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CCI 1ST SECTION, ZONE: , STATE 18:44:20
THE NEWS & OBSERVER
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2010
SPORTS SPECIAL SECTION E
The Forgotten All-Stars
Lawrence Dunn wanted to play in a high school All-Star Game that featured Broughton’s Pete Maravich in 1965 but wasn’t allowed due to segregation.
TRAVIS LONG - [email protected]
In the limelight at last
ABOUT THIS SECTION
The News & Observer and Charlotte Observer recognize the
great black high school basketball players who played in the
shadows of segregation. Now, a half century later, we tell
you about some of the greatest players in North Carolina
history: The Forgotten All-Stars.
SEGREGATED BLACK BASKETBALL
STARS OVERLOOKED FOR DECADES
By Tim Stevens
STAFF WRITER
INSIDE
L
Paul Grier
At a time when black and white players rarely met on the
court, Charlotte’s best high school player wasn’t picked for
the all-city teams. Page 2E
John “Goat” Bullock
After leading Durham Hillside to state championship and a
second-place finish, he disappeared forever. Page 4E
Harvey Heartley
He dreamed of going to N.C. State, then known as State
College, but was prevented by race barriers. Years later,
his brother got the chance to go. Page 5E
VIDEO AND MORE ONLINE
newsobserver.com
For video interviews and photos of the Forgotten
All-Stars, go to newsobserver.com.
awrence Dunn remembers the 1965 annual banquet of the Raleigh
Sports Club, where Pete Maravich was honored as the area’s high school
basketball player of the year.
Maravich, who played at Broughton and averaged 32 points per game,
was a logical selection. He was a first-team Parade magazine high school
All-America and the most coveted high school player in the country.
Dunn, who played at small Berry O’Kelly School on Raleigh’s Method Road, was a
star, too. The Raleigh Sports Club named him the Wake County independent player
of the year after he averaged 34 points and led O’Kelly to the N.C. High School
Athletic Conference 2-A title.
Maravich, who was white, had to leave the banquet early to prepare for the N.C.
Coaches Association East-West All-Star Game.
Dunn, an African-American, was not invited to the game. The East-West All-Star
games were for players at N.C. High School Athletic Association schools. White
players.
Dunn didn’t know all that. He thought the
East-West All-Star Game was a chance to play
against the best, and he was ready to go.
“I leaned over to Coach [William] Hooker
and asked if we had a game like that, and if I
could play in the one with Pete?” Dunn said.
“He said he’d explain later, but he never did.”
Dunn’s high school, Berry O’Kelly, and the
other high schools for African-Americans,
were members of the N.C. High School Athletic Conference.
Dunn played during a time of segregation in
North Carolina. Many black basketball stars
had limited prospects after high school and
most played in relative obsurity, unable to
play for most major schools in the South.
Maravich scored 42 points, which is still the
All-Star Game record, in Greensboro.
Dunn later played in a Johnston CountyWake County All-Star Game for the black
schools. He doesn’t remember how many
points he scored.
Almost 50 years later, Dunn, 64, still remembers the disappointment of not playing
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with Maravich in the All-Star Game.
“That hurt me as much as anything in my
life,” he said. “Pete went to the game, and I
went to a dance they were having at my
school. ...”
“Pete was somebody that got a lot of [attention]. I accepted that. I never said I was better
than him. I know that he loved basketball better than anything. But I’ll always wonder what
was out there. That’s why I really hated that I
couldn’t play in the East-West All-Star Game.
I would like to know how I would have done.”
Closed doors
Dunn, one of 10 children raised in east Raleigh, wasn’t as good as Pistol Pete, but he was
good enough to play in the Atlantic Coast
Conference, according to the coaches of the
era. But that was never an option.
“I knew there were white people and black
people, but we never really talked a lot about
society,” he said.
SEE DUNN, PAGE 3E
CCI 1ST SECTION, ZONE: , STATE 17:53:36
2E
The Forgotten All-Stars
A
THE NEWS & OBSERVER
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2010
PAUL GRIER
Paul Grier, who starred at West Charlotte High in 1956 and is considered one of the best players ever from Charlotte, shows his dribbling ability at his old school.
PHOTOS BY TRAVIS LONG - [email protected]
The best in his city
By Peter St. Onge
STAFF WRITER
On Saturdays and Sundays, in
junior high and high school,
Richard Vinroot walked to the
bus near his parents’ Charlotte
home, and he headed up Providence Road looking for some basketball to play. It didn’t much
matter where those games might
be. He didn’t much care who he
played with, so long as the basketball was good.
The best games, he learned,
usually involved black players.
It was the 1950s, a decade after
Jackie Robinson became the first
black to play Major League Baseball, but a decade before a black
basketball player would put on a
varsity uniform for an Atlantic
C o a s t C o n f e re n c e s c h o o l .
Sports, just like the rest of America, was navigating the harsh currents of race. And compared to
the rest of the America, the
South was lagging.
In North Carolina, blacks and
whites played sports together only in the most casual fashion, in
old gymnasiums and on public
playgrounds, where teenagers
gathered for pickup games.
In Raleigh, some of the best
college and high school players
from around Eastern N.C. came
to an old court outside an A&P
grocery store in the Mordecai
community. In Durham, they
gathered at Carr Junior High.
In Charlotte, it was the Red
Shield Club in Fourth Ward, or
the Colonial Park courts and
others. The players came from
poor, inner city neighborhoods,
or like Richard Vinroot, working class homes a few miles
away. For some, the only thing
more different than the paths
they took to those games was
the path their basketball lives
took afterward.
None of which mattered at the
time to Vinroot, who would later
play for the University of North
Carolina Tar Heels before coming back to Charlotte, where he
would become mayor. “Nobody
much cared it was blacks and
Former Charlotte mayor and UNC basketball player Richard
Vinroot, left, played against Paul Grier in pickup games.
whites,” he says of those games.
“We were kids playing basketball. I remember there were some
great players out there.”
To most of the city, those players
would be forever anonymous – ignored by white newspapers,
shunned by major southern universities.
But one of them, whom Richard
Vinroot remembers, might have
been the best ever in Charlotte.
Talent and confidence
“You want to see the course?”
Paul Grier says, pulling up in an
electric golf cart. It’s a chilly
Wednesday morning at the venerable Charlotte Country Club.
Grier, in a windbreaker and corduroys, has just finished a morning shift on the maintenance
crew.
It’s a good place, he says, driv-
ing past the stately white clubhouse. He’s worked there since
1 9 7 2 , p a r t- t i m e n o w, w i t h
enough of his days left over to
play a little golf. He could probably make some extra money
with some on-the-side matches,
he says, but everyone here knows
better than to play him.
You learn this quickly about Paul
Grier: He’s never lacked for athletic
confidence – or the talent to back it
up. By the time he graduated from
West Charlotte in 1956, Grier was
considered one of the best players in
school history – and one of the best
ever in his city.
At 6 feet 2, Grier was quick
enough to be a playmaking guard
and strong enough to be a rebounding forward.
“He was the best I’ve seen come
out of Charlotte,” said George
Young, a West Charlotte sports
historian who later played with
Grier on a touring Charlotte team
called the Westside 5. “His play,
his knowledge. Whatever it was,
he had it.”
Most of the city, however, had
no clue. Newspapers didn’t send
their reporters to West Charlotte
games, even during a run of state
titles, instead paying a student a
few dollars to call in games for
box scores. And with blacks and
whites playing in different N.C.
high school basketball associations, the best black teams never
got the opportunity – or the recognition – that came with playing the best whites.
Jeff Capel, now a Charlotte
Bobcats assistant coach, remembers when his all-black high
school, West Southern Pines,
played for the state title in the
mid-1960s.
“I remember getting the newspaper the next day and wanting
to read about how they did,” he
says. “There was not one mention of them in the newspaper. I
remember asking my dad about
it and he said, ‘They just don’t
write about us.’ ”
On the playground, though, everyone knew Paul Grier. He
played mostly near his home in
the Double Oaks neighborhood,
but he also found games downtown and at other spots where
whites came to play. Vinroot,
who starred at East Mecklenburg, remembers playing against
Grier at the Red Shield Club. “I
remember him being very good,”
he says. “Better than me – and I
thought I was pretty good.”
Says Grier: “The white boys
would come down, and we would
just kill them. They’d beat us in
football, but in basketball, we’d
just run them to death.”
The games were informal with
the same rules no matter which
court, which city you played:
Play until you lose. Play with
whomever you could grab. Didn’t
matter what color your skin was.
“If you could play, you could
play,” said Lawrence Dunn, a
black high school star at the time
in Raleigh.
Outside that A&P in Raleigh,
the best high school talent, along
with players from North Carolina, Duke and N.C. State, would
wait their turns for a game. It was
on those courts Dunn met first
met Fayetteville’s Rusty Clark
and New Bern’s Bill Bunning,
white players who eventually
were UNC starters.
In Charlotte, Grier remembers whites and blacks drinking
Cokes together after games. It
was integration years before
four black youths ordered sodas, along with coffee and donuts, at a Greensboro whitesonly lunch counter in 1960.
Says Vinroot: “We didn’t feel
like we were sinful or anything.
At some point we develop our
biases and behaviors, but kids
don’t care.”
Kids also don’t notice, and Vinroot didn’t think much more
about Grier until Vinroot started
getting named to all-city teams in
high school. Grier was on none of
those teams.
“That,” says Vinroot, “is when
I finally started to think, ‘This
ain’t right.’ ”
SEE GRIER, PAGE 3E
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character comes through.
AT&T is proud to join in honoring those who through their athleticism on
the court, and their courage and character in the face of injustice, laid
the foundation for future success while challenging North Carolinians to
embrace diversity and opportunity for all.
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CCI 1ST SECTION, ZONE: , STATE 17:57:36
The Forgotten All-Stars
THE NEWS & OBSERVER
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2010
A
Lawrence Dunn, left, was a captain at N.C. A&T.
DUNN
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1E
Paul Grier decided to play at N.C. A&T so he could stay close to home.
TRAVIS LONG - [email protected]
GRIER
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 2E
Barnstorming
Nine years after Grier graduated from West Charlotte,
Maryland native Billy Jones became the first black to
play for an ACC school when he suited up for his homestate Terrapins. A year later, New York native Charlie
Scott became the first black scholarship athlete for
UNC, Paul Grier’s favorite team.
Integration would soon allow blacks the path their talents had marked out for them, and N.C. cities and towns
would see some of their best – Rocky Mount’s Phil Ford,
Shelby’s David Thompson, Wilmington’s Michael Jordan – launch heralded careers at state universities.
Grier had a different choice.
“Those days, you could either play up north or go to a
historically black college,” says Charles McCullough,
coach at West Charlotte from 1961 to 1987. “That’s just
the way things were, and the players understood that.”
Grier says he was recruited by a couple of northern
schools, including Purdue. But, he says: “My mom
didn’t want me that far away,” so he chose N.C. A&T,
where he played immediately on a team that included
future NBA player Al Attles.
During his sophomore year, he came back to Charlotte
on a weekend Goose Tatum’s Harlem Stars were playing
an exhibition. “Goose asked around about any local
players that could play against them,” Grier says.
Grier scored 26 points in the exhibition. He made
$45, but says he lost his college eligibility.
Instead he went barnstorming with the Stars, then later with the Harlem Hobos and the Court Jesters. He
traveled across the U.S. – and even to Havana, Cuba,
before the Castro regime took over. “It was a great life,”
he says. “I was making a lot of money then.”
In 1964, while leaving a Chicago bar, he was hit in the
hip with a stray bullet. His basketball career was over.
He took up golf for a while – seriously enough to play
on a black pro tour – then came back to Charlotte and
the job at Charlotte Country Club.
Some time later, he noticed one of the club’s members,
former Charlotte mayor Richard Vinroot. Grier recognized him, of course. “Oh yeah,” he says now, standing
on the driving range. “He played for Carolina.”
Back in the gym
Another chilly Wednesday. West Charlotte High School.
Paul Grier, now 74 and in a sweater and slacks, walks into
the gymnasium, where a photographer begins setting up to
take his picture. Across the gym, Richard Vinroot begins to
walk his way. “You know,” says Grier. “I’ve never met him.”
They shake hands, then embrace. “Glad to see you,
sir,” Vinroot says, and Grier says the same. Then Vinroot jokes: “I don’t want to play you on your home
court,” and soon the pair are talking about basketball.
Vinroot, now 69, graduated from East Meck in 1959,
then attended UNC on a Morehead Scholarship. He saw
the court in nine games for the Tar Heels and scored his
only point for Dean Smith on Jan. 6, 1962, when he was
fouled in a game against Notre Dame and hit his first of two
free throws.
He thrived at Chapel Hill, becoming class president
his junior and senior years, then later earned a law degree there. In Charlotte, he served eight years on the city
council, then as mayor from 1991-1995. He is now an
attorney at an Uptown Charlotte firm.
Before all of that, he grew up the son of poor, immigrant parents, in a household not that far removed economically from Paul Grier’s. But whites, no matter the
background, had different choices, different opportunities, he says. “I got a lot of breaks,” Vinroot says, “and
sports had a lot to do with those breaks.”
Grier shrugs at questions about that. He says he didn’t
think much then about chances he missed – until Charlie
Scott went to UNC.
“That kind of hit my mind,” he says. And now, well,
there’s no way to know how opportunities would have
played out.
On this day, in this gym, he and Vinroot talk about the
best players they’ve seen – including Charlotte’s and
UNC’s Walter Davis and Bobby Jones, names this basketball state will forever celebrate.
And the player some say was better than any in this
city? Grier tells Vinroot about getting interviewed by a
Charlotte Observer reporter in 1987 – 31 years after he
graduated from West Charlotte. “It was the first interview I ever did,” he said. “I had tears in my eyes.”
Vinroot puts his hand on Grier’s shoulder. “I used to
have an interview every week back then,” he says. “And
you were a lot better than me.”
They talk some more about basketball, about kids and
grandkids, until it’s time for the photo shoot. The West
Charlotte girls varsity team has come into the gym, and
as they stretch they point at Grier’s way. They don’t
know the man dribbling a basketball for the camera.
That’s Paul Grier, they’re told. They look blankly.
Some think he’s the best ever to play in Charlotte,
they’re told. “For real?” “Did you hear that?” “Grier?”
They go quiet and watch the old basketball player, still
dribbling, gracefully.
“Maybe,” says one, “he can teach me a few things.”
Reporters David Scott and Tim Stevens contributed to
this story.
His was a household where faith dominated – “you
couldn’t play outside on Sunday if you didn’t go to
church” – but where race was never discussed.
While Maravich slipped into gyms to shoot for hours
at a time, Dunn retreated to his backyard rim and a
goal with no net, no backboard.
Maravich was a national recruit. Dunn was, too, but
with a caveat. Most major colleges in the South, including the four ACC schools in North Carolina, didn’t
recruit black players.
“He was good enough to play in the ACC,” said
James Farris, who coached O’Berry Kelly rival Garner
Consolidated. “He was quick and could shoot the eyes
out.
“He could have played anywhere where he was given
the chance.”
Ed McLean, who was in his first season as the allwhite Broughton coach in the fall of 1964, saw the
black players in pick-up games in the community.
“There were guys who could really play,” McLean
said. “They could play with the best people we were
playing.”
Hooker, the O’Berry coach, said Dunn is one of the
quickest players he has ever seen, and he has never
seen Dunn’s equal as a shooter.
Hooker remembers watching Dunn make shot after
shot from the top of the circle in practice from what
would be 3-point range today.
Hooker called Dunn “Lucky Shot” and the nickname
stuck.
“I loved to shoot that fadeaway jumper from the corner,” Dunn said. “I’d fall all back in the crowd and that’s
where the girls were usually standing.”
There was little defenders could do because of
Dunn’s range and his quickness.
“James Farris, who was coaching at Garner Consolidated, got so frustrated one night because they
couldn’t stop Lawrence. James was pulling at his hair.
But nobody stopped Lawrence all year,” Hooker said.
Dunn’s 34 points per game came on a limited number of shots. Hooker said Dunn made more than half of
his shots.
“Lawrence didn’t shoot that much, but he didn’t
miss many,” Hooker said.
CIAA beckons
Dunn said he had some major college basketball offers, the most intriguing from Indiana University.
“The Van Arsdale boys [Dick and Tom] were there,
and it was a well-known program,” Dunn recalled.
“The coach told me they wanted me to come and pass
the ball. I wanted to shoot.
“But the bigger thing was that I was a scaredy cat.
That was a long ways from home.
“Besides, in my world, North Carolina A&T was just
as good, and they wanted me. I wanted to play in
North Carolina and the CIAA was as good as I could
hope for.”
Hooker said he still hasn’t forgiven Dunn for not telling him about the Indiana offer.
“I’m still mad about it,” Hooker said. “I wish I had
known.”
Dunn had a good career at N.C. A&T and was the
team captain as a senior.
At that time, many of the best players in the country
played in the CIAA, and Dunn remembers as a freshman
trying to guard Earl “the Pearl” Monroe, who would later
star for the New York Knicks.
“He was coming down on a fast break, and he was
known for doing this spin move so I was ready for it,”
Dunn recalled. “But he faked the spin I was expecting
and spun the other way. I just stood there watching
him.
“My coach [Cal Irvin] took me out and said, ‘Don’t
worry. He does that to everybody.’ ”
Dunn later coached the Garner High girls to the
state 4-A basketball championship in 1978. The juniors on the baseball team he coached at Garner won
the state title as seniors, and he built an outstanding
boys basketball program at Athens Drive.
He was Athens Drive’s first boys basketball coach and
held the position until resigning in 2001.
Dunn doesn’t spend time wondering what his life
would have been like if he had been able to go to an ACC
school. He regrets not playing in that East-West All-Star
Game, but doesn’t despair over it.
“I’m still enjoying my life,” he said. “I was raised to
not look back, but to look ahead.”
But Dunn did get a chance to be part of the N.C.
Coaches Association All-Star Game.
Twenty-five years after he attended a school dance
while Maravich set a scoring record, Dunn coached
the East team to victory.
[email protected] or 919 812-8910
3E
CCI 1ST SECTION, ZONE: , STATE 17:58:39
4E
The Forgotten All-Stars
A
THE NEWS & OBSERVER
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2010
JOHN ‘GOAT’ BULLOCK
A champion, a mystery
By Tim Stevens
STAFF WRITER
For a moment, John “Goat”
Bullock was the greatest basketball player Durham Hillside High
had ever seen, the star of a team
of stars. And then he was gone, a
budding legend whose story
seemed to end with his final high
school basketball game.
His teammates don’t remember hearing Bullock say goodbye.
They don’t remember seeing him
again after he scored 42 points in
a loss to West Charlotte in the
1965-66 N.C. High School Athletic Conference championship
game. Bullock quit coming to
school, they say, and his teammates heard that he had returned
to his native New York City.
Years later, they would hear rumors of Bullock sightings in New
York, but they would never hear
from Goat again.
“He was always a mystery
man,” recalled teammate William “June” Harris. “We never
saw him after practice. I don’t
really remember seeing him
much at school.”
His former teammates say
ESPN unsuccessfully tried to
find Bullock when it did a special
on his high-scoring Durham Hillside team, dubbed the Pony Express. Reporters and researchers
for The News & Observer and
Charlotte Observer were unable
to locate him for this story.
“He was just gone,” said Willie
Bradshaw, who coached the Hillside junior varsity. “After the
championship game I don’t know
if he ever came back to the
school.”
Hillside teammate Marshall
Hill said Bullock was a “lone
wolf” but agreed with teammate
Daniel McLaurin, whose book
“32 Minutes of Greatness” is
about the 1965-66 season, that
Bullock was a great teammate.
“He was a jokester,” McLaurin
said. “He’d laugh with us at practice, but he didn’t hang out with
us. If there was a party after a
game or something, Goat
wouldn’t be there.”
John ‘Goat’ Bullock, second row, second from left, led Durham Hillside to a state championship in 1965.
PHOTOS BY TRAVIS LONG – [email protected]
‘6-3, plays like 6-8’
Bullock moved in with his
grandmother on Umstead Street
in Durham in the summer of
1964.
“I had heard that Goat had gotten into a little trouble in New
York and came [to Durham Hillside] to be with his grandmother,” said teammate George Outlaw, who lives in Leavenworth,
Kan.
Bu l l o c k p l aye d i n p i c ku p
games at Carr Junior High in
Durham, where white and black
basketball players, including
Duke and University of North
Carolina players, would play together.
“The first time I heard of Goat,
my friend told me that he had just
seen the baddest dude to ever
lace on shoes,” said Mike Dixon,
who saw all of Bullock’s games.
“Goat was unbelievable. All these
college guys were st anding
around shaking their heads.
“Years later, when I saw Earl
Monroe for the first time, I said
he reminds me of Goat, but Goat
was better.”
Bullock averaged a triple-double for Hillside in 1965-66. He
scored 22 points per game,
grabbed 12 rebounds and handed
out 10 assists per game.
All five Hillside starters scored
in double figures that season and
the team set a state high school
record by averaging 105 points
per game. The team scored 100
points or more in a state record
14 games and set the state record
for most points in a game in a
Marshall Hill was a teammate of John ‘Goat’ Bullock
on Hillside’s state title team.
A 1965 conference title pendant given to the Durham Hillside
basketball team led by Bullock.
14 7 - 5 7 v i c t o r y ove r Ro c ky
Mount Booker T. Washington.
“John Bullock was the best
basketball player I’ve ever seen
on the high school level,” Russell Blunt, the late longtime
Hillside football coach, said in
1995. “And yes, that includes
Rodney Rogers. Rodney was a
fantastic player, but I still say
Goat could have put Rodney in
the basket with one of his slam
dunks.”
McLaurin was amazed when
he first met Bullock, who introduced himself as Goat and created a sensation on the outdoor
courts at Whitted Junior High,
McDougald Terrance and Carr
Junior High in Durham.
“I figured he must be 6-7, 6-8
from what I heard,” McLaurin
said. “He was 6-3, but played like
he was 6-8.”
Bullock would stun spectators
with his slams, but he never
dunked in a game. It was against
high school rules at the time.
Bullock entered Hillside in the
fall of 1964, but the paperwork
confirming his eligibility wasn’t
in place until midseason.
The varsity was 6-4 when Bullock joined the team, but had
shown its potential in defeating a
Laurinburg Prep team 92-90
without Bullock. Charlie Scott, a
future All-American at the University of North Carolina, had 30
points for Laurinburg in the loss
and another “Goat,” New York
playground legend Earl Manigault, scored 16.
The win set the stage for Bullock’s arrival.
“When he got there we started
tearing the league up,” McLaurin
said.
The best example of the team’s
explosiveness came in the
NCHSAC championship game
w h e n H i l l s i d e o v e rc a m e a
30-point halftime deficit to defeat
West Charlotte, 80-78 in overtime. Bullock hit the winning
shot.
The team’s coach, Carl Easterling, worked throughout the
spring and summer to arrange a
game, or at least a scrimmage,
against some of the all-white high
school teams in the area, according to members of the team. Easterling offered to lock the gym
doors and let no one in except
players. He wanted his team to
take on the other top teams in the
area.
“Nobody would do it,” McLaurin said. “I guess the timing
wasn’t quite right yet.”
‘Lefty’ remembers ‘Goat’
The 1965-66 Hillside team
started where the state championship team of the previous year
left off, taking a 138-70 victory
over Durham Little River in the
opening game.
The highlight of the regular
season was a 110-106 win over
Laurinburg and Scott at North
C a ro l i n a C o l l e ge ’s p a c ke d
5,000-seat McDougald Gym.
Bullock put on a show.
He scored 41 points, grabbed
25 rebounds and handed out 13
assists. Scott had 15 points before fouling out.
“I remember the game,” said
Charles “Lefty” Driesell, the former Maryland coach, who was at
the game recruiting Scott for Davidson. “It was so loud you
couldn’t hear the officials’ whistles. The teams were running so
much and it was so loud that the
teams would score a couple of
baskets and the officials would
wipe them [the whistles] off because they had blown the whistle
before.
“I remember there was a player
named ‘Goat,’ but that’s about all.
If he got 41 on Charlie he must
have been something, though.
What became of him?”
Bullock led Hillside back to the
NCHSAC 4-A championship
game, but West Charlotte dominated, as Bullock scored 42 of
H i l l s i d e ’s 6 6 p o i n t s i n t h e
30-point loss. “Nobody else could
make anything,” Dixon said.
“Goat quit passing and started
shooting. He made 19 straight
shots at one point.”
And then he disappeared
His former teammates heard
Bullock had returned to New
York. Many thought he would
show up on a college roster or in
the NBA, but he never did.
Hill believes Bullock is alive in
New York. He still hears rumors
about his former teammate from
time to time.
“The legend of Goat Bullock
will never die,” Dixon said.
“Coach Easterling once said
Goat Bullock was the best basketball player he’d ever seen. Most
people who saw Goat would
agree.”
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CCI 1ST SECTION, ZONE: , STATE 18:8:5
The Forgotten All-Stars
THE NEWS & OBSERVER
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2010
REGINALD ‘HAWK’ ENNIS
A
HARVEY HEARTLEY
Denied a
chance to
go to NCSU
By Tim Stevens
STAFF WRITER
Reginald ‘Hawk’ Ennis is memorialized on this plaque as one of N.C. Central’s best basketball players.
TRAVIS LONG – [email protected]
‘The greatest’
By Tim Stevens
STAFF WRITER
Famed college and professional basketball coach
John McLendon didn’t hesitate when asked who was
the greatest player he ever coached.
McLendon coached three consecutive National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics national champions and
won more than 600 games, but his mind rolled all the way
back to 1940 when he was beginning his career as the
coach of North Carolina College, now N.C. Central.
“When I am asked to name the greatest player I have
coached, my mind is deluged by a thousand memories,” McLendon said before his death in 1999. “I have
seen many great athletes. I am reluctant to name just
one, but I know all my colleagues will agree that [Reginald] ‘Hawk’ Ennis of Smithfield is the greatest basketball player we have witnessed in our time.”
A half century later, Reginald Ennis is remembered
more as a high school coach and administrator than as a
player.
That Ennis played college basketball was due to the
vision of Dr. C.W. Furlong, a black physician in Johnston County. Furlong had seen Ennis playing at the allblack Johnston County Training School in Smithfield
for coach Howard Brutus Wilson, who would later precede Clarence “Big House” Gaines as coach at Winston-Salem State.
Furlong arranged a trip to Durham and presented
Ennis to McLendon.
“Coach, I have brought you the best high school basketball player in the state,” Furlong reportedly said
during that first meeting with McLendon.
Ennis started all four years at North Carolina College,
was captain and the team’s most valuable player for three
years, and was selected to the all-CIAA team three times.
McLendon, who had learned from Dr. James Naismith at the University of Kansas, was the perfect coach
for Ennis. McLendon couldn’t play at Kansas because
he was black, but Naismith, the inventor of basketball,
allowed him to attend Jayhawks practices where he
learned how to adapt to basketball’s changing, faster
pace.
Ennis, who was a lanky 6 feet 2 with a gymnastics
background, fit in the new style perfectly.
He was a great shooter and extremely quick. He had
long arms and was a great full-court pressure defender.
Soon McLendon began calling him Hawk because of
his quickness and his court vision.
Ennis was drafted after he graduated from college, but
not by the National Basketball Association, which
wouldn’t draft its first black player until 1950 (McLendon’s Harold Hunter was one of three black players drafted that year). Ennis went into the U.S. Army during
World War II and later served in the U.S. Air Force in
Korea.
In between, he earned his master’s degree at New
York University.
Ennis spent the bulk of his adult life as an educator.
“He was a drill sergeant in the Army, and he was
the toughest man I ever knew,” said Harvey Heartley, who played for Ennis at Johnston County
Training School.
“He believed that you had to run to play basketball
and you had to be in shape to run. There was a stage at
one end of the gym, and he’d stand up there and fold
his arms and stare at you. He looked like he was 14-feet
tall. He’d run you to death.”
Ennis taught and coached at Johnston County Training School, later named Johnston Central High, for 22
years. He later coached at Smithfield High and Smithfield-Selma High and was an assistant principal at several Johnston County schools.
He had opportunities in college coaching at N.C.
Central and Fayetteville State but preferred to coach in
high school.
“He knew he came too early to make millions of dollars playing basketball like some of the players do
now,” said Carolyn Ennis, his widow. “But he knew he
was living at the perfect time to help boys become
young men.”
Ennis died in 1994 at 74. His legacy was part teacher, part coach, part star player. For many who knew
him, he would always be Hawk Ennis.
So when it came time for the Johnston Community
School in Smithfield to choose a nickname, there was
but one choice: Hawks.
Harvey Heartley grew up dreaming of playing basketball at State College, now N.C. State.
The 6-foot-4 Heartley was a star at Johnston County
Training School in Smithfield in the late 1940s.
“Bones,” as he was known, was a tremendous shooter.
“If I shot it, I knew it was going in,” Heartley recalled.
John McLendon, the coach at North Carolina College, now N.C. Central, started recruiting Heartley after seeing him play as a 14-year-old.
“We played Durham Hillside over at Washington
High in Raleigh,” Heartley said. “The place was
packed. I scored 39 that night. I was 14 years old. I
didn’t have any bad habits. I went to bed by 8. I drank
my milk and ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I
could run all night long.
“After the game, Coach McLendon said I needed to
come play for him.”
After Heartley graduated, he had scholarship offers
from throughout the country, but State College and
other segregated schools were not an option.
“I wanted to play for State,” recalled Heartley, who
later coached basketball and was athletic director at
St. Augustine’s.
“Most people don’t remember, but back when the
Dixie Classic was played at State, we [blacks] were
allowed to sit in one section. Section 48. Right behind
the South goal.”
Reginald Ennis, the Johnston County Training
School coach, got his team tickets to the Dixie Classic,
an annual holiday event that pitted four of the nation’s
top collegiate teams against State, Duke, the North
Carolina and Wake Forest in a three-day tournament.
“It was wrong, and it was racist to put us in that one
section, but it was wonderful,” Heartley said. “We’d sit
in our little section, and we’d see coaches and players
from everywhere. And we got to see all those great
players. I wanted to get down on the court with them.”
Harvey Heartley played at N.C. Central from 1951
through 1955. He was an all-CIAA selection and later
was inducted into the Central Intercollegiate Athletics
Association Hall of Fame. Heartley later coached state
championship high school teams at Clayton Cooper
and Raleigh Ligon.
In Raleigh in 1951, there were still separate drinking
fountains for blacks and whites, separate entrances at
movie theaters and separate swimming pools.
N.C. State would not have its first black scholarship
player for another 20 years.
Al Heartley, another Johnston County Training
School product, made State’s freshman basketball
team as a walk-on in 1967 and became its first black
basketball scholarship recipient the following year.
“I wanted to go there so badly,” Harvey Heartley
said. “I think that’s why my younger brother went
there.”
Harvey Heartley dreamed of playing for N.C.
State but he attended N.C. Central and later
became a successful coach and athletic director at St. Augustine’s.
2005 NEWS & OBSERVER FILE PHOTO
5E
CCI 1ST SECTION, ZONE: , STATE 18:8:55
6E
The Forgotten All-Stars
A
THE NEWS & OBSERVER
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2010
STEPHENS-LEE HIGH
Former Stephens-Lee High School basketball stars Johnny Bailey, left, Henry Logan, center, and Willie Maples led their team to a championship in 1962.
PHOTOS BY TRAVIS LONG - [email protected]
Led by star trio to title
“In those days, you couldn’t have
too many blacks go on, if you know
what I mean,” Bailey said. “(Colleges) would come in and pick one
from the team. The door was only
going to be open for one at a time.”
Logan was the one at StephensLee.
By David Scott
[email protected]
They called it the “Castle On
The Hill,” an imposing, threestory school building nestled into a mountainside in Asheville.
The school’s actual name was
Stephens-Lee High, Asheville’s
black high school from 1922 until
1965. All that remains today is the
gymnasium. The rest of the school’s
buildings was demolished long ago.
That gym was the site of many
of Stephens-Lee’s greatest sports
moments, played out by athletes
few of whom – because of the nature of those segregated times –
would be known beyond Asheville’s black community.
But the Bears’ 1962 state basketball championship team
would provide an exception.
That year, led by one of the
great players in North Carolina
history, Stephens-Lee traveled to
Greensboro to beat Winston-Salem’s Atkins High 66-59 for the
state’s black 4A championship.
The team was made up of several college-caliber players, none
taller than 6 feet 3 but each with
an accurate shooting eye and
great leaping ability.
“That team had so many really
good players, and the key was
they all played their role,” said
Johnny Bailey, a player on the
Bears’ junior varsity that year.
What made the Bears special,
however, were their core players –
forward Bennie Lake, forward Willie Maples and especially a skinny
5-10 guard named Henry Logan.
As Bailey would later write:
“(Logan) played in a zone only
the gods would approve of.”
Asheville’s finest
In 1962, Stephen-Lee had a special basketball team. Coached by
C.L. Moore (the father of former
Johnson C. Smith basketball coach
Bob Moore), the Bears traveled all
over the southeast to play. With no
schools to play around Asheville,
the Bears spent weeks out of town,
playing games in Tennessee, Wil-
Major opportunity
Former Stephens-Lee High
School basketball standout
Henry Logan.
mington and Charlotte.
The Bears racked up the victories wherever they went, led many nights by the trio of Lake, Maples and Logan.
Maples and Logan, however,
were the team’s unquestioned
leaders. Maples challenged his
teammates to be better, often directing his criticism at the supremely talented Logan.
“They were like Ali and Frazier,”
said Bailey. “But also Henry was
[Michael] Jordan to Willie’s [Scottie] Pippen. Neither would give in.
In essence, they really complemented each other.”
After winning the state championship in 1962, the Bears – thanks
to Logan – began to attract more
attention. When Logan and Maples
were seniors in 1964, Stephens-Lee
games were moved to the Asheville
Civic Center.
“White people heard about us
and wanted to watch us play,” Logan said.
By that time, some Bears players had attracted the attention of
black colleges in the Carolinas.
Lake would attend Shaw. Maples
said he had a scholarship offer
from N.C. A&T.
Western Carolina coach Jim
Gudger saw Logan play a game at
the Civic Center and, astounded at
his talent, offered him a scholarship.
“My mama wanted me to stay
home and break the color barrier
at Western,” said Logan said.
Logan elected to go to Western
Carolina, where he embarked on
a remarkable career.
Although North Carolina’s
Charlie Scott was the first black
player to star at an ACC school in
the south when he started his varsity career in 1967, Logan is generally considered to be the first to
star at a predominantly white
university in the southeast.
Logan averaged 30.7 points in
his four-year career with the Catamounts, who were then in the
small-college NAIA.
Logan had jumping ability that
was comparable to future N.C.
college stars David Thompson
and Michael Jordan.
“That’s what they say,” Logan
said. “God blessed me with having great hang time. I’d be up
there for a long period of time. It
scared me sometimes.”
One of Logan’s opponents was
Lenoir-Rhyne’s Neill McGeachy,
now the school’s athletics director.
“He was a dynamic player, the
likes of which we had never seen,”
said McGeachy said. “He was a
great shooter, but he had that lift
that got him to the basket.”
McGeachy recalled Logan pulling up for a jump shot over another Lenoir-Rhyne player.
“He said he could read Henry’s
shoe size on the bottoms of those
Converse Chuck Taylors (shoes),”
said McGeachy said. “He ran over
to me and sad said, ‘Geach, you can
guard Henry now.’ ”
Breaking the color barrier at
Western Carolina was not stressful
for him, Logan said. The biggest
problem Logan encountered was
not being permitted to play in a tournament in Lafayette, La., in 1964.
Drafted by the NBA’s Seattle
SuperSonics in 1968, he instead
played two seasons in the American Basketball Association because the Oakland Oaks offered
him $5,000 more than the Sonics. He played two seasons with
the Oaks (playing with Charlotte
Bobcats coach Larry Brown) and
Washington Caps.
Logan said he fell victim to a lifestyle that comes with pro basketball. Drinking and partying too
much, he gained 50 pounds – from
175 pounds to 225 – in one year.
He came down awkwardly on
his knee in a game with Washington. The injury ended his career.
“I got all that money and didn’t
use it right,” Logan said. “I
wasn’t taking care of my body,
didn’t make the sacrifices and
that’s where the trouble started. I
wouldn’t have hurt my knee if I’d
been doing the right thing.”
After working more than 30 years
as a recreation director in Memphis,
Tenn., Marion, N.C., and Black
Mountain, Logan is retired in Asheville. He was voted into the N.C.
Sports Hall of Fame in 2000, joined
that year by Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski and Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson.
“That was fantastic, it was the
best feeling I ever had,” Logan
said.
Lost chance
Willie Maples, who turned
down the offer from N.C. A&T,
felt his basketball future would
be best served by going directly
to the pros. He tried out for the
ABA’s Kentucky Colonials. He
was cut, he said, after outplaying
other higher-profile (and white)
guards who complained that the
team shouldn’t sign an unknown
player ahead of them.
After being cut from several other pro teams, Maples said he ended up playing for the Harlem
Globetrotters for eight years and
then the Harlem Clowns for several more years. After he stopped
playing, he lived what he says was
a care-free life in several cities, including San Francisco, Acapulco,
Mexico and St. Petersburg, Fla.
He, too, has retired to Asheville.
Maples has been arrested multiple times over the years on charges
including DWI, public intoxication, assault and shoplifting. His
most recent arrest came in 2001.
“By the grace of God, I am OK
as a person now,” Maples said. “I
have my life straightened out.”
Documentation
When Johnny Bailey was in elementary school, his older brother Joe Chandler – a star Bears
football player in the late 1950s –
would walk through the neighborhood, asking businesses to
donate money to help StephensLee buy equipment and uniforms
for the athletic teams.
“He couldn’t (raise the money), and I remember he stood
right in front of us and cried,”
Bailey said.
“I knew at that time that it would
be my destiny to make sure that all
those people who helped StephensLee be the best school it could be
would get their due.”
Bailey eventually would co-author a book with Bennie Lake
called “The Greatest Sports Heroes of the Stephens-Lee Bears.”
Logan, Maples and Bailey remain close friends and live close
to each other in Asheville. Lake
died earlier this year in Durham.
Logan, now 65, still appreciates the opportunity he was given by Western Carolina.
“If some of my teammates had
a chance to go schools like they
do now, a lot of them would have
made the pros or been big-time in
college,” he said. “If they could
have had that chance, that’s what
would have happened.”
“We Are Rising”
Come see the
stars of today
and enjoy thrilling
basketball action.
Feb. 7 – Livingstone
Nov. 27 – Belmont Abbey* - 2:00 p.m.
Feb.
12
– Winston-Salem State
Dec. 7 – Queens*
Feb.
19
– Fayetteville State
Dec. 16 – Tusculum*
Feb.
24
–
Saint Augustine’s*
Jan. 6 – Saint Paul’s
Feb.
26
–
Saint
Augustine’s
+ - 8:00 p.m.
Jan. 15 – Chowan
Jan. 17 – Elizabeth City State
Unless noted, all games are doubleheaders that
begin at 6:00 p.m.
Jan. 20 – Lincoln (PA)
*-Women only +-Men only
Feb. 5 – Johnson C. Smith
A decade of Basketball championships
2001-2002 – Men’s CIAA Champions
2002-2003 – Women’s CIAA Champions
2003-2004 – Women’s CIAA Champions
2004-2005 – Women’s CIAA Champions
2005-2006 – Women’s CIAA Champions
2007-2008 – Women’s CIAA Champions