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‘Jayhawkers’ movie more than story about basketball

Views West

by Murrel Bland

The Boss Lady (Carol) and I walked into the Standees movie theater Saturday, March 15, to watch the independent “Jayhawkers” film. The theater and an ancillary restaurant are in the Prairie Village Shopping Center.

As we walked up to the ticket counter, we visited very briefly with three other couples—also obviously Jayhawk fans.

“Well, we don’t have to watch the Jayhawks tonight, so we came to see the movie,” one man said. KU lost the night before in the Big 12 tournament to Iowa State.

The feature film “Jayhawkers” tells the story of how Wilt Chamberlain was recruited and played basketball at the University Kansas in Lawrence. But it is much more than a film about basketball. It is a story about how the greatest basketball player ever helped change the hearts and minds of Kansans when it came to race relations.

The film tells of Wilton Norman Chamberlain who was born in 1936 in Philadelphia, Pa. He led his Overbook High School basketball team to two city championships; once he scored 90 points in a single game.

B.H. Born, a KU graduate who played for coach Phog Allen in the early 1950s, had spotted Chamberlain and encouraged Allen to recruit him. Allen visited Chamberlain and his parents and found that more than 200 other schools were recruiting the basketball sensation; Allen, known not only for his coaching skills but also for his power of persuasion, convinced Wilt to visit Lawrence.

A special delegation welcomed Chamberlain to Lawrence, meeting him at the Lawrence Airport. He decided to play for KU.

However, after he came to Lawrence, Chamberlain ran into ugly racial discrimination. Black persons were not allowed to attend downtown Lawrence movie theaters or eat in restaurants. There are scenes where Chamberlain integrates a movie theater and a restaurant.

Franklin Murphy, the KU chancellor, saw Chamberlain not only as a great basketball player, but also as an agent of change who had—through sports– the power to lead the way toward racial justice.

I recall conversations with Roy Edwards Jr. and his wife Joan, about how they befriended Chamberlain, inviting him to their Kansas City, Kan., home for Sunday dinner, despite certain neighbors who looked disapprovingly. Chamberlain would lift the Edwards children up to a goal so they could dunk the basketball.

Justin Wesley, a current member of the KU basketball team, does an excellent job of portraying Chamberlain. His coach, Bill Self, had suggested to Kevin Willmott, the film’s director, that Wesley would do a good job in the movie. Wesley did.

Willmott , a native of Junction City, Kan., is an independent moviemaker and an associate professor of film at KU. His other films include “CSA,” a story of what it would be like if the South would have won the Civil War and “The Only Good Indian,” a story about students who escape from Indian schools.

Jayhawkers” also provides insight into the life of coach Allen. Allen, portrayed by Kip Niven, played in the early 1900s for James Naismith, the man who invented the game of basketball and KU’s first head basketball coach.

Allen told Naismith that he wanted to coach basketball. Naismith said basketball didn’t really need a coach—that “you just let players play.”

According to legend, there were times during Naismith’s coaching tenure that he didn’t attend games; at other times, he served as a referee. Coaching was a sideline for Naismith—his other duties included teaching hygiene classes and conducting chapel meetings; he also was an ordained Presbyterian clergyman.

Allen was considered the man who invented basketball coaching. He wanted to coach Chamberlain; however state law forced him to retire at age 70. He was bitter that Chancellor Murphy refused to seek an exemption; instead Murphy appointed Dick Harp, Allen’s assistant, as the new head coach. Allen had favored Ralph Miller who had played at KU for Allen in the late 1930s. Miller was a very successful basketball coach at Wichita University, the University of Iowa and Oregon State.

Kathleen Warfel, an actress that I first met when she was at Washington High School in the early 1970s, does an excellent job of portraying Bess, Phog Allen’s wife. Warfel has appeared in several local theater productions and is a KU graduate.

The “Jayhawkers“ film is in black and white–consistent with the films of the 1950s era—except for the final scenes that are in color. The movie closes with shots from a halftime ceremony in early 1998 during halftime of a KU-K-State game when Chamberlain’s jersey was retired. I was fortunate to have attended that game.

Chamberlain had been reluctant to come back to KU for the ceremony; when he started to speak to the packed field house of more than 16,000 loyal Jayhawk fans, he started to apologize for losing the national championship game in 1957 to the University of North Carolina. But the fans didn’t want to hear that. There was no need for him apologize. And in that moment, he praised his KU experience, ending with ”Rock Chalk Jayhawk.”

Murrel Bland is the former editor of The Wyandotte West and The Piper Press.

Column: Do you like where this road could lead?

by Lawton R. Nuss

Last year several legislators crafted a proposal for changing the constitutional process chosen by the people of Kansas for selecting Supreme Court justices. These legislators sought endorsements by the Kansas Bar Association and the Kansas District Judges Association (KDJA).

According to several sources, the endorsements would induce the Legislature to give judicial branch employees their first pay raise in more than 4 years. I told our 1,500 employees that while the justices supported the pay raises, we opposed the trade. Later one of the crafting legislators publicly denied any linkage between the overdue pay raises and selection of justices and demanded my apology.

Recently one of these legislators advanced a new proposal. Linking money to other court issues can no longer be denied. Rather, it is glaring.

Instead of pay raises, this time legislative money is being offered to keep all Kansas courts open after July 1 – in direct exchange for some important restructuring of the judicial branch. More specifically, the money would be given if the KDJA now endorsed the “package deal.” The package includes changing the statewide unified court system in two fundamental ways.

First, it allows the chief judge in each of Kansas’ 31 judicial districts to submit and control his or her own budget. Second, it allows the judges in each judicial district to choose their own chief judge. The Supreme Court has exclusively exercised the authority for both actions since at least the late 1970’s after a constitutional amendment. All 31 chief judges – the ones most directly affected by the decentralizing budget provision – oppose it. Additionally, many prefer the Supreme Court’s traditional chief judge selection process, where for almost 40 years the Court has sought input from all judges and employees working closely with them before making the appointment. Chief judges and justices alike ask, “What needs fixing?”

One packaging legislator informed the KDJA that without a positive statement about the entire package, it would fail. The money for keeping the courts open would then be lost. And no other legislative revenue proposal for keeping courts open was planned. In other words, no endorsement means closed courts. So while disagreeing with a significant part of the package, the executive committee concluded, “The KDJA can accept [it], because the courts of Kansas will be allowed to remain open for business.” The Kansas Senate approved it a few hours later.

The Supreme Court strongly opposes the package – for reasons that should be clear. Most objectionable is the diffusion of the unified court system’s centralized authority in exchange for money to keep Kansas courts open.

Some argue this legislative action violates the people’s constitution. The 1968 Legislature’s “Citizens’ Committee” recommended all the various courts be unified, modernized and administered by one central authority. This recommendation was followed by a 1972 statewide election in which Kansans voted to add this language to their constitution: “The supreme court shall have general administrative authority over all courts in this state.” Acknowledging this mandate for unification and modernization, a later committee chaired by Edward Arn – former Attorney General, Supreme Court justice, and two-term Republican Governor – specifically recommended one budget for the entire judicial branch.

I express no opinion on the constitutionality of the package. Because if it is challenged in a lawsuit, the Supreme Court may need to answer that question.

But as the package moves through the House of Representatives, all Kansans should ask themselves at least two questions: First, is this package true to the will of the people when they voted to change their constitution and place all administrative authority under the Supreme Court and to eventually unify all Kansas courts??

Second, if Kansans start down the road where judges feel compelled to help bargain away the Court’s authority, where does that road end? Will otherwise fair and impartial judges be asked to decide court cases the way some legislators want them to be decided – in exchange for money to keep the courts open for the people of Kansas they all are supposed to be serving?

Lawton R. Nuss is a Salina native and a fourth-generation Kansan. He has served on the Kansas Supreme Court since 2002 and as chief justice since 2010.

Celebrate St. Pat’s Day with a little Irish literature

Kansas City, Kan., author Helen Walsh Folsom has written a new novel with an Irish setting, just about ready to send off to her publisher. (File photo)

Window on the West

by Mary Rupert

St. Patrick’s Day can hardly pass without a mention of one of the names most locally associated with the holiday – Helen Folsom.

Folsom, age 80, has written a book on St. Patrick, called “St. Patrick’s Secrets.”

Her three books have an Irish theme, and she has another one almost ready to send off to the publisher, reported her daughter, Bettse Folsom.

The new book is another fictional story set in Ireland.

Folsom’s first book, in 2002, was the nonfiction, “St. Patrick’s Secrets.” That was followed by “Ah, Those Irish Colleens!” a historical book, in 2003.

After a tornado hit her Kansas City, Kan., home in 2003, Helen’s fiction writing was put on hold for a while.

In November 2012, Folsom published a novel, “Fianna, The Dark Web of the Brotherhood,” available from Amazon.com. This novel has lots of Irish romance and adventure, set in 1892 during the Irish rebellion, and those who read it can learn a little about history, too.

“Fianna” is doing great overseas, especially in its Kindle sales, Folsom said.

To find Helen’s books online on the Amazon website, visit: “St. Patrick’s Secrets” “Ah, Those Irish Colleens,” and “Fianna.”

To reach Mary Rupert, editor, email [email protected].