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92AΠ C O A C H R AY M E Y E R
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
SUNDAY, MARCH 19, 2006
Ididn’t know Ray Meyer when
he was young.
So there is this sense I
have that he was always an
old man.
Ah, but he wasn’t.
There was an entire lifetime he
spent from 1913 until, say, 1975,
when he was a kid, a player, a
young coach, a newlywed, a dad, a
middle-aged coach, a feisty X’sand-
O’s guy full of spit and vinegar
and tough, gnarly love.
A basketball lifer, plain as day.
Like a lot of younger folks, I
started to pick up on ``Coach’’
when he had those great DePaul
teams in the early 1980s.
A 59-3 record from 1980 to 1982
will get your attention. So will
losing in the first round of the
NCAA tournament in each of
those seasons.
Which reminds us that games
will make you as happy as possible,
then invariably kick you in
the head.
Basketball was at the root of Ray
Meyer’s life from the get-go. Why,
he even spied wife-to-be Marge
when she was a teenage hoopster.
``She ran fast,’’ he told me one
time. ``But I ran faster.’’
There was a twinkle in his eye
when he said this.
Did those eyes ever not twinkle?
No doubt.
I’ll bet the troubled Skip Dillard
remembers when they didn’t.
And the early, gawky George
Mikan, too.
And I doubt there was much
twinkling when Ray was so upset
about the way DePaul treated his
son Joey that he more or less
banned himself from the Belden
premises for a spell.
That’s the thing: As an old man,
Ray Meyer was still tough, but he
had mellowed into a Chicago
treasure, an entire city’s grandpa.
If I told you how much he looked
and acted like my departed grandfather
Norbert ``Pamp’’ Overstolz,
you’d chuckle with good humor.
But Ray was young once, and
we should remember that.
Hell, he was young for a long
time, even if we weren’t born yet.
And it’s that youth that must
have formed the elder hoops
statesman we all cherished.
Wouldn’t you like to have
known Ray Meyer back in 1933,
when he was a student at Notre
Dame, when he wasn’t a coach,
when he was just an intense, kneepadded
varsity player loving the
game insanely?
I remember talking with Coach
Ray last spring at an old high
school gym, and he was in a wheelchair,
which irritated
him to no end.
Duke coach Mike
Krzyzewski was
there, too, paying
his respects.
And when it came
time for the photoop,
old Ray got out of that chair
and stood.
From pride. And feistiness.
I think that was what drew
people to Ray Meyer after he was
65 or so — an attitude that was really
just desire, pride and an
essential decency that revealed
itself as integrity, kindness and
determined gentleness toward
those who deserved it.
His concern for former players
never waned. His love of his family
was manifest. And his feistiness
did not allow for pretensions.
Leave Chicago to retire in
Florida or Arizona? Are you kidding?
Ray Meyer was more
Chicago than the Water Tower.
``Chicago’s my home,’’ he would
say simply, putting
the matter to rest.
So he became our
town’s symbol of
the good old days in
basketball, the days
before cell phones,
deranged NBA
agents, shoe deals and trunks that
resemble zoot-suit bottoms.
Yet Ray was cutting-edge back
in his day. Mikan was as radical a
floor concept as you could have
imagined in the mid-1940s.
And it was Ray’s attitude that
was at the core of one of the most
enduring, charming and heartsqueezing
rituals of all: Coach’s
weekly visits to Marge’s grave, a
metronome of love that for 18
years could be interrupted by
nothing except time itself.
Marge died in 1988. She was
Ray’s pal, the mother of their five
children. And that was that.
Marge needed talking to. Every
Saturday. In the end, all that
could stop Ray’s visits were his
own waning light, the bum legs,
the Jumbotron clock in the sky.
We stood by the gravesite a few
years back, on a cold winter day,
Coach clearing a few withered
leaves, speaking some words of
cheer to his departed mate.
On the tombstone was Marge’s
name and the dates of her birth
and death. Next to that was Ray’s
name on the same stone. His
birthdate was inscribed, but not
the rest of the information.
``Someday, I’ll be there,’’ Coach
said, eyes twinkling.
He wasn’t sad. He wasn’t distressed.
He was Coach.
And he is there.
Twinkle in his eye
a lasting memory
Young coach Ray Meyer (middle) leads his players in reviewing game
film in May of 1945. —SUN-TIMES
RICK TELANDER
There is this sense
I have that he was
always an old man.
Ah, but he wasn’t.
Along the way, he groomed
some of the most gifted talents
and legendary names in the game
— not only as the coach at DePaul
for 42 years, but as the creator of
the summer basketball camp he
built in Three Lakes, Wis., and
ran for 55 years.
Some of the greatest names to
play the sport were among the
thousands who spent summers
there. Hall of Famers such as Dan
Issel and Bob Pettit learned the
game during the morning, then
spent afternoons ``tubing'' behind
a speedboat driven by none other
than the head man. Of all his
achievements, the camp was one of
the enduring loves of Meyer’s life.
In much the same way, Meyer
endured as a loved and respected
coach and humanitarian.
``There’s only one man you're
referring to in Chicago when you
say, `Coach,' ’’ former Bears coach
Mike Ditka told a gathering of
sports greats attending an awards
banquet in 2002, ``and that’s
Ray Meyer.''
The statement drew a standing
ovation from the audience of honorees,
many of whom were decades
younger than Meyer.
If they hadn't seen Meyer
coach, they had seen him attending
Bears games (he was a seasonticket
holder for a half-century),
Cubs games (he happened to be
the singer of the seventh-inning
stretch when Sammy Sosa hit his
historic 60th home run in 1998) or
White Sox games (his relationship
with team executive Eddie Einhorn
dated to the 1950s, when
they pioneered the era of college
broadcasts on local TV).
Meyer and Einhorn once made
a handshake deal to televise
DePaul games from old Alumni
Hall for $50 a game.
``Every coach told me, `You're
nuts. It's going to kill your attendance,'
'' Meyer once remembered.
``But the second year we got $100
a game, and it did wonders for our
attendance.''
It was the kind of foresight that
helped turn ``the little school
under the L tracks'' into a powerhouse
of college basketball in the
late 1970s and 1980s, a program
that, like the Cubs, developed a
national following because of its
association with WGN-TV.
Long before the advent of national
cable giant ESPN, the Blue
Demons were the only college basketball
game in town. And, with
the Cubs, they shared a long-running
association with WGN radio
(720-AM) through the early 1990s.
They were associations that
proved to be a boon to recruiting
for Meyer and, later, for his son
Joey, who played for his father
and served as his longtime assistant
before taking the reins of the
program when Meyer retired in
1984. When he retired, Meyer
ranked fifth on the all-time coaching
list with 724 victories.
For the next 13 years, he continued
to be a daily working presence
at the school. He served as a
special assistant to the president
and as the analyst on DePaul radio
broadcasts. His analysis was
precise, but he was unabashedly
partisan when it came to how the
game was going or how the referees
were (or were not) performing.
His role off the court was a continuing
boon to the university. As
its chief fund-raiser, Meyer was
personally responsible for building
the coffers and was in no small
way an architect of the school's
explosive growth since the 1980s.
During his 55 years at DePaul,
he set another remarkable standard
by attending 1,467 consecutive
Blue Demons games.
``Coach Meyer casts a large
shadow on the game of college basketball
in a positive light,'' said
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, a
Chicago native who grew up
watching DePaul games. ``He truly
loved the game and the kids he
coached. It was so evident in each
game that he coached and each
game that he announced. I love
him. He served as a great example
of what a coach should be.''
Krzyzewski had been one of
several speakers to attend a 1998
dinner honoring Meyer. Hundreds
attended the event in the wake of
what became an ugly chapter in
DePaul’s relationship with Meyer.
A festering relationship between
administrators and Joey Meyer
ended with his firing in 1997. Ray
Meyer then resigned, and the
school said goodbye to its legend
with a one-page news release.
The dinner was organized by
Meyer's friends rather than by the
university, and the animosity continued
even as the school honored
Meyer in September 1999 by naming
its new on-campus recreation
facility for him.
Meyer attended the event, but
he had little other contact with
the school for the next three years.
Not until the athletic department
hierarchy was replaced in
the spring of 2002 did the strain
ease. Jean Lenti Ponsetto, who
had played for the DePaul women's
team during the 1970s and
had married one of Meyer's former
stars, Joe Ponsetto, quickly
moved to heal the separation
when she was named DePaul’s
new athletic director.
She reached out to mend fences
and moved to honor Meyer in a
way that would keep his name on
the program permanently, having
the floor at Allstate Arena named
for Meyer and his late wife,
Marge. The unveiling coincided
with Meyer's 90th birthday in
December 2003 and remains an
enduring legacy to a life that
began on the West Side.
Meyer was the youngest of 10
children in one of three non-Jewish
families in the neighborhood
RAY
From Page 94
“There’s only one
man you’re referring
to in Chicago when you
say, ‘Coach,’ and
that’s Ray Meyer.”
MIKE DITKA
Career highlights
1942 Hired by DePaul
as men’s coach.
1945 DePaul wins NIT,
then considered
college basketball’s national
championship, and George
Mikan wins first of three
All-America honors.
1946 Meyer opens
summer hoops
camp for boys on 66 acres
of land he clears himself near
Three Lakes, Wis. It is the
first camp of its kind and
operates for next 55 years.
1950 Meyer begins 10
seasons as coach
of college All-Americans
in summer tours against
the Globetrotters.
1978 Meyer named
national coach of
year as Blue Demons go 27-3
and reach Elite Eight.
1979 DePaul defeats
top-ranked UCLA
to reach Final Four, losing in
semis to Larry Bird’s Indiana
State team. Meyer elected
to Naismith Basketball Hall
of Fame.
1980 Meyer named
national coach of
the year after DePaul goes
26-2 and finishes regular
season ranked No. 1.
1981 Meyer awarded
John Bunn Award
from the Hall of Fame for
contributions to the game.
1984Meyer named
national coach of
the year and retires as fifthwinningest
college coach.
1999 Ray Meyer Fitness
and Recreation
Center dedicated at DePaul.
2003 DePaul dedicates
Ray and Marge
Meyer Court at Allstate
Arena in honor of Meyer and
his late wife.
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