkansas Years

I check in periodically with thrift stores selling books cheaply and, more likely than not, find some books that I must have. They cost anywhere from 50 cents to a couple of dollars, providing cheap continuing education.

 

Recently, I picked up Barry Switzer’s autobiography, Booklegger’s Boy, mainly because I recalled that he was born in Arkansas and played football for the University of Arkansas during the latter part of the 1950s. I wanted to know more about the background of an Arkansan who was among the most successful college football coaches in history.

Also, the biography was of interest because I was in Fayetteville, Arkansas, during the years Switzer was playing for the Razorback. Still a youngster then, I would often go to Razorback games, spending time sledding down the steep grass incline in the north end zone on a large piece of cardboard.  When a game ended, I and a bunch of other kids would run onto the field just to be near the famous warriors in their tear-away jerseys.

Before reading the book, I had few recollections of Barry Switzer, but knew that he had coached the hugely successful Oklahoma Sooner football team. I vaguely recalled that he left that job under a cloud many years ago and that he had a reputation as being arrogant and ethically slippery.

The opening chapters of the book tell of Switzer’s final crisis at OU in June 1989. (The book was first published in 1990 by William Marrow. It was co-written with Bud Shrake.) The first chapter discusses the circumstances leading up to his forced resignation.  The story includes a rape and shooting at the Bud Wilkinson House (where the OU football players lived), his quarterback selling dope to an undercover agent, and allegations that he gambled on Oklahoma and other college football games. In other parts of the book, Switzer explains why he was not responsible for the bad deeds of his players and why the charges against him were whimsical, at best. He also excoriates the NCAA on its rules and operations.

The beginning of the end from Switzer at OU
from sportsillustrated.cnn.com

All of this is of interest, I suppose, if you really like or dislike Switzer. Also the parts of the book detailing Oklahoma’s football seasons will appeal to people who give a flip about that team. For me – since I have no strong feelings about the man or the team -- the interesting part of the book is about Switzer’s years in Arkansas, the first 29 years of his life.

Those years of Switzer's life have some dark and disturbing elements involving his parents. He did not have a normal childhood with a stable home and inspiring elders. Far from it. When Switzer grew up in Crossett, with some time living in El Dorado, his father was a pariah, a man who made a living by illegally selling liquor in Ashley County. Thus, the title of the book, Bootleggers Boy. Although I was initially skeptical about the impact of Switzer's father’s occupation on his life, but book convinced me that it was of great importance.

For example, as the son of a bootlegger Barry was not highly regarded by the parents of his school mates, and he describes how he had to get a friend to pick up his dates because the parents of young women in the city did not want them dating the son of disreputable man. This painful detail of his early life is just a small example of what it meant to have the parents he had.

Switzer was born on October 5, 1937. His father was Frank May Switzer, whose father, Barry’s grandfather, had owned thousands of acres of cotton and pine forest outside of Crossett and had served twice in the Arkansas General Assembly (he lost everything late in life due to illness). According to Switzer, his father was “a handsome man with a powerful physique.” His mother was Mary Louise Wood Switzer, who he describes as “the smartest, prettiest girl in Crossett.”

After Barry was born, he and his parents lived on a houseboat a few miles from Crossett on the Ouachita River. His father operated the toll bridge over the Ouachita River. When World War II started, the family moved to California where the father found work in a shipyard in San Pedro. His mother and a friend opened a café in Long Beach, where their house was located, called “Arkies.  Barry attended kindergarten while living there.

The family returned to Arkansas soon after the war. According to Switzer, his father got involved in “a dry cleaners, a furniture store, a department store, a bakery, a fishing camp, and a used-car lot, but he never made a dime out of any of them.” (p. 24) Then he found out he could make good money as a bootlegger, serving dry Ashley County.

The Switzer family in late 1945 or early 1946 lived in a “gray shotgun house” four miles west of Crossett. Built on stump logs, it was located on a gravel road near a swamp bottom. The house had no electricity, no running water, and no telephone. Its “facilities” was a three-hole outhouse “with a Sears, Roebuck catalog that wasn’t for reading, and a sack of lime in the corner.” P. 25.

Young Barry Switzer from
www.encylopediaofarkanas.com

The house was located about three hundred yards (through the woods) from a rural black community with a dozen or so shacks and Sam Lawson’s Café, which served as a late-night entertainment center.  The location was fortuitous because, apparently, much of his father’s business was with blacks living in the area. According to Switzer, his father had five or six black guys selling liquor for him. Also, his father augmented his whisky business by making usurious loans to various people, including blacks, in need of quick money.

Barry, of course, was still a kid during these early years of his father’s business. His best friends, he wrote, were his big collie, Major, and black kids in the area.

Unfortunately, trouble in the Switzer household extended beyond his father’s occupation: not only was he a bootlegger, but he also was a “rounder and a womanizer.” Tired of his bootlegging and messing around, Barry’s mother moved with him and his brother to El Dorado when Barry was in the 5^th grade. There she had a whole-in-the-wall café called the Coffee Cup (p. 26).  In El Dorado, when Barry was in the 6^th grade at Yoakum Grade School, he began playing football.  In doing so, he found an activity at which he excelled, and he met future Razorbacks Jim Moody and Wayne Harris.

As Switzer was about to start the 8^th grade and was looking forward to playing junior high football in El Dorado, his mother decided to return to live with her husband.  Thus, Barry played football in Crossett and became a local star there in different sports at his all-white school. However, because of his stigma as the son of a bootlegger, he hung out with black kids and played pick-up games with them. Based on this experience, he realized that he would not be a star if he had to play with and against blacks in a school setting.

The relationship between his dad and mom did not improve after she moved back in with him. As Switzer describes it, with his father running around for business and pleasure, his mother, who had few friends, did not have anything to do. Switzer writes, “She read all the time, lived in a world of fiction. I didn’t know it, but she had started taking barbiturates by prescription, and she was drinking. She would kind of glide through the day with a glaze around her.” (p. 29)

When Switzer was a senior in High School, his father got busted by Arkansas Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission officers and was convicted on state liquor charges. He was sent to the Arkansas State Penitentiary, a large farm in the town of Varner, located in the delta by the Arkansas River.

Switzer as a Razorback from www.hogdb.com

With his father in prison, Switzer, then 6’ 1”, weighing 185 pounds, was given a scholarship to play football at the University of Arkansas. He enrolled in fall, 1955. His scholarship provided room, board, books, tuition, and fees, plus he was given $15 per month for laundry money, which was much of what he had to live on. He had a room in Gregson Hall his first year, was home sick, and was not much interested in his classes.

In 1956, he and other football players moved down the hill to the Wilson Sharp House, the new dorm for athletics. He was redshirted his sophomore year, and he began to take his studies seriously – eventually making the Dean’s List in the Business department.

According to Switzer, a turning point in his life came when Frank Broyles became head coach at the University of Arkansas in 1958. In 1957, as a red-shirted sophomore, he had played behind all-conference center Jay Donathan. (Donathan was head coach at Fayetteville High School for several years; his last year was 1962, when I was a sophomore on the team.) In 1958, during Broyle’s first season, Switzer was not a starter but was often on the field. The Razorbacks lost their first six games trying to run the Delaware Wing T.  When Broyles switched to the straight Wing T and Split T, which made better use of the running talent of Jim Mooty, the team won the last four games.

Switzer as a Razorback from
www.voicesofoklahoma.com

As the 1959 season approached, back in Crossett things were still not good. His father was out of prison, and his bootlegging and money lending businesses were doing well. As Switzer describes it, “He was a fine-looking man, very popular in the black community, where he strolled about giving dimes to little kids. But his life still revolved around drinking, gambling, and women. He was out every night doing whatever it was he did.” P.43.

His mother was sinking more deeply into her world of fiction and barbiturates and alchohol:  “She’d sit in her favorite chair and read her novels, never leaving the house but lost somewhere in her imagination, the ills and the booze inside working on her….” (p. 45)

August 26, 1959 was a fateful day for Barry Switzer, one that had to have scarred him forever. He was at the family house near Crossett; his father was somewhere else. He describes what happened the evening of that day:

That night I went to bed in the front bedroom…I hadn’t turned out the light yet. Mother came in and sat on the bed. I didn’t totally understand the hell she was living through. I was too young to know how really desperate her everyday life was….She loved me and she needed my love so much, but as I looked at her sitting there on the bed kind of glassy and smiling, loaded o prescription drugs and booze, something broke inside me and I said to her something I will always regret.

I said, “Mother, I would rather never ever see you again and know you are safe and well taken care of, than to see you like this all the time.”

She leaned over to kiss me.

I turned my head away. (p. 45)

His mother then got a pistol out of the closet and walked out of the room to the back porch. Barry just watched her leave; then he heard a shot. She had killed herself.

Of course, Switzer felt responsible for and guilty about what happened that evening. It surely was a heavy burden. However, thirty years later, when writing this book, Switzer found out that his mother had planned her suicide – it was not in response to what he had said and done. She had left a suicide note, but Barry’s father had kept it a secret from him.

(In November, 1972, when Switzer was an assistant coach at OU, his father was murdered, shot at his house by long-term girlfriend, Lula May, who was jealous because he had started seeing another woman. The shot in the chest would likely not have killed him, but when Lula May was speeding to get him to the hospital, she missed a sharp turn on a gravel road and hit a power pole. The car exploded into flames, killing both of them immediately.)

Despite the tragedy in his life, Switzer’s senior year at UA was a good one. He met his future wife, Kay McCollum (March 31, 1941-January 1, 2008) who was a freshman on the UA campus. She was from Stuttgart, majoring in math. Also, she was a featured twirler with the marching band. They married in 1963 and were divorced in 1981.

On the football field, Switzer -- playing his final year -- was leader of the “Wild Hogs” unit, the second string team; however he played nearly full time at center. He was elected team tri-captain with guard Billy Luplow and quarterback James Monroe.

That year, 1959, Arkansas tied for the Southwest Conference championship with T.C.U. (who Arkansas beat 3-0) and Texas (who beat UA by a score of 13-12 at Memorial stadium in Little Rock). The town of Crossett held a “Barry Switzer Appreciation Banquet” on January 26, 1960, attended by 200 people who paid $1.75 per ticket to hear Coach Broyles and Arkansas Gazette’s Orville Henry speak. (p. 48)

After Switzer graduated he hung around Fayetteville helping with the freshman team and waiting to his summons to the army. It came later in 1960. However, he was released early from the Army (with the help of some influential friends) after Broyles invited him to be a full-time assistant for the 1961 team. He was a Razorback coach through the 1965 season. In early 1966, Jim McKenzie, an assistant coach at UA, was hired to be the coach of the University of Oklahoma. He hired Switzer for his staff.

OU Coach Barry Switzer with Michigan's Bo Schembechler
from sportsillustrated.cnn.com

At Oklahoma, Switzer was an assistant coach from 1966 to 1972, then became head coach in 1973, a job he kept until 1989. In 1976, Frank Broyles offered Switzer the head coaching position at the University of Arkansas. When he turned it down, Broyles hired Lou Holtz. While head coach at Oklahoma, the team had a 157-29-7 record, with national championships in 1974, 1975, and 1985.

In 1994, after this book was written, former Razorback football player Jerry Jones hired Switzer to be head football coach of the Dallas Cowboys. With Switzer as coach, the Cowboys won the Super bowl in 1966.  He resigned as a coach of the Cowboys in 1998.

Switzer as coach of Dallas Cowboys

In reading Bootlegger’s Boy (and other things about him), there is much not to like about Barry Switzer. He inherited some of his father’s bad traits, and some of his personal and professional behavior was – to put it kindly -- not beyond reproach. Nevertheless, he was one of the most successful coaches in the history of collegiate football, and he was one of the most famous Arkansans in the second half of the 20^th Century.

The story of Switzer’s years as a youth and young man in Arkansas makes his accomplishments even more impressive. His accomplishments came in spite – or perhaps spurred by – the difficulties and tragedies of his early years living in a dysfunctional family on the edge of Crossett. 

April 15-18, 1969: Protesting in a Tree at the University of Arkansas

The year 1969 was full of events providing evidence that big changes were occurring at the University of Arkansas – a shift in thinking and power relations. Two of the big 1969 events were described in previous blog posts. The first was the Muhammad Ali controversy when, in March, the University administration was not intimidated by an Arkansas State Senate resolution opposing his speech, and students laughed at the senators who proposed it. (See http://www.eclecticatbest.com/2013/01/arkansass-old-guard-takes-on-muhammad.html)

The second event was later in the year when a decision was made to stop playing Dixie at athletic events. The decision came after a vote by the student senate to recommend against playing it the song; that vote was used by the band director to justify an action he had long wanted to take. (see http://www.eclecticatbest.com/2011/05/december-2-1969-night-we-drove-ole.html )

A third event, providing more evidence of the changing times, came in April 1969. It was a strange episode, verging on the absurd, and it added to a sense of excitement and ferment among many UA students. Also it showed that some students (and non-students on the edge of campus) opposed and even resented the new thinking that was taking hold: it looked to them as if the hippies, liberals, and maybe, even communists were taking over the campus.  

 

The Cyprus Tree Still Stands by the
Old Student Union

This event started at 6:00 a.m. on Tuesday, April 15 when a 22-year-old man, a former student not enrolled at U of A that spring semester because of financial difficulties, climbed up into a tree and vowed to stay there until noon on Friday, April 18^th. He put in place a crude platform middle way up the sprawling Cyprus tree located in front of the Arkansas Student Union building and he brought with him some supplies (he vowed to consume only water and bread during his time in the tree) and a utility bucket.

Before his trip up to his perch in the tree, the man, Stephen R. Pollard Jr., nailed a handwritten message to the tree trunk to explain what he was doing and why. His explanation was partly a New Age message and partly political. In his Age of Aquarius mode, Pollard wrote that he was “totally disgusted in a world where there is no love between people” and that he had decided to “make this small stand to emphasize my beliefs. Being in this tree symbolizes, to me, an escape from the humanity into the world of nature.”  He concluded, “I sincerely hope that my actions will inspire the University of Arkansas population to take note of the world situation and forget their selfishness and quest for personal gains and strive for a better world for all.”

Addressing political issues, Pollard wrote that he totally disagreed with United States involvement in Vietnam, with the policies of the military-industrial complex, and with the presence of military training on the U of A campus. He also said he was opposed to discriminating against minority groups in the country.

That morning of Tuesday, March 15^th, I had to be in the Student Union at about 8:30 a.m. for a meeting concerning student elections to be held on Thursday. I walked sleepily by the Cyprus tree, noticing nothing unusual. Little did I know what was about to happen there.

The guy in the tree did not remain undiscovered for long. By midmorning, word was spreading about him, and curious students were trooping over take a look.  Coincidently, that morning a group of about 30 student protesters had assembled on the lawn in front of Old Main where Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) cadets were doing their weekly drills (at the time ROTC was still mandatory for all male freshmen and sophomores). The protestors did a bunch of silly things on the periphery of where the cadets were marching, including playing croquet to distract cadets.  Only one of interfered directly with the ROTC activities

 

The group announced that on Thursday it would have a picnic in front of the library to protest mandatory ROTC.  A student advisory vote on mandatory ROTC participation was scheduled as part of a student election to be held on Thursday.

As reporters got word about the guy in the tree, they quizzed university officials about what they were going to do.  Dean of Students William F. Denman told them, citing university regulations, that Pollard would not be removed from the tree as long as he did nothing obstructive.

That day I spent some time at the tree in the late afternoon and early evening, stopping by as I was going to the library. Lots of students were passing by or milling around. Like me, some were curious about what the heck was happening. Some were cheered by the spectacle and supportive of Pollard: more than forty people signed and posted to the tree a proclamation agreeing with his message.  Other students were cynical (one noted, eyeing the crowd: what a place for a guy to go if he wants to escape humanity). Apparently, although I did not notice it at the time, some people were angered by what was going on and were plotting ways to disrupt it.

Later in the evening, the darker side of the campus emerged.  Newspaper accounts of Tuesday night told of two different incidents. The first one involved a jeering group of about 50 people who surrounded the tree and about ten of Pollard’s supporters, shouting derogatory and threatening remarks at them, and throwing eggs, bottles, and water-filled balloons.

A second, more dangerous, event came later, after midnight when about 20 persons, “apparently not students” (according to the Arkansas Gazette) arrived and threatened Pollard’s life. Four of them, with knives, ran to the tree and started trying to climb it. One made it high enough to cut a rope holding some supplies. However, two separate newspapers reported, a student who identified himself as an athlete, who had climbed the tree to talk to Pollard, stopped the attack on Pollard. The campus newspaper reported that one person was cut with a knife, though it did not identify who. Apparently, this threat ended when the city and campus police arrived and the would-be assailants quickly left the scene.

After what happened Tuesday night, University administrators decided that Pollard would not be permitted to stay in the tree. The university issued a statement calling the situation dangerous, and said that it had information from UA faculty members that an attempt would be made Wednesday night to forcibly remove Pollard from the tree. Also it reported receiving anonymous telephone calls threatening Pollard.  The university statement said the situation on Tuesday night was one in which “a clear and impending threat was presented to the safety of individuals.”

Throughout Wednesday, large numbers of students continued to congregate around the Cyprus tree to support, heckle, or simply watch what was going on. Those there at about 3:00 p.m. saw Dean Denman climb into the tree to ask Pollard to leave the tree. Pollard replied that he could not in good conscience leave unless he was removed by legal authorities. 

 

Pollard descends the Tree on Wednesday, April 16.
The Police Officer holding the ladder is Wayne Stout

After Denman returned to the ground, he filed a trespassing complaint with city police, who arrived at about 5 p.m.  The two officers who came to the scene were Assistant Police Chief Wayne Stout, the father of a childhood friend and Jefferson Elementary School classmate, Larry Stout, and John Paul Davis.  Officer Stout climbed up a ladder to get nearer to Pollard to tell him that he was under arrest and order him to come down from the tree.  A picture by Ken Good of Pollard descending the tree on a ladder with Stout watching him was on the front page of the Northwest Arkansas Times and the Arkansas Traveler, plus on page 6A of the Arkansas Gazette.

After his arrest, Pollard was taken to the city police department where he was booked for trespassing and released on $500 bail. Denman explained that Pollard was removed from U of A property to forestall possible injury or damage to university property. He said, “To our knowledge this was our only recourse and it was his wish to be arrested….If there was any other alternative we would have used it.”

Soon after Pollard came down from the tree, Joe Saunders, a campus activist with long hair and one gold earring, climbed up to take Pollard’s place in the tree and vowed that he would stay there “indefinitely.” He explained “If I continue, it will at least look like there is support for what Steve is doing…If I get hurt, it will just show what a messed-up place this is.”  University officials decided they would not remove U of A students who chose to sit in the tree.

 

Dean of Students, William F. Denman

Wednesday night was again tense. During the evening, until around 1:00 a.m., about 250 supporters and onlookers were at the tree. About 30 supporters circled the tree to defend it. They sat singing songs “with a mixed protest, patriotism and spiritual flavor” and talked among themselves and with a people who the Arkansas Traveler called “agitators.” This later group yelled at Saunders and his supporters. Some of them threw eggs, firecrackers, and a smoke bomb toward the tree. Much of the crowd dispersed when rains came in the early morning.

Thursday was a busy day around the tree. A student election was being held, and large numbers of students came to the Student Union to cast their votes for student officers and on the referendum concerning the continuation of mandatory ROTC.  Also, the students protesting ROTC moved its picnic from another part of campus to the tree because “it was easier to move the picnic than the tree.” 

On Thursday afternoon, Saunders decided that he did not want to spend another night in the tree, and climbed down from the tree at about 4 p.m. on Thursday. He told reporters he got out of the tree because he was scared. He said he had heard threatening remarks made against him by some people near the bottom of the tree and felt that organized groups on the campus were out to get him: “I’m extremely paranoid,” Saunders said, adding that he wasn’t interested in publicity and believed that 23 hours aloft had proven his enthusiasm for Pollard’s position.

Saunders place in the tree was taken over by several students who each went to the perch in the tree for an hour or two at a time. The first shift in the tree was taken by John Little of Releigh, Miss., a graduate assistant in the English Department and Tommy Snow, a student from Mountain Home.

Little told a reporter, “We are here because we believe that tree climbing is part of the American tradition….I believe that people ought to be able to climb trees without bearing the brunt of any redneck who happens to have a raw egg in his hands.”

Fred McCuiston, a student from Little Rock, took the second shift after about an hour. He said he was “for a guy’s right to climb a tree – to dissent.” Five other students were to follow him throughout the night and the following morning.

At one point in early evening about 500 people were at the tree. Again, some came to support, some to watch, and some to heckle. They listened to a rock band, the American Music Festival that showed up to play in support of the tree sitters. The band dedicated songs to “any suppressed people” on the campus and to “that awful looking tree over there [the cypress].”

The spectators also saw “morality plays” put on by supporters to entertain the audience. The final one had Pollard as the star. It was a courtroom scene in which Pollard knelt before a bearded judge, who wore a straw hat and pounded a gavel. The “judge” told Pollard “to stay out of any tree you don’t want to be hung out of.”

Some of the crowd disappeared in early evening, when it came time for the results of the student election to be announced. Usually the results were read in the lobby of the student union, but because of tree hubbub, the announcement was moved up the street to the lobby of the old library.

Thursday night was mostly uneventful. However, it had a little excitement, including the explosion of a firecracker attached to arrow that was shot in the general area of the tree.  Also, at about 2:00 a.m. an unidentified person charged the tree and climbed into the lower limbs, then ran away when campus security arrived. Cold and rain caused the crowds to thin as time passed.  Early Friday morning, a Northwest Arkansas Times  reporter visited the site, finding two people in the tree perch and two people sitting at the base of the tree.

As originally scheduled, the tree sitting ended at noon on Friday when Pollard climbed up the tree a last time to disassemble the platform he had pieced together and lower the boards, along with remaining supplies, to the ground. He was the final person to descend from the tree, to the applause of many of the 100 people watching from below. The observers were singing “We shall overcome.” 

Pollard argued that his actions had been an exercise of his right to dissent. His critics said that his actions suggested that he was a communist and that his protest was damaging to the country and to the University’s “prestige around the country.”

An article in the Friday, April 18^th edition of the Arkansas Gazette had a story headlined, “Students Using Techniques of Communists.” It quoted Rep. John Ashbrook, a member of the House Committee on Internal Security, telling the 30^th annual meeting of the Freedom Forum at Harding College that “Student radicals are creating campus disorders today by using a time-tested ‘confrontational’ technique that was perfected by Communists.”

 In response to questions, Pollard said he was not a Communist and was opposed to the Communist form of government. He emphasized that he supported United States’ fighting men in Vietnam, but not the policy that sent them there.

Pollard said he viewed the demonstration as a success:

It engendered emotions, good and bad, among University students who I thought were apathetic towards very important issues….It seemed to me before that the only emotions they knew were laughing and crying.”

Pollard said he was gratified that students had openly discussed the issues, both pro and con.

R. D. Rucker, a student from Newport, circulated a petition requesting that the University drop trespassing charges against Pollard.  The petitions, with about 300 signatures, were presented on Friday morning to the University of Arkansas’ Office of Student Affairs. The charges were not dropped, and on May 8^th, Pollard was convicted on trespassing. Judge V. James Ptak fined him $25 for the offense, plus $13 costs. He gave him a 10 day suspended sentence. The fine and costs were paid by coins and bills contributed by the 25 to 30 supporters of Pollard who attended the trial.

For a while, Pollard was something of a campus celebrity, but things soon turned bad for him. On December 4, 1970, he and his wife were arrested by Fayetteville police on drug charges. Then, almost exactly two years after his trespassing trial, on May 2, 1971, he was convicted of two serious felony drug charges and give the maximum sentences for each: consecutive terms of five and ten years in the state penitentiary (See Northwest Arkansas Times, May 3, 1971, p. 2).   

 

Jo Martin, 1969

In the aftermath of this strange tree sitting event, some students – like me – were a bit puzzled by what had happened, but were glad it had. Most students, I think, were appalled by the attempts to harm Pollard and his successors, and wondered who had done those things.  Ultimately, I and my friends on campus were glad that the voices of tolerance had won again on campus. Personally, I though it all was quite a bit of fun that U or A had become a “happening place.”

Afterword:  On Thursday night, April 17, as a band played and hippies sang under the Cyprus tree, the results of the student election were announced to a crowd of nicely dressed students crammed into the entry hall of the old library. It was announced that Jo Martin, an off campus student unaffiliated with a sorority, had been elected president of Associated Students at U of A, defeating Tom Boe, a fraternity member whose candidacy had been supported by the Greeks on campus. She was the first female elected to that position.

Also students had voted in favor of a resolution calling for the abolition of mandatory ROTC at the University of Arkansas.

Notes:

The summary of events at the Cyprus tree and all related quotes were taken from the following newspaper articles:

Youth Settles in a Tree as UA Students Protest Campus ROTC Program. April 16, 1969 (Wednesday), Arkansas Gazette, p. 4A.

U of A’s Tree-Sitter Removed by Police After Threats Made. April 17, 1969 (Thursday). Arkansas Gazette, p. 9A

Tree Sitter Ousted From Perch, Charged  by U of A Officials. April 17, 1969 (Thursday). Northwest Arkansas Times,  pp. 1-2.

Brenda Blagg.  April 16, 1969 [sic] (Thursday). Protester arrested by Police: Student Takes Indefinite Perch. Arkansas Traveler, pp. 1-2.

U of A’s Tree-Sitter Removed by Police After Threats Made.  April 17, 1969 (Thursday). Arkansas Gazette, p.

Student Ends Vigil in Tree, 2 Replace Him. April 18, 1969 (Friday). Arkansas Gazette,  p. 13a

Cold, Rainy Weather Cools Fervor of UA Tree Sitters. April 18, 1969 (Friday). Northwest Arkansas Times, p. 1.

Four-Day ‘Perch-In” a U of A End; Originator Says Project a Success. April 19, 1969 (Saturday). Arkansas Gazette, p. 2A