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Few are called ... very, very few
Athletes, coaches step into spotlight when schools compile HOF lists
By Dennis Barnidge
dbarnidge@yourjournal.com
There is almost no wrong way to start a school hall of fame.
Salute scholars or athletes. Shine the spotlight on teachers or administrators. Find inspiration in what happened when they were in school or what they've become since graduation. And on and on.
There's no wrong way to do it. None.
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Which was of no consolation at all to the Crystal City Board of Education when it hatched the plan for diving into the hall-of-fame pool. Crystal City studied and tweaked. It discussed and analyzed. It went through lists and lists and lists of names.
The point, longtime school board member Patrick Cherry says, was never that a hall of fame couldn't be done wrong, but that it had to be done right.
Cherry thinks Crystal City has done that. Or will do that.
Crystal City will be the seventh Jefferson County school to have a hall of fame when it turns the spotlight on a five-man inaugural class of honorees on May 13. The honorees will be saluted during the school's senior awards program.
"I'm really excited about this," Cherry says. "This is something that's going to be exciting for the district."
Although Crystal City's first group of honorees is strongly connected to sports, Cherry says the HOF is not sports exclusive. He points out that one of the anchors of the first class is Elmer Smith, a beloved science teacher who kept Hornets on the right side of bunsen burners and critical thinking for more than four decades.
Smith is the non-sports exception in the first group of honorees. Bill Bradley, Dick Cook, Danny LaRose and Arvel Popp are the other members of the inaugural class. All have strong connections to sports. In fact, each already is a members of sports halls of fame - Bradley, the National Basketball HOF and the National High Schools Sports HOF among others; Cook, the Missouri Track and Cross Country Coaches HOF; LaRose, the Missouri Sports HOF and the Mizzou Sports HOF; and Popp, the Missouri Basketball HOF and the Missouri Sports HOF.
Crystal City is in the majority when it comes to expanding its hall-of-fame reach beyond sports. Festus, Herculaneum and Windsor all have high school halls of fame open to all grads. Fox and Seckman have sports halls of fame, and Northwest may follow suit next year. De Soto's HOF started as a sports hall of fame, but was expanded to all students by the time it added a second class.
Crystal City gave at least a moment's thought to a sports-only HOF before deciding on a broader format.
"We're still an educational institution," Cherry says.
The Golden Age
Call it the golden age of Crystal City. Not many would argue with that.
Cherry says it's just coincidence that the first class of honorees for Crystal City's Wall of Fame all passed through the high school at the north end of Mississippi Avenue within a 10-year period. Smith and Popp were on the faculty then. Cook graduated in 1956, LaRose in '57 and Bradley in '61.
Crystal City in the 1950s had some outstanding athletes. Besides Cook, besides LaRose, besides Bradley, there was Ike Jennings, George Bequette, Richard Bias. Beyond those three, there was three more. And three more. And three more.
"If Crystal City was accused of having a swagger, I think that's where it came from," Cherry says of the 1950s.
The sports credentials of the Crystal City Wall of Fame honorees are impressive.
>Bradley's sporting resume is beyond lengthy. The short version is that he was a legend and playing at Crystal City, Princeton, with the 1964 Olympic team and as a member of the New York Knicks. At Crystal City, he broke the eight-year-old state scoring record of Lionel Smith of (Cape Girardeau) University High as a senior in 1960-61 and held the record for 22 years. Nearly 50 years after hoisting his last jumper for the Hornets, Bradley's 3,068 points (27.4 ppg for four years) still is fourth on the state scoring list.
Likely it doesn't quite fit on his list of sporting achievements, but Bradley, a three-term U.S. Senator, also delivered one of the best basketball lines in history when running for president for the first time in 1988. Quizzed during a debate on the best way to select the Democratic nominee - primary elections? back-room maneuvers and horse trading? - he said, "Personally, I favor a jump shot from the top of the key."
>LaRose was the best player on the University of Missouri's best football team. A two-way end and punter for Mizzou, he was an all-America for the Tigers team that was No. 1 in the country for most of the 1960 season and capped the year by beating Navy (and Heisman winner Joe Belino) in the Orange Bowl. The top draft choice of the Detroit Lions, he played in the NFL and AFL for six years.
>Cook was a high school standout for the Hornets - he was the top sprinter in Missouri as a senior in 1956 - and a member of the football and track teams at Mizzou, but today he is best known for his contributions as a teacher and coach. The founder and longtime coach of the Jefferson County Jets youth program, he coached Crystal City to a state record six consecutive girls state titles in track from 1984-89.
FINDING THE RIGHT PIECES
What do you put in a hall of fame?
Robert Bradshaw, athletic director and assistant principal at Herculaneum High, argues that a school hall of fame is more than a list of names or an arrangement of plaques. He argues that if it's done correctly, a hall of fame showcases the heart and soul of the school and community.
"I think it's a vital part of our community," he says.
Festus High principal and coaching legend Karen Biehle says the Festus HOF connect the students of 2009 with grads of 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago.
"It's great for our students to see the achievements of our alumni," she says, noting that a couple Festus High history classes have made the work of HOF honorees the focus of class sessions.
Fox assistant superintendent Lorenzo Rizzi likes the idea of using the hall of famers as an example.
"The students see their plaques every day. Hopefully they're striving to reach and exceed their accomplishments," he says.
Herculaneum's first hall of fame class turned the spotlight on names that already are part of day-to-day life in the school district. The honorees who were saluted last fall include include several whose names are on district facilities and schools. Longtime guidance counselor Ora Robinson's name is on the high school gym. Senn-Thomas Middle School is named in honor of hall of fame notables Dr. Emmett Senn and Roy Thomas. Some of Herculaneum's more memorable moments have been played out on the football field named in honor of hall of famer John W. Dugan. Herculaneum also carved out a HOF spot for trailblazer Margarete Burris, the district's first African-American teacher.
Tisha Delaney Vandemore and Bill Holmes are the sports connections on Herculaneum's honors list. Delaney Vandemore was an all-America volleyball player at Jefferson College and the University of Nebraska. At Nebraska, she led the Cornhuskers to the NCAA championship match. Holmes coached Herculaneum to 27 consecutive wins in the 1960s.
With one grad from the mid-1930s, Herculaneum's HOF class reaches as far back in the school's history as any in the area.
Patrick Cherry says Crystal City was aware of the tick-tock of history when it considered the selections for its first group of honorees.
"I urged the committee to look way back," he said. "We need to reach back as far as we can remember."
Though it picked a 1950s-centric group for its first class, Crystal City's HOF guidelines open the door to recognize not only long-ago Crystal City high teachers and graduates, but also residents who attended segregation-era schools, Star Elementary, which was located in Crystal City, and Douglass High in Festus.
PICK A NUMBER, ANY NUMBER
Picky, picky, picky.
In theory, that is the approach hall of fame committees take. Picky, however, is in the eye of the beholder.
Festus has inducted only 13 members into its HOF in the last 17 years. Fox, at the other end of the spectrum, has held three Sports HOF programs and has saluted 34 individuals and three teams.
As much as a hall of fame is about school history and achievement, it also is about numbers. Is one too few? A dozen too many?
Fox may have overreached with three big HOF groups in 2005, '06 and '07. It has put the HOF program on hold the last two years and is not rushing into a fourth group of honorees.
"I believe Fox High is thinking they will induct more in the next year or two. I think Seckman High is going to wait a couple more years also," says Lorenzo Rizzi, Fox assistant superintendent and a former wrestling coach who was a member of the HOF class of 2006.
Herculaneum, a district with a long history, started its HOF with 11 honorees. The plan is to scale back to five inductees beginning with the next class.
"I think it was important to take more the first year," Bradshaw says.
Bradshaw notes that schools that are serious about recognizing their history are running out of time to swing the spotlight to pre-WWII contributors and grads, the youngest of whom already are in their 70s.
Crystal City, another district with a long history, opted for fewer in its inaugural class of honorees than Herculaneum. Its reasoning: "If you're going to have more than five, you're going to get to kind of get lost," Cherry says, arguing that an honors program that runs on and on isn't much of an honor for the person who is at the end of the line.
Crystal City's plan is to honor five this year, five next year and then cut back to three honorees per year starting in 2011.
Cherry says Crystal City has enough HOF-worthy grads and students to last for years.
"We've got a long way to go," he says. "There's so many people who are worthy of it."
Crystal City honoree Dick Cook says one nice thing about hall of fame plans is they leave room to make any fixes that are needed. He compared the process to picking an all-star team. "Somebody very deserving is always left off, but with this we'll be able to go back and make things right," he says.
RECOGNIZING THE DESERVING
There is an argument for keeping honors lists exclusive. The thinking goes that a hall of fame with 10 members is more selective than one with 100.
The argument on the other side is: if 100 are worthy why recognize only 10?
Festus's Biehle doesn't want to water down the hall of fame process, but she says too many contributors go unappreciated.
"I don't know that we do enough to recognize people during their lifetime," she says.
When Herculaneum held its HOF program last year, seven of the 11 honorees were able to attend and the families of two others were able to participate.
Next week, three of the five honorees will attend the first Wall of Fame program at Crystal City. Popp is being recognized posthumously, and Bradley is unable to attend. Smith, Cook and LaRose, who is coming in from his home in Michigan, all will be there.
It will be an exclusive group, to be sure. But exclusivity probably means more when you're on the outside looking in than when you're on the inside looking out.
Cook, for instance, doesn't mention that it will be a small group in the Crystal City spotlight. He doesn't mention that it will be the first group in the spotlight. Instead, when nudged to talk about the Wall of Fame, he says the recognition of his alma mater, his community, his friends is a bit humbling.
"I appreciate it very much and I'm honored and somewhat surprised," he says.
And that seems a pretty good way to start a hall of fame.
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