A BREAK FROM CIGARS: REMEMBERING COACH WOODEN

Los Angeles, June 5, 2010 – This Web site is all about cigars, but I hope our readers will indulge me with a short remembrance of John Wooden, the amazing UCLA basketball coach who died last night at age 99.

My first in-person encounter with Wooden came when I was a freshman manager of the UCLA track & field team in 1974. Our locker room was in Pauley Pavilion and being a freshman, Wooden spotted what to him was an unknown person walking along the concourse level; I was looking for the keys to a storeroom to get some equipment for our practice session.

It wasn’t more than a minute later when one of the basketball managers was on the concourse, asking who I was and what I was doing there since practices were closed. After I explained, the manager left and I went back to the locker room and then to the track.

Imagine my astonishment when, by chance, I saw Wooden in the athletic department offices the following day and he came up to me and apologized for any rudeness or misunderstanding. That he would care about the feelings of a freshman manager in another sport floored me, but I have never forgotten it.

After his retirement, I saw Wooden often on the Drake Stadium track in the mornings when I would be preparing for workouts or meets and he was talking his morning walk. He never failed to wave, say hello and call me by name. If we had a meet scheduled for the following day, he wanted to know how we would do, in detail.

If coverage of Wooden’s death seems too full of the impact that he had off the court, rest assured that this was his unique gift not just to his players, but to the UCLA community at large that continues to this day. In a town which is used to celebrities and generally allows the rich and famous to live their lives without being stopped at restaurants and shops, Wooden was besieged wherever he went. Well into his 90s, long lines would form inside Pauley Pavilion prior to each game for autographs or a picture or just to shake his hand . . . for a man who had not coached for more than 20 years.

In an age of non-stop hype, shock and loudness, Wooden’s coaching achievements marked him as among the most accomplished individuals in any profession, yet he never lost his sense of humility or devotion to his core values. Psalm 8 is often translated to say that God made man “a little lower than the angels,” but the distance between the angels and Wooden was a lot less than for most of us, and is now none at all.
~ Rich Perelman

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